History UsefulNotes / ColdWar

* 1962-1978: The period of détente. PRC-USSR relations worsen and the border clashes intensify, an all-out war between the two looks increasingly likely. You are more likely to see a [[GeneralRipper rogue commander]] start up a FalseFlagOperation here without approval from the top. Witness the Film/JamesBond films ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice'' and ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe''.

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* ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'' indirectly used the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union in both its [[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 original series]] and the [[Series/TheTwilightZone1985 1985 revival]]. One -- "A Little Peace and Quiet," the debut story of the 1985 revival -- involves the use of newscats, depicting growing tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, much in the style of the first half of ''Film/TheDayAfter'' to set up the climax (nuclear war actually breaking out between the U.S. and USSR).

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* Boris and Natasha, the spies from ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'', are from the mythical country of Pottsylvania, and their Fearless Leader seems more German than anything else, but Boris and Natasha both have the thickest, most [[LargeHam gloriously over-the-top]] Russian accents you could ask for.

* ''Series/CourageousCatAndMinuteMouse's'' RoguesGallery includes two spies named Comrade and Commissar.

* The music video for ''Miike Snow'''s ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl6k_h2drK8 My Trigger]]'' is set during the Cold War, with the United States' President and the Kremlin's leader both being pressured into going for the nukes. In the end, neither one goes for it.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' indirectly used the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union in both its original series and the 1985 revival. One -- "A Little Peace and Quiet," the debut story of the 1985 revival -- involves the use of newscats, depicting growing tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, much in the style of the first half of ''Film/TheDayAfter'' to set up the climax (nuclear war actually breaking out between the U.S. and USSR).

* The ''OperationFlashpoint'' series.

* Film/ThirteenDays: About the the political infighting UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy went through during the CubanMissileCrisis.

* 1991: The Soviet Union self-destructs, with UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia taking on its UN Security Council seat and most of its debt.

* 1917-1930: Starts in UsefulNotes/RedOctober, in which the Bolsheviks seized power and waged the Russian Civil War. League of Nations forces intervened and (indirectly, for the most part) assisted the various nationalist and White Russian forces in their attempts to secede from or take over Bolshevik Russia respectively. The various anti-Bolshevik factions were too ill-coordinated to prevail, though a fair few countries (like Poland) managed to successfully secede when the Red Army tried to march to Germany through Poland to aid the Bavarian Revolution (which was violently crushed). Witnessed UrExample of the Red Scare - the United States being notably zealous in its crusade against socialism, at least until the later advent of [=McCarthyism=]. Fiction in this era tends to focus upon [[BombThrowingAnarchists Bomb Throwing Communists]], attempts to jumpstart a world revolution, and the chaos of the Russian Civil War.
* 1931-1945: A period of reduced tensions between the USSR and the rest of the world as Imperial Japan's lurch to the right-wing and the rise of Fascism and Nazism in the wake of the Great Depression led to some tentative contacts between the USSR and the non-communist and non-fascist powers. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII This blossomed into a full alliance after the USSR was brought into the wider war in '41]], though both sides still worked to expand their spy networks in each others' ranks. The fall of the Axis powers coupled with several high-profile scandals led to the conflict quickly re-emerging in the post-war period. Expect fiction to portray the Soviets at best as heroic but not entirely trustworthy allies and conniving and treasonous enemies-in-all-but-name at worst.

The period of high tension and LensmanArmsRace between the Western democracies and their client dictatorships[[note]]This is arguably the origin of the term 'The West', as Western Europe and its allies were all anti-communist dictatorships (like Franco's Spain) and democracies (like the Fourth French Republic). Since the war's end, the term has come to encompass all European-type societies, not just non-communist ones. Likewise, the French Fifth Republic under De Gaulle exited NATO and conducted its own independent policy with the Soviet Union.[[/note]](led by UsefulNotes/{{NATO}}) and state communism (led by the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn USSR]], the Warsaw Pact a.k.a the "eastern bloc", with China kind of aligned with them till the Sino-Soviet split of '60[[note]]Whereupon, at a few points, World War Three looked more likely to start as a Sino-Soviet conflict[[/note]] and other emerging left-wing and communist movements. The nature of the 'war' means it didn't have a beginning or end as such, but Churchill's "UsefulNotes/IronCurtain" speech of 1946 to the Malta meeting of 1990 are popular dates. UsefulNotes/RedOctober is the earliest start-date, the latest end-date being Christmas Day 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the [=USSR=] was officially dissolved. There was never a direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers.[[note]]Excepting the whole 'Korean War' thing, wherein the vast majority of North Korea's troops and pilots were actually PRC and Soviet 'volunteers', respectively.[[/note]] Most of the fighting came as a result of proxy wars, with one or both sides backed by one or both superpowers ([[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]], [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam]], The UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, The Angolan Bush War, Afghanistan, etc).

* 1987-1991: UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan [[GoKartingWithBowser goes go-karting with]] [[UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev Gorbachev]]. Glasnost and the end of the Cold War to the tune of ever-increasing PRC experimentation with capitalism. Expect the RenegadeRussian to appear wanting to [[TheNewRussia avenge his side's "loss"]] or a paranoid GeneralRipper trying to MakeTheBearAngryAgain for personal reasons.

The period of high tension and LensmanArmsRace between the Western democracies and their client dictatorships[[note]]This is arguably the origin of the term 'The West', as Western Europe and its allies were all anti-communist dictatorships (like Franco's Spain) and democracies (like the Fourth French Republic). Since the war's end, the term has come to encompass all European-type societies, not just non-communist ones. Likewise, the French Fifth Republic under De Gaulle exited NATO and conducted its own independent policy with the Soviet Union.[[/note]](led by UsefulNotes/{{NATO}}) and state communism (led by the [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion USSR]], the Warsaw Pact a.k.a the "eastern bloc", with China kind of aligned with them till the Sino-Soviet split of '60[[note]]Whereupon, at a few points, World War Three looked more likely to start as a Sino-Soviet conflict[[/note]] and other emerging left-wing and communist movements. The nature of the 'war' means it didn't have a beginning or end as such, but Churchill's "UsefulNotes/IronCurtain" speech of 1946 to the Malta meeting of 1990 are popular dates. UsefulNotes/RedOctober is the earliest start-date, the latest end-date being Christmas Day 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the [=USSR=] was officially dissolved. There was never a direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers.[[note]]Excepting the whole 'Korean War' thing, wherein the vast majority of North Korea's troops and pilots were actually PRC and Soviet 'volunteers', respectively.[[/note]] Most of the fighting came as a result of proxy wars, with one or both sides backed by one or both superpowers ([[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]], [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam]], The UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, The Angolan Bush War, Afghanistan, etc).

The period of high tension and LensmanArmsRace between the Western democracies and its client dictatorships[[note]]This is arguably the origin of the term 'The West', as Western Europe and its allies were all anti-communist dictatorships (like Franco's Spain) and democracies (like the Fourth French Republic). Since the war's end, the term has come to encompass all European-type societies, not just non-communist ones. Likewise, the French Fifth Republic under De Gaulle exited NATO and conducted its own independent policy with the Soviet Union[[/note]] (led by UsefulNotes/{{NATO}}) and state communism (led by the [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion USSR]], the Warsaw Pact a.k.a the "eastern bloc", with China kind of aligned with them 'til the Sino-Soviet split of '60[[note]] whereupon, at a few points, World War Three looked more likely to start as a Sino-Soviet conflict[[/note]] and other emerging left-wing and communist movements. The nature of the 'war' means it didn't have a beginning or end as such, but Churchill's "UsefulNotes/IronCurtain" speech of 1946 to the Malta meeting of 1990 are popular dates. UsefulNotes/RedOctober is the earliest start-date, the latest end-date being Christmas Day 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the [=USSR=] was officially dissolved. There was never a direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers[[note]]Excepting the whole 'Korean War' thing, wherein the vast majority of North Korea's troops and pilots were actually PRC and Soviet 'volunteers', respectively[[/note]]. Most of the fighting came as a result of proxy wars, with one or both sides backed by one or both superpowers ([[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]], [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam]], The UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, The Angolan Bush War, Afghanistan, etc).

* ''Film/OneTwoThree'' is set shortly before the BerlinWall was built (in fact, that's the reason why the movie became a victim of TooSoon).

* [[http://www.mobygames.com/game/third-courier The Third Courier]], a modern spy game set in Berlin, had the misfortune to be released in 1989, as the BerlinWall was falling.

* 1946-1962: [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors The Chinese Civil War resumes]] (and in 1950 is won by the Chinese Communist Party), coinciding with and causing a sharp falling-out between the two sides which culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The short-lived Sino-Soviet alliance (1949-1960) dissolves amidst Sino-Soviet border skirmishes. Fiction here has direct Soviet involvement in evil plots. The SpaceRace also begins with the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.

* Early Creator/MarvelComics, published in the early 60's, tended to include a lot of Cold War-related plots. Comicbook/IronMan in particular fought a lot of Communist agents of one sort or another -- Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, even the ComicBook/BlackWidow first appeared as a Soviet spy before [[HeelFaceTurn defecting to the U.S.]], and of course Tony's origin has him escaping from the North Vietnamese. Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk owes his origin to a Soviet spy, Igor Drenkhov, who deliberately allowed the gamma bomb to detonate while Bruce was in the target area. And [[Comicbook/FantasticFour Reed Richards]] launched his rocket to beat the Soviets in the SpaceRace. Years later in TheEighties, the U.S.S.R. would have its own super team, the Soviet Super-Soldiers. Due to ComicBookTime, all of these Iron Curtain characters have been subject to retcons in the last couple of decades, as the Cold War recedes further and further into the past.

* Early MarvelComics, published in the early 60's, tended to include a lot of Cold War-related plots. Comicbook/IronMan in particular fought a lot of Communist agents of one sort or another -- Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, even the [[{{Comicbook/Avengers}} Black Widow]] first appeared as a Soviet spy before [[HeelFaceTurn defecting to the U.S.]], and of course Tony's origin has him escaping from the North Vietnamese. Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk owes his origin to a Soviet spy, Igor Drenkhov, who deliberately allowed the gamma bomb to detonate while Bruce was in the target area. And [[Comicbook/FantasticFour Reed Richards]] launched his rocket to beat the Soviets in the SpaceRace. Years later in TheEighties, the U.S.S.R. would have its own super team, the Soviet Super-Soldiers. Due to ComicBookTime, all of these Iron Curtain characters have been subject to retcons in the last couple of decades, as the Cold War recedes further and further into the past.

* East-West tensions are a major plot point in the FiveEpisodePilot for ''Series/ChallengeOfTheGobots.'' Notably, the Communist character, Anya Turgonova, is [[ChummyCommies one of the good guys]], but there's a lot of initial distrust between her and the American good guys.

* ''Anime/FutureWar198X'', an obscure {{Toei}} production loosely based on ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar''.

* 1991: The Soviet Union self-destructs, with TheNewRussia taking on its UN Security Council seat and most of its debt.

* 1991: The Soviet Union self-destructs, and the Russian Republic takes on most of its debt and its seat on the UN Security Council.

* 1991: The Soviet Union commits suicide, and is no more. The Russian Republic takes on most of its debt and its seat on the UN Security Council.

* 1946-1962: [[NoMoreEmperors The Chinese Civil War resumes]] (and in 1950 is won by the Chinese Communist Party), coinciding with and causing a sharp falling-out between the two sides which culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The short-lived Sino-Soviet alliance (1949-1960) dissolves amidst Sino-Soviet border skirmishes. Fiction here has direct Soviet involvement in evil plots. The SpaceRace also begins with the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.

* ''VideoGame/YouAreEmpty'' takes place during the ColdWar in an alternate universe where the Soviets have taken over the USA.

* UltimateDefenceOfTheRealm

* Most of the Literature/JamesBond and the ''Literature/TheNovemberMan'' novels.