History Main / ShatteredWorld

If the pieces are somehow hovering in an atmosphere with gravity, that's WorldInTheSky.

* The Digital World in ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'' has had large chunks taken out of it by Digimon that were corrupted by Cherubimon, though the pieces that are still intact remain where they were. The Royal Knights arc sees the remaining areas destroyed until the Digital World is just so many floating bits of ground with railroad tracks running between them.

* In a previous theory of the formation of UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem (now discredited), the asteroid belt was the remains of a fifth planet, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaeton_(hypothetical_planet) Phaeton]]. Current theory instead says that Jupiter's gravity prevented the material in the asteroid belt from coalescing into a planet in the first place. This hasn't stopped the previous theory from popping up in Science Fiction stories, though, particularly in older stories or stories which aren't really all that "science-y" anyway, because a planet that blew itself up in a nuclear exchange ... or was blown up by someone else in retaliation ... makes a nice anvilicious Aesop.

* ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'': After Sonic gets [[UnwittingPawn tricked]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero into giving the]] Chaos Emeralds to [[MadScientist Dr. Robotnik]], the world ends up broken like this and it's then Sonic's job to fix everything.

%%%
%%
%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct alphabetical order.
%%
%%%

** In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/SpaceCadet'' the heroes find that Phaeton was destroyed in a nuclear accident, and in ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' there's a line that says it was destroyed by the Martians.
** In Creator/DavidWeber's ''[[Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes Dahak]]'' series alien invaders hit it with a big rock to destroy a First Imperium military base. Many more asteroid belts are found in other systems [[spoiler:left after the Fourth Imperium's civil war]].
** In Creator/FredricBrown's ''Letter to a Phoenix'' the rebellious colony on the fifth planet was destroyed with the planet.
** In James P. Hogan's ''Literature/GiantsSeries'' the planet was called Minerva and was the original homeworld of both the titular giants and humans. The planet's moon was captured by Earth's gravity and became Earth's current moon as well.
** In ''Gold in the Sky'' by Alan E. Nourse, the protagonists find an alien TimeCapsule left on an asteroid in the Belt, including a map showing a planet once occupied the orbit between Jupiter and Mars.
** In the Seetee series by Creator/JackWilliamson a planet made of [[AntiMatter contraterrene]] exploded when it came into contact with normal matter, creating the Belt which {{Asteroid Miner}}s are now mining for its CT.
** Homaged in ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'' when the Jovians make claim to the Asteroid Belt based on their "ancient victory over Phaeton--the planet whose destruction had originally formed the Asteroid Belt."

Often a case of ArtisticLicenseSpace, as any object that's large enough to be held together by its own gravity and form a planet is too large to be broken apart like this in the first place. If some world shattering event were to happen, you would not see the large, jagged chunks floating above the planet, as you might often see in fiction. At least, not for any length of time. The debris would fall back onto the planet, which would also re-collapse back into a sphere, rather than remaining a shattered and broken world.

->''"The plate of stone we live on, our Osmium Court, is one fragment of a rocky planet that crashed into the Fundament and broke apart. All the other nearby continents — the Helium Drinkers, the Bone Plaza, the Starcutters — came from the same world. Perhaps the other races of the Fundament are migrants too. We live on the shrapnel of our homeworld, floating on an ocean deep inside a gas giant."''
-->--'''The Books of Sorrow''', ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}''

** ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'': Some air worlds, such as Coliar in Realmspace, are swarms of islands rotating in a common atmosphere without one big body "below". There is also the Astromundi Cluster, consisting of the asteroid leftovers of two collided planets.

* In ''Film/GalaxyQuest'' there is one shown as the ''Protector'' leaves the dock.
* The penultimate scene of TheFilmOfTheBook ''Film/TheNeverendingStory''.

** About a sixth of the Klingon-controlled moon Praxis is (sort of) intact, after the [[EarthShatteringKaboom "incident"]] it suffered at the beginning of [[Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry Star Trek VI]].
** In ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', a shattered moon identical to Praxis is depicted in orbit of Qo'nos. Presumably, the Klingons studied the futuristic technology aboard the mining-ship ''Narada'' from the previous film, causing the mining accident to happen twenty years ''early''.
* In the beginning of ''Film/IndependenceDay'', audience gets to see what appears to be a chunk of a destroyed planet, having it's inhabitants wiped out by the Harvesters, just as the Harvester mothership is making her way towards Earth.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': In ''Film/ANewHope'', the ''Millennium Falcon'' comes out of hyperspace amid remnants of Alderaan.
* In the 2002 version of ''[[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 The Time Machine]]'', as a result of lunar mining gone awry, the Moon shattered and ultimately formed an asteroid belt.

Often a case of ArtisticLicenseSpace, as any object that's large enough to be held together by its own gravity and form a planet is too large to be broken apart like this in the first place. If some world shattering event were to happen, you would not see the large, jagged chunks floating above the planet, as you might often see in fiction. The debris would fall back onto the planet, which would also re-collapse back into a sphere, rather than remaining a shattered and broken world.

Often a case of ArtisticLicenseSpace, as any round object that's large enough is held together by its own gravity too well to be broken apart like this. If some world shattering event were to happen, the debris would fall back into the larger portion, which would also collapse into a sphere, rather than remaining a broken sphere.

[[caption-width-right:330:Guys, when did we break off?]]
[-[[caption-width-right:330:Illustration by [[http://artofgregmartin.com Greg Martin.]] Used with permission.]]-]

** In Creator/DavidWeber's ''[[Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes Dahak]]'' series alien invaders hit it with a big rock to destroy First Imperium military base. Many more asteroid belts are found in other systems [[spoiler:left after Fourth Imperium's civil war]].

** ''Literature/JediAcademyTrilogy'': Anoth was shattered by some cataclysm in the ancient past, leaving it as three distinct chunks that remain in each other's vicinity due to their gravitational pulls. Two fragments are close together to share an atmosphere, which is wracked by constant storms as the fragments scrap together and generate immense static discharges. The third is further off a little more stable, enough so as to be able to host a small, compact outpost.

* In one book by Creator/CarlSagan -probably ''Comet''-, he discusses the possibility of Saturn's [[Film/ANewHope Death Star]]-like moon [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Mimas]] having been broken by the large impact that formed the large Herschel crater, with an illustration that depicts such moon broken into chunks.

* ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'': [[spoiler:The land where the series takes place is actually a big landmass broken off from Earth by aliens.]]

** Argus in ''Legion'' is partway to this trope, as entire fragments have either been pulled free or sunken into the surface due to the Legion's strip mining. Mac'aree in particular floats high above the rest of the surface.

** Malachor V. The reason it became this way was due to [[WarIsHell Mandalorian Wars]], where the Jedi Exile was ultimately left with no other option but to [[GodzillaThreshold authorize the use of a superweapon onto the planet]], thus ending the war once and for all.

* ''Franchise/{{Macross}}'':

* ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' shows one such world being made - with a bomb that warps a significant portion of the planet into fold spaces.

* In ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'' by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the earth is split into 7 pieces each with their associated elements. Their exact location in relation to each other is unclear however whether they are in our solar system or separate dimensions.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' has lots of these, including the Taspan system and the Graveyard of Alderaan.