History Main / Post911TerrorismMovie

A SubTrope of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. See WesternTerrorists.

** ''Film/TheVillage'' represents the second wave. 9/11 is still not mentioned, but it's conceptually about the isolationism and fear of the future that took over the US post-9/11, and the characters [[spoiler:who flee from the modern world, retreating to a colonial time period in their own village]] are mentioned as being from [[BigApplesauce New York City]] and met in a support group, having lost people to violent and random crime. It's often supposed that this is designed to be a commentary on post-9/11 America and paranoia over safety and modernity, with those characters being commentaries on the families and friends of 9/11 victims and survivors.

* Three of Creator/MNightShyamalan's movies from after TheTurnOfTheMillennium are viewed as being inspired by 9/11 and feature some heavy subtext that marks them out as members of each wave:

** ''Film/TheHappening'' represents the third wave. It's explicitly about terror (although admittedly spread by [[ItMakesSenseInContext plants]] as part of GaiasRevenge). It starts off in a sunny morning in [[BigApplesauce New York City]], and features professional people committing suicide randomly and inexplicably, followed by construction workers jumping to their deaths in the street. This was reminiscent of one of the most controversial pieces of 9/11 iconography: the images of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center.

** ''Film/United93'' ironically somewhat subverts the trope by being a Verité-style docudrama.

* ''Series/DesignatedSurvivor'' is essentially 9/11 but with Capitol Building being bombed,[[note]]and some speculation goes that United Airlines Flight 93 was meant to hit the Capitol had it not been for the passengers' revolt[[/note]] forcing a woefully unprepared incumbent to take the reins. The high tensions and emotions lead to Muslims being targeted because it was the Taliban and Al Qaeda last time and the threat of Islamic State, with the likes of Bin Laden and the immediate reaction name dropped. It even has a reenactment of the President (ironically [[Series/TwentyFour Jack Bauer]] as a liberal against war-hungry conservatives) being pressured to commit to swift brutal retaliation, even possibly a nuclear strike.

* In ''Anime/EdenOfTheEast'', Mononobe's plans involve what's basically a copycat crime version of 9/11. He noticed how those attacks brought people together in America, and so wants to recreate that effect via a FalseFlagOperation which involves firing missiles at Japan and killing thousands of people. Oddly, the hero doesn't find the FalseFlagOperation part an intrinsically bad idea--he just wants to create the same effect but without having to kill anyone.
* ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'', despite being set in an alternate history where the USSR never fell and terrorism is of the good old-fashioned state-sponsored kind, got the Type One treatment, with its US premiere postponed for about a year following 9/11 just because its fourth episode featured a plane being hijacked, despite the fact [[spoiler:that the plane then landed safely and all its teenage passengers were rescued by Mithril]] -- so except the actual act of hijacking an airplane, there was ''zero'' parallel with 9/11. More awkward is that a critical part of Sousuke's backstory is being a {{Child Soldier|s}} in the Mujahideen, the broad anti-Communist insurgency movement during the Soviet-Afghan war that al-Qaeda branched off from. Not wanting to suggest that the series' hero was once fighting on the same side as Osama bin Laden,[[note]]though this wouldn't be true, as Osama was booted out by the time Sousuke would have gotten involved, and the specific commander Sousuke fought under is an {{Expy}} of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a political enemy of Osama's whom al-Qaeda would eventually assassinate[[/note]] the 2002 anime adaptation opts to change Sousuke's stated home country from Afghanistan to the fictional "Helmajistan", refrain from naming the guerilla force he was part of, and remove any references to the fact that he was raised Muslim.
* ''Anime/TerrorInResonance'' is absolutely drawing on this trope. The first episode starts off with the theft of plutonium from a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. It ends with a [[RuleOfSymbolism twin towered building exploding and one of its towers collapsing, complete with massive smoke/debris clouds engulfing hapless people.]] The next episode starts off with still images of rescue workers in the rubble that appear to be directly inspired by photographs of the aftermath of 9/11, followed by high-level anti-terrorism conferences as police discuss their options.

* ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'', which despite being set in an alternate history where the USSR never fell and terrorism is of the good old fashioned state sponsored kind, got the Type One treatment, with its US premiere postponed for about a year following 9/11, just because its fourth episode featured a plane being hijacked, despite the fact [[spoiler:that the plane then landed safely and all its teenage passengers were rescued by Mithril]] -- so except the actual act of hijacking an airplane, there was ''zero'' parallel with 9/11. More awkward is that a critical part of Sousuke's backstory being a {{Child Soldier|s}} in the Mujahideen, the broad anti-Communist insurgency movement during the Soviet-Afghan war that al-Qaeda branched off from. Not wanting to suggest that the series' hero was once fighting on the same side as Osama bin Laden[[note]]though this wouldn't be true, as Osama was booted out by the time Sousuke would have gotten involved, and the specific commander Sousuke fought under is an {{Expy}} of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a political enemy of Osama's whom al-Qaeda would eventually assassinate[[/note]], the 2002 anime adaptation opts to change Sousuke's stated home country from Afghanistan to the fictional "Helmajistan," refrain from naming the guerilla force he was part of, and remove any references to the fact that he was raised Muslim.

* ''Film/WhiteHouseDown'' is more of a mix of two and three, but the background of the real BigBad is [[WellIntentionedExtremist slightly more complicated]]. [[RefugeInAudacity The movie itself has many comedy bits]].

* Although ''Series/TheWestWing'' never deals with 9-11 specifically (although this is arguably justified by it being set in what is in many ways quite clearly an AlternateHistory; it's quite possible that the attacks simply never happened in that universe), it often deals heavily and frequently with Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the seasons following 9-11; the episode "[[Recap/TheWestWingS03E01IsaacAndIshmael Isaac and Ishmael]]", a [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]] episode written, filmed and aired within three weeks of the attacks, deals with Islamic terrorism, and a running plot in the third and fourth seasons deals with the fallout from an attempt by a {{Qurac}}[=-sponsored=] terror group to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

* ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'', which despite being set in an alternate history where the USSR never fell and terrorism is of the good old fashioned state sponsored kind, got the Type One treatment, with it's US premiere postponed for about a year following 9/11, just because it's fourth episode featured a plane being hijacked, despite the fact [[spoiler: that, the plane then landed safely and all it's teenage passengers where rescued by Mithril.]] So except the actual act of hijacking an airplane there was ZERO parallel with 9/11.
** More awkward is that a critical part of Sousuke's backstory being a {{Child Soldier|s}} in the Mujahideen, the broad anti-Communist insurgency movement during the Soviet-Afghan war that al-Qaeda branched off from. Not wanting to suggest that the series' hero was once fighting on the same side as Osama bin Laden[[note]]though this wouldn't be true, as Osama was booted out by the time Sousuke would have gotten involved, and the specific commander Sousuke fought under is an {{Expy}} of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a political enemy of Osama's whom al-Qaeda would eventually assassinate[[/note]], the 2002 anime adaptation opts to change Sousuke's stated home country from Afghanistan to the fictional "Helmajistan," refrain from naming the guerilla force he was part of, and remove any references to the fact that he was raised Muslim.
* In ''Anime/EdenOfTheEast'', Mononobe's plans involve what's basically a copy cat crime version of 9/11. He noticed how those attacks brought people together in America, and so wants to recreate that effect via a FalseFlagOperation which involves firing missiles at Japan and killing thousands of people. Oddly, the hero doesn't find the FalseFlagOperation part an intrinsically bad idea--he just wants to create the same effect but without having to kill anyone.

* ''ComicBook/TheBoys'': Set in an AlternateUniverse where superpowered individuals have existed since [=WW2=], but are mostly Vought Corporation-sponsored hedonists. While 9/11 did happen, the President ([[AuthorTract not Bush]], [[TooDumbToLive he'd managed to decapitate himself with a chainsaw]]) had listened to the warnings and ordered the planes to be shot down, but the Vought-planted VP knocked him out so the supers could save the day. The supers ''royally'' screwed up the rescue attempt, with the net result being that the planes plowed into the Brooklyn Bridge rather than the WTC. Some of the more controversial aspects of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror still occur (the main characters work for the CIA), but most of the plots involve preventing Vought from mass-marketing supers.

* ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'': With the titular Dark Knight representing order and justice and practically every major villain of the trilogy representing sectarian fanaticism, large scale terrorism, or chaos, it's practically impossible not to find parallels to the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror.

** The [[Film/Transformers2007 first film]] averted all mention of the war on terror. Even the army base in Qatar attacked in the beginning, though in the Middle East, has been there for decades. Notably, the US military is capable of helping the Autobots on occasion, and even fighting off Scorponok. However, no one ever mentions the possibility of a terrorist attack, even with the hacking attacks it's assumed to be the work of Iran, North Korea, or China.
*** This may actually be a case of RealityIsUnrealistic since the ability to take out a US military base with almost no survivors left is something that no terrorist group is even close to doing. Even the hacking as portrayed in the movie is beyond the abilities of any terrorist groups. US military networks are very hard to breach even less so with someone doing it from inside Air Force One.
** In the [[Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen second film]] they portrayed American-led special forces hunting Decepticons around the world with carte blanche international support.
** By the [[Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon third film]] this had changed completely. The Decepticons are portrayed as terrorists that execute a 9/11-style event on a citywide scale in Chicago. The filmmakers evoke 9/11 imagery throughout the entire scene by setting buildings on fire, knocking them over and showing human beings jumping from them. What happens if Americans make concessions to terrorists makes up a large portion of the plot.
* ''Film/TheKingdom'' likewise gives the dispatched US agents the military might of an entire platoon to kill an entire terrorist cell in their fortified barrio. Interestingly, it does otherwise deal with the issue more realistically than other films, dealing with the politics and culture involved and even how both sides can get fanatical, including a rather chilling future TykeBomb in the making.
** The original draft of the script had a different ending in which all of the U.S. agents were killed [[spoiler: by the other Saudi liaison as the Americans boarded the plane at the end]]. It was agreed that the audience just wouldn't be able to walk away from the movie after seeing that, and rightfully so.
** The one-of-a-kind multimedia montage is one of the most concise and accurate film representations of the events that lead up to 9/11, it should be used in history classes.
** Strangely yet unsurprisingly, the real life Saudis claimed the movie as racist and stereotyping against them, in spite of some of the more positive imagery that the movie gives their perspective.
* Spike Lee's ''Film/TwentyFifthHour'' was at the time amazingly risqué for showing five minutes worth of a character's first hand view of ground zero being cleaned up. To be fair, considering the rest of the movie's downer tone, it was used devastatingly well.
* ''Film/{{Munich}}'', which dealt with the aftermath of the 1972 terrorist attacks during the Olympics, took place long before 9-11 and hence avoided mentioning it specifically... though the last shot of the film is of the Twin Towers in New York City. Judge for yourself.
* ''Film/ReignOverMe'', a melodrama with Adam Sandler as a 9/11 widower and Don Cheadle as a friend attempting to help him recuperate, exemplifies the second type, while not actually being about terrorism per se.
* ''Film/YouDontMessWithTheZohan'' dealt directly with the terrorism involved in the Israeli-Arab conflict mostly in the third way: the main character was a counter-terror operative. In a rather surprising fact for an Adam Sandler film, both sides are treated as sympathetic people who want to just get on with their lives but have to fight a ridiculous war to please annoying, nationalist parents. This isn't entirely ''true'', but it's damn good for a film that otherwise focused on Sandler finding new ways to talk about sex with a funny accent.
* Played straight and subverted in ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'', Dakota Fanning asks "is it the terrorists?" when the aliens start attacking. The film's first act and part of the second act are full of imagery that evokes the attacks as well: aliens fire heat rays that turn people into clouds of ash, and in one scene the aftermath of a plane crash is studied. Also notable is the attitude of the protagonist's son, who is obsessed with "getting back at them." By the end of the second act, imagery reminiscent of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars takes center stage, making it clear that the film isn't just using the aliens to represent terror groups.
* Then there are the movies actually about the 9/11 attacks:
** ''Film/United93'', which ironically somewhat subverts the trope by being a Verité-style docudrama.
** Creator/OliverStone's ''World Trade Center'', which tells the true story of two Port Authority police officers who were trapped under the rubble for 24 hours.
** 2017's ''Film/NineEleven'', starring Creator/CharlieSheen and Creator/WhoopiGoldberg, depicts the story of a small group trapped in an elevator during the attacks on the World Trade Center.
* ''Film/RightAtYourDoor'', which was about a biological attack on Los Angeles. Ignored the actual terrorists completely, focusing solely on the effect this would have on average people.
* The film ''Film/{{Unthinkable}}'', which focuses on the [[HeWhoFightsMonsters psychological toll that extreme interrogation techniques have on its practitioners]], and whether or not it being a part of their job makes them [[DesignatedHero "good" guys]] or not.
* The Creator/RobertPattinson film ''Remember Me''. The ''very last shot'' of the movie, shows a classroom with the date of September 11, 2001, then Pattinson's character in his office in the World Trade Center. Audiences and critics alike did not take this well.
* ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'': M says that the CIA discovered a massive shorting of airline stocks that allowed "somebody" to profit from 9/11. While it's never ''stated outright'' that Le Chiffre was involved in 9/11, it's at least heavily implied: he tries to pull the same scam in the movie, and as a banker for terrorists it stands to reason that he'd have the connections to know 9/11 was coming. M's offhand comment "Christ, I miss the Cold War", besides being a ContinuityNod to older Bond movies, is likely an allusion to the post-9/11 state of politics.
* The Thai superhero film ''Film/MercuryMan'' is more than a bit shameless in this aspect. the BigBad is an Afghan terrorist named ''Osama bin Ali'' (though he [[FakeNationality sounds and looks Thai]]) and his evil plan is to blow up American military installments in Thailand with stolen weapons.
* ''Animation/TheReturnOfHanuman'', movie [[MadeInCountryX made in India]] has Hanuman preventing 9/11 by bending the Twin Towers. He also captures a person similar to UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden along with other terrorists and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush-like person.
* ''Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice'', being made by the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' guys, is an over-the-top parody of these types of movies. The eponymous Team America go after terrorists, but often [[DestructiveSavior cause more damage than the enemies they fight]], and it's all played for [[RefugeInAudacity laughs]].
* ''Film/WhiteHouseDown'', which is more of a mix of two and three, but the background of the real BigBad is [[WellIntentionedExtremist slightly more complicated]]. [[RefugeInAudacity The movie itself has many comedy bits]].
* By contrast, the other "White House gets taken over by terrorists" film ''Film/OlympusHasFallen'' is more of a type three as it has a darker and more brutal tone to it and the villains are all North Koreans. The sequel ''Film/LondonHasFallen'' is a type three as well, dealing with both MiddleEasternTerrorists and WesternTerrorists.
* ''Film/AmericanAssassin'', which is about Mitch Rapp having a personal vendetta against terrorists after his girlfriend is killed in a terrorist attack.
* The ''Sicario'' franchise, while dealing primarily with the United States' War on Drugs, sits firmly in this category. In [[Film/{{Sicario}} the first film]], [[spoiler: the CIA agents respond to the Cartels' operations in Arizona as if they were stamping out an insurgency in the Middle East]]. More specifically, the events of the sequel, ''[[Film/SicarioDayOfTheSoldado Day of the Soldado]]'', are directly triggered by jihadists crossing the Mexican-American border to carry out bombings.
* The 2012 Espionage thriller ''Film/ZeroDarkThirty'' depicts the CIA's manhunt for the architect of the September 11th attacks, Osama bin Laden. The film averts the third category by showing that the search for bin Laden was anything but easy; the central protagonist never kills anyone herself and the agency is powerless to stop many attacks in the intervening years, even ones directed at their own.
* In ''Film/JackRyanShadowRecruit'', Jack Ryan joins the Marines not long after the 9/11 attacks. The movie is also about trying to prevent a terrorist attack on New York.
* The 1998 film ''Film/TheSiege'', released three years before 9/11, was about the FBI dealing with homegrown Islamic terrorists committing bombings throughout New York, starting with an MTA bus, then a Broadway theatre, a school, and the FBI New York office.
* ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' is a Post-9/11 {{Kaiju}} Movie. The monster's rampage through New York is explicitly designed to call to mind the 9/11 attacks and the state of emergency that New York was under at the time, starting with a collapsing skyscraper (and not just any skyscraper, but the Woolworth Building, a [[MonumentalDamage Lower Manhattan landmark]]) producing a dust cloud that rolls through the streets in a manner not unlike the famous shots of the dust from the collapsing World Trade Center rolling through Lower Manhattan. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXc7hpMgofQ This video]] by Up From the Depths goes into more detail.
* ''Film/RedEye'' was Creator/WesCraven's take on the genre, done as a PsychologicalThriller with horror elements. The terrorists' identity and ideology are [[TerroristsWithoutACause never outlined]] (they're heard speaking Russian, but that's about it), the plot instead concerning one of them trying to force the manager of a hotel to collaborate with their plot to assassinate the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security while he's staying at her hotel.
* ''Film/TheForeigner2017'' is an odd example. The antagonists are a terrorist cell, but instead of Islamic terrorists it reaches way back into the archives and pulls out the [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles IRA]].

* Ditto ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', which is essentially a LighterAndSofter version of ''Series/TwentyFour''.
* Its predecessor, ''Series/{{JAG}}'', went right into full UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror mode after 9/11 (naturally, seeing as the show was always just one big propaganda project to drum up support for the military). The main characters routinely traveled into hotspots like Afghanistan, Iraq and others where real-life Judge Advocate General personnel would never set foot.
* Although never dealing with 9-11 specifically (although this is arguably justified by it being set in what is in many ways quite clearly an AlternateHistory; it's quite possible that the attacks simply never happened in that universe), ''Series/TheWestWing'' often dealt heavily and frequently with Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the seasons following 9-11; the episode "Isaac and Ishmael", a [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]] episode written, filmed and aired within three weeks of the attacks, dealt with Islamic terrorism, and a running plot in the third and fourth seasons dealt with the fall out from an attempt by a {{Qurac}}-sponsored terror group to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.
* LawProcedural shows had episodes that followed the second example. The 2001-2002 seasons of ''Series/ThePractice'', ''Series/JudgingAmy'' and ''Series/FamilyLaw'' all had episodes where an Arab or Persian character is picked up by the FBI or Homeland Security, and the lawyers are stymied by "classified information" in trying to understand what their client did and how to defend them. These showed fears of civil liberties eroding in the "early days" of the War on Terror. ''Series/LawAndOrder'' dove deep into the second type during the Fred Thompson years, occasionally veering into Type 3. Episodes often touched on 9/11's effect on the country and New York City in particular, and often used the War on Terror to generate JurisdictionFriction (With the feds interfering with - or outright hijacking - cases in order to further anti-terrorist goals).
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. When John Crichton finally gets back to Earth he asks why his previously open-minded and egalitarian father has such a paranoid and hardline attitude on sharing alien technology with other nations. His father replies simply, "September the 11th." Crichton, having seen a lot worse, isn't impressed with this view.
* ''Series/RescueMe'' is interesting in that while 9/11 is incredibly important to the series, it hardly ever touches on the idea of terrorism. Rather, it focuses on 9/11's effects on firefighters and their families (in particular, turning a large number of them into [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] {{Shell Shocked Veteran}}s.). In later seasons, they purposefully [[BrokenBase split the fanbase]] by having star character Franco Rivera "come out" as a a [[http://firefightersfor911truth.org/ Firefighter For 9/11 Truth]] who points out how various policy-makers spoke of a "new Pearl Harbor" as the first step toward an American-dominated world. These views are shared by his actor, Daniel Sunjata.
* ''Series/TheSopranos'' also deals with the post 9/11 environment in an interesting way. It started by doing the standard thing: removing the Twin Towers from the intro montage of Tony driving from New York to his home in suburban New Jersey. But then it starts to realistically discuss the effects it would have on Tony's world, as Dwight Harris, the FBI Agent that had chased him for several seasons, is re-assigned to Anti-Terrorism. Tony then spends the remainder of the series trying to cultivate a relationship with him in order to trade info about potential terrorists (the only snitching his colleagues will tolerate) for leniency in the ongoing investigations into his syndicate.
* The FBI as shown on ''Series/TheWire'' has shifted its priorities away from drug crime, leaving the overmatched Baltimore PD to handle it alone. In fact, the only way they can get Federal help in most seasons is to baldly lie to the Feds to tie their investigation to a Terror case. Interestingly enough, the writers actually predicted that the real FBI would do the exact same thing, since the pilot was written months in advance of the FBI's move towards dealing mostly with terrorism.
* Mentioned briefly in the first few episodes of ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles''. Sarah and John jumped from the nineties to present day, thus completely skipping over the 9/11 attack. Sarah goes to get a new identity forged, and she is told it will be harder after the attack. She speculates that if she hadn't time jumped straight through it, that she would've thought it'd be the end.
* ''Series/{{Standoff}}'' brings us the episode "Man of Steele", where the eponymous radio shock jock has a man on the line who takes a woman hostage. When Emily tries to reason that the FBI is trying to find the woman who scammed him Steele scoff, "Yeah right, the FBI couldn't find 19 known terrorists with box cutters." This quote is later seen on Lia's computer, who recorded Steele for when the FBI would step in to take him off the air, labelled 'September 12'.
* The ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'' remake of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters are Due on Maple Street]]" had the neighborhood on Maple Street be paranoid over a terrorist attack rather than an alien invasion like in the original. Besides that, the plot was mostly unchanged.
* ''Series/BlueHeelers'' mentions this trope in passing, from fear Muslims are terrorists in light of 9/11 to UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden being used to score political points in a town election to an episode revolving around Afghanis on the run: subverted when it had to do with them being asylum seekers.
* Largely averted in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' (she [[BackFromTheDead missed the attacks]]), but "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E4Help Help]]" has counselor Buffy... [[ShapedLikeItself help]] a boy who feared his brother joining the Marines. Afghanistan was a battlefield and Iraq was about to become one, and Buffy reassures him it's not stupid to be scared of what might happen like he thought it was.
* ''{{Series/Spooks}}'' spent its first, pre-9/11, series focusing on [=MI5=] dealing with internal threats. Subsequent series focus more (but not exclusively) on international threats and islamic terrorism, until series 5, when it becomes a ConspiracyThriller.
* ''Series/DesignatedSurvivor'' is, essentially, 9/11 but with Capitol Building being bombed,[[note]]and some speculation goes that United Airlines Flight 93 was meant to hit the Capitol had it not been for the passengers' revolt[[/note]] forcing a woefully unprepared incumbent to take the reigns. The high tensions and emotions lead to Muslims being targeted because it was the Taliban and Al Qaeda last time and the threat of Islamic State, with the likes of Bin Laden and the immediate reaction name dropped. It even has a reenactment of the President (ironically [[Series/TwentyFour Jack Bauer]] as a liberal against war hungry conservatives) being pressured to commit to swift brutal retaliation, even possibly a nuclear strike.
* ''Series/HomeLand'' can absolutely be renamed, ''American Foreign Policy in a Post 9/11 World: The Series.'' From Carrie's obsession being because she did not stop the New York and Washington attacks to drone strikes in Al Qaeda and ISIS to 4chan social media cyber war against foreign and domestic terror.
* ''Series/{{Becker}}'': The penultimate episode has John help a old lady get to Manhattan and when they arrive she can't go. Actually she begins telling a story about her son, with Becker quickly catching on even before the references to September and the view from his office spell it out.
* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' is very much a product of the post-9/11 world. Reese and Carter are both veterans of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. Finch started working on The Machine the day after 9/11, with the primary purpose of identifying future potential threats to the country.
* ''Series/ThePunisher2017'': Frank Castle and Billy Russo served in a Marine Corps black ops unit in Afghanistan that was secretly smuggling heroin back to the United States inside the corpses of [=KIAs=]. The second episode of season 1 sees Dinah Madani having a conversation with her partner while walking around the reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial, even namedropping the attacks and peoples' resilience to bounce back after such major losses.
* ''Series/Daredevil2015'': Multiple:
** The show is set in Hell's Kitchen, which in season 1 is slowly rebuilding from [[Film/TheAvengers2012 "The Incident"]], which anyone who's seen ''The Avengers'' know was when aliens came out of a wormhole in the sky and wreaked havoc on Manhattan. Wilson Fisk is also exploiting the destruction by bid rigging on construction contracts.
** After Fisk's bombing of Hell's Kitchen to eliminate the Russians, which he paints in the press to look like the work of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, Foggy likens the guy to Al-Qaeda (something Matt, being the eponymous masked man, takes offense to).
--->'''Foggy Nelson:''' Please tell me I don't detect a hint of admiration for that terrorist.\\
'''Karen Page:''' This is just all speculation. Nobody knows if he's a terrorist or what.\\
'''Foggy Nelson:''' You're absolutely right. Terrorists have causes. They claim responsibility. Al-Qaeda wanted the world to know exactly what kind of assholes they were. This guy? Not a peep. All terror without the "-ist." You know what they call that? Nut job.
* ''Series/JessicaJones2015'' establishes that some people have developed prejudices against powered people in light of the Incident, and they are meant to be analogous to the sort of treatment people of Middle Eastern descent got after 9/11. At one point, a woman who lost her mother in the Incident even tries to kill Jessica just because she's enhanced, while in the season 3 finale, after going rogue and killing three criminals, Trish gets thrown in the Raft, AKA Superpower Gitmo, just because she's enhanced.

** "The Job" is about one of Frank's colleagues dying from 9/11-related illness.
** In season 6, a police officer named Thomas Scully is up for promotion to Sergeant. However Frank has reservations about the promotion because Scully was one of four officers tried and acquitted 14 years earlier for the death of an unarmed Muslim teen who was shot sixty-one times in a dark apartment. Such a promotion could be bad as far as public relations are concerned, given the current climate. Frank talks with Jamie, who says that Scully was one of his instructors at the Academy. When he brought up the shooting, he said that at the time, his precinct was on edge, given it was just after 9/11, there was a tip that someone of Arab ethnicity was stockpiling weaponry, and a cop in their precinct had been shot in a housing project just days before the incident. This caused a perfect storm of circumstances that caused them [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet to gun down this teen who reached for his wallet]]. [[note]]The entire incident is based on the Amadou Diallo shooting incident of 1999[[/note]]

** In "Hall of Mirrors" an undercover cop who infiltrated a terrorist cell is shot in a drive-by. It turns out to have not been related at all to the cell infiltration but to a love triangle.

** In "Friends in Need," Frank acknowledges the issues that come up with intelligence gathering while hosting a number of top British police officials, bringing up the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks in doing so.

** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'', of all games. It's set in a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed fictionalized pastiche]] of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity in The2000s, and heavily mines the post-9/11 mood of the city for both its story and its satire. In ''GTA IV'', elements of the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror and the neoconservative/jingoistic political climate of the [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush Bush era]] are very much present in the game's storyline here and there. In fact, the theme of terrorism plays a significant role in the game's narrative. For instance, when working for the U.L. Paper contact, you have to confront literal Russian terrorists. One mission even requires you to dispose of a North Korean mob boss who counterfeits dollars and directly serves the interests of North Korea. The reason you have to eliminate him? Because you have to serve the interests of the U.S., and what he's doing isn't good for the economy. [[spoiler:Dimitri Rascalov]] himself, the BigBad of the entire story, is treated as a high-profile national threat, even going so far as to commit acts that could very well be classified as narco-terrorism, such as launching a large-scale nation-wide cocaine operation that threatens to destabilize the nation and orchestrating an attack on a senator's convoy to silence his campaign.
** As with the previous game, the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror plays a significant role in some portions of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV''. Merryweather Security went from a small-time security firm to a full-on private military company thanks to making bloody profits on conflicts in the Middle East, and are now one of the most powerful entities in the United States. The FIB and IAA both exhibit paranoia and fear akin to their real-life counterparts over Islamic terrorism, and Weazel News is quick to report on any potential un-American activities or threats. Many of the in-universe politicians cite an end to the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror, either peacefully or through evermore security and policing, as their campaign qualities. This makes a lot of sense and reflects the time quite well, considering that ''GTA V'' is set in TheNew10s during the [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama era]], a period when the first signs of the PyrrhicVictory of the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror in Iraq were observed, and the war was becoming increasingly unpopular worldwide. This negativity is vividly reflected in the ColdBloodedTorture mission, where ''you are'' the interrogator.
* A related trend during the 2000s was the Post-9/11 Military Game, which had you playing as a Western soldier or operative fighting terrorists in the Middle East or in other global hot zones. The FirstPersonShooter genre especially was dominated by such games, with the more science fiction-inspired settings popular in TheNineties falling by the wayside outside of a few standard-bearing franchises. At the genre's peak, they were often compared, by both their fans and their critics, to the gung-ho, PatrioticFervor-driven war movies that Hollywood made during and after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
** ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'' was one of the first games in this vein to come out. Notably, it provided a (canonical!) campaign for the terrorist faction, the Global Liberation Army, together with those of the American and Chinese heroes. Also of note is how, despite coming out in 2003, the game wound up being [[HarsherInHindsight scarily prescient]] of the rise of the Islamic State a decade later, with many of their tactics being mirrored in the GLA.
** ''[[VideoGame/ModernWarfare Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare]]'' was the TropeCodifier. While the BigBad turns out to be a Russian ultranationalist, most of the action concerns [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything an unnamed (but geographically located in Mesopotamia) Middle Eastern petrostate that the US has invaded and which has gotten its hands on a nuclear weapon]] -- one that is even led by a dictator named al-Asad[[note]]The name of a US airbase in UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, and one letter away from the name of the family that has controlled UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} since 1971, that country seen at the time as one that the US might invade next after Iraq[[/note]]. Later ''Modern Warfare'' games diverged from this, though, inspired more by techno-thrillers with a story about WorldWarIII between NATO and Russia.
** ''VideoGame/ArmyOfTwo'' goes for the third. One cutscene is for 9/11 and a lot of the game has you fighting al-Qaeda, who are even mentioned by name.
** The [[VideoGame/MedalOfHonor2010 2010 reboot]] of ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'', and its 2012 sequel ''Warfighter'', attempted to do a straightforward, realistic shooter take on UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, much as previous games had done with World War II, without the embellishments that ''Modern Warfare'' had brought with it.
** ''[[VideoGame/Area51FPS BlackSite: Area 51]]'' combined the post-9/11 military game with the sort of sci-fi shooters that the genre had displaced. Much of the story was a satire of the militarism of the US after 9/11, with the armed forces overstretched by multiple wars and turning to the [[SuperSoldier Reborn program]], its ranks taken from convicts, the homeless, illegal aliens, and soldiers without families, in order to have enough soldiers to fight its wars without having to bring back conscription (and thus infuriate voters and destroy support for the war effort). The first level also took place in Iraq.
* A VisualNovel, ''[[http://www.9-11game.com/ Broken Hearted: A 9/11 Story]]'' was released in 2006, the same year with ''United 93'' and ''World Trade Center''. It took the second route, [[SugarWiki/NeedsMoreLove and despite the rough art, it is surprisingly good and touching]].
* The IncitingIncident of ''VideoGame/InFamous'' is an explosion the reduces 1/3 of Empire City (which is basically New York) that people immediately assume was a terrorist attack, there's a conspiracy theorist that thinks that the government orchestrated the attack (with Cole being in on it and having purposefully set it off) and [[VideoGame/InFamousSecondSon two games later]], [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual conduits]] would be relabeled "[[FantasticSlurs bioterrorists]]" as they become more and more commonplace.

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* WebVideo/TheMysteriousMrEnter argued that PeriodPiece ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'' should have been more akin to a movie of The Second period, in that the spectre of 9/11 should have had some bearing on the 2002-set movie. Instead there's no mention of it whatsoever, which he claimed undermined the point of making it a PeriodPiece at all despite it taking place in Canada with a focus on teenage girls.

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* After 9/11, Franchise/GIJoe merchandise and programs took the "terrorist" out of Cobra's description as a "ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world."
* One of the first long-running storylines in ''Webcomic/NipAndTuck'' involves Nip Todd getting the role as the lead for an action film inspired by UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. The director's original script is distinctly anti-military, revolving around a crooked politician hoping to frame an innocent Muslim community for acts of terrorism (with ''bioweapons!'') to further drum up support for UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, only to be stopped by an [=INS=] agent who learns of the plan and goes rogue to stop it. As Nip himself firmly supports UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, and the rest of the actors turn out to be fellow Conservatives all blacklisted from the Screen Actor's Guild for their political views, they make a plan to secretly reshoot the movie as pro-military instead. Outing the director for his planned version, they make so much off of the movie that they go on to found their own indy movie company.

** The [[Film/{{Transformers}} first film]] averted all mention of the war on terror. Even the army base in Qatar attacked in the beginning, though in the Middle East, has been there for decades. Notably, the US military is capable of helping the Autobots on occasion, and even fighting off Scorponok. However, no one ever mentions the possibility of a terrorist attack, even with the hacking attacks it's assumed to be the work of Iran, North Korea, or China.

* The ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'' remake of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters are Due on Maple Street]]" had the neighborhood on Maple Street be paranoid over a terrorist attack rather than an alien invasion like in the original. Besides that the plot was mostly unchanged.

'''The First''': Where a great, ''great'' many movies after 9/11 don't talk about it, mention it, or even ''allude'' to what happened. Stories set in the US, especially New York, after the attacks that should logically deal with terrorism never even talk about it passingly.

'''The First''': Where a great, ''great'' many movies after 9/11 don't talk about it, mention it, or even ''imply'' it happened. Stories set in the US, especially New York, after the attacks that should logically deal with terrorism never even talk about it passingly.

** Although not as overt as its predecessor, ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' continues to maintain certain elements of the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror. '''That said''', these elements are much less idealized and more diluted, with the paranoia toward [[MiddleEasternTerrorists jihadist terrorism]] focused much more on the country's government agencies (such as the FIB and IAA) than on the overall atmosphere of the story. This makes a lot of sense and reflects the time quite well, considering that ''GTA V'' is set in TheNew10s during the [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama era]], a period when the first signs of the PyrrhicVictory of the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror in Iraq were observed, and the war was becoming increasingly unpopular worldwide. This negativity is vividly reflected in the ColdBloodedTorture mission, where ''you are'' the interrogator.

** Although not as overt as its predecessor, ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' continues to maintain certain elements of the WarOnTerror. '''That said''', these elements are much less idealized and more diluted, with the paranoia toward [[MiddleEasternTerrorists jihadist terrorism]] focused much more on the country's government agencies (such as the FIB and IAA) than on the overall atmosphere of the story. This makes a lot of sense and reflects the time quite well, considering that ''GTA V'' is set in TheNew10s during the [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama era]], a period when the first signs of the PyrrhicVictory of the UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror in Iraq were observed, and the war was becoming increasingly unpopular worldwide. This negativity is vividly reflected in the ColdBloodedTorture mission, where ''you are'' the interrogator.

* ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'': While Frank never directly fights any terrorists, terrorism influences several arcs:

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'', of all games. It's set in a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed fictionalized pastiche]] of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity in the 2000s, and heavily mines the post-9/11 mood of the city for both its story and its satire.

* In ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'', Dakota Fanning asks "is it the terrorists?" when the aliens start attacking. The film is full of imagery that evokes the attacks as well: aliens fire heat rays that turn people into clouds of ash, and in one scene the aftermath of a plane crash is studied. Also notable is the attitude of the protagonist's son, who is obsessed with "getting back at them."

* WebVideo/TheMysteriousMrEnter argued that PeriodPiece ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'' should have been more akin The Second, that the spectre of 9/11 should have had some bearing on the 2002-set movie. Instead there's no mention of it whatsoever, which he claims undermines the point of making it a PeriodPiece at all.

* By contrast, the other "White House gets taken over by terrorists" film ''Film/OlympusHasFallen'' is more of a type three as it has a darker and more brutal tone to it and the villains are all [[AcceptableTargets North Koreans]]. The sequel ''Film/LondonHasFallen'' is a type three as well, dealing with both MiddleEasternTerrorists and WesternTerrorists.

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[[folder: Anime & Manga]]

* ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'', which despite being set in an alternate history where the USSR never fell and terrorism is of the good old fashioned state sponsored kind, got the Type One treatment, with it's US premiere postponed for about a year following 9/11, just because it's fourth episode featured a plane being hijacked, despite the fact [[spoiler: that, the plane then landed safely and all it's teenage passengers where rescued by Mithril.]] So except the actual act of hijacking an airplane there was ZERO parallel with 9/11.
** More awkward is that a critical part of Sousuke's backstory being a ChildSoldier in the Mujahideen, the broad anti-Communist insurgency movement during the Soviet-Afghan war that al-Qaeda branched off from. Not wanting to suggest that the series' hero was once fighting on the same side as Osama bin Laden[[note]]though this wouldn't be true, as Osama was booted out by the time Sousuke would have gotten involved, and the specific commander Sousuke fought under is an {{Expy}} of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a political enemy of Osama's whom al-Qaeda would eventually assassinate[[/note]], the 2002 anime adaptation opts to change Sousuke's stated home country from Afghanistan to the fictional "Helmajistan," refrain from naming the guerilla force he was part of, and remove any references to the fact that he was raised Muslim.

[[folder: Films -- Live-Action ]]

* In ''Film/IronMan'' much of the plot takes place in Afghanistan, but the Ten Rings aren't Islamist terrorists.
** On the other hand, the fact that the Ten Rings ''aren't'' jihadists isn't made apparent to the viewer until later in the film, when the video of Tony being held captive is given in-universe subtitles, which seems to be deliberate.

* In Spielberg's ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds'', Dakota Fanning asks "is it the terrorists?" when the aliens start attacking. The film is full of imagery that evokes the attacks as well: aliens fire heat rays that turn people into clouds of ash, and in one scene the aftermath of a plane crash is studied. Also notable is the attitude of the protagonist's son, who is obsessed with "getting back at them."

** ''Film/{{United 93}}'', which ironically somewhat subverts the trope by being a Verité-style docudrama.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* Largely averted on ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', she [[BackFromTheDead missed the attacks]], but "Help" had counselor!Buffy...[[ShapedLikeItself help]] a boy who feared his brother joining the Marines. Afghanistan was a battlefield and Iraq was about to become one, and Buffy reassures him it's not stupid to be scared of what might happen like he thought it was.

-->'''Foggy Nelson:''' Please tell me I don't detect a hint of admiration for that terrorist.\\

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