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Great Offscreen War

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"I stepped out of the TARDIS onto a desolate-looking planet. All around me were thousands of extras, killed in an exciting and protracted battle that we've neither the time nor the budget to show."

There was a war. It happened years ago, maybe even thousands of years. Characters reference it, especially if they took a part in it: the Shell-Shocked Veteran never managed to get over what he experienced back then, while the Phony Veteran, on the other hand, will never shut up about how many brave things he did in it.

Sometimes people will use the war as a reference point for placing events on a timeline — something happened a few years before the war, or somebody did something after the war.

Maybe people still have to deal with its consequences. The war happened, and it left its ugly mark on the world. But it's never shown to the audience — we never see a single flashback from the war, are never shown more than just a glimpse of what happened. The war will be referenced, but otherwise left mysterious, unexplained. Why it happened, how it ended, and what all the things that took place there (which people talk about like it should be obvious) actually were, are never explained. We may not even know the different factions involed in the fighting. The war is only a mysterious event of the past, included mostly to add a bit of mystery and give people excuses for insane ideas. Needless to say, this trope can easily be processed into Fanfic Fuel.

World War III is often used as this, as are the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and so on. Stories set After the End have the tendency to do this with the war that caused the apocalypse. If the war never stopped, may be a Forever War.

Often used as a sub-trope of Cryptic Background Reference. Compare also Cataclysm Backstory, and Unspecified Apocalypse for After the End-type scenarios that were not necessarily caused by war. For a fight that literally happens just offscreen, see Battle Discretion Shot.

Please, avoid shows referencing Real Life conflicts. We already have plenty of information on them. If anything, such tales would go under During the War.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Beastars has the Carni-Herbi War that happened about 100 years prior to the setting of the story and massively shaped the modern society, supposedly being the source of all animosity between the two sides, but the exact specifics of what happened are kept a secret to the general public.
  • Bleach: Shinigami and Quincies have been opposed for over a millennium with two periods of warfare being very important for the main storyline. The first is the original war between Yhwach and Yamamoto that occurred a thousand years ago and led to the creation of the Quincy Clan and the Gotei 13. The second is the Shinigami's attempted purge of the Quincies 200 years ago. Both wars significantly impact the present-day Quincies and Shinigami, including anyone they associate with, be they human or hollow.
  • In Blue Gender, we don't actually see humanity get overtaken by the Blues.
  • In Claymore there is the Mainland, a continent where two nations have been waging war constantly for decades. No main character ever gets to visit the mainland, and we only know about it through descriptions, however it is revealed that one of these two nations is allied with the Dragon Descendants, powerful creatures much stronger than Humans, and that the nation opposed to the Dragon Descendants created the Organization to develop monsters and creatures able to fight the Dragons, the Organization took over the Island and created all the Yoma and Awakened Being using Dragon's flesh as part of a giant Research project.
  • Code Geass has the Britannian invasion and conquest of Japan, which we see only in flashbacks concerning young Lelouch, Suzaku and Nunally and the one from first episode opening sequence. There also was an alternate version of the Napoleon wars, where Napoleon conquered Great Britain, making all the British aristocracy run to America, creating the Britannia Empire.
  • Cowboy Bebop has the War on Titan, which shaped the lives of Vicious, Vincent, and Grencia years before any action related to the main story took place. We get a few brief glimpses of it in flashbacks however.
  • Heavens War in Darker than Black serves as the backstory for most of the main characters, and is the driving force behind Hei's actions his sister Pai disappeared at the end when Heavens gate exploded, and Hei is trying desperately to find her.
  • The war between the Saiyans and the Tuffles (Tsufuru-jin) in Dragon Ball is very important to the mythology of the series but we never actually see it except in brief clips in some of the anime episodes.
  • Fairy Tail: The Dragon King Festival is the name given to the civil war between dragons 400 years prior to the start of the series, which resulted in the creation of Dragon Slaying Magic, the rise of Acnologia, and the virtual extinction of dragons as a species due to Acnologia's indiscriminate rampage near the end where he slaughtered every dragon and Dragon Slayer, friend or foe, he could get his claws on. Most of the backstory given on the war is told through the ghost of Zirconis, a dragon on the anti-human side slain by Acnologia, and Irene Belserion, the creator of Dragon Slayer Magic who also became a dragon from overuse of her magic (and is also Erza Scarlet's mother).
  • Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: The Demon King waged a war on humanity for at least a thousand years until he was slain by the Hero Himmel's party. The story picks up in the aftermath of his death when humanity has finally achieved some measure of peace.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set sometime after both World War III and IV, AKA the Second Vietnam War.
  • The Joui War in Gintama is often referenced throughout the series and many notable characters take part in it, though only a few flashbacks are shown at best.
  • The Gundam franchise has used this setting in several of its Alternate Timelines:
    • After War Gundam X: The Seventh Space War, which ended in a mass Colony Drop, devastating Earth, wiping out 90% of the human population, and causing a calendar change. We see a few scenes from it, and meet a few survivors of the war, though the focus is more on the characters trying to build a new world on the ashes of the old, and prevent an Eighth War from starting up in the meantime.
    • ∀ Gundam has the final conflict of the Dark History. There's very little known of it, except that it was apparently so nasty that all the space colonies pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, and the pilot of the Turn A Gundam felt the need to wipe out all civilization on Earth (though his/her reasons for doing so are never stated... for obvious reasons, very few records of that time survive).
    • Gundam: Reconguista in G: 1000 years before the story started, the Universal Century depicted in the original Gundam series underwent a societal collapse after numerous wars. Records of the time are sparse, but it is known that most of the space colonies were either destroyed or left, Earth's environment was ruined, and there was a severe famine that caused even more death. Most of the current society under the rule of Capitol Tower is kept in line out of fear of ever risking such a disaster again.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has the Calamity War fought 300 years prior, which was so devastating that it caused a change in calendar and blew up most of the Moon. It was apparently fought between humanity and automated, self-repairing, and self-supplying drone superweapons called Mobile Armors, which killed a quarter of the human population at the time. Why anyone would create the Mobile Armors has not been discussed.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury occasionally references the Drone War, a conflict that seemingly occurred a few decades before the series. We know little about it as of this writing, but it was a major motivating factor behind Delling's belief that the Gundam technology could come to no good.
    • It's also played with in the main Universal Century timeline, where many of the smaller side stories take place independently of the larger war. Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket takes place in the neutral Side 6 colony of Libot, which was barely touched by the One Year War until events of the series (with some mentions of events of Gundam sprinkled in), while Gundam Sentinel takes place sometime during the events of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ but is otherwise completely separate.
  • Hellsing Ultimate: The wars that Alucard/ Dracula fought against the Ottoman Empire.
  • Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: The war between the three families in the region Bard lives in took place before the events of the story, though we occasionally see flashbacks to it.
  • In Kemono Jihen, the eponymous Kemono Jihen was a major war between Kemono and humans a thousand years ago. The resulting devastation convinced Kemono to hide themselves from humans and erase the memory of their existence from humanity, allowing themselves to fade into myth and obscurity. The point of Kemono offices like Inugami's is to allow Kemono to live peacefully among humans while preventing needless conflict that could ignite tensions on both sides.
  • Last Exile also has the war between its two major powers, which is mediated by The Guild. Much of the action of this war takes place BEFORE the actual story, as a few episodes in we discover that one of the planets these factions live on is dying, essentially taking them out of the conflict for good. They're pretty much refugees after this point.
  • The many wars of the Ancient Belka in Lyrical Nanoha. We have been told some general info about it, such as how it destroyed Old Belka and led to the current age where physical-based weapons were banned, but otherwise, it's a big question mark. These wars were not visually depicted until Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, which revolves around the Reincarnation of two prominent figures from that war.
  • Macross:
    • In Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the backstory tells of a massive war between the Zentradi and a group known as the Supervision Army. This also forms a big part of the plot in Macross 7, where we learn more about what the Supervision Army is and where it came from. The war is actually on-going, and has been for something like 20,000 years, with the Zentradi and Supervision Army having been almost exactly evenly matched from the start. Many Zentradi fleets are still actively engaged in battle against Supervision Army forces far outside of the Milky-Way galaxy, and are far too busy to take note of humanity's affairs. Fortunately for the humans, both groups seem to be largely fragmented, and haven't noticed humanity destroying/assimilating various Zentradi fleets as their civilization expands. The growing human-"cultured" Zentradi alliance commonly skirmish against both forces, but the New United Nations have yet to run afoul of another one of the larger armadas, and already have colonies spread across roughly a third of the Milky Way galaxy.
    • There was also a World War III fought on Earth that led to a One World Order. Though the prequel Macross Zero covers some characters' actions in it, most of the factions and causes are kept vague.
    • Macross Delta has the Windermerean war for independence, which took place a few years before the story. Windermere did succeed in securing their independence from the New UN, but are still bitter over the lives lost... especially over the fact that a Fold Bomb was detonated on Windermere during the conflict.
  • Mysterious conflict with Mazinkaiser SKL, whose consequences are related to events of the series.
  • Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has the dragon war between the Order and Chaos factions. Characters make plenty of references to it, but the fact that the story takes place on Earth (which is an established demilitarized zone) means that it's never shown. The one time that the plot heads to the other world, the battle that would have taken place is avoided thanks to Kobayashi's intervention.
  • Naruto has the first three Shinobi World Wars; though they play a major role in the backstories of a good chunk of the main cast, we still know very little about these conflicts outside of a few offhand mentions and short flashbacks, plus a single gaiden story starring Kakashi.
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind has the Seven Days of Fire, in which the God Warriors were unleashed on the world and industrial civilization was destroyed.
  • The war between Megalomesembria and Hellas Empire in Negima! Magister Negi Magi.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion several wars broke out a few days after the Second Impact, one of which resulted in the destruction of Tokyo. We know nothing about these wars other than what's mentioned in Shinji's history textbook.
  • Pumpkin Scissors begins with the graduation ceremony of a class of army cadets being interrupted by an announcement that the war everyone thought they were going to be sent to fight in had just ended. The series itself is about a team working to help repair all the damage that was inflicted on their country during the war.
  • The War with "Them" in Sound of the Sky is a complete mystery that has become filled with myths.
  • Subverted in Space☆Dandy, where the war isn't so much off-screen as that the narrator completely forgets to mention it. It pops up now and again, but typically does not have much impact on the story until the last episode.
  • The war between the Spiral Warriors and the Anti-Spirals in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Parallel Works #8 details this a little focusing on Lordgenome's involvement.
  • Toriko: The Gourmet War that was waged prior to the start of the series and lasted for 100 years. Other than Acacia ending it by enlightening the world leaders with the ingredient GOD, we see next to nothing about the war.
  • Transformers:
    • Following the events of Transformers: The★Headmasters, the Decepticons completely retreat from Earth and prompt the Autobots to likewise leave the planet behind. The resulting conflict between the Autobots based on the planet Athenia and the Decepticons on planet Charr becomes known as "The Master Wars" due to the technology of the planet Master (e.g. the Headmasters) forming the backbone of the conflict. This is used to explain the much smaller cast of Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, since the fighting is so fierce neither side can afford to send reinforcements to Earth.
    • Throughout Transformers Victory, God Ginrai's Autobots battle Overlord's Decepticons over in G Nebula 89. Both sides are comprised of survivors from Masterforce, but barring God Ginrai (and a brief appearance by Minerva) they don't even get lines or proper appearances.
    • In the Japanese version of Beast Wars, the Maximals and Predacons are still engaged in outright warfare (even using the same Japanese terminology for the factions: Cybertrons for the Maximals and Destrons for the Predacons). Beast Wars II introduces Lio Convoy and Apache engaging the Predacon unit in combat, while Beast Wars Neo has Big Convoy's Establishing Character Moment be his destruction of a Predacon fortress almost single-handed. This larger war otherwise goes unmentioned.
  • Something like this was suggested in the dub version (but not the original version) of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. When Bommer summons his Flying Fortress SKY FIRE to use against Crow, Crow is naturally freaked out (as most of Bommer's opponents are when he summons it) and exclaims "That's not a monster, that's World War IV!" The implication, of course, is that World War III has occurred in the time period between the present day and this future time.

    Comic Books 
  • The Authority:
    • In the second arc, Jenny Sparks mentions how Earth cut down all connection with the alternate Universe, The Sliding Albion, after the First World War erupted there. Characters from Albion mention briefly that between that event and Albion's invasion on Earth, that world has seen eight other world wars.
    • Also, the fourth story arc (and first written by Mark Millar) showed us a glimpse of another alternate Earth, which had thirteen continents. A world war that erupted there ended with armies of Adolf X exterminating all non-black people on all of them. The Engineer finds the idea of sending a group of superpowered white supremacists there quite interesting.
  • Frank Miller's RoboCop: As befitting the fact it was based on Frank Miller's original script for RoboCop 2 and elements going into RoboCop 3, the Amazon War from those two films is part of the backstory, with the Rehabs (much like in 3) being mercenaries who'd been involved in the war now employed by OCP — with the addition of Sgt. Reed having served in the war and recognizing the Rehabs from his time there.
  • The Marvel Comics mini-series History of the Marvel Universe established the Siancong War, a combination of the Korean and Vietnam Wars which saw America enter the equally fictional Sin-Cong to try and drive off Communist invaders. It would be this war where people like Ben Grimm and Frank Castle would participate in as Comic-Book Time made using World War II and the Vietnam War implausible.
  • In the Judge Dredd universe, the Great Atom War/World War Three started off as this, with only a few incidents in it ever being revealed. However, nearly 30 years later the storyline Origins came along and averted this trope, giving a solid order to events and how they were seen through along Joe Dredd's eyes.
  • Venado Bay in Legion of Super-Heroes V4. In the retroboot Legion, the backstory of the planet Durla (Chameleon Boy's home) is the Six Minute War, the nuclear fallout from which left the planet barely habitable and is the origin of their Voluntary Shapeshifting.
  • Despite the fact that the chronology of Lucky Luke is deliberately murky to the point of parody, one historical event that is often referred to is The American Civil War to the extent that some of Luke's enemies (Jesse James and Joss Jamon's gang) are known to have participated in it as mercenaries (for the Confederacy of course).
  • Most of the event on the backstory of Old Man Logan (on which every single villain of the Marvel Universe teamed up and took over North America (if not the world, it's not really explicitly said), killing (most) of the superheroes) remains unexplained except for the post-apocalyptic wasteland where the story takes place, a number of Cryptic Background References (and the piles of spandex-wearing skeletons that adorn the sites where they are mentioned), and a couple of flashbacks to the event, where we see the massacre of the X-Men (by Wolverine, who got such a Heroic BSoD from being duped in such a way (by Mysterio) that he is still reeling from it by the time the story starts), and the Red Skull's slaying of Captain America.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) has the aptly named Great War between the Mobians and Overlanders (aka. the descendants of humanity). It was started when the Knight Templar Kodos killed two scouts from both sides and sent them to their respective sides, causing some seriously long-standing racial tensions to explode. It lasted for five years and ended when Dr. Robotnik (back when he was still called Kintobor) supposedly switched sides and gave the Mobians what they needed to drive back the Overlanders. Unfortunately, after the Mobians won, Robotnik promptly betrayed them too and overthrew the king with his badnik army. Many of the comic's older characters were in the war and there's still plenty of resentment and bigotry left over from the war.
    • There's also the first year of the Second Robotnik War, which saw Dr. Eggman regain his power base and promptly retake Mobius after Sonic had been thought killed in battle.
  • Sonic the Comic and the continuation Sonic the Comic – Online! has the Great War between the Echidnas of Megopolis City and the Drakons of the invading Drakon Empire which took place eight thousand years ago over Mobius' Emerald mines which could contain the Chaos energy, a powerful but highly unstable energy source created by scientists on Drak the Drakons home planet, the Drakons were able to steal seven Emeralds before the war began. The gems, when combined with the Chaos energy, formed the legendary Chaos Emeralds. Two days before the war began, Pochacamac, leader of the Megopolis tribe, managed to steal the sacred Emeralds back from the Drakons, both to keep to return them to their true home and to prevent the Drakons from conquering the entire galaxy. Angered, the Drakons sent out a scout to examine the Echidna defenses before sending a full-scale invasion force to claim the Emeralds. A battle erupted inside Pochacmac's command room, with Drakon Prosecutors and Sentinels fighting against Sonic the Hedgehog and echidnas armed with Guardian Robots. The fight was briefly interrupted when a Prosecutor struck the Emeralds with his Dimensional Staff, causing a chain reaction that turned a fallen Drakon warrior into the mighty Chaos. The ensuing explosion weakened the gathered Drakon soldiers enough for Knuckles and the other tribesmen to fight back while Sonic and Pochacmac took care of Chaos. After a final push, the echidnas drove the Drakon invaders out of the city, but the war was far from over. Although no victor was ever declared, the failure of the Drakons to claim their intended prize suggests the Mobian defence held out, albeit at a great cost.
  • Continuing the trend, Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) partially deals with the aftermath of a rebellion against Eggman's army, referencing the one that took place in Sonic Forces. The machinery, social impact, and reconstruction efforts are very much present throughout the comic.
  • Star Wars: Legacy has the conflict between Galactic Republic and Empire, won by the latter, who then got into the war with the Sith.
  • The Transformers (IDW) continuity has a few that happened either before or sometime during the onscreen war between the Autobots and Decepticons, which has recently ended:
    • The First Great War, which happened several million years before the comics. We don't know much about it, but Nova Prime and his allies managed to bring it to a peaceful conclusion leading the Cybertronion Golden Age.
    • The Software Wars, we know next to nothing about this one, except that Guzzle was in them and it was centered in the city of Polyhex.
    • The Lava Wars, again, we know next-to-nothing about this one. Apparently it was caused by a guy called Magma.
    • The war amongst the Stentarians between the Ammonites and Terradores. It's apparently ongoing, is older than all the other known galactic wars, and caused The Shattering, which eventually led to the formation of the Galactic Council.
    • Transformers: Last Bot Standing is set in a continutiy where the Great War is long over, and it took nearly everything in the universe with it. Few Cybertronians are left, and none are in good shape. The wars are impled to have wiped out pretty much every known race with them, including Humans and Nebulons.
  • Ultimate X-Men: The Brotherhood bombed the Capitol in Washington DC a week before the action starts in the first issue.

    Eastern Animation 
  • Iron Kid: The war where Marty's ancestor fought the General is constantly mentioned even before the General's return becomes more likely. Society is still struggling to recover from it during the main series and many robots combatants from both sides are still around.

    Fairy Tales 
  • Maid Maleen: The titular princess and her chambermaid spend seven years locked away in a tower. When they break out, both women find out Maleen's father got into a fight with the wrong ruler during their captivity, since "her father's castle lay in ruins, the town and the villages were, so far as could be seen, destroyed by fire, the fields far and wide laid to waste, and no human being was visible. [...]The enemy had ravaged the whole kingdom, driven away the King, and slain all the inhabitants." The identity of whoever destroyed the kingdom is unrevealed, but since Maleen and her servant have no longer a home, they are forced to wander around the ravaged countryside until they arrive in another city.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): It's not that overt, but there are references to Ghidorah killing other members of both Thor and Godzilla's respective species (the former because they refused to submit to Ghidorah's dominance) in the ancient past.
  • Another Rainbow in Another Sky: It's mentioned that there's a civil war between the Dream Valley (G1), Friendship Gardens (G2), and Ponyville (G3) ponies. After years of absence, Paradise and Wind Whistler seek out Megan for help. The story ends with Megan, Kim, and the ponies riding off to Dream Valley.
  • Beyond the Winding Road, a PandoraHearts Continuation fic, has the Great Tousterre War. Paralleling World Wars I and II, the great political mess left by the events in the manga led to a massive, bloody war between Sable and its invading neighbors. The war has political ramifications even a century later.
  • Child of the Storm has a number of these, as a result of major league world building and the sheer scale of the setting.
    • The War of the Nine Realms, between the Alliance of Realms and Surtur, over a million years before the present.
    • The War for the Dawn, between Asgard and her allies and the Dark Elves, about 6000 years prior to the present when the Dark Elves tried to destroy the Nine Realms with the Aether, and rearrange them with the Dark Elves on top.
    • The Avalon Wars, a series of wars between Asgard and Avalon, as the followers of the two respective pantheons clashed, and the two pantheons wound up on collision course (though it's implied that the Avalonians fired the first shot, lashing out at what they saw as encroachment by the followers of the Asgardian gods and Christian missionaries). It ended when the Frost Giants invaded and an Enemy Mine ensued, but it's heavily implied that Asgard was winning and the Avalonians are still carrying a grudge.
    • The Last Great Frost Giant War, with Asgard, Avalon and their human allies (including the ancestors of the founders of Hogwarts) on one side, and the Frost Giants on the other, circa 500 AD. The Avalonians were swept aside early by the might of the Casket (something which Odin puts down to them having been weakened by fighting Asgard), the ancestors of the Founders rallied for the Last Stand, before Asgard played the role of Big Damn Heroes and saved the day. A long war ensured, a world war, and the allied forces won, the Frost Giants were stripped of the Casket of Ancient Winters and Loki was adopted by Odin. Odin's descriptions to Harry of what happened make it sound pretty spectacular, with notable incidents including Aethelstan Gryffindor dueling Laufey with 'swords and magic' and losing a hand (he eventually took up Mjolnir), while leaving scars to remember him by, Prospero Slytherin wielding the wand Laevaeteinn (which is heavily implied to be a fragment of the Phoenix) in a Last Stand so spectacular it retroactively carved out the Grand Canyon.
  • The Tiberium War (or to the more pedantic people on the streets of Coreline that know their Command & Conquer lore, the Fourth Tiberium War) on Cline Op Ghost In The Machine. The specifics of the War are All There in the Manual for the setting, but all that is important to the protagonists is that the Brotherhood of Nod left behind a base, which was then taken over, transformed into an experiments lab, and abandoned by Aperture Science, deep within the Australian countryside that they need to explore.
  • Digimon Trinity: There are repeated mentions of a war that has resulted in the protagonists of Adventure and 02 becoming Famed In-Story. While the specifics are uncertain, it has resulted in TK having become the bitter head of Hypnos, and Tai and Agumon to have vanished for fifteen years.
  • Endless Pantheon: The Goa'uld and Faerie Courts went to war several millennia ago due to Thoth's Folly, a series of events which saw the Goa'uld fall from grace. The exact details of the war are not clear as the Terms which ended the hostilities also rewrote much of the Goa'uld racial memory of what happened. To the modern day, the Goa'uld still consider this to have been the only war worth mentioning as such.
  • Evilhumour's "The Powers That Be" multiverse of stories has a shared one, mentioned in both A Chance Meeting of Two Moons and Diplomacy Through Schooling, the third story in the Diplomacy-verse: the alicorn-dragonequus war, in which the majority of both species fought one another in the service of Order and Chaos, the two Eldest of the Creators. This war is the reason why there are so few alicorns in the multiverse, and why the Doors to the Realms In Between have largely been sealed off. As the Diplomacy-verse notes, after it was over, Order and Chaos stepped back; their Champions for each universe are largely in charge of their business there nowadays.
    • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Equestria fought two during the thousand-year timeskip between the prologue and first chapter.
      • The war between Equestria and the Changelings began after the destruction of Canterlot Castle and the deaths of everyone within, and ended when Blueblood slew Queen Chrysalis. Its ramifications are still being felt a thousand years later, including the treatment of the Changelings.
      • When Sombra returned, he started the Crystal World War, which lasted ten years and took the entire world working together to drive him back to his empire's capital and kill him.
  • Fallout: Equestria has the war between the zebra and Equestria, which ended much like in the original Fallout (again, it's almost confirmed that the zebra fired first). We actually hear a great deal about what happened in the background of the war, but still almost never see a battle fought.
  • Friendship is Witchcraft:
  • In Frontier, it's revealed that the geth Consensus tied up the Big Bad so much that its full force is never applied to the heroes. Keep in mind how many casualties they suffered anyway, so the "full force" of said enemy might have been more like "game over."
  • The Golds: At some point between Belle, Baelfire and Bella returning to Storybrooke and “Moving Day”, Cora found her way into Storybrooke and rallied half of its citizens into a frenzy, claiming that Bella is an abomination and should be killed before she brings disaster. Cora ripped her heart out and held it as leverage against her parents, only for Bella to use her first moment of instinctive magic to turn her into a rose.
  • The Jackson Legacy: The Private War takes place a decade before the story kicks off.
  • Justice League of Equestria: The War in Heaven; we don't know much about it, just that Athena battled and defeated Darkseid and the forces of Apokalips.
  • The Legend of Genji has the Foggy Swamp & Sandbender Rebellions that took place about twenty years before the start of comic. It was a pair of uprisings staged by the indigenous Foggy Swamp and Si Wong tribes against the larger Earth Federation after the Federation attempted to expel the natives from their homelands through military force. The Foggy Swamp Rebellion resulted in the swampbenders gaining their independence after driving away the Federation's armies with the help of Avatar Korra herself. However, the Sandbender Rebellion was not as lucky and got steamrolled by the technologically superior Earth Federation, which would place the Si Wong Desert under military occupation over the next few decades while they mined the desert's underground oil deposits.
  • The Man with No Name: The Great Time War and the Independence War both play important roles; besides heavily influencing how the Doctor interacts with the crew of Serenity (and vice versa) the Big Bad is revealed to be an alien who felt his people were betrayed by the Doctor during the Time War, and his sponsors are Browncoat zealots hoping to use mind-controlled Reavers to restart the Independence War.
  • My Hero Academia: Mechanical green: The "Avalon War" enacted by Dr. Paxton Frederick Jones, waging war against multiple nations with his army of robots eleven years before the beginning of the fic. The war caused a lot of destruction and death, the effects of which are still being felt in the present. Numerous characters make reference to either experiencing the war itself, or having their lives irrevocably changed by the side-effects of the war, whether it be from the death of love ones such as Ochaco's parents and Mei's mother dying in the crossfire, the physical and mental toll of fighting Paxton himself, or the fallout from his causing multiple nations to collapse in on themselves, nearly succeeding with the United States too.
  • The Negotiations-verse is a recursive fanfiction of The Conversion Bureau that takes place in the aftermath of the war between humanity and ponykind, with humanity emerging victorious. Nothing of the war is actually shown (until the prequel story Warfare, which describes the war in the form of journal entries written by a Royal Guard, and the fan-written side story Choice, which details a few key moments and battles), but it's stated to have gone on for five years, with both sides sustaining heavy losses (humanity lost several cities and nations that were wiped out by the barrier and at least one-third of their population while Equestria lost the Crystal Empire, three of its princesses, close to half of its population, and most of its military forces).
  • Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! has the Lantern War, a colossal conflict between the Green Lantern Corp and the Red Lantern Corp that began when the Red Lantern Corp inexplicably invaded Earth back when Izuku's adoptive grandfather was still in fighting shape. It's heavily implied to have been a bloody and brutal affair, which led to widespread xenophobia on Earth that persists into the main story. Many alien superheroes who were once praised as champions for good like the Martian Manhunter and Starfire were either ousted, forced into hiding, or killed out of sheer paranoia. Those closely associated with them, like Renegade, were treated similarly. Izuku himself is plagued with self-loathing at the start of the story for being an alien, which is only compounded by his lasting guilt complex.
  • The New Age of Monsters: The first war. As in the first war ever! It happened many thousand of years ago and consisted of a series of battles between many different humans factions and their respective “gods”. Eventually, the kaijus grew disillusioned with their followers and stopped supporting them, leading to an last attempt by Mu to conquer the world by controlling kaiju to attack their weakened enemies. This proved to be the last straw for Manda and she allowed Mu to be destroyed by the other kaiju.
  • The Night Unfurls: The Forever War between Celestine Lucross and Olga Discordia. The readers understand why the war broke out and has lasted for centuries (the Fantastic Racism between humanity and dark elves), many Kuroinu-original characters have been either directly involved in or affected by said war one way or another (The Seven Shields, the Black Dogs, Olga, Grace, etc.), and the war itself is still ongoing by the beginning of the fanfic (though at its final stage, since Celestine's vision foretells its end as a result of Kyril's appearance). However, the readers do not see much of the actual war, and Kyril is more of an Outside-Context Problem instead of someone affected by the war, though he does contribute to its end. Several Original Characters, namely Kyril's four apprentices, were not even born at that period. Then again, the main focus of this story is the conflict against the traitorous Black Dogs, not Celestine and Olga's century-old war.
  • PokĂ©mon Reset Bloodlines has several mentions of Trainer-Ranger Wars in the past, with Lt. Surge having fought in the most recent one that ended 40 years ago. The sides of the war were mentioned to be the Trainer Aligned Treaty Organization (consisting of Kanto, the Orange Islands, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, and Orre) and the Fall City Pact (consisting of Fiore, Almia, and Oblivia), with side conflicts originating from one side aiding the traditional enemies of the other, such as the Fall City Pact giving aide to the Draconid Tribe that often was in conflict with the main Hoenn population. What is known about the war is that it was not pretty.
  • Pony POV Series: The Great Alicorn-Draconequs War, which was a side effect of the wendigos being destroyed. The head of the Draconi, Entropy wanted retribution from being harmed by the fires of friendship, but the Alicorns said it would be misplaced blame for an accident and stood up for the mortals who did it. So, Nature's Law (The Alicorns) and Nature's Fury (The Draconi) went to war over it. There are some snippets of details provided. Discord apparently sawed off the alicorn of fate's wing during the fighting. Destruction was EATEN by discord near the end. And Death's kids chose their mother over him, but he promised them that they would never fight during the conflict. Eventually, both sides burned themselves out on how stupid this had become and called a truce, though Celestia, Luna, Galaxia and Discord ended up incarnating on earth afterwards due to fleeing the war.
  • Power Rangers GPX: In great Power Rangers tradition, an ancient, pre-historical war between humans, elves and Zordonians forms the backdrop. Long story short, the Zordonians were nasty, the humans and elves got mad and kicked them off the planet, humans accidentally killed the elves' leader, the elves hid and the Zordonians returned 10,000 years later.
  • The Powers of Harmony has the War of the Sun and Moon, the conflict between Celestia and Nightmare Moon, which in this story is presented as having lasted several years. There are a few flashbacks to it, but for the most part it's offscreen.
    • There's also the Blood War between the Metallic and Chromatic dragons, triggered by Discord making each side think the other killed their leader/progenitor Io. This war lasted for the entire Era of Discord (centuries, if not longer), and it was only after his defeat that Celestia and Luna were able to reveal the truth and end the war.
    • Discord also started a war between the Crystal Ponies and the other races inhabiting Tarandus, which led to the formation of the Crystal Empire (which originally lived up to the name and trope.
  • Queen of All Oni: The Red King's Rebellion, wherein Tarakudo overthrew the Oni Elders. We only see a portion of the Final Battle, spread out over two separate flashbacks.
  • Roanapur Connection: The Russian and EU war refered in chapter Eye Of The Storm that took place between 1987-1990, is heavily implied to have been a bloody and costly war that Europe is still recovering from years later. With Ganabati also noting the use of Chemical bombs and gas attacks that did a number on the major cities, but also on Poland and Ukraine especially.
    • The Great War is also mentioned in chapter one that Nathan states led to Japan becoming a republic in 1945 atb. Though no further details have been provided yet on it beyond Natsumi’s grandfather having fought in it.
  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: Act III mentions the Battle of Kahdaln, the Last Stand during a war between monsters and humans for control of the world; the monsters lost and were forced back into the monster world, thus beginning The Masquerade. In the present day, most monsters dislike talking about it to the extent that, when Ahakon brings it up in class, Ms. Nekonome promptly dismisses it as a myth.
  • Shakedown Shenanigans: The current 40 Eridani Starfleet Construction Yards are built on the site of a Vulcan yard that was destroyed by a Romulan raid during the Earth-Romulan War 250 years earlier. The ongoing Federation-Klingon War also gets mentioned as the reason for the USS Bajor's construction (she's primarily a line battleship to replace combat losses) but doesn't play a role in the plot.
  • Several times in Sonic X: Dark Chaos, mostly because the author has admitted that he isn't good at writing battle scenes.
    • The Demon-Seedrian War, which ended in the creation of Tsali and the near-extermination of Cosmo's race, is a major part of the backstory frequently alluded but never actually shown. The author began to write a prequel to explore it, but it was scrapped.
    • The battles between the Demons and Angels aren't really shown either - the story focuses more on the effects of said battles and the political machinations behind the scenes.
  • Soul Eater: Troubled Souls: Death Weapon Meister Academy and the Witch Society have been in opposition for a long time, but their conflict hit the nadir in a time called the Period of Destruction. Lord Death claims it is the darkest and bloodiest period of war between them. Three whole centuries of on-and-off bloodshed; for reference, both World Wars began and ended during the Period of Destruction. Other notable events include the Lucrenian Clan Incident that plays a vital role in Cancer’s and Kujira’s lives and the defensive purge of the Immortal Clan necessitated from their attack on humanity.
  • Tarkin's Fist: The Americas War, fought between the Union of South American Nations and the North American Union, provides some backdrop for the frigid international situation at the time of the Empire's arrival. The war is started by an emboldened South America, flush with oil money, making a land grab in Central America. The NAU intervenes. Fought over the course of three years in Central America, the Caribbean, and in Venezuela, the war ends in a draw, with the ceasefire being arbitrated by the People's Republic of China. European clandestine support for the USAN leads to a straining of relations between North America and the nations of the European Union.
  • To the Stars has the Unification Wars between the United Front and Freedom Alliance. The former won and became humanity's unified government seen in the story. Most of the details are All There in the Manual.
  • Utopia Unmade has the Bad End War that took place in the past, where Pierrot took control of Märchenland, renamed it the Bad End Kingdom, and attacked Majorland. The Precure Kingdom aided Majorland and eventually exterminated all the residents of the Bad End Kingdom. This was when Love realized the Precure Kingdom was heading towards something bad.
  • There is the occasional mention of the Battle of Al'Zahur in Warriors of the World: Soldiers of Fortune that took place fourteen years prior to the fic. All anyone knows about the war is that it was "between mercenaries and the Chivalry", and that Valkron was part of it. He's reticent on the subject, but he does imply that it changed a lot about how the way things were run in the Kingdom afterwards.
  • In With Strings Attached, Grunnel talks about how the Tayhil and their monsters conquered most of Baravada some 200 years ago, and how the skahs rose up to take back the place.
  • A Young Girl's Guerrilla War: As in canon, the Second Pacific War ended with Britannia invading the Japanese mainland and forcing Tokyo’s unconditional surrender. Even many of the characters too young to have fought in it still remember the devastation. Before that, there was the First Pacific War, evidently waged between Europa Universalis and Imperial Japan approximately seventy years before the canon story, ended so poorly for the Japanese that the country was reformed into the Republic of Japan.

    Films — Animation 
  • The Angry Birds Movie ended with the beginning of the war between the titular Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies, which was central to the Angry Birds video game series for so long. With the sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, beginning with the end of such a conflict, very much of that war becomes this trope, left to the imagination...or the series' games that you play.
  • At the beginning of The Black Cauldron, the characters mention that there's a war being fought (presumably against the Horned King, given the context), but we never see any part of it, nor do we even see whom or whatever the Horned King is fighting against.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • When watching Airplane!, they never make clear which war "The War" was for Ted Stryker, though judging by when the movie was made, one might assume Vietnam. As farcical as the entire movie is, it could very well have been some other war entirely though. Hell, it could be a war they (or Ted) completely made up as well. In one scene Ted starts having flashbacks which are represented by Stock Footage going farther and farther back, all the way through World War I biplanes and finally the Wright brothers test flight.
    • "The War" in Zero Hour! (1957), the film on which Airplane! is based, and which came out a quarter of a century earlier, was obviously World War II. This time frame informs a lot of the gags and references in the latter film.
  • Devotion (2022): World War II, which most of the cast trained for but weren't able to serve in: deuteragonist Tom Hudner applied to the Naval Academy after Pearl Harbor and was a month away from graduation when Japan surrendered.
  • King Arthur in First Knight waged several wars to secure and defend Camelot. Lancelot's family perished in one of those wars.
  • In Godzilla vs. Kong, throughout the film, there are repeated allusions to an ancient war between Godzilla and Kong's ancestors, but the details are left very vague, including why it happened, which side started it or what the outcome was, beyond the implication that it led to the decline of both species.
  • Ida is set in Poland in 1961, 16 years after the end of World War II and a decade or so after the show trials at the height of Communist oppression. Both of those traumatic experiences hang over the entire film. Ida is in search of the truth about her parents, Polish Jews who were murdered during the war. Although Wanda doesn't admit it, she obviously feels guilt over her role as a Hanging Judge during the Communist show trials of the early 1950s.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring begins with Galadriel recounting the story of the last war with Sauron, several thousand years prior. We only see the end of the final battle.
  • Maleficent's backstory includes a war between humans and The Fair Folk. While the film only makes small reference to it, the novelization expands on this; notably, it was in this war that Maleficent's parents were killed. The film itself shows the two races living in segregation, though the ending implies that Queen Aurora will bring peace between them.
  • In RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3 there is mention of a war in the Amazon, with Cain and the Rehabs having served in the war. The latter film sees Lewis reading a copy of USA Today in the scene of the botched donut shop robbery with the headline being the war getting worse. These were elements from Frank Miller's original script for 2, which had Sgt. Reed as having served in the war and dreading the arrival of the Rehabs as he recognized them as mercenaries from his time in the war.
  • A plot point in Rollerball. Whenever the protagonist tries to find out details about the Corporate Wars he finds himself hitting a brick wall, as America is One Nation Under Copyright and doesn't want its skeletons in the closet being aired.
  • Seventh Son is set about a century after a war waged by evil witches on humanity, which the world is said to still be recovering from.
  • Shredder Orpheus takes place in a future dystopia sometime after the Great Contra War, which left the veteran Axel without the use of his legs and lower nervous system.
  • The Clone Wars were this for the Star Wars franchise until the prequels came, then two cartoons and a lot of other things explored it, so it ultimately avoids this trope. This was actually an Enforced Trope before the prequels came out: Expanded Universe writers weren't allowed to set stories in the Clone Wars era to leave it open for George Lucas.
  • The Time Machine (1960):
    • The protagonist from 1899 traveled a couple of decades into the future. One of his friends' sons mentions "the front" of "the war". It's obvious it's the First World War, but being a time-traveler, he was unaware.
    • The film loops back to this trope again in the late second act, when the protagonist visits the remnants of a museum's collection kept (however ignorantly) by the Eloi. The "talking rings" recording devices relate the horrific effects, then aftermath, of a cataclysmic global war that ostensibly occurred during the period that the Time Machine was buried in rock. (Speaking as it does of the destruction of oxygen factories and germ warfare, it's unclear whether it is the same war whose nuclear strike the protagonist narrowly avoids in his second "future stop," or one that follows.)
  • Snowpiercer: A previous revolt against Wilford, the McGregor Riots from four years ago, are alluded to a few times. What happened to McGregor is unmentioned but likely bad, as the Front Section passengers shot so many advancing rebels that Curtis is convinced that bullets went "extinct."
  • Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision: The first sign that Miller ignoring Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act is having unpleasant consequences like Josh Chan warned are constant vague references to a catastrophic war where Doc's husband and Chan's parents died and O'Rourke lost an eye.
  • The war against the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. When the film starts, the war is over, and the Sentinels are just hunting the last mutant survivors.
  • A Year of the Quiet Sun: The film is set in Poland in early 1946, less than a year after the end of World War II. The Recovered Territories of eastern Poland are an area that was Germany less than a year before and as such, was ravaged during the Soviet offensive. Everyone is suffering from the trauma of war. Emilia and her mother seem to have been transferred to Poland's new territory against their will, after they lost both their house and Emilia's husband in the war. Norman, the American soldier who falls in love with Emilia, suffers from trauma and nightmares from his time as POW.

    Literature 
  • The Aeon Legion fought a number of these like the First Temporal War against a people called the Kalians over who would police Time Travel. Also the Faceless War fought against parasitic monsters called the Faceless. The Legion is still struggling to recover from the Faceless War.
  • Alien in a Small Town apparently experienced two of these, the Genomic War - which gave rise to a number of genetically engineered Human Subspecies who have had varying degrees of success interacting peaceably with baseline humans in the years since — and the Android Uprising, about which we are given even fewer details, but the current society seems to believe that Androids Are People, Too. The biggest effect of the Genomic War on the main story is that it apparently caused the Amish and Mennonites to have to evacuate their territories for a time, and when they finally returned, they were somewhat less closed minded than they had been, and a number of outsiders followed them, making them a much more ethnically diverse group than they had been.
  • Most of the large-scale conflicts in Arrivals from the Dark are glossed over with few details given. Even if a story is taking place during an interstellar war, the protagonist is likely to be involved on its fringes. This includes the four Void Wars against the Faata (taking place over the span of a century), the war with the Dromi (which lasts for at least 150 years due to the sheer numbers of the enemy), as well as the smaller conflicts against the Kni'lina and the Haptors.
  • The Arts of Dark and Light has the war against the Witchkings a number of centuries back, which broke the back of the kingdoms of the elves and enabled the rise of the human states of Savondir and Amorr as the main great powers of the setting. Whether seen as history (by the humans) or living memory (by the elves), everyone still recognizes how important the war was. In the setting, it's treated much like World War II is in real life, as a great defining political and cultural event, and the Witchkings are still invoked in rhetoric as the one supreme great evil, somewhat like a sort of fantasy version of Godwin's Law.
  • One of the Barnaby Grimes books mentions a war that was fought (possibly still being fought) to the East, in "The Malabar Kush". It included events such as "the siege of Rostopov", "the fall of Dhaknow", and "the storming of the Great Redoubt".
  • The Crapsack World of the Bas-Lag Cycle has had a few:
    • The destruction of the ancient Ghosthead Empire, which had been founded by Ancient Astronauts wielding probability magic so powerful that the site of their arrival on the planet remains a combination Eldritch Location and Hellgate; relics like "Possible Towers" and "Possible Swords" are scattered in hidden places across the world.
    • The Malarial Queendom of the Anophelii was all but exterminated and its few survivors sequestered on a small island, where the mosquito-like females' insatiable Horror Hunger can be controlled.
    • New Crobuzon's Golden Age ended in the Pirate Wars against two rival city-states, to which New Crobuzon retaliated with an attack of Torque-bombs that twisted the ruins of Suroch into a teratogenic wasteland.
  • The Psychlo invasion in Battlefield Earth, which lasted about 9 minutes.
  • The Bounty Hunter Wars: The backdrop of the series is a bloody civil war amongst the Bounty Hunters Guild that the Empire and Xizor are benefitting from. Practically none of the actual conflict is shown. Aside from the bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back (several of whom don't take a side), only four guild members (Craddosk, Ob Fortuna, D'harhan, and Gleed Ontondon) appear in the trilogy, and two of them die before the conflict starts.
  • The Cassandra Kresnov books have the League-Federation War for which Sandy, an Artificial Human Super-Soldier, was created. It's never explained for certain who actually won, though the implied outcome is that the Federation won but left the League more or less intact.
  • One of these is mentioned at the very end of The Chronicles of Prydain, when Dallben explains that he came across the aftermath of a tremendous battle in which everyone had been killed, including civilians. The only survivor was the infant boy he found hidden among the roots of a tree; Dallben took him home, named him Taran, and raised him. He tells the story to explain that he kept Taran's parentage from him not because he didn't want the boy to know it, but because he himself has no idea who Taran's parents were.
  • Stephen King's The Dark Tower series occasionally reference the last war of the Gunslingers against the Good Man, and it's the backdrop against which Wizard and Glass is set. There is also an even older event implied to be a nuclear war, which is why the series is After the End in the first place.
  • The Discworld series has two examples - the wizard wars which serve as an example of why wizards shouldn't actually cast spells, and the wars of the Evil Empire, which serve as the origin story of the Orcs. The latter may or may not be the same as the "big old wars" mentioned in "Troll Bridge", in which Cohen the Barbarian fought for a bright new future and the return of the king, and Mica the troll fought because a big troll with a whip told him to.
  • Divergent: The third book briefly mentions the Purity War, a conflict fought between the genetically pure and the genetically damaged. The result was the quarantining of several GD-dominated test cities in the Midwest (including Chicago) as a way to produce more GP people.
  • In The Dreamside Road, the conflict with Thunderworks totally reshaped the world’s governments and earned Orson Gregory, a.k.a. Wayfarer One, a reputation for heroism and badassery.
  • A Dry, Quiet War by Tony Daniel. The protagonist returns to his home planet after fighting a war twelve billion years in the future at the end of time, apparently to hold back the spread of entropy so the universe has a chance to exist in the first place. He deliberately says as little as possible about the war because to discuss what happened would risk creating a Grandfather Paradox, and he'd have to return to the future to fight all over again.
  • The Butlerian Jihad is repeatedly mentioned in the original Dune series and had a profound effect upon the setting, specifically, it is the reason computers are outlawed. After Frank Herbert's death, his son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson wrote a prequel trilogy to flesh out the details. But the fans try not to talk about those.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: The Angelic Wars were a series of ongoing battles between humans and angels. Since these battles happened centuries ago, we hear a lot about them, but never see them happen.
  • Somewhat ironically, the war in The Forever War happens almost entirely offscreen. Time dilation due to near-lightspeed travel means the protagonist misses the vast majority of the war, only finding out what has happened and how technology has changed when they arrive back at base decades or centuries later than when they left. The war lasts over a thousand years, in which time the protagonist completes four years of military service, almost all of it travel time.
  • Larry Niven's Future History (leading to Known Space) series deals heavily with relations between humans and the Kzin, but the early Man-Kzin Wars never showed up in the books just because Niven didn't like writing war stories. He did let other writers go back and fill that in later, though.
  • The Godslayer Chronicles by James Clemens has a back story of a great war between the Gods which ended in the shattering of the Gods' world and splitting the Gods into 3 beings: a flesh but immortal body which landed on "Earth", and 2 non-corporeal forms in the Aether "The Aethryn" and the Naether "The Naethryn".
  • Harry Potter series:
    • The First Wizarding War against Voldemort.
    • The Second Wizarding War zigzags with this trope. On one hand, the heroes do eventually get to battle the Death Eaters and their allies. On the other hand, it's pretty clear there are some incidents/battles that happen offscreen such as Voldemort's attack on Amelia Bones which results in the latter's death. This is because most of the books are taken from Harry's point of view. The majority of the seventh book has the trio mostly being on the run and Locked Out of the Loop from the wizarding world until they're able to hear from the radio news about various Death Eater-related attacks/incidents.
    • The war against Gellert Grindelwald is even more obscure. All we know for sure is that it apparently took place around the same time as World War II. Word of God is that the timeframe and location of the war against Grindelwald are not a coincidence, but is vague on whether this was just a deliberate parallel to World War II by the author or an indication that they were actually the same war. Although this conflict would eventually become the central one of the prequel Fantastic Beasts film series. However, only two of five have been released so the details are still vague.
  • The Heroes of Olympus: The first book reveals that while the Greek demigods were busy fighting Kronos in the East Coast during the events of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Roman demigods were busy fighting Kronos' second-in-command, Krios (whom we only saw in a vision in that series) in the West Coast. We only get cursory mentions of the war, but judging by Jason Grace's Badass Boast, he personally slew Krios.
  • High School DĂ—D: The war between the Angels, Fallen Angels, and Devils. When the series begins, the three sides have struck an uneasy truce because the last bout of the war very nearly wiped out all three sides and resulted in the deaths of both the four Demon Kings of Hell and God Himself. Many of the series villains are members of one side or another who wish to continue the conflict, regardless of the potential extinction of their faction.
  • From Honor Harrington:
    • Admiral Theisman's purge of the State Sec forces which refused to fall in line with the new government after the overthrow of the Committee of Public Safety. The only part of it shown is from The Fanatic, which itself took place away from the meat of the action. Not a typical example, as that particular conflict took place between two of the later books of the series.
    • Earth's "Final War" many centuries before the current timeline, where the planet was nearly rendered completely uninhabitable until several colonies sent aid to repair the damage.
  • The Hostile Takeover (Swann) series has the Genocide War against the Race, the Big Bads of the Moreau Series, which destroyed all their colonies. There are still Kill Sats in place over their homeworld, programmed to destroy anything that makes orbit.
  • Twice in The Hunger Games: the civilizational collapse that led to the founding of Panem, and the more recent "Dark Days" when Panem's districts rose in an unsuccessful rebellion against the Capitol which lead to the creation of the titular games.
  • The Kharkanas Trilogy has a few:
    • The story happens just a few years after the Forulkan War, which is often referenced but never explicitly shown. Almost all characters have in some way been influenced by it, be it through participating or losing a good chunk of their families to it, and the entire population of Kurald Galain has been decimated; some noble houses are almost gone. All that is shown for certain is that the Tiste won.
    • Either parallel to or shortly after the Forulkan War, the war against the Jhelarkan happened, but even less is shown of that even though it must have happened recently enough that the Jhelarkan are still licking their wounds and have yet to deliver the promised hostages as of the start of the first volume.
    • At the end of the second volume a far more ancient war is hinted at. It's supposed to have been scarily similar to the current civil war, hinting that history is repeating itself, but that's all that is said about it.
  • Laszlo Hadron and the Wargod's Tomb: The Sagittarian Extinction is the one most relevant to the story, but also mentioned are the Solar War, the Imperial Wars, and the Interregnum.
  • The aptly-named Vague War in Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium, which takes place decades prior to the novel. Many references are made to the war, but few details are revealed. Apparently, it was a big free-for-all with all known races but no alliances. The war led to the formation of the Human Empire. The author even throws in a funny story about humans spreading misinformation about their dietary needs (i.e. that we need spinach to survive). The aliens spend resources developing a spinach-killing virus and lose countless ships spreading it throughout the human worlds. When humans don't die, they surrender out of shock. On a less funny note, good luck finding spinach after the war.
  • Liv in the Future: A war known as "The Big Big Nuclear War" ended in 2967. Not much is known about it other than portals beginning to appear in large numbers after it concluded.
  • Some kind of great war is implied to be happening in Lord of the Flies. The reason the children are on the island is because the plane that was evacuating them from a soon-to-be-nuked Britain was shot down.
  • The vast majority of the century-long war between The Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds in The Lost Fleet series. John "Black Jack" Geary catches just the opening salvos, before being forced to become a Human Popsicle. His Escape Pod is discovered many decades later, and he helps turn the tide and bring the war to an end.
  • The Malazan Book of the Fallen, being a ten-volume doorstopper series with a millennia-spanning backstory, also has a couple:
    • The so called Jaghut War on Death is said to have happened millennia ago. The only source of information on that is an undead dragon in the eighth book, who claims that it happened and brought the Jaghut — usually a solitary bunch prone to becoming hermits — together in entire armies, as well as allies from almost every race inexistence at that time. High King Kallor, who's old enough to have seen the Jaghut in their prime, has never heard of that war and refuses to believe the dragon. The trope is, however, later averted in the prequel, The Kharkanas Trilogy, where it happens onscreen, but is still in play for the main series.
    • The civil war that sundered the Tiste homerealm of Kurald Galain is often references but barely ever shown, and what little information there is tends to contradict itself. All that's certain is that it destroyed Kurald Galain and caused the three Tiste peoples to evacuate into other realms, and was caused by Mother Dark turning away from her children. Again, this one is averted in the prequel trilogy, but remains in play in the main series.
    • The extermination war in which the T'lan Imass decided they'd had enough of being ruled over by the Jaghut Tyrants and vowed to hunt the latter into extinction is also often referenced and important for the setting's backstory, but only bits and pieces of information are given to the reader. This one happened at least three hundred thousand years before the main story.
    • Another extermination war with even less information available is that of the Forkrul Assail against the followers of the god best known as the Errant. It reduced the Errant's power drastically and himself from the local top god to skulking the shadows. And that's pretty much all that is known about it. Other than that he is still smarting tens of thousands of years later.
    • The Forkrul Assail — they love their war mongering — invasion of the sub-continent of Kolanse is very sparsely explained, but being important to the series' backstory, it is referenced quite often once introduced. They showed up in their ships, took over, caused a famine and have been lording over Kolanse ever since. How exactly they managed to gain control over several kingdoms can only be inferred thanks to their particular style of magic.
    • The various conquests of the Malazan Empire are mostly only referenced, chiefly among them the conquests of the continents of Korelri and Genabackis (only the tail-end of which is shown) and the sub-continent of Seven Cities. The latter plays the bigger role in the backstory of the series as it provides the reasons for the Whirlwind Rebellion that happens in the second volume.
  • The Maze Runner: The prequel novel, The Kill Order, mentions the War of 2020. This is the only time in the series where real-life year count is used (the count currently used is made up of three digits), suggesting that the war was the catalyst for the reset of the count. This may mean that the series is set over 200 years into the future.
  • Conspicuously averted in Les MisĂ©rables. Hugo takes a break from telling his story to go into a very extensive and detailed history lesson on the Battle of Waterloo. He finally ties it into the main story at the very end of the battle by revealing a relationship between two characters that really could have been summarized in a sentence or two. ThĂ©nardier was looting the bodies and encountered Marius's Only Mostly Dead father, saving his life and thus causing Marius to initially believe that ThĂ©nardier is a war hero rather than a total scumbag.
  • In Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is supposedly a vast war raging between the three superstates, but it has no actual bearing on the novel's plot. Of course, it could just be made up to make the party's rule seem legitimate.
  • In Palimpsest, there are a lot of references to a war that took place at some point prior to the events of the story. Most of the immigrants know it happened, but few seem bothered by the details. It's eventually revealed that Palimpsest had once closed itself off to immigrants completely, but Casimira went to war against the anti-immigrant group because sorrow and loneliness made her determined to bring the immigrants back. Because she won, people from real life once again got the ability to travel there and possibly stay forever.
  • The Perfect Run: The advent of superpowers from the Alchemist's Elixirs led to years of conflicts and war called the Genome Wars. The war killed off billions, devastated entire swathes of continents and reshaped the world, with a Genius supervillain called Mechron being a major player - and all before the story even begins.
  • In Andre Norton's novel Plague Ship, the Solar Queen lands on Earth in the middle of a radioactive wasteland. The few clues given indicate that this is all that remains of central Europe, destroyed in a nuclear war a long time ago.
  • The Red Rising trilogy has three:
    • The Conquering, which took place roughly 736 years before the start of the original novel. The original Golds who colonized Luna, weary of paying heavy taxes to Earth-based corporations, declared their independence, turned around, and conquered Earth.
    • The Dark Revolt, when the Obsidian caste rebelled against their Gold masters a little less than three centuries after the Conquering. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and 90% of the Obsidian population was exterminated. To prevent future rebellions, the Obsidians were stripped of all technology and banished to the poles of planets and moons, where tribal shamans encouraged the superstition that the Golds were gods, a fact which Golds masquerading as Nordic deities deliberately reinforced.
    • More recently was the first Moon Lords' Rebellion, which began fifty-five years before the start of the trilogy, when the moons of Saturn rebelled against the Core after Octavia au Lune usurped her father as Sovereign. The war lasted for twenty years and did not end until The Ash Lord destroyed Rhea, the moon which had instigated the rebellion, with nuclear warheads, killing millions. Up until the second book of the trilogy, the glassy ruins of Rhea in the night sky and their children held as political hostages on Luna was enough for Octavia to keep the Moon Lords in line. After the Augustan alliance shatters at the end of Golden Son, the outer moons of the solar system declare their independence once more. Though their second rebellion does not do well, the revelation that Octavia had been keeping enough nuclear weapons to repeat what the Ash Lord did to Rhea if necessary convinces the Moon Lords to form a temporary alliance with the Rising to defeat the Sovereign's forces.
  • Several characters in Remember To Always Be Brave are straight from the last of three global wars which started in their 1900s, the Roman-Nipponese war. Immediately before those two, there was the Sino-Roman war and the Roman-Mongolian war, and all three lasted from around the 1900s to 1953, with a nuclear bombing of Japan and the "Peninsula" (Korea) followed by a long, bloody invasion.
  • In Restaurant to Another World, there are references to the Demon War of Conquest, which occurred about 70 years prior to the start of the series. Demons lost the war and this is the reason why many demons like Aletta are still discriminated, even though the majority of demons have abandoned their wicked ways and have integrated into society. A regular of the restaurant Artorius/Pork Cutlet is one of the Four Legendary Heroes who had defeated the Demon King.
  • The Reynard Cycle:
    • At the outset of the series, there has been a civil war raging in Arcasia for over a hundred years. The Countess Persephone's father was slain in it, Duke Nobel proved his skill as a military commander during it, and Bruin, Tiecelin, and Grymbart fought in it, occasionally referencing battles, camp life, what the weather was like before an engagement, etc. The war drove an entire region to famine so extreme that its people had to resort to eating their own children, and yet it's over before page one of Reynard the Fox.
    • More cryptically, there are occasional references to "The Glyconese Rebellion", an ancient war in which dragons were involved.
  • Robert A. Heinlein:
    • Several stories in the Future History 'verse refer to the "Wet Firecracker War", particularly in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and The Door into Summer.
    • In Between Planets, his protagonist refers to "the great field, still slightly radioactive, where Old Chicago used to be." It is not known if this is a result of the Wet Firecracker War or some other incident.
    • His near-immortal protagonist, Lazarus Long (a.k.a. Woodrow Wilson Smith) mentions having participated in several wars on nearly as many planets.
  • In The Rogue King by Aldrea Alien, there was once an empire spanning the whole continent. It fell 2000 years prior to the story's setting.
  • The Salvation War has constant mentions of the Great War between Heaven and Hell (lasting for a few million years), demons wiping out multiple other races on other worlds, and skirmishes among the demon nobility.
  • Seekers of the Sky makes references to major conflicts between this Alternate History's powers, mainly between the State and the Russian Khanate (it's mentioned that this world had it own version of the Napoleonic Wars). There are also mentions of occasional conflicts between the State's American colonies and the Aztec Empire. There is also the war that brought the British Isles under the State's control.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles has the Uprising, a rebellion instigated by a clique of Shadowhunter supremacists called the Circle, who wanted to topple the Clave and install a government that persecutes Downworlders. This forms the backstory of many characters; Clary's father, Valentine, was the Circle's leader, while her mother, Jocelyn, plus the Lightwoods, the Herondales, and the Waylands were senior members. Luke was also a member, until he was expelled for turning into a werewolf, and didn't participate in the Uprising. The failure of the rebellion is the reason why Clary, Jocelyn, and the Lightwoods all live in New York, and why Jace was raised by Valentine instead of his parents, who both died during the rebellion.
  • The Shannara books mention the First War of the Races. It's only mentioned briefly as being a huge war where the rebel Druids and the race of Man fought the Druids and the other races (Elf, Dwarf, Gnome and Troll). Men were defeated, but the war had far-reaching consequences. However, none of the books at present actually tell the story of the war itself such as what caused it, the major battles and so on.
  • Sky Jumpers: Forty years prior, General Shadel made an attempt to Take Over the World, which was largely unopposed due to the Worldwide Nuclear Disarmament Act eighteen years before THAT. Ultimately, a new type of bomb was created in the hopes of stopping Shadel, the Green Bomb. Unfortunately, Shadel had managed to get hold of how to build those himself, and fired his bombs at America's ally nations. Of course, America fired their green bombs at him, ending his campaign. Unfortunately, much of society was destroyed in the process.
  • In Jo Walton's Alternate History Small Change trilogy, Germany continued fighting on the Eastern Front past 1949; Japan conquered most of China. The novels take place from the detached perspective of England, with word of the continuing war coming in newspaper headlines and occasional chatter.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire (and it's television adaptation Game of Thrones) has many of these. Some have been detailed in the companion books (Archmaester Gyldayn's Histories, The World of Ice & Fire, and Fire & Blood), but others remain unexplained. Ordered by reverse chronology:
    • The Greyjoy's Rebellion. It's the reason why Theon is a ward of the Starks, and serves as a factor to the Ironborn's decision to secede during the War of the Five Kings, as they have not given up the idea of independence.
    • The most important to the series is Robert's Rebellion, which ended fifteen years before the series starts. It began when Rhaegar Targaryen, heir to Aerys II, stole Robert's betrothed, Lyanna Stark, while Aerys himself had also murdered Eddard Stark's father, Rickard, and brother, Brandon. It resulted in the fall of House Targaryen, who had ruled the Seven Kingdoms for nearly three centuries, and the installation of the Baratheon-Lannister dynasty. It is really the cause for all of the events in the series - giving the effect that the reader has plunged into the middle of the story rather than the beginning.
    • What Tywin Lannister did to inspire "The Rains of Castamere". "But there are no Reynes and Tarbecks"... "Exactly." The World of Ice & Fire finally reveals the event: after the Reynes and Tarbecks defied his authority, Tywin beat them militarily and burned Tarbeck Hall to the ground, and then trapped the Reynes in a mine and redirected a river to drown them.
    • The War of the Ninepenny Kings, the culmination of five rebellions instigated by House Blackfyre, a cadet branch of the Targaryens. The last Blackfyre and a group of bandit-kings warred against Westeros in the Stepstones and the Free City of Lys. The conflict ended with the extinction of the Blackfyres in the male line, although the Golden Company limped on in the Free Cities. Meanwhile, the Tales of Dunk and Egg prequel series explores the fallout of the First Blackfyre Rebellion. The Second Blackfyre Rebellion also led to the Peake Uprising, which killed Maekar I and led to the ascension of Aegon V "Egg".
    • The Dance of the Dragons, a Targaryen civil war that happened over 160 years prior. It is now the subject of House of the Dragon.
    • The Dornish Wars, five separate conflicts instigated by the Targaryens to conquer Dorne, the most persistent of the Seven Kingdoms. Unlike the others, Dorne remained independent long after Aegon I passed away, and it wasn't until the reign of Daeron I, his great-great-great-great-great-grandson, that it was de facto subjugated. Which didn't stick, anyway; Dorne was ultimately integrated a generation later through Altar Diplomacy by Daeron's namesake and first cousin once removed, Daeron II.
    • Some nobles are concerned when Cersei Lannister elects to revive the long-dormant Faith Militant, because the last time they grew powerful, they started a rebellion against the Targaryen dynasty (though to be fair, it was because they were opposed to their tradition of incestuous marriage), which ended during the miraculous reign of Jaehaerys I. And it's unknown if lightning can strike twice.
    • Further back in time, we had Aegon Targaryen's conquest of Westeros and the creation of the united monarchy of the Seven Kingdoms. Years in Westeros are dated from the point of the Targaryen invasion (BC = Before Conquest, AC = After Conquest).
    • The seldom-mentioned Century of Blood, a century of constant wars after the Doom of Valyria destroyed the Valyrian Freehold, creating multiple factions in Essos fighting for supremacy. The Dothraki rose during this time, as without Valyria to hold them back, they were free to plunder Essosi territory. The Free Cities of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh were formerly united under the Triarchy, but they fought each other during the Daughters' War (so-called because they are the "Daughters of Valyria") and separated.
    • Westeros had several unification wars. The Age of Heroes led to the rise of great Houses such as the Starks and Lannisters. The Andal invasion led to the coming of the Faith of the Seven, the importation of the typical Medieval lifestyle and the disappearance of the Children of the Forest. The Rhoynish Invasion of Dorne led to that place becoming a principality under the rule of House Martell.
    • The truly ancient wars between Valyria and the Ghiscari Empire, back when the former was still a nascent kingdom, more than four thousand years ago. It was the reason why slavery is prevalent in Essos; when Valyria conquered Ghis, it adopted many of the latter's practices, including slavery, and expanded it to cover the rest of the continent. Afterthat was Valyria's war with the Rhoynar empire. The defeat of the Rhoynish caused them to flee to Dorne.
    • Going even further back to mythic times, there are the stories from various cultures about a great battle between good and evil, implied to be an earlier war with The Others. In Westeros, this was imagined as the Long Night, during which the First Men and the Children of the Forest banded together to fight the Others, who came from the Land of Always Winter in far northern Westeros.
    • The first recorded conflict in Westeros was between the Children of the Forest and the First Men, recently arriving through a land bridge that connected Dorne, the Stepstones, and western Essos. The Children called in the "hammer of the waters", which flooded the land bridge and caused the North to be separated from the rest of the continent by a swamp. But the arrivals were too large in number, and the Children eventually made peace with them, presaging their cooperation during the Long Night.
  • Star Trek Expanded Universe:
    • In the Star Trek: New Frontier series, Calhoun and Picard (and their crews) discover that a species that's apparently been friendly — the Selelvians — is actually capable of an insidious level of mind control which they've hidden successfully up until this point. In the next book in the series, there's been a Time Skip of several years and the Selelvians have been defeated after a fairly vicious war.
    • The war is also this trope in the "mainstream" novel 'verse. We know that it indeed happened (between Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul and the early Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch), off near the Tholian border, but other than a couple of offhand mentions it's not yet been visited.
  • In the The Sword of Truth series, many of the MacGuffins, events and plots of the entire series are a result of the direct influence of the events in the Great Wizard War that happened over 3000 years ago.
  • The setting of Terra Ignota was shaped by the Church Wars, a religious war about "two interpretations of the same god" which was so horrific that it discredited the entire concept of the nation-state: starting in Europe, all borders were dissolved in protest, and citizenship to any nation became voluntary and could be renounced at will (national sovereignty becoming secondary to a set of humanistic Universal Laws applicable to everyone, everywhere). It also led to a taboo against organized religion that stands strong even centuries later. Few details are given about the war itself, but America is both clearly singled out as the aggressor and has seemingly ceased to exist in global politics and culture by the time the books take place.
  • Stewart Cowley's "Terran Trade Authority Handbooks" opening opus, Spacecraft: 2000-2100AD purports to be an identification guide of the spacecraft of that era (it's essentially one-page profiles based on spacecraft pictures by illustrators such as Chris Foss and Peter Elson). The smaller ships of the Proxima Wars - Earth and Alpha Centauri vs. Proxima Centauri - from all three races fill the military section, and there are hints of major fleet actions between capital ships early in the conflict. While a few specific battles are touched on in terms of detailing the service histories of the ships that fought them, and the civilian ships built in the wars' aftermath add a smattering of their own history, a full history of the entire war does not exist. There were to have been further TTA handbooks as part of an early 21st Century attempt to reboot the franchise, but these seem to have gone to Development Hell. Cowley played the game again in the follow-on Great Space Battles. One of the ships in the ancient fleet which is resurrected to save humanity when its enemies show a disturbing ability to hack the battle computers of the sophisticated frontline ships (and yes, this predates the reboot Battlestar Galactica by DECADES) is described as being a veteran of 'countless' Imperial policing actions - but we never get to find out what these are, even though they are serious enough that battleships were required.
  • The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Long ago, there was a Wizard War that left large tracts of Fantasyland as Waste Areas, devastated by magical pollution that persists into the present. Few details are given of what exactly happened. However, this is one of just two historical periods which ever get referenced.
  • Trail of Lightning takes place After the End when the world has been devastated by both the Big Water (flooding driven by climate change) and the Energy Wars (armed conflicts between nations to secure remaining resources). No one from DinĂ©tah bothers to leave because they believe the rest of the planet is uninhabitable.
  • Triplanetary mentions the first and fourth Jovian Wars, which resulted in the formation of the Triplanetary League from Venus, Tellus, and Mars.
  • In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, the Secret War. It's referred to several times as the reason for much of the chaos in the world. No longer offscreen after the fifth volume, which reveals the lead-up to the war and the war itself.
  • Villains by Necessity: The War that set up all the events in the book. Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Good fought Evil in a vast, destructive conflict. Evil was led by the Dark King, with many battles whose relics are still left behind in the present. The Six Heroes finally gathered every segment of the Spectrum Key on a quest, causing the defeat of Evil and then sealing it off from the world entirely. Unfortunately, this upset the cosmic balance, so in the time since things have slowly been sliding toward "sumblimation", i.e. destruction by pure Light and Good. Six villains instead have to gather the segments and release Evil for averting this.
  • Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is full of these. Mad Yuri's War, the Cetagandan Invasion, the Komarr Conquest and subsequent Revolt all have a direct impact on the storyline decades after they took place.
  • In Watchers of the Throne, while the political drama is ongoing on Terra, there are no less than four different wars being fought off-screen.note 
    • The Thirteenth Black Crusade is throwing itself at Cadian Gate (and in fact has already breached it, the news just hasn't reached Terra yet), and provides the main motivation for the political schemes.
    • The Thousand Sons invasion of Fenris is mentioned as one of the things that pass by the Chancellor's desk without him being able to respond.
    • In the latter half of the book, civil unrests and global riots pass most of the protagonists - trapped in the Imperial Palace - completely by.
    • The second book's plot springs from Guilliman departing Terra to fight in the Indomitus Crusade.
  • In Sergey Lukyanenko's Watches books, the Treaty is signed between the Light and the Dark Others after a magical war that nearly destroyed everything. Hardly any details are revealed about the war. The beginning of The Film of the Book Night Watch shows a battle between two groups of barbaric-looking people without using any magic (the director hates magic), with each group consisting of two dozen men at most. This is likely meant to be symbolic, though.
    • Later novels flesh out more details. In The Last Watch, Anton sees a vision of a battle that took place long ago that ended when Gesar and Rustam used a spell devised by Merlin to collapse the layers of the Twilight in a certain area, turning both the Dark Others and their human armies into living statues.
    • In School Supervision, it's revealed that Ghostapo was real in that some Others participated in World War II on the side of the Nazis and used magic against the Allied-aligned Others. St. Petersburg was the site of the biggest magical battle of the war, likely contributing to it becoming a Genius Loci in The Face of the Dark Palmira.
  • The War Against the Chtorr. There are frequent mentions of the United States fighting (and losing) a war in Pakistan, which led to the forced demilitarization of the country before the events of the series. And in one novel after being captured by renegades, the protagonist returns to be told the United States had actually been invaded (other than by the Chtorrans, that is) while he was away. Mind you, it's implied that war didn't last very long thanks to the invaders using Trojan Horse technology sold to them by the United States.
  • The Aiel War in The Wheel of Time is mentioned in passing by numerous veteran Warders, Tam al'Thor, and others. Many other wars — the Breaking of the World, the War of a Hundred Years, Artur Hawkwing's war of consolidation — all serve to create rich background for the series.
    • The ending at least of the Aiel War was covered in the Prequel novel, New Spring.
  • The 'Holy War' against the Ghouls in E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, in which all the civilized ("polite") nations of the world of Mercury fought alongside each other, and that ended just shortly before the book's storyline begins.
  • In The Zodiac Series, the Trinary Axis is brought up quite a few times. To put it simply, a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers (Blazon Logax of House Leo and Brianella Amarise of House Cancer) decided to secede from the Zodiac, convincing Vecily Matador of House Taurus to join them. Things escalated from there. Unsurprisingly, the immortal Aquarius laid the seeds for it (though it’s heavily implied it was unintentional on his part).

    Live-Action TV 
  • The war with the Magogs from Andromeda, the end of which caused the Nietzschean revolution, may count too, as it started at the beginning of the first episode. The episode then jumps 300 years in the future, to the main plot, not only skipping the downfall of the revolution, but also the civil war among the ones who caused it, the High Guard.
  • Babylon 5
    • The Dilgar War, the first major interstellar war that the humans got involved in, as well as the previous Shadow War, which took place around a thousand years previously. We do see a glimpse of that era, mostly just some less advanced looking Minbari ships, but nothing of the war itself.
    • Also the Telepath War. We are shown only before and after.
    • And the first Narn war for independence from the Centauri, about 100 years prior to the beginning of the series.
    • Along with the numerous wars the Centauri Republic was waging with its neighbors in the third season, none of which are seen, or indeed the numerous smaller wars between the members of the League of Nonaligned Worlds in the same season.
    • There are also allusions to various minor conflicts that the Earth Alliance took part in. Not to mention the Earth Minbari War, which we heard much about, but saw little of, until the prequel movie In The Beginning.
    • Also, the Drakh War, of which we see practically nothing due the spin-off telling it getting Screwed by the Network.
    • Other important conflicts are the other Shadow Wars, the war against the Thirdspace Aliens, the one against whoever created The Hand (purpoted to be the Thirdspace Aliens in the Expanded Universe), and the genocidal war between the Centauri and their co-worlder race the Xon.
    • Discussed by Garibaldi in an introspective moment in season 5 as things move towards war with the Centauri. To paraphrase, he wonders aloud why we always divide history by the wars, not by the periods of peace, and comes to the conclusion that wars are just more fun.
    • Played With in one episode when Marcus & Dr. Franklin were being smuggled to Mars. The Earth Alliance kept out of the Vorlon-Shadow war, so from the perspective of most humans this is the case. Marcus even (sarcastically) lamented coming home as a war hero in a war nobody ever heard about.
  • Both series of Battlestar Galactica have mentioned previous wars with Cylons.
    • The new BSG's First Cylon War did eventually get screentime in Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome and a flashback in the episode "Razor". The video game Battlestar Galactica Deadlock covers much of the war, though its original elements and storyline probably aren't canon. An earlier licensed video game also purports to cover that period, even being played from the perspective of Commander Adama as a rookie pilot, but it mixes and matches so many elements of the original series and remake that it probably belongs in its own separate continuity.
  • The villain from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Prom " bred hellhounds which were used in the Makhash Wars, whatever that is..
  • Doctor Who:
    • Episodes of the classic series referred to several different events, including the survivors of the destruction of Phaester Osiris defeating Sutekh and sealing him in a pyramid on Mars, or the ancient war between the Time Lords and the Great Vampires shortly after the beginning of time.
    • The great Cyber-Wars fought between human forces and the Cybermen were mentioned frequently, but the Cybermen were hardly even seen at the height of their power — mostly after the fact as The Remnant.
    • The Sontarans have warred with the Rutan host for at least 60,000 years of the Whoniverse's timeline (mentioned in both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures), and yet we've never encountered a Rutan and Sontaran together on TV once.
    • The Last Great Time War, between the classic and new series. It was never shown, we know only that it caused a lot of destruction and wiped out entire races, including the Time Lords, whose Sole Survivor was the Doctor. We find out that the Doctor was the one who ended the war, killing every Dalek (apart from a few who got away, of course) at the cost of also killing every Time Lord, including their own children and grandchildren. The Doctor has to deal with the consequences of the Time War from time to time and sometimes they or somebody else makes a reference to some events of it, but it's still mostly a mystery.
      • The Time War is described by the Gelth in "The Unquiet Dead", themselves being bodiless refugees of the War, as being "invisible to lesser species but devastating to higher ones", meaning that the Time War was "offscreen", as it were, to a large portion of the Universe.
      • Showrunner Steven Moffat has gone on record saying that he will never show the Time War since there isn't enough money in the world to do it justice. All we see of it in "The Day of the Doctor" is a few brief scenes of the Dalek invasion of Gallifrey at the war's climax... and it is not pretty. See also this line to The Master, in "The End of Time: Part Two":
        The Doctor: You weren’t there, in the final days of the war. You never saw what was born. But if the Time Lock’s broken then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres — the war turned into Hell. And that's what you've opened. Right above the Earth. Hell is descending.
    • Ancient battles between the Fledgling Empires (including Gallifrey) and the Racnoss were mentioned in "The Runaway Bride".
    • Played With in "The Doctor's Daughter". A war, fuelled by cloning machines, has gone on for 700 generations. It turns out that those 700 generations were cloned, shoved into battle and killed in the space of one week.
  • Dominion has the Extermination War fought between humanity and the angels led by Gabriel. We saw the opening days of the conflict in Legion (the movie to which this show is a sequel), but the show is set 25 years after its conclusion.
  • Earth: Final Conflict occasionally mentions the SI War that ended just prior to the arrival of the Taelons, where the SI stands for "Sino-Indian", though the US was also involved in some capacity. Not many details are revealed, but no nukes were used, which is amazing, since both China and India have them. The first protagonist fought in the war, and the second one took on the identity of someone else who did. Several other characters were also involved in various capacities. Apparently, the war ended when someone employed a new WMD called the Quantum Vortex (some suggest it was the Taelons), which killed 100,000 people. There are a few flashbacks to the events of the war through the series. There's also the Taelon-Jaridian War, of which barely anything is known, save that it has been going on for milenia and suposedly spans galaxies.
  • Emerald City has the battles against the Beast Forever, which come roughly once every generation. Specifically the last war, which took place twenty years before the events of the series, resulted in the deaths of King Pastoria and Mother South, as well as the Wizard supposedly saving Oz and becoming its ruler as a result. It's eventually revealed that the King and Queen were killed by Eamonn on orders of the Wizard. Mother South is still alive and is being hidden by Glinda, breeding new witches to fight the Wizard.
  • The Firefly pilotnote  (and one other episode) contain a flashback to the "Independence War", but other than that it's just talked about, although its aftermath is the prime motivation for many of the characters. In fact it's not until Serenity that we get a clear picture of what it was actually fought over.note 
  • Kamen Rider Agito is a non-direct sequel to Kamen Rider Kuuga, most explicitly referenced by the police-made G3 Powered Armor being based on data from Kuuga himself. According to the backstory, Kuuga's old enemies the Grongi fought a war against another monster group, the Lords, who eventually won and became the villains of Agito. Kamen Rider Decade directly references this when the heroes go to an Alternate Universe version of Agito and land right near the end of the Grongi-Lord War.
  • The Last Ship has the Immune Wars. Season 2 Big Bad Sean Ramsey and his cult, who believe that their natural immunity to the Red Flu is divine will and that they're therefore destined to rule the world, are established shortly after their introduction to have apparently taken over Europe. We never get a full explanation of this, nor what happened after Ramsey's defeat by the crew of the Nathan James, though some details are revealed over time — at the very least, Britain put up a fight, which all but wiped out the Royal Air Force in the process.
    • Season 5 reveals that there was a war between Mexico and Cuba during the global famine of Season 4. Apparently Cuba fired first by invading Mexico (though they claim that the "invaders" were actually starving refugees), which Mexico fought off before counter-invading and occupying Cuba. How this all ended isn't touched on, but Cuba is independent again in the present.
  • The Insect Wars from Lexx. Despite only being mentioned once or twice in a couple episodes, the Wars are very important to the plot since they never really ended. The last surviving Insect passed his essence onto humans to create the Divine Order which helped him revive his original body and wipe out most of the Light Universe's human population in one fell swoop. His Divine Shadow takes great pleasure in telling Kai all of this.
    His Divine Shadow: The victory of your ancestors was not complete.
    Kai: You are a survivor of the Insect Civilization!
    His Divine Shadow: Yes, last of the Brunnen-G.
  • Loki (2021): In the pilot, we're told that there was once a Multiversal War, as conflict broke out between various universes that threatened to wipe out all of creation, until the Time Keepers ended it and created the Time Variance Authority to ensure that only a singular timeline would exist in order to prevent this from happening again. The Season 1 finale reveals that this is only half true — the war did happen, but was specifically fought between variants of the same man (all but outright said to be Kang the Conqueror) until one managed to secure the existence of only his timeline by creating the TVA and giving them the myth of the Time Keepers to guide them. When this victorious Variant is killed by Sylvie in the finale, the timeline starts branching, indicating that the war is about to start again.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The War of Wrath is briefly shown in the Opening Monologue.
  • The conflict between Dharma Initiative and the Others was only hinted at in the first four seasons of Lost, though the Season 5 gives us a pretty clear picture of it. The conflict between the Others and the US Army is even more obscure.
  • Lucifer (2016): Lucifer often talks about his rebellion against his Father that led to his fall, but we see nothing of it.
  • Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Several episodes into the series, after it's become apparent that mermaids have something against mermen, Rita gives an As You Know speech to the mermaid trio about how in the ancient past ("before men lived in cities"), a pod of mermen tried to conquer the oceans and make the mermaids subservient to them. Apparently, it took a betrayal from one of the mermen and the mermaid pods from all five oceans joining together to defeat them, and as a result, all mermen were banished to land.
  • In Merlin (2008) there are increasingly frequent mentions of a war waged at some nebulous time before/around King Uther's time in which ancient/recent kings were pitted against the sorcerous High Priestesses.
  • Power Rangers falls back on this one a lot, to the point where Epileptic Trees have grown due to some wars sharing the same rough dates. Some of these conflicts are original while others are carried over from the original Super Sentai counterparts:
    • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had a great battle between Good and Evil 10,000 years ago. Zordon was with the good guys, Rita with the bad guys under the command of Zedd. The only other clue we have about it is the ending: According to some of the novelizations released around the time, the war ended in "a tie" and came down to a frikkin' coin toss to end the war. Zordon won, but Rita, being a sore loser, trapped Zordon in his Time Warp and stole the Dragon Coin before she and her minions were sealed away in the trashcan. Naturally, nothing like the books' 'coin toss' thing has ever been suggested onscreen. All we know is, Rita got canned, and that Zordon has used teenagers before (though none of Zordon's warriors in flashbacks looked like Rangers.)
    • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy is so vague that we don't even know if there was one big event or just a bunch of isolated incidents. Either way, a lot of backstory happened 3,000 years ago, ending in the placement of 5 quasar sabers in stone on Mirinoi to be chosen to fight again in the future. Most of it in deep space, but if the Lights of Orion were found on Terra Venture, then they have to have been left on Earth when they were lost back in the day.
    • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue had Bansheera and company put in the can 5,000 years ago thanks to a powerful warlock who seemingly single handedly beat them all. Bansheera's entire motivation for attacking in the present is to destroy the city and reestablish her palace upon the demons' sacred ground, granting 'ultimate power.' The fact that she had it then meant she had to have been a lot worse than anything witnessed during the Lightspeed series.
    • Power Rangers Wild Force/Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger had the war between the Animarian civilization and the Orgs 3,000 years ago.
    • Power Rangers Ninja Storm introduced one of the generals this way; the warlord Shimazu terrorized the populace with his Wolfblades 2,000 years ago until he is sealed in a mask.
    • Power Rangers Mystic Force saw a group of wizards seal away the forces of the underworld only twenty or so years prior (so somewhere in or around the 1980s). Interestingly, we know a lot about the end of this war thanks to it apparently being a very family affair.
    • Power Rangers Jungle Fury had a war between man and beast 10,000 years ago. Surprisingly, four of the seven Old Masters that survived the war also survived to the present day.
    • Averted in Power Rangers RPM, where we get a number of flashbacks to Venjix's conquest of Earth the year prior.
    • Power Rangers Samurai/Samurai Sentai Shinkenger had the Nighlocks/Gedoushu sealed away by samurai in feudal Japan, and apparently a number of skirmishes between them and the samurai's descendants in the intervening years. Power Rangers even showed a flashback involving the current Rangers' parents running off to fight as Rangers themselves, which had to have taken place somewhere in the 90s alongside a previous Rangers series.
    • Gloriously averted with the Great Legend War of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, though the evil Space Empire Zangyack are said to have had a long history conquering the universe before the invasion of Earth.
    • Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger had the war where the Deboss wiped out the dinosaurs but were ultimately forced into hibernation, along with the two sides being in a cold war that heated up occasionally throughout history.
  • The Amazon War from the second and third RoboCop films carries over to RoboCop: The Series and is likewise an ongoing conflict with one of Murphy's childhood friends being part of a special ops unit that was missing and presumed killed during the war, only for said unit to turn up alive and well, suffering from issues related to the war.
  • Scrubs has the Janitor mention overthrowing Kyle, the former leader the Brain Trust ("A dictatorship masquerading as a democracy") during The Revolution of '02, specifically The Battle of the Basement Supply Closet. This probably never happened.
  • Silo: The Rebellion, a long-ago insurrection against the leadership of the Silo, is constantly mentioned as an event that helped shape many of the current rules of the Silo.
  • Silicate War, the war with the android revolution, taking place years before events of Space: Above and Beyond.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Original Series has a lot of those:
      • The Third World War and Eugenic Wars, all taking place on Earth and concerning only humanity. It was actually one war in the Original Series, but was later divided.
      • The war between Earth and Romulan Star Empire, which forms the backstory for the episode "Balance of Terror". When first mentioned in the original series, this war was fought entirely at extreme ranges with nuclear weapons (and with neither race ever actually seeing a member of the other). Star Trek: Enterprise depicted the build-up to the war and retconned the details a bit: both sides had access to conventional starships and weapons but the Romulans themselves remained unseen by humans.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
      • The wars between the Federation and the Cardassians, which were responsible for creating the Anti-Cardassian Maquis. Strangely, the wars weren't mentioned in the first seasons, only later.
      • The "brutal border wars" against the Talarians and the Tzenkethi, which happened at some point between the Original Series and The Next Generation. There was also at least one conflict with the Tholians in the same time-frame.
  • The civil war in heaven among the angels in Supernatural is all off screen, which is likely justified as humans can not perceive the true form of angels without their eyes burning out.
  • Played with in That Mitchell and Webb Look where a group of people are holed up in a nuclear bunker playing a game show and broadcasting in the vain hope somebody is actually watching. It all focuses around "The Event"; the only interesting thing any of the characters can think about but are sworn not to talk about for various reasons. The most probable event would be a nuclear war.
    • Or alternatively whatever caused the majority of the human population to become zombies ('Them').
  • The Walking Dead Television Universe:
    • In The Walking Dead (2010), the military is mentioned to have been overtaken by the Walkers and their abandoned equipment and corpses are seen lying about in the streets of Atlanta and outside of CDC, but it's never shown how the military were defeated.
    • At least not until Fear the Walking Dead, where it becomes apparent that the military lost because they (or at least the National Guard in LA) were incompetent and evil. A recording played in a much later episode indicates that for some reason, the National Guard and regular army started fighting each other in the middle of this too.
    • The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live later clarifies that the infighting between the National Guard and US Military was the result of the Guard refusing to go along with the federal government's orders to bomb major cities in a futile attempt to contain the Zombie Apocalypse.

    Podcasts 
  • The Adventure Zone: Balance has The Relic Wars, a global conflict fought over immensely powerful magical artifacts called the Grand Relics; it nearly destroyed the world a decade back. Most of the world doesn't remember it, thanks to Laser-Guided Amnesia.

    Roleplay 
  • From Embers in the Dusknote :
    • The War in the Void, fought between the Necrons under the Silent King and the main Tyranid hive fleet. We don't see much of it due to it taking place outside the galaxy, but the Necrons made use of their most destructive superweapons that they don't dare use inside the galaxy for fear of wrecking the place, and the Tyranid hive fleet was a few dozen times larger than the galaxy at its height.
    • The War in Heaven in the backstory. It lasted thousands of years, and things were crazy enough that according to Word of God, the Primarchs, some of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy present-day, would only be second-tier heroes if they were around back then.
    • The Krork aganst the Eternal Conflagration. As of the third Grand Conclave, it is eight hundred Sectors of Krork against a level 4 WAAAAGH! eleven hundred sectors in size englobing them. The (almost) full might of Gork and Mork on one side versus War in Heaven technology on the other. All we know is that 1) The Krork are building Attack Moons and War Worlds. 2) The Orks are attempting to build Attack Moons but are yet to field one and 3) the Krork are confident they'll win.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Battletech has an interesting relation to this trope, as it features multiple eras who started out being this trope. The 'classic' Battletech started in the In-Universe year of 3025 and featured an eight-hundred year backstory filled with these (of particular note were the Reunification Wars, the Amaris Civil War, and the first three Succession Wars). As the game has expanded forward in time, sourcebooks have also been released to allow games being played at these time points, using era-appropriate tech and 'mechs. The main remaining offscreen war at this point is the Outer Reaches Rebellion, as it happened 300 years before the creation of the Humongous Mecha the setting is known for.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Adventure I12 Egg of the Phoenix: The War of Ending between the forces of Evil and Old Empyrea. Doc and the silver dragon Falx fought in the war, during the adventure the Player Characters find a message that dates back to it, and one mission involves scouting one of the Castles of Ruling that played a major part in the war.
    • An attempt was made to rework the Greyhawk setting with The Greyhawk Wars (the war Iuz was preparing for in the time period of the original boxed set). The war itself was represented as a stand-alone board game only. It produced some interesting novels set in the aftermath of the War where characters often have to deal with the consequences, but the canon version of the war itself is relatively obscure.
    • The various fiends have their own GOWs that shaped their societies, such as they are.
      • The Chaotic Evil demons have the Upheaval, an ancient conflict sparked when the primordial obyriths suffered a devastating defeat in the war between Chaos and Law. The Queen of Chaos lost her most powerful champion, her alliance of other obyriths shattered, inspiring their tanar'ri servitors to rise up against them... and then an eladrin warhost saw a similar opportunity and invaded the Abyss, driving as many fiends as possible into its various layers. When the fighting was over, the power of the obyriths had been forever broken, the tanar'ri were the dominant breed of demons in the Abyss, and the Queen of Chaos was in hiding, and has not been seen since.
      • The Lawful Evil devils have the Reckoning, a great civil war that wracked the Nine Hells of Baator. The various archdevils split into two factions that attempted to unseat Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine. Unfortunately for them, Asmodeus was such as an expert chessmaster that his counter-conspiracy left his would-be usurpers utterly broken, and emerged with an even tighter grip on power. In the aftermath, the treacherous archdevils were punished in various ways — Baalzebul was transformed into a hideous slug monster, while Belial lost official rulership of Phlegethos to his daughter Fierna — though the archduke Geryon, who had served as Asmodeus' mole during the conflict, was also punished by being deposed as ruler of Stygia, perhaps because loyalty is no virtue in Hell. The grudges from the Reckoning persist to this day, though most archdevils are more concerned with getting revenge on their rivals/co-conspirators than making another serious attempt to overthrow Asmodeus.
    • Eberron has one happening just a few years before the current day of the setting. The Great War was sparked by a Succession Crisis, and lasted for about a century. It saw the creation of several nations who seceded from the original five nations of Galifar, and only ended when a mysterious catastrophe consumed the entire nation of Cyre, killing everything within its borders. The war doesn't have to be offscreen, and there are resources available for playing during the war, but the "present day" of the setting is two years after the war officially ended.
    • The backstory of the Nentir Vale setting in 4th Edition has the war between the civilization of Nerath led by King Elidyr and the gnoll demon horde headed by Yeenoghu. There was also the war between the tiefling (half-devil) empire of Bael Turath versus the dragonborn empire of Archosia. Your characters most likely will start their career scrounging leftover supplies from said wars.
  • Exalted has a few examples: the Primordial War, the Aftershock War, the Usurpation and the Balorian Crusade. All of these are provided some level of detail (specifically who was fighting and why), but the exact events of the wars are generally shrouded in mystery (typically because they all involved reality being damaged to some degree).
    • And those are just wars involving the Exalted. The occasional hint is dropped regarding wars waged by gods in the era before humanity, and even occasionally to conflicts involving the Primordials prior to the existence of Creation.
    • Autochthonia has its own version in the Elemental War (so named because it so devastated the mechanical ecology that it drove thousands of elementals violently mad), which was noteworthy for being an extremely violent, ethnically driven total war in a world where most fighting is skirmishes to steal resources and supply lines.
  • The setting of Flying Circus lives in the shadow of the Great War, where Himmilgard's political powers bombarded each other out of existence, tainted the landscape, and traumatized the survivors. This war takes place twenty years before the game setting's start. That's enough time where campaigns won't take place in the Great War, while keeping it enough of a presence that most characters rather want to forget.
  • In Twilight: 2000 World War III is pretty much already over in 2000 when the first adventure is set, with the players as survivors of one of the last major battles. Everybody lost.
  • The War of Vengeance/The War of the Beard in Warhammer led to the current state of the Elvish and Dwarf Kingdoms; Dark Elves disguised as High Elves attacked a Dwarf caravan, to which High King Gotrek sent emissaries to Phoenix King Caledor II demanding an explanation and compensation. Caledor sent the emissaries back with nothing, saying that the Dwarfs had to beg if they wanted anything. Gotrek was pissed, but sent the emissaries back another time, demanding more compensation for the insult. Caledor had their beards shaved, one of the most grievous insults to a Dwarf, starting a war that would wreck both kingdoms and leave the two races as bitter enemies.
  • Given Warhammer 40,000's tagline "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war", it's unsurprising that this happens quite a lot. Most prominent are the Robot War that explains the Imperium's distrust of Artificial Intelligence, the Great Crusade in which the Emperor founded the Imperium, and the Horus Heresy which resulted in the Imperium as we know it today. Going further back, the War In Heaven between the Slaan and the Necrons sets up the backstory for the setting as a whole, but few details are ever given and even less is known in-universe. Some of these have been elaborated on more over time, especially the Horus Heresy which started as a vague explanation for why Chaos Space Marines exist and why the Emperor doesn't do much, but in recent years has become a major focus of the literature in the expanded universe.
    • There are also numerous examples of wars which would count as great in most settings, but which are so small they hardly get a mention in Warhammer. Crusades lasting decades and covering hundreds or thousands of worlds often get little more than a sentence or two of offhand mention. Even those that form the background of larger works (such as Gaunt's Ghosts) have very little of the whole war ever shown.
    • The War in Heaven is arguably the most important event in the Warhammer galaxy's history. It not only directly created three of the largest factions in the game (the Orcs, the Eldar and the Necrons), but the uncounted trillions of angry dead souls was enough to corrupt the Afterlife, turning it into the churning nightmare of a hellscape known as the Warp, making it partially responsible for Chaos as well.
  • In the backstory lore of Wyrmlings, the Order of Dragon Knights fought a massive conflict against the Evil Wizards that were once menacing Dragonsdale. The Knights won and banished the Wizards in the end.

    Theatre 
  • William Shakespeare:
    • As You Like It: Duke Senior was (somehow) deposed by his younger brother Fredrick and exiled to the Forest of Arden. A very blatant Deus ex Machina at the end restores Senior to his rightful place.
    • Old Hamlet's war with Norway in Hamlet.
    • Othello's military record might also count: he boasts at length of his experience with 'pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war', but we never see him fight. Giuseppe Verdi's opera compensates for this somewhat by having him win a naval battle in the opening scene, but this is still an Offstage Moment of Awesome.
    • Macbeth begins with a recounting of a war between Scotland and Norway.

    Toys 
  • The Core War in BIONICLE, although we do see a very brief account of its more important moments in one of the Flashback comics. Also worth mentioning are the Matoran Civil War, the Toa-Dark Hunter War, and the Dark Hunter-Brotherhood of Makuta war, the former of which we're shown nothing, and the latter two which only show glimpses of the conflict.

    Video Games 
  • The Belkan War was this in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: the only events mentioned in the game were that Bartlett and Pops were shot down together, and that it ended when Belka dropped seven nukes on its own soil. It was later expanded on in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, allowing you to experience the conflict for yourself, henceforth becoming a major part of the franchise's lore.
    • Other wars that form a crucial part of certain games' backstories are civil wars in enemy nations, one big example being the Estovakian Civil War, a brutal knock-down drag-out mess that involved as many as five factions and lasted six years, essentially a precursor to the Anean Continental War seen in Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. In Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, the Leasathian Civil War also serves a similar purpose.
  • AI War: Fleet Command: The war outside the galaxy, known semi-officially as the Extragalactic War in the sequel. Rather than being a past event, it's simply far away with almost entirely unknown but impossibly huge threats involved on one side, and the AI on the other. This war is the reason you aren't dead; it takes up so much of the AI's attention and industrial capacity that you, in comparison, are a speck Not Worth Killing. The goal of the game is to remove the local processors to rid your area of the galaxy from AI control, without raising enough hell that it decides it can spare the time and power to really murder you. And if things get too far out of control, stuff that is an actual valuable asset in this war rather than mere chaff is brought in; the low end is pure pain, the high end is a death sentence.
  • The Assassin's Creed series makes reference to a war that occurred tens of thousands of years ago in the First Civilization, between Those Who Came Before and the humans they used as slaves. This war is never detailed, but is instead used as a context to explain how the Half Human Hybrids "Adam and Eve" became Phlebotinum Rebels and stole the secret of the Pieces of Eden. And then their civilization was wiped out by a solar flare, making the whole thing moot.
    • Later games also establish the Isu had their own war, dubbed "the War of Unification". Valhalla has characters in the Asgard storyline mention a war between the Aesir and Vanir, which only ended when Odin and Freyja reluctantly married. Whether this has any relation to the War of Unification is unclear, given the Asgard memories are not an accurate depiction of events as they happened.
  • Atlas Reactor has the Titan War, which was fought between practically all of humanity after the Reactors failed and Atlas was the only place left on Earth with power. The War was won by the three Mega Corps who currently run Atlas. Several of the Freelancers you can play as were veterans of the War, having gained Resurrection Contracts due to their actions during the war.

  • The Ura-Caelondia war in Bastion. It's been over for a while, but a lot of the Ura and the only living Caelondian old enough to remember it (Rucks) are still a bit sore over it.
  • BlazBlue: The First War of Magic, in which humans (including Hakumen, Jubei, Valkenhayn, and Terumi) fought against The Black Beast. Later, the Ikaruga Civil War, in which Jin became "The Hero of Ikaruga" by murdering Bang's lord.
  • A recurring theme in Book of Mario: Thousands of Doors is an offscreen war. The Persian Empire, The Koop Kingdom, and the 10-Nauties are the primary superpowers fighting in it, though what it's being fought over is...unclear. Book of Mario 64 reveals the Stellarvinden, while controlling Mario, consumed all the peaches and caused a global shortage.
  • Borderlands mentions a conflict between most of the major weapons manufacturers known as the "Corporate Wars" that resulted in the collapse of the Central Government.

  • Castlevania has "The Demon Castle War" in 1999 where modern-day soldiers attacked (and died; given the zombies) Dracula's Castle. This war also heralded Dracula's true and final death at the hands of Julius Belmont, Alucard, and other allies (including a member of the Belnades clan), thanks in part to a Shinto ceremony sealing Castlevania inside of a solar eclipse and cutting off the Dark Lord from his source of power in the process. There is no game that covers this, with the two closest games to that point being set 36 years afterwards or 55 years before.
  • The rebooted Castlevania: Lords of Shadow series had the Necromantic Wars, a series of conflicts between the titular Lords of Shadow against the ancient civilization of Agartha that took place before the game's storyline and is merely referenced on in-game supplementary material and Zobek's narration. The Lords of Shadow were victorious and completely wiped out the Agarthians, with only a few survivors of left when the game begins none of which survive until the end.
  • In Cat Quest, the Dragons Wars which opposed the dragons to the Old Masters and the Dragonbloods, happened a very long time ago but is constantly referred to through the game.
  • Cave Story: References are made several times to a war for control of the Demon Crown. It's implied that the protagonist and Curly Brace were combatants in this war, two of the few surviving soldiers from the army that massacred the Mimigas. But that's ultimately revealed to be false when Curly regains her memories—she remembers fighting to destroy the Demon Crown, separate from any army, with the protagonist as her only ally.
  • Chicken Police: The Meat War, which happened about 100 years before the events of the game. It lasted 27 years, 80-90 million animals died, and 27 species were declared extinct after the war. Some people are worried that a second Meat War is brewing.
  • City of Heroes has the first Rikti War in Primal Earth, and the Hamidon Wars in Praetorian Earth.
  • The "Great Mistake" in Civilization: Beyond Earth is sometimes implied to have been World War III, or a regional nuclear exchange (India and Pakistan are often brought up in this context). Other times it seems that it was an ecological collapse and/or some kind of unexplained science going horribly wrong — whatever it was, it's the cause of Earth That Used to Be Better.
    • Likewise, in Beyond Earth's spiritual predecessor, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, had the implication that civilization back on Earth completely went to shit not long after the Unity left. By the time Planet's descendants finally return to their world of origin, Earth is a lifeless rock with a few giant craters in it.

  • Dark Souls:
    • Dark Souls: The war against the Everlasting Dragons, which lead to the founding of Lordran and the prosperity of human kingdoms. Only one character who lived through it will remark on his experiences, which are mainly tinged with sorrow that he now that it's over, his purpose as a dragon slayer is now finished as well.
      • Briefly mentioned is the war against the demons of Lost Izalith. Where Gwyn personally led his knights to exterminate the Chaos Demons created by the Witch's attempt to recreate the First Flame. This war ended and failure, and all that's known is that the Black Knights came into being after the Flames of Chaos corrupted them and made their weapons more deadly to demons.
      • The lore makes the occasional mention of an event called the "Occult Rebellion" where a group of humans or giants made war upon the gods of Anor Londo using forbidden weaponry that channeled Dark. The only name tied to this event was Havel The Rock, who was apparently exiled. The ember used to make the weapons was hidden in the Painted World and the entire conflict, as well as it's participants, was otherwise erased from history.
    • Dark Souls II: The war against the Giants that took place some 100 years or so before the game begins. It apparently lasted over 120 years and, while Drangleic was ultimately victorious, the kingdom was utterly ravaged by the Giants' attack and never recovered.
    • Dark Souls III: The reason for all those dead knights in Lothric? A civil war erupted between two religions in Lothric, one being the state religion of worshipping and kindling the First Flame, the other being centered around a woman named Gertrude and her "heretical" worship of the Angels (whoever they were). The Winged Knights are the remnants of Gertrude's rebellion.
  • The Sin War, an eternal war between the forces of Heaven and Hell, is given as the background to Diablo (1997), but aside from a short mention in the manual it doesn't really make an appearance. It's only in the second game, after Diablo has been released that angels start making an appearance and the war itself becomes relevant.
  • The Dragon Age series has several examples:
    • Loghain of Dragon Age: Origins often mentions the Ferelden rebellion against Orlais. Vague references to the war between the Qunari and the Tevinter Imperium are also present.
    • The First Blight lasted 192 years, the Second lasted 90 years: the Third and Fourth blight were comparatively smaller and lasted only 15 and 12 years. At the beginning of Origins, Duncan is desperately trying to increase the ranks of the Fereldan Grey Wardens in order to avoid another Blight lasting years or even generations. Dragon Age II confirms that the Fifth Blight, which is the setting of Origins, lasted a full year, which is comparatively amazing.
    • The plot of Dragon Age II is about what started the Mage-Templar War that has engulfed all of Thedas by 9:40 Dragon. Vague hints are all we actually know about the present in which the framing-device is set, whereas the game itself focuses on the life of Hawke from 9:30 - 9:37 Dragon and how the Champion came to unintentionally participate in the opening shots of the conflict.
    • Thedas history is built on one enormous war after another. The titular Dragon Age was predicted to be a time of upheaval, but it's still got some catching up to do in terms of body count. The oldest known conflict, predating the First Blight and the Age system, is the elf empire vs the nascent Tevinter Imperium. The sheer loss of elf culture is still being felt centuries later.
    • The novel The Stolen Throne describes the rebellion against the Orlesian occupation, although the final battle in which Loghain really proved himself as a general is not described (the future King Maric wasn't even present there, choosing instead to settle a personal score).
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition reveals some important info about the war between the Elven empire and Tevinter - namely that the elves were already involved in a civil war. Far from the mighty conquerors their descendants imagine, Tevinter was kicking the elves when they were already down.
  • Dungeon Siege II has an ancient war forming the entire background to the plot, although the details are somewhat vague due to the circumstances involved - the war ended when two powerful magical artifacts met which resulted in an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, wiping out everyone involved and reshaping the world right down to changing how magic worked. The game gives various hints about it, but many of these come from an Unreliable Narrator who turns out to be the real Big Bad and was lying about at least some of it all along.
  • Dungeons of Dredmor contains many references to a war between elves and dwarves that's taken place back on the surface; the dungeons are full of discarded weaponry and such.

  • In the Earth series, we never get to see or read details about World War 3, only that it was a nuclear war that destroyed all former nation-states. Only a few facts are known from before the war, mostly about the founding of the Lunar Corporation. The game history starts after the war, with the creations of the United Civilized States and the Eurasian Dynasty.
  • A number of wars influenced the present-day state of affairs in Elden Ring:
    • The Golden Order was not the first to govern the Lands Between, and was only established through multiple wars of conquest. In particular, the hard-fought victory against the giants of the mountains saw that race completely wiped out.
    • While we don't hear much about it, there was certainly a conflict between The Golden Order (Marika's followers) and the enigmatic Godskin Cult (A group of skin wearing heretics bent on killing the gods). It ended with the death of the cult's leader, the Gloam-Eyed Queen and the Rune of Death being taken by Maliketh. In the modern day, Godskins are few and far between, mostly hidden in weird areas that aren't particularly fond of the Erdtree.
    • A war between Marika's Empire and the dragons of Farum Azula began when Gransax breached the walls of Leyndell for the first and only time in history. Godwyn the Golden ended the war when he bested and befriended the dragon champion Fortissax and integrated the dragons into the Golden Order.
    • Radagon invaded Liurnia twice on Marika's behalf. He was turned back the first time by the forces of Queen Rennala, and the second was resolved when the two of them married.
    • The most recent and devastating was the Shattering. When the Elden Ring was shattered and both Queen Marika and Elden Lord Radagon disappeared, their demigod children each claimed a fragmentary Great Rune and started fighting one another. In particular: Leyndell was besieged twice; Morgott sent an army to destroy Rykard's forces in a gruesome mass-Mutual Kill; the scholars of Raya Lucaria rebelled against the Carian Royals; and finally, Malenia marched her troops south, defeated Godrick in Limgrave, and finally met with the forces of General Radahn in Caelid. The fight between the two left Malenia comatose, Radahn a maddened husk of his former self, their respective armies all but destroyed, and the realm of Caelid a disease-ridden wasteland.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Several significant wars have been fought in the series backstory or between installments that have shaped the game world.
    • The War of the First Council in the First Era set the stage for all that followed. The devout, Daedra/ancestor-worshipping Chimer and atheistic, scientific Dwemer came into conflict in the land now known as Morrowind. After years of fighting, they were forced to team up to drive out the invading Nords. Their alliance remained under the leadership of Chimeri Lord Indoril Nerevar and Dwemer Dumac Dwarfking, known as the "first council." It was a time of great peace and prosperity for both races. However, the Dwemer Dug Too Deep beneath Red Mountain and unearthed the Heart of Lorkhan, the creator god. Chief Tonal Architect, Lord Kagrenec, crafted tools to tap into the power of the heart, hoping to allow the Dwemer to transcend mortality. The Chimer, seeing this as a blasphemy against their gods in the Daedra, attempted to stop the Dwemer, reigniting their war. The two tribes clashed at Red Mountain, the Nords also may have been involved but that's only according to their history the Dunmer don't mention any other factions participating in the battle. Forces led by Nerevar and Lord Voryn Dagoth infiltrated the Dwemer Red Mountain stronghold. Exactly what happened next is up for intense debate, but the Dwemer disappeared from existence, Nerevar was slain, Dagoth and the Tribunal used the tools on the heart to achieve godhood, and Azura cursed the Chimer with dark skin and red eyes, transforming them into the modern Dunmer. The Nord defeat in Morrowind also marked the furthest expanse of their early empire, the first empire of Men in Tamriel. Many of their conquests were thanks to their mastery of the Thu'um as a weapon of war. After that defeat, Jurgen Windcaller, one of the defeated Nord leaders, reflected on it and determined that it was a punishment from the gods for misusing the Thu'um. Thus, he created the Way of the Voice and founded the Greybeards to only use the Thu'um to honor the gods. Afterward, it saw a drastic drop in use as a weapon of war and the Nords were never again able to reach that level as an empire. The aftereffects of this battle can still be felt in the plotlines for Morrowind and Skyrim.
    • The Tiber Wars were a series of wars fought as part of Tiber Septim's campaign to conquer all of Tamriel. Septim had conquered all but Morrowind (protected by their Physical Gods and the Summerset Isles (protected by their powerful magics) during the late 2nd Era, the only two provinces the last empire out of Cyrodiil, the Reman Dynasty, had failed to conquer.note  Unknown to Septim, the Dunmer demi-gods of Morrowind, known as the Tribunal, had been cut off from their divine power source by their ancient enemy, Dagoth Ur. Septim's legions easily sacked Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind. Without their gods to protect them, the rest of Morrowind would have been devastated in a protracted war with Septim's legions. Knowing this, Vivec, one of these gods, met with Septim and forged an Armistice. Morrowind would join the empire as a Voluntary Vassal, sparing his people from war. In addition, Vivec offered the Dwemer-crafted Reality Warping Humongous Mecha - The Numidium - to Septim in exchange for special privileges for Morrowind. (Specifically, continued Great House rule, free worship of the Tribunal, and the right to continue practicing slavery which was outlawed elsewhere in the empire.) Septim then used the Numidium to Curb Stomp the Altmer of the Summerset Isles (sacking their capital in less than hour), bringing them under the rule of men for the first time in history. With the unification of Tamriel, Septim began the Third Era of Tamriellic history during which the games from Arena to Oblivion all take place.
    • The War of Betony was fought between the Bretons of Daggerfall under King Lysandus and the Redguards of Sentinel under King Camaron over control of the strategically important island of Betony in the Iliac Bay. Both kings were slain during the war, which saw Lysandus' son lead the forces of Daggerfall to victory. Lysandus' ghost, however, returned to haunt the city of Daggerfall, which kicks off the plot to the Daggerfall.
    • The "Great War" was fought between the forces of the Aldmeri Dominion under the leadership of the anti-human extremist Thalmor and the remnants of the Septim Empire under Emperor Titus Mede II in the 4th Era. The Dominion's forces sacked the Imperial City, committing gruesome atrocities against the city's populace. With reinforcements from his Nord forces in Skyrim, Mede was able to recapture the city, but at great cost. Knowing that his empire was too exhausted to endure further conflict, Mede reluctantly signed the White-Gold Concordat; a treaty that, among other things, banned the worship of Talos in the Empire. This particular provision angered the Nords most of all, leading to the Civil War in Skyrim.
    • The civil war itself in Skyrim is an optional side quest, allowing the player to completely ignore it and let it happen entirely off-screen if they so choose.
  • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: When you reach the Fetid Necropolis and return to speak with Ramus, he will recall a few major moments of Arcania's history. Notably, a despot and his opponents clashed in the same stratum, and the numerous ensuing deaths would transform the place into the Fetid Necropolis. The founding leaders of Iorys would proceed to entrust the Guild with the task of discovering the mysteries of the Yggdrasil before another such war would ensue.
  • Evolve has the Mutagen Wars, also known as the Basilisk Rebellion. Hyde and Lazarus were veterans of the first while Slim was a veteran of the third on the opposite side, with each of them having various conversations regarding it. The writer eventually released the details of the war, which can be read here.
  • EXA_PICO:
    • The thousand-year war between Sol Ciel and Sol Cluster that peaked with the Grathnode Inferia. Only a few people actually remember the events of it by virtue of being over 700 years old.
    • Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia has the war between Mir-led Reyvateil and humans, which ended with Mir sealed and the Reyvateil treated as second- or even third-class citizens.
    • Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica has the previous period of conflict between the Grand Bell and the Sacred Army. The current period of conflict takes the majority of the gameplay, so it doesn't feel very offscreen-y.

  • Fallout has the Great War, a two-hour war during which every nuclear-capable country in the world launched. No one knows who launched first, and given the state of the world afterwards it doesn't really matter anymore.
    • Two sources — the leader of the Enclave (the remnants of the US government) and the log of a Chinese submarine commander during the Great War — point to the Chinese. Still, they might be mistaken, and part of the lead-up to the Great War is still undetailed — the war between China and the USA has been given a fair bit of attention, but the other Resource Wars — especially the one between Europe and the Middle East, and the ones that happened in Europe after that - are still mostly names, if even that.
    • Fallout: New Vegas mentions several for the New California Republic. There's the NCR-Enclave War, The NCR-Great Khans War and the NCR-Brotherhood of Steel War. Each of the conflicts relates to at least one companion; Boone = Khan War, Veronica = Brotherhood, Arcade = Enclave.
    • Averted with Fallout 3 with the "Operation Anchorage" simulation, where you (virtually) fight a small part of the war to reclaim Alaska from the Chinese before the bombs dropped, though notes around the facility record that the simulation has been repeatedly rewritten at the orders of a general, and bears less and less relation to the reality.
    • We finally get to see it, or at least one of the opening salvos, in Fallout 4.
  • Rex "Power" Colt, the main protagonist of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, is a veteran of many wars across the globe, serving under Commander Ike Sloan in Omega Force. Of particular note is Rex's time fighting in Vietnam War II, where he was killed a rebuilt as a Cyber Commando.
  • Final Fantasy seems to love this trope:
    • Final Fantasy VI: The War of The Magi that destroyed previous civilization(s) and petrified the Warring Triad, gods of magic.
    • Final Fantasy VII: The war in which Shinra conquered the world, especially Wutai. The very end of this war (the conquest of Wutai part) is the very first chapter of Crisis Core.
    • Final Fantasy VIII: The war between Galbadia and Esthar, roughly eighteen years before the game began, which was caused by Sorceress Adel, the ruler of Esthar, attempting to Take Over the World.
    • Final Fantasy X: The war that destroyed the world and drove Yu Yevon mad, turning him into Sin.
    • Final Fantasy XI: The stage is set by the great Crystal War of twenty years earlier; the opening cinematic shows a climactic battle from the War. The three great cities now deputize adventurers because of how the war depleted their armies. Becomes an onscreen war in the Wings of the Goddess expansion, where characters can travel back in time and participate in the war.
    • Final Fantasy XIII: The War of Transgression, which nearly destroyed Cocoon 500 years ago.
    • Final Fantasy XIV: For A Realm Reborn players, the United Eorzea-Garlemald war that culminated in the Battle of Carteneau is this, with the current conflict being an extension of it. Legacy players got to experience it firsthand.
    • Final Fantasy XV has the war between the kingdom of Lucis and the empire of Niflheim. The turning point of the war is shown early in the story (using footage from Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV) and continues in the background.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics: The war fought between Mullonde and the Zodiac Braves. The truth is very different from what scholars accepted as historical facts. And recently, the 50 Year War in which many of the game's older famous generals made a name for themselves.
    • Dissidia Final Fantasy: The war between Lufenian and their neighbor, which facilitated the birth of Chaos to defeat Omega.
  • Most Fire Emblem games have this as a part of the backstory:
    • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem have the first war between the Kingdom of Archanea and the dragon-ruled Dolhr Empire, where Marth's distant ancestor won fame for sealing the Earth Dragon Medeus away.
    • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade and Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade have a great war between humans and dragons, referred to as 'The Scouring', that occurred roughly 1,000 years before the events of the games. It ended with the humans supposedly killing off the dragons, though in actuality, the dragons, on the verge of defeat, exiled themselves through the Dragon's Gate to find a new home in another world, closing the portal behind them. The few dragon survivors that didn't make it to the Gate and were left behind in Elibe retreated to the Nabata Desert and founded the village of Arcadia.
    • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones details an ancient war against the Demon King, where the Five Heroes and the Manaketes defeated the demons, then went on to found the current kingdoms of Magvel (sans Carcino).
    • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn give us several offscreen wars of the past, the biggest being the ancient Order Versus Chaos war between Ashera and Yune, with various factions siding with either goddess. More recently, there was also a great revolt of Laguz to liberate themselves from Begnion slavery.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening has one occurring just one generation before the game, instigated by the actions of the Grimleal (a card-carrying Religion of Evil), leading to the previous exalt of Ylisse trying to exterminate them, only to fail as his nation got bogged down in a bloody war with the realm of Plegia as a whole. The second generation characters turn out to come from a war-torn future where the Grimleal caused a Zombie Apocalypse, forcing them to travel back in time after their parents all fell attempting to fight back against the Risen horde.
    • Fire Emblem Fates has long had conflicts between the two main countries of Hoshido and Nohr, with the game's story being the latest war.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has easily the most war-torn setting in the entire franchise. The land of FĂłdlan has suffered numerous foreign invasions throughout its almost 1,200 year history, and the continent's three countries have fought their fair share of wars against each other, and put down an even larger number of internal insurrections and rebellions. The most signficant is a war that occurred so far in the backstory none of the characters in the game were alive to witness it, not even the the most long-lived surviving Children of the Goddess. That would be the apocalyptic war between the technologically advanced Agarthans and the goddess Sothis, which sundered the continent, led to the destruction of Agartha, and possibly even the extinction and rebirth of humanity as a whole, as the Agarthan descendants in "those who slither in the dark" repeatedly refer to the humans living on the surface as creations of Sothis.
  • Freelancer has the Coalition / Alliance war, the beginning of which was shown in Starlancer but which lasted for another century afterward and the winner is not the one the first game would indicate, as well as the 80 Years War between Rheinland and the GMG.
    • For that matter, Starlancer opens with a Coalition vessel arriving in Alliance space for some sort of peace conference, suggesting that the two sides had at minimum been in an unusually literal Space Cold War up until that point. This is quickly glossed over in favour of establishing the Coalition as a bunch of Card-Carrying Villains. Some flavour text also alludes to a Lunar Civil War some fifty years earlier that the elderly carrier the player character is assigned to participated in, but this is never elaborated upon.

  • Gears of War has the Pendulum Wars, which is where Marcus Fenix made himself a war hero. And the majority of the Locust war that happens before the first game opens.
  • Granblue Fantasy has the War, a war between the Astrals and the rest of the Skydwellers, which happened millennia ago, causing the former to retreat to their home island and leaving behind dozens of their creations which still remain in the present.
  • Since Grand Theft Auto III radio conversations and ads have hinted at a war between America and Australia which happened sometime in the mid 1980s. It's played for laughs.
  • In the Ground Control games: World War 3, the Independence Wars, the First Stellar War, the Terran-Viron conflict, most of the Second Stellar War. There are mentioned in a few brief lines in the manual.
  • Guardians Of The Galaxy is set after the “Galactic War”, which saw Thanos and the Chitauri attempting to conquer the galaxy, with the Nova Corps and a La RĂ©sistance group standing against them and countless planets being pulled into the fray in some way (such as Drax’s home of Katath being razed by Thanos or Groot’s home of Planet X being destroyed as a test of a Chitauri superweapon). It eventually ended with Thanos’s (unconfirmed) death by Drax’s hands and Gamora capturing the Chitauri Queen.
  • Guild Wars:
    • Prophecies has the titular Guild Wars that caused a divide between the three human kingdoms of Tyria. Three separate Guild Wars occurred, ending only when the Charr invaded and presented the humans with a more urgent threat.
    • A majority of the war against the Charr also took place off-screen before the game begins, during the two-year timeskip after the tutorial, and after the refugees departed.
    • Factions has the Tengu Wars which brought about a (temporary) peace between the Canthan Empire and some of the native Tengu. Much earlier in history there was also a war of unification where the Luxons and Kurzicks were both conquered by the Empire.
    • Nightfall has the war between the free nations of Elona and Palawa Joko, .
  • Guild Wars 2: Several wars took place between the two games.
    • A prolonged war took place between the Charr and the surviving armies of Ascalon. Ultimately a peace accord was signed in the face of the common enemy, the Elder Dragons.
    • In Elona Palawa Joko diverted the main source of water for the human nations, forcing their surrender. He now controls everything south of the Crystal Desert.
    • The dwarves have continued to wage a war against the Destroyers since the end of the first game and so are never seen in the sequel.
  • Guilty Gear has the Crusades, an apocalyptic conflict between humans and Gears, led by Justice. In some games you can play duels that happened back then.

  • The Seven Hour War from Half-Life 2. It's the reason why the Combine control the planet: they defeated all of Earth's armed forces in just seven hours.
    • Additional media expands upon the circumstances of the War: It wasn't so much that the Combine overpowered the full might of the world's militaries in a matter of seven hours, but that, ever since the Black Mesa Incident, the planet had been devastated by portal storms and the hostile extraterrestrial life that emerged from them. It was to the point that the planet was practically three steps away from total societal breakdown anyways, and the Combine just happened to come across Earth in the midst of all this. The Seven Hour War wasn't so much of a "decisive battle" as it was simply mopping up what little military resistance could be mustered in the middle of the massive global calamity. The true tragedy of the Seven Hour War isn't that Humanity's forces weren't defeated so decisively and trivially, but that Humanity lost the War before it even began.
  • Halo:
    • The backstory has the Interplanetary Wars, a ten-year-long series of conflicts fought almost 400 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, which led to the establishment of the Unified Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command as humanity's main governing powers.
    • The Inner Colony Wars, mentioned off-hand in Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa, were a series of conflicts involving the Inner Colonies nearly 200 years after the Interplanetary Wars.
    • The Covenant's 3,404 years of history includes a vast number of conflicts that we know relatively little about, with several involving the conquest of newly encountered species. These conflicts include the War of Beginnings, the Taming of the Lekgolo, the Sixteenth Unggoy Disobedience, the war against the Banished (which was concurrent with the war against humanity), etc.
    • The games treat the war between the Forerunners and Flood (which ended 100,000 years before the start of the main series) largely as this, though we did eventually get a more direct look into the conflict in The Forerunner Saga. The Forerunners are also noted to have fought various other wars even further back in the past, most noticeably their conflict with Advanced Ancient Humans.
  • Hexx mentions the Chaos wars, which apparently involved one of the four deities in the setting.
  • Though it's only hinted at until the sequel, before the events of Hotline Miami, the Soviets attempted to invade America, managed to make it at least to occupying Hawaii and nuked San Francisco.
  • Homeworld had two:

  • The Great Keyblade War in Kingdom Hearts. It took place long before any other point in the game's timeline and was fought between hundreds, if not thousands of different Keyblade bearers, all for the right to form the ultimate weapon and take control of the Cosmic Keystone. The result: the weapon was shattered, the great power hid itself, and barriers rose between the worlds to prevent easy travel. All that remains is an absolutely massive Field of Blades on an otherwise abandoned world.
    • Averted in Kingdom Hearts χ which shows the Keyblade War in all its glory. The game reveals that the war was fought over Lux, the light of the world, and not the χ-Blade and Kingdom Hearts as the legends state. On that note, the χ-Blade doesn't even appear in the war at any point nor is it even mentioned during it or prior to it.
  • Knight Bewitched: A few character mention that the kingdom of Halonia was in a war with a mysterious nation a long time before the current time. In the Dragon's territory, you'll learn that it was a war against the dragons, due to Typhus's manipulation of Zamaste.
  • Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has the Mandalorian Wars. Much of the information about it is from allusions and As You Know statements in the games, and lots of characters you run into in both games are war heroes or veterans from one side or the other.
    • Its successor, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has a recent war between the Galactic Republic and the reborn Sith Empire. The war ended when the Empire sacked Coruscant, held it hostage, and demanded a peace treaty (for reasons that vary wildly depending on who you ask). The two powers have spent the intervening years in a very intense just-this-close-to-hot Cold War.
      • Rise of the Hutt Cartel involves the titular organization making their own bid for power on a galactic scale, but all the players ever see is the guerilla war for Makeb where the outcome is decided. It's not entirely clear if there even were other fronts, since their plan hinged on the resources they were raiding Makeb for.
      • Between the Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire expansions a massive raiding force from a third side devastates both factions. We see bits of it in a trailer, but in-game the timeline skips over it and rejoins during a combined attempt to track them back to their homeworld. There's then a second offscreen war with the same enemy's full strength where they conquer the galaxy while the Player Character is temporarily out of action.
      • The Third Galactic War between the Sith Empire and Republic after that faction is defeated takes place almost entirely off-screen, with the player character only involved in strategically important but small scale skirmishes.

  • The Last Story had a war that occurred hundreds of years ago that was ended by House Arganan. Later on, another large war engulfed the Empire that killed the families of Zael and Dagran, which led to them becoming mercenaries. In addition to that, it is also stated that the Empire has fought many campaigns against the Gurak people in the past. The game's plot is well and truly kicked off when the Gurak invade Lazulis Island, sparking off another war.
  • The battle with the quiskerians and the death of Phaeton in Legacy of Heroes.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a vague recounting of a war which occurred before Link was born and led to the death of his mother, who left him in the care of the Great Deku Tree. It's implied that this was the war that led to the unification of Hyrule.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has Ikana Canyon, which was the site of an ancient war between the Ikana Kingdom and the enemy Garo ninja. It isn't made directly clear what exactly happened during the war, though the comments of the various undead members of both sides along with the placement of several important characters (the king of Ikana within his ruined castle, the Ikana general in the graveyard with most of his men, the ninjas practically everywhere, and the Garo Master within the stronghold of Stone Tower) seems to suggest the Garo ultimately won, but it was a "victory" that ended with everyone dead and the canyon lifeless.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past talks about a warnote  known as the Imprisoning War in which the Knights of Hyrule fought to give the Seven Sages the opportunity to seal Ganon in the Sacred Realm. It also talks about an even earlier warnote  which led to the Triforce being sealed in the Sacred Realm in the first place.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess mentions a similar conflict, describing how an evil tribe of powerful sorcerers (known in Fanon as the Dark Interlopers) came so close to getting the Triforce that the Spirits of Light had to entrap them in the Twilight Realm, where they evolved into the Twili.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword mentions an earlier conflict in which Hylia and her armies fought against armies of invading demons to keep the Triforce safe. In this case, the offscreen nature of the war is actually justified: in the early days of the war, the group from whose perspective we see were sent up into the sky on a Floating Continent with the Triforce to keep both safe and out of reach of the war.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds treats the events of A Link to the Past as this. There is also the war fought for the other Triforce in Lorule, very much like the one fought in Hyrule. Unlike Hyrule, they destroyed the Triforce to keep it from being anymore trouble, which ended up being a very big mistake.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the Great Calamity, in which Calamity Ganon took over the Guardians and Divine Beasts and used them to ravage Hyrule. While an early expository cutscene shows a glimpse of the massacre that took place in Hyrule Castle Town and Link's last retrievable memory shows the moment he succumbed to his injuries while fighting the Guardians, the main evidence that the Calamity happened are the blasted ruins and decayed Guardians strewn about Hyrule. There's also the original battle between Hyrule's combined forces and Ganon 10,000 years prior, which is only depicted on a mural in Impa's home.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has the Imprisoning War (separate from the conflict of the same name first discussed in A Link to the Past), where Ganondorf was sealed away in the Depths after he tried to destroy Hyrule. We only see very brief glimpses of the war itself — two cutscenes of Ganondorf summoning hordes of monsters, and one of him being imprisoned.

  • Mass Effect has several examples:
    • The Rachni War that ravaged the galaxy about 2000 years ago, the Krogan Rebellions a thousand or so years before the current date, the Morning War between the Quarians and the Geth 300 years ago, and the First Contact War between the Alliance and the Turians which took place about 30 years before the first game.
    • Mass Effect 3 has Javik, a revived Prothean from 50,000 years ago, who talks about a series of wars that his people fought (such as the Metacon War) and other conflicts in his timeframe.
    • There's also the war on Garvug mentioned by the Cerberus News Network, in which corporate mercenaries attempted to take over a krogan-controlled world, and the Second American Civil War, the details of which can be found during the "Stolen Memories" mission.
  • Somewhere between the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero series, there occurred a great war called the Elf Wars, caused by Dr. Weil corrupting the Mother Elfnote  and combining it with his other creation, the reploid Omega, to make reploids wreck havoc in the entire world, causing death to 60% of all humans and 90% of reploids until Zero and X stopped them in the fourth year. This event has shaped most of the Zero series' world and its characters, and yet info on the war is scarce. This, as it turns out, is intentional - it was such a horrific war that the Neo Arcadian government, built after the war, decided to bury all historical texts and info about the war deep in the ground, and declare anybody who knows it a Maverick, out of fear that "Weil's Sin" will repeat.
  • Metal Wolf Chaos: The Arizona Conflict, of which player character Michael Wilson is a veteran. It's heavily hinted that Michael's presidency, Richard's evilness, and nearly every involved party's past is connected to this event, but details are not given, aside from the fact that Michael received a Congressional Medal of Honor during that conflict.
  • A recurring element in the Metroid Prime Trilogy:
    • The backstory of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes covers the 50-year war between the Luminoth and the Ing. By the time Samus Aran lands on Aether, the surviving Luminoth are holed up in the Great Temple waiting for a miracle to beat back the Ing, and dead Luminoth are all over the place.
    • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption:
      • At the start of the game, a Federation technician mentions that he hasn't seen "that many fighters scrambled since the Horus Rebellion".
      • Bryyo's Reptilicus civilization tore itself apart with a civil war between the traditionalist Primals and the Science Lords, super geniuses who looked upon the Primals with disdain. This war also did serious damage to Bryyo. Bear in mind, this was before the Leviathan hit the planet. The player learns about this war from lore scans dotted around Bryyo.
      • The War of Liberation on Wotan VII, which is mentioned in Ghor's backstory. As a result of the injuries he received in that conflict, he was rebuilt as a cyborg, with only 6% of his original body still intact.
  • Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic (old verse):
    • The Timber Wars between Erathia and AvLee over the Contested Lands. Some hero descriptions mentions them, they're a key part of the backstory for VII and one campaign in Heroes III... and the only one we get any real detail is canonically not a proper war (VII involves a renewed conflict over part of the Contested Lands, but the only things that are assured to happen in the conflict are skirmishes and manouevering for position, followed by peace negotiations. It can escalate into a full-scale war, but hints in later games implies that the path in which that occurs isn't the one that happened).
    • The rebellions against the Colonial Government after the Silence (the loss of contact with the Ancients, the mother civilization). The Colonial Government ruling the planet had been strong before the Silence, but after their legitimacy was damaged and their resources strained, and with that came rebellions. Initially the Colonial Government,under Governor Padish, held on by pumping out weapons and armour using the miraculous Heavenly Forges, but without Ancient maintenance the Forges gradually began to break down, and the rebellions chipped away at the Government. Within a century it had collapsed... and that is what is known of the only known planet-spanning conflict in the history of Enroth.
  • Mission Critical has most of the war between The Alliance and the UN over limitations on technology. The manual goes into a brief overview, but few details are given. The possible future war between the UN and the ELFs is also largely undescribed.
  • Monster Hunter has the Great Dragon War where, an unknown amount of time ago, an advanced civilisation controlled the world at large, creating powerful weapons such as the Dragonator and towers that reached into the stratosphere, as well as genetically enhancing themselves, with their decendents who kept these enhancements being able to become Monster Hunters. The titular monsters were used a guards, livestock or slaves by this civilisation. This alone created hostilities between the humans and monsters, until the civilisation went to far and created the Equal Dragon Weapon, a living weapon made from butchering monsters and fusing parts together, requiring hundreds of monsters be killed to create just one Equal Dragon Weapon. This act drove the Elder Dragons to wage war against the civilisation, destroying their cities and creations across the world and driving humanity to near extinction. This justifies why the Hunters in the series are so intent of maintaining the natural order, the fantastical and futuristic weapons and locations found in the series, and also the reason Elder Dragons are so hostile.
  • Several Monster Rancher data entries reveal that monsters fought in wars in the ancient past. 4 goes even further and has wars between humans, monsters, and demons.

  • In Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, the AI Wars are mentioned, but no details are given. Other conflicts not mentioned or mentioned/shown only briefly are the war between IASA and the megacorporations, the Vardrag-Gorg War, and the Noah-Gorg War prior to the events of the game.
  • The NieR and NieR: Automata has two offscreen wars before the start of the games. NieR has the White Chlorination Syndrome and the infected Legion that Project Gestalt was originally designed to counter long since faded into history. While NieR Automata has the proxy war between aliens and humans by letting the machines and androids fight for them respectively, which was said to be fourteen wars.
  • Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: The Scripts Of Grimvald Vorius mention that Malachi was sealed away after an event known as "the Crimson Wars" centuries ago.

  • Ophilia Clement from Octopath Traveler was orphaned as a girl as a result of war. Exactly which war is never disclosed.
  • Operation: Matriarchy has the Human-Velian war that occured seven years prior to the game, which is never shown but alluded in cutscenes.
  • The most important event in Overwatch's backstory is the Omnic Crisis, in which the world's omnics rebelled en masse for reasons unknown. It was during this period that Overwatch itself was founded to bring together the world's best soldiers to create an elite task force for combatting the machines. They proved so effective at ending the crisis that the United Nations allowed them to stick around as an officially-sanctioned international law enforcement agency for decades into the early "present" of the 2070s, at which point internal problems, bad press and some critical losses forced its collapse, setting up the actual narrative's main premise. In the present, the conflict's effects are still being felt: Russia is engaged with its own conflict with hostile AI left over from the Crisis, nonviolent and sentient worker omnics are the subject of persecution and injustice throughout the world, and many characters — most notably Bastion, one of the very same killer machines deployed during the conflict that has since developed free will — struggle with the memories of what they endured during the war. Bastion's and Reinhardt's animated story cinematics mitigate some of the "offscreen" nature of this trope by giving us some glimpses of the Crisis while it was ongoing, and the cancelled graphic novel First Strike would have focused entirely on Overwatch's origins during the conflict's height. But otherwise, it remains confined to the background as an explanation for how the world wound up in its current state.

  • Pandora's Tower has a war that occurred fifty years ago. Unlike most instances of this trope, this particular war and its fallout have great plot significance. Later on, the kingdoms of Elyria and Athos had been fighting a war that ended only two years before the game begins, and tensions between the two countries are still high despite the peace.
  • Lt. Surge in PokĂ©mon Red and Blue refers to a war in which his electric PokĂ©mon "zapped [his] enemies into paralysis." None of the subsequent games (except the remakes, which repeated the line exactly) mentioned anything about this war. A popular fan theory theoriezes that there was a large conflict before the first game, which is why there are so few adult males; most are either older, or children.
  • A war three-thousand years before PokĂ©mon X and Y serves as the backstory for the game's plot.

  • In Quilts & Cats of Calico, the Kingdom of Scratchington is at war with its neighbors. The Quilter's father left Tomkitty City to fight in the said war, while the Quilter themself meets the army at Tiny Whiskerville to sew for them. Due to the cozy tone of the game and its focus on quilting and cats, we don't get to see the war itself.

  • RuneScape has the God Wars which had raged on for 4000 years, making up the entirety of the Third Age. Despite ending 2169 years ago, the repercussions are still felt today: many races were driven to extinction, down to Last of His Kind or Dying Race; and the gods were forced to depart from Gielinor. Many quests focus on this time: the cave goblin-dwarf railway is postponed due to the discovery of related artifacts, the player rediscovers the myriad, a Dying Race of Energy Beings, human-vampyre tension runs high but if another war breaks out, Guthix would be reawakened to destroy the world and remake it. Except now he's dead.

  • Septerra Core. The Resource Wars, the most recent of the wars between Ankara and Jinam. Also the war between Chosen factions that devastated Maya's hometown.
  • Shining Resonance: All the player is allowed to see of Ragnarok directly is a mural of the event, along with narration explaining that the High Elves allied with the Shining Dragon and the World Dragons to seal away Deus. Since the event took place many centuries ago, the mural is one of the few remaining records of it. The only "living" survivor of the war is the spirit of the Shining Dragon, who explains to Yuma that War Is Hell very much applies. This lack of info sets up an endgame reveal about Deus' true nature as a machine made by the elves to harvest Dragon Energy before its catalysmic potential prompted the great war to stop it and those who didn't care for the risks and consequences.
  • This is the central cause behind the events of Shirone: The Dragon Girl. The war happened between the different races populating the world. The dragonkins' castle fell and everyone in it was slaughtered, including the royal family. The Dragonkin king, in an attempt to protect his daughter, used memory orbs to create an illusion of the castle, where she daughter would be safe. Centuries later, Shirone is mistaken for the king's daughter. She and all neighboring visitors end up trapped in the illusion. As Shirone grew up in a world of peace, she has no trouble teaming up with the other prisoners (all from a different race), and after witnessing their teamwork, the king's ghost finally realizes that the times have changed and the war is no more. He dismantles the illusion after asking Shirone to cherish this peace.
  • SIGNALIS: The war between the Empire and the Eusan Nation (Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of China and East Germany) is frequently mentioned and is clearly still happening, but the game takes place out of the combat zone.
  • Splatoon has the Great Turf War between the Inklings and Octarians that took place a century before the first game's events, in which the Inklings ended as victors and Octarians were forced to live underground. Cap'n Cuttlefish was part of this war, and several of its details are revealed throughout the games in Sunken Scrolls and casual conversation.
  • For the longest time, StarCraft had the Guild Wars, which were referenced only in vague snippets as a civil war whose consequences still loomed over the Terran worlds. Fast forward many years, it's been more-or-less explained away with tie-in literature. Still nothing in the games, but this series has always assumed you did the reading first.
  • The Winchester War in Sunless Skies, which opposed London loyalists to the Reach independentists, took place several years before the game, leading to the very awkward status quo in place at the start of the game. From what can be heard and seen (it left some very impressive debris fields, and you constantly find wrecked locomotives to investigate while roaming the Reach), this war was a gruesome one.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story talks about a war in the back story in which the Star Sprites sealed away the Dark Star to keep it from attacking the Mushroom Kingdom.
    • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team features the war between the Pi'illo Kingdom and Antasma to keep the latter from obtaining the wish-granting Dark Stone. The Pi'illos were able to seal Antasma in the Dream World to keep this from happening, but Antasma was able to crush the Dark Stone and turn the Pi'illos to stone until Mario and Luigi free them.
    • In Super Mario Odyssey, the Ruined Kingdom is speculated to have gotten that way as a result of its inhabitants having one against the Ruined Dragon. The region is covered in sword-like pins that were used in an attempt to contain the Dragon's electric powers.

  • Tales of Symphonia: Long ago, during Mithos's time, Sylvarant and Tethe'alla were at war. This war killed the Giant Kharlan Tree, which was once a source of ever-flowing mana. This is also where Mithos met Kratos and Yuan, and where Martel was killed, and thus how he decided to split the world in two. Because the Tree is considered a myth, the war is also assumed to have been mythical, especially since the best-known version of the story ends with the citizens of Tethe'alla exiling themselves to the moon by climbing the Tower of Salvation, which is obvious fairy-tale material. This version of the tale is spread by Cruxis as propaganda, but while it does contain some obvious lies, it's still closer to the truth than one might expect.
  • Tales of Vesperia references The Great War between humans and Entelexeia. One of the party members is a veteran.
  • Touhou Project: The Great Suwa War, in which Kanako subjugated Suwako; and Yukari's (first) invasion of the Moon. Silent Sinner in Blue is essentially Yukari taking revenge upon the Lunarians over her defeat 1,000 years ago.
  • Trails Series:
    • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: The Hundred Days War. It took place a decade or so before the start of the first game, and shaped the personal history of many of the main characters. The protagonist is the daughter of the man who won the war, and whose mother was a casualty of it, and her love interest is the Sole Survivor of the village that was destroyed by the aggressors to create a Pretext for War.
    • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel: The War of the Lions. It took place two hundred and fifty years before the game proper, but it get referenced regularly, and the war that is fought in the second game is in many ways a repeat of that war. In the third game, there's also the North Ambria campaign where The Hero of the first two games participates in said war and all the details are told through flashbacks as he explains it to his friends. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War is an anime dedicated to finally featuring the events of this great offscreen war onscreen.
  • Triangle Strategy: Thirty years before the events of the game, the three nations of Norzelia engaged in a conflict called the Saltiron War, which ended with an uneasy truce.

  • In Ultima VI, there's supposedly a huge war with the gargoyles going on. The soldiers talk about it. You see the wounded being cared for in Cove... however due to the Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay you travel all over the fairly pristine world and never find a single battleground.
  • The backstory of Undertale had a war between monsters and humans that resulted in the monsters being sealed away in the underground. Even though monsters are said to be almost helpless in the face of a sufficiently powerful Killing Intent, humans feared monster-kind's ability to absorb the power of human souls and grow stronger.
  • Several cases in the Unreal series. The Tournament series in particular has the Human-Skaarj War; the only concrete references we've got to how anything went down are a pair of Assault maps in Unreal Tournament 2004, one of which depicts the final battle and the other part of the various conflicts in its aftermath. Other cases include the "Strider Wars" mentioned in Unreal II: The Awakening, which very little is known about save for that one of your crewmates served in the war, and was responsible for setting up a trap for the eponymous Striders that resulted in their defeat. Other conflicts that occurred offscreen include the First Necris Invasion and the Corporation Wars (which may or may not be occurring during the events of Unreal II: The Awakening and Unreal Tournament 3).

  • The First Eptinan Wars exist has only a blurb in the manual for Vanguard Bandits. The Second, also has this effect, having been going on since before the game starts, and despite still going on most of the backstory for it exists in a single flashback.
  • Vector Thrust had World War III in an Alternate Universe Earth which opened up with a nuclear barrage between Kaesel and Poltavia. Having only targeted each other's militaries but avoiding civilian casualties, they isolated themselves while other nations took advantage of the power vaccum, one nation being The Kingdom, which had next generation weaponry. When The Kingdom suddenly enters a nuclear civil war and attacks everyone they believe responsible, it takes all six of the world superpowers to stop them, and by then, there was already apocalyptic levels of damage done, and most of the world except for one continent is irradiated. The game pretty much takes place After the End, the remaining nations still maintain order to some degree.

  • Characters in Season 4 of The Walking Dead (Telltale) mention that several large communities are at war with each other. The Delta's raiding party is the main antagonist of the season, but the larger community is never shown. Neither are the other communities they are fighting.
  • In Warframe, The Old War between the precursor Orokin Empire and the Sentients is pretty much the cause of the state of present setting. It was the cause of the creation of the playable faction, the Tenno, the release of the Technocyte Plague, and if the Stalker is to be believed, indirectly resulted in their destruction when the Tenno Turned Against Their Masters and destroyed them, leaving behind the reams of Lost Technology that everyone is squabbling over now.
  • World of Warcraft 's Expanded Universe has goblins mention in passing a series of no less than four Trade Wars, and described as worse, the Peace War. Details are sparse, limited to battles having been fought in the tunnels of the goblin capital Undermine, and Trade Prince Gallywix's favorite bakery being repeatedly destroyed over the multiple wars.
    • There are also the Troll Wars, which are why high elves are friends with humans, humans have mages, and Zul'Aman is in ruins. A few of the Artifact quests also reference it.
    • The space-faring demonic Burning Legion is described as having destroyed over 1000 worlds, many of which had plenty of armies and champions for some probably pretty epic wars. Some of these are described in the chronicles of the Order Halls in the Legion expansion.
    • Meanwhile, the Shadowlands expansion describes how the various afterlives of the Warcraft universe need to regularly defend themselves from outside forces in some apparently massive wars. In particular, both Bastion and Maldraxxus have been invaded by the forces of the Void, while Revendreth had to fight a war against the armies of the Light that was so costly, it bathed a portion of the realm in blinding, searing, perpetual daylight.

  • Xenoblade:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1's Action Prologue is the Battle of Sword Valley, which was the last battle of the Mechon invasion of Bionis and where Dunban became a legend throughout the land for singlehandedly turning back the enemy advance. There was also the war between the Machina and the forces of the Bionis, millennia before the events of the game.
    • In Xenoblade Chronicles X, there is a massive conflict between two alien armies that just so happened to break out over Earth. As shown in the opening sequence, the battle resulted in Earth's destruction and humanity's forced exodus into space, with one of the alien armies pursuing them and causing one of their ships to crash-land onto Mira.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has two:
      • The Aegis War, a conflict from 500 years ago that resulted in the destruction of three titans as the Aegis Mythra and her driver Addam fought against Malos, another Aegis and his army of Artifices. While in the game itself, it is only ever talked about or shown in flash backs, as multiple characters that fought in the war are still alive, the DLC expansion “Torna the Golden Country” is set during the war, showing how the war ended and setting up the main game.
      • An even more vague war is shown briefly in the last chapter of the main game, which didn't even receive an official name. It was set over Earth - yes, our Earth, and involved two factions, one of which wasn't even named. The named faction were called the Saviorite Rebels, while the unnamed one was likely made up of the United States of America and an unspecified European nation, and the God of 2's world, the Architect, was a human scientist working for the unnamed faction. That's not the twist, though - the real twist is that the Architect is half of Professor Klaus/Zanza, the first game's Big Bad, and that the event that resulted in the creation the worlds of the first two games happened during the final battle of said war. Said event was vaguely shown at the very end of the first game as well, with the version being shown in 2 being more detailed and showing it from the perspective of Professor Klaus. Yeah, it's that kind of game.
  • The X-Universe backstory includes the Terraformer War in the 2140s AD, during which insane terraforming robots wiped out all of Earth's extrasolar colonies and nearly destroyed Earth, too. A Terran warfleet managed to lure them through a jumpgate, which was then destroyed behind them; this fleet became the Argon race. About 200 years later, we had the First Xenon Conflict, where the terraformers reappeared, followed by the Boron Campaign, a more conventional interstellar war between the various superpowers.

    Visual Novels 
  • In the backstory of Fate/stay night, the Third Holy Grail Wars counts, as it shaped the circumstances under which the Fifth is fought. At first, the Fourth Holy Grail War was also an example, but eventually the story was told as Fate/Zero. Said war also occurs in the backstory of Fate/Apocrypha (according to this, the Third Reich got involved after getting wind of a possibly omnipotent wish-granting device), albeit in this timeline, due to the Greater Grail being taken to Romania, neither the Fourth or Fifth occur in this timeline. Also, instead of an Avenger being summoned by the Einzbern, it was a Ruler, which means the Grail isn't corrupted in this timeline and plays into said surviving Ruler's own plans.
  • ghostpia has occasional references to a devastating war that happened sometime in the past but absolutely no details about the true scale, reasons or outcome are ever given. It's speculated that the unexploded missile in the middle of town is a remnant of it.
  • Buried in the backstory to Hatoful Boyfriend is the war between humans and just-uplifted birds, which started with the disorganized Hitchcock Winter, became formal when birds drew up their own Declaration of Independence, and continued for thirty years until humans surrendered. Of course things aren't entirely peaceful now...
  • Sunrider has the Alliance-Imperial War, which shaped the galaxy’s current political landscape by establishing the Solar Alliance as a legitimate rival to the New Empire and breaking the latter’s dominance of the galaxy. This would lead to the Compact Revolution a century later, in which the New Empire collapsed due to internal dissent and was reorganized into the People’s Alliance for Common Treatment, or PACT.
  • South Scrimshaw: The drones used for camera and illumination work are mentioned as having been created during the Pacification War on Earth. Some details are provided - the war was brief and "mostly between Earth factions" but there was threat of Orbital Bombardment, implying some degree of extra-terrestrial involvement.
  • Tokyo Necro: The Sino-American war was a conflict in the VN's backstory between China and America come about as a result of the encroaching ice age that raged from 2141 to 2186 with many other countries getting dragged into it. It was during the later half of the war where the use of the living dead as cheap and perpetual soldiers were widely used leading that period to be called the War of the Dead.

    Web Animation 
  • Red vs. Blue has repeated references (especially in the Recollection Trilogy) to some kind of great war against an alien race. The only details are that it took place during The Blood Gulch Chronicles and was resolved offscreen sometime between Blood Gulch and Reconstruction (or possibly sometime before the end of Blood Gulch), that Project Freelancer was one of many desperate initiatives towards the end of the war, and that humanity became allied with the aliens afterwards. As the link shows, everything indicates it's the Human-Covenant War from the Halo games the series is built on, although the connections to Master Chief's story are often very loose. (More can be read on the Red vs Blue WMG page).
  • RWBY mentions a few distant wars.
    • Once upon a time, humans were driven to the brink of extinction by the Grimm. Humanity discovered the power of Dust and fought back, eventually gaining enough territory to build several kingdoms.
    • Eighty years before the start of the series came the bloody conflict between kingdoms known simply as the Great War, which pitted an expansionist alliance of Mantle and Mistral against Vale, which was later joined by Vacuo. The conflict was touched off by settlers from both sides clashing during the Mantle/Mistral expansion, though nobody knows who shot first. The aftermath of the War had profound societal consequences for all of Remnant. The King of Vale, heavily implied to be an incarnation of Professor Ozpin, who had led the decisive Final Battle, spearheaded the creation of the Huntsman Academies, one for each kingdom, in order to train the future generations of humanity's protectors. Furthermore, as an act of defiance against Mantle and Mistral's suppression of the arts,Note the tradition of Colorful Theme Naming got started.
    • The Faunus were treated by humanity with no small amount of Fantastic Racism throughout history, resulting in at least one Faunus Rebellion, where Faunus night vision proved itself a decisive advantage. After the Great War, they were granted the small continent of Menagerie as their new homeland, ending open conflict (but not either the racism, or the festering resentment).
  • Salad Fingers from Salad Fingers often references an event called the Great War in a few episodes. However, it's so far unknown if the war was nuclear or even existed at all as it could be all in Salad Finger's mind.

    Webcomics 
  • Anecdote of Error takes place in the middle of a war between the countries of Batea and Alemi, but since the story takes place in a boarding school, this is just background detail. Until Alemi's army sends a small group of soldiers to invade the school, thereby dragging the main characters into the conflict despite them only being teenagers.
  • More like Great Offscreen Brawls. In various Celestia's Servant Interview comics, Gig, Master of Death, would antagonize the pony being interviewed that strip. In the comments after Rarity's fifth interview, he paint-bombed the Carousel Boutique, and... well Rainbow Dash gives the fallout both short-term and long-term after the fifth reverse interview. To summarize: Fighting accomplished nothing beyond hospitalizing Dashie twice, and the memory spell didn't work either.
    • Since Derpibooru's days may be numbered, here is the summary:
      Nightwing: Gig maybe? since in one of rarity’s asks he did throw a paint bomb into her boutique.
      Rainbow Dash: That was when I lost my temper and fought with him. I’m not into fashion myself, but Rarity is awesome, and no one does that do her. When a hoof sandwich proved ineffective, I really lost it and gave him a fast-moving shod back hoof to his little monkey balls. That only angered him, and he slammed me into the ground. Trip one to the hospital, and that was when I discovered the "One Hocklet to Rule them All" trilogy. /)^3^(\
      After the fifth Twilight Sparkle interview, Twilight determined that we could safely borrow the Elements from the Tree of Harmony for just long enough to turn him to stone. Gig did not stay petrified, though, and he beat me to a pulp again, If it weren’t for Zecora my wings would have had to be amputated. I still had to go to the hospital again.
      Then the princesses called the emergency meeting to learn as much as possible about Gig. The six of us were there, as were primate experts Lyra Heartstrings and Sunset Shimmer. Bon Bon was there though I’m not supposed to say why, and Django was there because he knew about Gig. There we learned about Gig’s former good self as Vigilance, and Twilight decided to use the memory spell to awaken his Vigilance memories.
      Pinkie found some hotpods, somehow. Just by being Pinkie Pie, I guess. Anyway, Gig came for them and Twilight cast the memory spell. Sadly, the Vigilance memories didn’t stick.
  • In Crimson Knights the war between Crales and Aleovohan happens entirely off-panel apart from the attack on Brennus Cliff which is seen first hand. The war in the South in the Soburgian Empire (implied to be much grander in scope) is also completely unseen.
  • One (probably two) of the four "Breakings" from The Dragon Doctors.
  • There are several of these in Drowtales, including several wars of the Surface between the Dark and Light Elves and the conflict that eventually led to the Surface becoming uninhabitable, forcing the remaining elves to flee underground. Then there's the war between the Dark Elves and their children, the Drow, which led to the near extinction of the Dark Elves. The city of Chel'el'sussoloth also has a few of these such as the Sharen vs. the Sullisin'rune and various other times the Imperial forces have come into conflict with rogue clans.
  • Gene Catlow: There was some sort of armed conflict that led to the Animen being granted full civil rights and several older supporting characters were a part of it. But it's never been spelled out whether this was a full-on revolution, an "Arab Spring" type uprising or a touchstone event like the Stonewall Riots.
  • The war with the Other in Girl Genius occurred about twenty years before the events of the comic, and was basically a Steampunk zombie apocalypse. Then, after the Other's unexplained disappearance, the surviving Sparks and nobles immediately started fighting over what was left. Klaus put a stop to all that. Two centuries previously had been the war between the Storm King's Alliance and the Heterodynes, whose ending set the stage for centuries of scheming over who would be Andronicus' successor.
  • How to Raise Your Teenage Dragon references the Nephilim War, an invasion of the friendly furry kingdom Xootopia.
  • The Universal War in Kill Six Billion Demons, which is long over by the beginning of the comic's story. It was a Divine Conflict free-for-all between all the Demiurges that took a millennia to die down, and whittled the Demiurges' numbers down from over a million to seven. Many of the surviving seven obtained their power during the War, having been born mundane during or shortly prior to its beginning, and at least one appears to be motivated by what he experienced during the war.
  • In Oceanfalls, There is a mysterious war as part of the setting's backstory, between humans and monsters. Aria's mother died in it. It was ended by the creation of a barrier which divided the human and monster worlds; it is this same barrier that forms a massive dome which traps both worlds inside it. Nino's psychological reaction indicates that he has some dark connection to it.
  • Only Human has Luna War I and Luna War II, which eventually brought the end of human civilization.
  • ReBoot: Code of Honor: It's said that Megabyte's "Hunt" from the end of Season Four eventually escalated into a Net-wide Viral War, which affected tens of thousands of systems. Very little of it is shown, though, as the comic begins in the last days of it.
  • Res Nullius: The story takes place immediately after a genocidal war that (Possibly) left the two protagonists as the Last of Their Kind. Details of the war, including the name of the species that decimated two spacefaring civilizations, have been minimal.
  • Ronin Galaxy: Taylor speaks to Cecil about the current war-like state of Earth and her difficulty getting to the Moon on this page. Cecil retorts that Earth is an "antique collecting space dust."
  • The Teraport Wars from Schlock Mercenary count as a rare example of a war concurrent with the story. Although it's pretty easy to imagine the effects the Teraport would have on a galaxy used to wormgate travel for war and trading, we never actually see much of the chaos the invention actually inflicts on galactic civilization apart from a single battle.
    • Also the Terraforming wars, back when both Tagons were in the Celeschul military. A faction of the human population of Celeschul wanted to terraform some of the other planets in the system, but the Schuul natives forbid it, eventually they rebelled, and were very much uncivilized about it.
  • The Old War in Skin Horse has been mentioned a few times. Tip has no idea what it was, and finds it very hard to get details from the nonhuman community, either because a crisis is going on, or because they don't actually know anything. We eventually get the details in "Mixed-Up Files", starting here. It turns out to be a desperate shadow war in the 19th century between human and nonhuman, provoked by Moustachio's attack on the Great Exhibition.
  • The Sanity Circus: Centuries before the plot, there was a war between humans and sorcerers (in Attley's words, 'The sorcerers invented magic and humans got huffy about that'). In the end humans won and the sorcerers were wiped out, but not before the last one created the Scarecrows.
  • Sister Claire has a war between the Witches and the Nuns about 20 years ago that greatly affected the world, including causing bits of the landscape to be missing, and the after effects still linger among the characters, several of whom were on either side, including Catharine's sister Clementine, who was the leader of the Witches known as The Bright One.

    Web Original 
  • In the NatOne Productions universe of Denazra, this trope has been going on for hundreds of years. The titular denazra have been conquering our tiny slice of the galaxy over the course of many generations. Most recently, the Coalition was completely routed at Orm.
  • Several previous conflicts are mentioned in The Solstice War but only the Ayvartan Civil War and the Nocht Unification War have been explored the tiniest bit in the story (through short flashbacks). At one point a character has a flashback of a dozen conflicts, suggesting a long history of Great Off-Screen Wars.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time takes place a thousand years after "The Mushroom War", which pretty much destroyed all of humanity. The events aren't elaborated on for the first third of the series' run. It isn't until the episodes "Finn the Human" and "Jake the Dog" that we explicitly learn it was a nuclear conflict, and one of the bombs unleashed massive mutagenic (and magical) energies, and these energies either gave birth to the Lich or revived him in the then-modern world. A solid third of the planet was also blown up, with observers from space being able to see a giant gap that goes all the way down to the core.
    • Also mentioned at one point is a war between rainicorns and dogs, which is never elaborated upon (beyond mention of Lady Rainicorn's father being saved by a dog at some point during it) but shown as a cause for great strife between the species.
  • Not exactly a war, but Avatar: The Last Airbender has the Fire Nation's destruction of the Air Nomads 100 years prior to the start of the series.
    • The Hundred-Year War itself is an an interesting variation in the show, as while it is ongoing, it still fits within the realms of this trope: We see much of the actual effects of the war, with the show taking place during its final year, but we get little information concerning the period between the Fire Nation beginning their expansion and colonization of other countries at the start of the war to the present. We only see some snippets of the raids on the Southern Water Tribe and Iroh's assault on Ba Sing Se through flashbacks while most other battles are only alluded to. Even over the course of the show itself we don 't see that much of the actual war, with only a small handful of major military battles being shown. (four, maybe five if you count "The Drill"). In fact, the entire century of conflict between Aang's freezing to when Katara frees him is mostly untouched, even in fan fiction.
  • Batman Beyond referred occasionally to "The Near-Apocalypse of '09", wherein the Justice League managed to seemingly kill the notoriously unkillable Ra's Al Ghul for good. Its nature has been speculated on for years by DC Animated Universe fans; one guess is that it was the final battle of Justice League Unlimited, which was definitely a "near-apocalypse", but the instigator of that conflict was Darkseid, not Al Ghul.
  • Centaurworld: Multiple episodes mention that Centaurworld went through a major and devastating war a few decades ago — several characters let slip that their goofy and cheerful personalities are a way to cope with the horrors they experienced, and a flashback shows that Wammawink was orphaned when her village was destroyed — but it's not explained precisely what happened there beyond the revelation that it involved the same monsters now attacking the human world.
  • Exo Squad: The Neosapien Rebellion a.k.a. the First Neosapien War fifty years ago. It is particularly oft mentioned in the early episodes, before the Second Neosapien War breaks out and easily surpasses the original one in scope and impact.
  • Futurama occasionally makes reference to some war or another, usually for a quick gag. One time one is relevant to the main plot is in "Three Hundred Big Boys", where the spoils from a recently won Bug War are spread among the populace. There were also the Star Trek Wars (not to be confused with the "Star Wars Trek"), which resulted in the banning of Star Trek, which led into the events of "Where No Fan Has Gone Before".
  • Imago is a fantasy Mons Series chock-full of powerful mages and their magical animal companions… who are seldom seen as they are off fighting the main villain. Meanwhile, the focus is on the group of kid heroes, who can hardly receive any assistance from adults.
  • Kulipari: An Army of Frogs has the Hiding War, in which the Turtle King, Sergu, raised a great ward (the Veil) over the Amphibilands to keep them safe, and an entire generation of the Frog's elite Kulipari warriors died throwing themselves against a scorpion horde to buy him the time to do it. This is a major background event, particularly as the hero, Darrel's, father was one of the Kulipari who died in that final battle.
  • Lloyd in Space: The show's description and marketing mentioned that it takes place shortly after World war IX, only for said war to never get mentioned in the show proper or have any implications on the world. It was likely either a dropped plot or an excuse as to why the show constantly deals with Fantastic Racism between the alien races.
  • Parodied in the The Simpsons Flash Forward episode "Lisa's Wedding", which suggested that WWIII took place some time between 1995 to 2010.
    Moe: Oh-ho, an English boy, huh? You know, we saved your ass in World War II.
    Hugh: Yeah? Well, we saved your arse in World War III.
    Moe: (beat) That's true.
  • Saving Me: As season 2 reveals, the Inter-Galactic Alliance, whom Earth is secretly allied with. Has been at war with a hostile alien race that's been rampaging across the universe known as the Gundrene, for an indeterminate amount of time.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) has a briefly-mentioned "Great War". Robotnik had put himself into a position to take over by helping Mobotropolis win it. The war itself is explored in the comic adaptation but the circumstances that lead into the coup are similar in both media.
  • In SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs is repeatedly alluded to having served in the Navy, with the episode "Krusty Krabs Training Video" stating he started the restaurant some time "after the war". While his past in the Navy itself has received some attention (we've seen some of his former shipmates, and his work as a deckhand pops up every now and then), there's been no detail given on what the "war" actually was.
  • The Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon" imports the Kzinti from Larry Niven's Known Space stories, and with it the backstory of their having fought multiple wars with humanity and lost all of them.
  • Steven Universe: Much of what occurs in the series has its roots in a war that took place 5,750 years ago, in which an alien race known as the Gems fought over the colonization of Earth. The splinter group devoted to protecting the planet, the Crystal Gems, won a Pyrrhic Victory after a thousand years, losing all but 4 warriors to a final attack that turned the rest into berserk monsters. The advancement that was made in colonizing the planet also led to a completely different geography and an Alternate History where various wars were never fought and most holidays never developed.
  • A Thousand and One... Americas:
    • In the twenty-fifth episode, a friendly Toltec courier tells Chris about a long, violent war between the factions led respectively by Mixcoatl (the first-ever chief of the Toltecs) and Chimalma (the goddess of fertility, and the overseer of life and death). The episode only shows a flashback of the last few moments of the way, when nearly everybody from both factions succumbed and only the two aforementioned generals stood up. The two decide to drop their weapons, and not only put a halt to the war but also married (unfortunately, Chimalma later succumed to a Death by Childbirth). The child conceived by them was a child who, upon growing up, defeated a Feathered Serpent that was attacking his homeland and then unified the two previously-conflicting factions, thus founding Tula.
    • In the final episode, it is briefly narrated that the Aztecs were a proud warrior civilization, and engaged into a war against other people. They won, leading to their status as the most powerful and advance pre-Columbian civilization until the arrival of the Europeans (led by Christopher Columbus).
  • Transformers has this to varying degrees, the Cartoon itself is a straight example, as the war has restarted on Earth and the million-year war on Cybertron is only alluded to.
    • The war between the Autobots and the Decepticons in Transformers: Animated. By the time the series starts, the war is over, with the Autobots having won and the Decepticons scattered to the far reaches of space.
    • The first flashback material was repurposed clips from The Transformers Generation One. We later see some flashbacks from Ratchet's perspective.
    • Transformers: Generation 1 contains references to the Third and Fourth Great (or "Cybertronian") Wars, the assumption being that there were a first and second. (They're probably in the fourth one. Or the fifth, if you consider the ending of The Transformers: The Movie to be the end of that particular war.)
    • In the Generation 1 episode "Sea Change", Perceptor mentions a "Third Cybertron War". Apparently separate from the Third Cybertronian War. Though given the context, it's not clear.
    • At some point in the process of writing some of the later spin-off comics, the writers appear to have decided that all the above were effectively one single conflict with occasional lulls or ceasefires, thus handily allowing any confusion over which war a particular character happened to be referencing at the time to be Hand Waved as the Cybertronians having trouble keeping track as well: If the only actual peace was the occasional short interlude where everyone was busy rearming they'd have to start blurring together after a while.
    • In Transformers: EarthSpark, the Transformers War is central to the setting and the backstory of several characters including Dot Malto, a veteran of the war and friend to a reformed Megatron, and Dr. Meridian, who has sworn to wipe out all Cybertronians after losing his arm in an attack on San Francisco.
  • The Venture Bros. makes occasional references to the "Pyramid Wars" of 1987, in which the O.S.I. finally defeated S.P.H.I.N.X. (largely parodies of G.I. Joe and Cobra). While some characters are said to have fought in it, very little detail is given.


 
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Alternative Title(s): The Great Offscreen War

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Wolf 359

The Enterprise D, under the command of now Captain Riker, is on it's way to the Wolf system to join the fight against a Borg cube with a fleet of Federation ships. However when they arrive, the battle is already over and the Federation lost.

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