History Main / WorldSundering

* The world of ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'' was shaped due to the battle between the god Flare Dragon Ceifeed and the demon lord Ruby Eye Shabranigdu. Their battleground by Lina's time 4000 years later is in the center of a huge almost circular ocean.

** ''VideoGame/SolatoroboRedTheHunter'' has a similar case of this being what the heroes are trying to prevent: [[spoilers:CODA, or the "Continent Orientation Defloat Alignment", is a protocol by Juno to bring all the floating islands back to their original positions on the planet's surface. While Juno's intended purpose for CODA was for it to occur when they determined the planet's new civilization had matured enough to be contacted by them and thus also removed the Cloud Sea, [[BigBad Baion's]] plan is to activate CODA early and use the Cloud Sea to purge the planet of what he believes to be another failed species.]]

* The Reset of the ''VideoGame/LittleTailBronx'' mythos is another extreme case-- [[spoiler:when humanity's warring with the [[MechanicalAbomination Titano-Machina]] came close to causing the extinction of all life on Earth, a group of human researchers collectively authorized the Juno (sentient supercomputers of unknown origin) to restart all life on the planet. Juno did so, erasing humanity and storing all other organisms into data, and then converted the planet's collective landmasses into FloatingContinents and blanketed the surface below with a volatile "plasma cloud sea" to purify it. Afterwards, Juno used the data to create completely new flora and fauna, and dogs and cats were used as the basis for a new humanity-- the [[FunnyAnimal Caninu and Felineko]] races.]]
** ''VideoGame/FugaMelodiesOfSteel'' has a smaller-scale but no less definite case: [[spoiler:when [[BigBad General Shvein Hax]] reawakens and takes control of the Vanargand (another Titano-Machina, and one of the most powerful), its BreathWeapon is so powerful that it breaks apart the singular floating continent of Gasco into an archipelago of numerous islands.]] Promotional material for ''VideoGame/FugaMelodiesOfSteel2'' notes that [[spoiler:due to changing air currents, the individual islands of Gasco have radically shifted from their original positions and altitudes, with their new positions being closer to the ones they take in ''VideoGame/SolatoroboRedTheHunter'']].

* At the beginning of ''Literature/TheFifthSeason'', Alabaster uses his [[DishingOutDirt orogeny powers]] in conjunction with the [[AmplifierArtifact obelisks]] to create a massive rift in the earth that split's the world's only continent in two, killing everyone in the city where the rift appeared and many in the areas relatively close-by immediately, as well as ensuring the ensuing volcanic winter-type event will starve everyone in the world within a few decades.

* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': The sink of Beleriand under the oceans is briefly shown in the ProloguedPrologue.

* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': The sink of Beleriand under the oceans is briefly shown in the ProlonguedPrologue.

** Alara was one plane that became five, each missing two allied colors of magic and having a concentration of their more common enemy, when an incredibly powerful planeswalker ripped the world into pieces to strip away its mana -- so for instance, Esper, lacking the individuality of red and green mana, is a world of machines. In the ''Alara'' block, the shards are sent drifting back together, with cataclysmic results for their inhabitants as each shard comes into contact with creatures, philosophies and forms of magic once unheard of.

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', there were two world-altering cataclysms: the [[AndManGrewProud Fall of Zeal]], in which an awakened [[EldritchAbomination Lavos]] annihilated the [[FloatingContinent Magic Kingdom]] and the Day of Lavos in 1999 AD, which razed the entire planet. [[ColonyDrop Lavos' arrival]] in 65,000,000 BC didn't change the face of the planet per se - only causing the Ice Age that [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs killed off the dinosaurs]] and led to the world where the Kingdom of Zeal ''did'' [[EvilIsNotAToy make him change things a lot.]]
* Frequently happened on ''VideoGame/GraalClassic'' pretty much whenever the admins got bored - a cataclysm and an island appears, a cataclysm and it merges with the continent, a cataclysm and it gets invaded and burned down, a volcano erupts and another island sinks...

** Another case seems to have occurred since the release of Alchemy at the end of the second game, judging by the map for ''[[VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn Dark Dawn]]''. Particularly noticeable are the apparent sinking of Tolbi, the expanded mountain range near where Altin should be, the fact that Kolima Forest is on a completely different part of the continent it's on (and also [[LostWoods more confusing]]), and the ''waterfalls between different levels of ocean''.

** Long before Bahamut's rampage, [[spoiler:there existed an unsundered world known as Etheirys, a world where the people were gifted with such powerful magic as to border on RealityWarping. Then came the Final Days, an apocalyptic event that caused the Ancients' creation magics to give birth to destructive beasts. In the hopes of setting the world right, half of Etheirys's population sacrificed themselves to summon a god, Zodiark. In the hopes of saving the world as she knew it from oblivion brought on by her peers' desire for their glory days, a woman named Venat took it upon herself to become Zodiark's equal and counterbalance, Hydaelyn, and sunder the world, splitting it and its aether into fourteen different realities: the "Source" and its thirteen "Reflections". The bulk of the game, thenceforth, takes place on the Source, with ''Endwalker'' taking place in The First.]]

* The Overdrive from the backstory of ''Manga/RaveMaster'' destroyed 1/10th of the entire planet and at one point the heroes have to stop it from happening ''again''. To put it this way, it was so bad that Shiva had to rerwite reality to undo the damage it did to the planet. The bad guys are trying to undo his sacrifice, so that the world returns to its post-Overdrive state: a ruined wasteland nearly devoid of life.

** ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'' has the Digital World split into 108 Zones, the implication being that they were once one. They are merged into seven Lands halfway through. Bagramon's palace remains in its own Zone the whole time.

** ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'' has the Digital World split into OneHundredEight Zones, the implication being that they were once one. They are merged into seven Lands halfway through. Bagramon's palace remains in its own Zone the whole time.

* ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'' has the Digital World split into numerous Zones, the implication being that they were once one. They are merged into seven Lands halfway through.

* In ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' the spellplague, among other things, radically changed the geography, from widening seas with the collapse of underground tunnels to the replacement of an entire continent with one from the lost world of Abeir.
* The Cataclysm in ''Literature/{{Dragonlance}}''.
** Also the Dragon Overlords in the Fifth Age.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'' suffered through several such cataclysms, most recently the ''Wrath of the Immortals'', which involved a massive asteroid impact and the teleportation of an India-sized continent from the surface world to the Hollow World. Gods were responsible for both.
** In the setting's backstory, the by all accounts self-inflicted destruction of Blackmoor was cataclysmic enough to shift the planet's axis.
* The Grand Conjuction shook up ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' a bit, although the small size of the Core means it was a more modest calamity than most of those listed here.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' examples:
** There was a pair of mini-blocks in a setting like this; it started out as the idyllic, LighterAndSofter ''Lorwyn'', but then the Great Aurora occurred and changed the plane (and set) into the much less friendly CrapsackWorld ''Shadowmoor''.
** The Overlay, [[BigBad Yawgmoth's]] plan to invade Dominaria, is one extreme version of this trope. During the ''Invasion'' block, several things happened to change Dominaria's face, so that when the war was over, Skyshroud Forest (part of the invading plane) was part of Dominaria, and Teferi's magic had shunted Zhalfir and part of Shiv into another dimension. When he tried to bring them back during the ''Time Spiral'' block, the rifts caused by his original shunting hindered the process: He was able to return Shiv, but Zhalfir was lost to the rift.
** Alara was one plane that became five, each missing two allied colors of magic and having a concentration of their more common enemy, when an incredibly powerful planeswalker ripped the world into pieces to strip away its mana. (So, for instance, Esper, lacking the individuality of red and green mana, is a world of machines.) In the Alara block, they smashed back together like cosmic bumper cars, accompanied by much asploding.
* Occurred in the backstory of the TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} world, when the dimensional gates built by the [[{{Precursors}} Old Ones]] collapsed, resulting in a huge blast of magic energy, followed by massive earthquakes and an enormous demonic invasion. The most notable result in the present day is the existence of [[{{Mordor}} the Chaos Wastes]] on both poles.
** A smaller-scale one occurred when the Elves were forced to sink part of their homeland beneath the waves to contain the magic energies released from the aforementioned cataclysm in order to keep the entire world from being torn apart, and later when the Lizardmen decided to use their magic to alter some mountain ranges, leading to the destruction of several Dwarf holds.

* The Overdrive from the backstory of ''Manga/RaveMaster'' destroyed 1/10th of the entire planet and at one point the heroes have to stop it from happening ''again''.

[[folder: Anime ]]

[[folder:Table Top Games]]

The World Sundering is a huge magical explosion that does the job of millions of years of geological shift in a few seconds. Generally, an evil wizard, an ArtifactOfDoom, or some other event causes all of the continents of the world to shift rapidly.

Since MedievalStasis makes it so that a MagicalLand will always be the same, and that 1,000 or so years in their world has the same amount of political, economic, and technological development as about five years in our world - that means that natural change happens pretty much never. Including geological shift. The continents, landmarks, etc. will remain in the exact same way they are across a span of 10,000 years, so the prophecy about the SealedEvilInACan in the [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Mountains of Shadowblood Peak]] will always be fulfilled without having Shadowblood Peak turn into the Shadowblood Picnic Hills thanks to erosion.

With one exception: World Sundering. Used as part of ExpansionPackWorld, or a CosmicRetcon to justify revamping an outdated setting, the World Sundering is a huge magical explosion that does the job of millions of years of geological shift in a few seconds. Generally, an evil wizard, an ArtifactOfDoom, or some other event causes all of the continents of the world to shift rapidly.

* It is implied in the ''{Literature/{Discworld}}'' that the suspiciously regularly-shaped Circle Sea seperating Klatch from the Central Continent is the result of an unspecified cosmic catastrophe, possibly to do with Literature/TheFifthElephant falling off the back of the World Turtle and re-impacting the Disc with some force. There is certainly enough ex-elephant underneath Überwald for there to still be a thriving mining industry capitalising on the bounty.