The '90s

aka: The Nineties

EXTREME PHOTO COLLAGE!! ^note Let's Party Like It's the '90s by Espinal Photography

Bart: Nothing you say can upset us! We're the MTV generation!
Lisa: We feel neither highs nor lows.
Homer: Really? What's that like?
Lisa: Meh. [shrugs]

— The Simpsons, "Homer's Triple Bypass"

I'm only Describing The '90s Here ironically.

The Nimble Nineties: The Cold War had come to an end and people were starting to fear Y2K. All of the kids (of whom the older ones were of the cynical and disaffected Generation X) listened to grunge bands, wore flannel or a Jennifer Aniston haircut while watching Friends, Seinfeld and The X-Files. Or they listened to Gangsta Rap, wore their baseball caps sideways paired with ridiculously baggy cargo pants and routinely "capped" people who "dissed" them, or they were beaten up by police and taped. Or they were the early ravers dressing in even baggier JNCO jeans, kandi beads, and pacifiers (to help out with teeth gnashing from ecstasy) and listened to electronica. Everything was neon, colorful, and Totally Radical. Cowabunga!

The world at this time was awash in radical changes and catastrophes on a global scale. The Soviet Union collapsed^note resulting in more than a couple ethnic wars between the newly-independent states., Nelson Mandela was finally freed from prison, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Margaret Thatcher hung up her handbag.

Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda exploded into savage sectarian genocide, while Liberia and Sierra Leone faced deadly civil wars that were frustratingly difficult for other nations to stop, provided that they even cared. Radicals revolted against corporations in Seattle at the beginning and end of the decade. Germany reunited after decades of post-World War II division, Czechoslovakia split up and Canada came within a hair's breadth of doing the same^note The leader of the separatist movement promptly shot off his mouth in a Sore Loser tirade at the failure, blaming big money and "the ethnic vote", ensuring that the "winning conditions" for a third referendum wouldn't arise for a while. Japan came to terms with the end of its economic bubble and settled in for the long, frustrating stagnation of "The Lost Decade". "Made in Japan" was replaced by Red China as the big outsourcing villain. HIV awareness grew, with disgust towards its victims gradually being replaced with sympathy upon Freddie Mercury's death from pneumonia exacerbated by AIDS in 1991. Additionally, the notorious spread of the virus among the heterosexual population of Africa finally killed off the "Gay Plague" stereotype of HIV, even as effective drug regimes were at long last developed. Meanwhile, Anita Hill would expose the social blight of sexual harassment that too many women endure in the workplace and elsewhere in the US Congress and thus the popular world at large. There were riots in Los Angeles and the OJ Simpson chase/trial/media circus. The younger tropers might have been born at this time — possibly in the back of a white SUV.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan pressured Mullah Omar's Afghanistan to extradite a dissolute Saudi nobleman, Osama bin Laden, who was holed up in the newly radicalized Afghanistan. It was almost as if he was planning something big... At this time, Bin Laden was not yet a household name, so when Bill Clinton dropped a bomb on an alleged Bin Laden hideout, many questioned the President's motives. Some critics suggested he was merely trying to distract the public from his many scandals, à la Wag the Dog. Of course, this suggestion may appear Harsher in Hindsight.

The conservative-dominated Reagan/Bush/Thatcher/Gorbachev era ended with a bang as "greed is good" got replaced by the 1987 Wall Street Crash and postwar recession ennui through the early '90s; the violent polarization of the '70s finally culminated in a return to centrism among the general populace as moderate liberals swiftly replaced the hard left and hard right of the preceding decades. In the U.S., Ross Perot led a political revolution of pissed-off independent voters; dissatisfaction with "The Man" became the norm, and Rush Limbaugh-inspired Conspiracy Theorist talk radio became the rage. Bill Clinton got elected thanks to Gulf War Syndrome, and remained popular during and after his presidency, even and especially during his impeachment trial in 1998. The right would eventually return to prominence during the latter half of the decade though, with born-again-Christian conservatives eventually sweeping away the secular, Clinton-led left in 2000. The opioid crisis started in the U.S., mainstreaming negative attitudes towards Predatory Big Pharma (both for accurate reasons and conspiracy theories). Meanwhile, Seattle coffee culture was all the rage as a Starbucks opened up on every street corner, driving fear into the hearts of Hipsters everywhere, who sought solace in Post-Hardcore, Postmodernism, and other things with "post-" and "-core" in it. In the U.K., Tony Blair and his 'New Labour' swept to power on a landslide, hailing a new era of optimism and 'Cool Britannia', fueled by an explosion of bands like The Spice Girls, Blur, and Oasis, and the transformation of Premier League football into an international spectacle, sport mingling with celebrity culture — most notably with the marriage of David and Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham.

Modern culture's obsession with electronics was born in The '80s and became dominant in the Turn of the Millennium, but it really came of age in the last half of this decade as people switched out computer models every other year. Dolly the sheep was cloned. GPS became operational. Cell phones became smaller and more common. Home computers that were actually easy to use instead of requiring a degree in programming became cheap enough to be affordable to everyone, and this, coupled with the invention of the World Wide Web ^note Invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inevitably led to the explosion of the Internet ^note Invented by Al Gore, which opened the floodgates. Porn, gifs of kittens, porn, jokes about the Clinton sex scandal and evil overlords, and porn involving Clinton were widely accessible for the first time. Bulletin Boards hooked up, moving from dial-in systems to the web. People began to band together to discuss their opinions of Star Trek and Star Wars on Usenet, the original "message board" system. Soon, other people joined in to talk about other shows, too, and thus the seeds for the birth of this wiki were planted. So while in 1990 teenagers who "spent time on computer message boards" were nerds, by 1999 it was a social stigma among teenagers if you didn't have an e-mail address.

On the business side of the internet sensation came the Dot-Com Bubble of the late-'90s, powering the biggest economic boom of the 20th century and putting even the best years of The Roaring '20s, The '50s, and The '80s to shame, meaning people had more money than ever to spend on all the exciting new technology while at the same time ironically having less cash in their pockets than ever thanks to another exciting new technology: digital banking. ATMs appeared on every street corner and allowed people to withdraw as much money from their accounts as they needed anywhere at anytime 24/7 without having to deal with asshole bank employees. In store debit often eliminated the need for cash at all, and the credit card was never more widely used (partly because more places than ever were accepting them, and partly because people didn't quite grasp the long term consequences of their overuse and abuse yet). Some even predicted the end of paper money all together. As the Web Browser was invented, garage entrepreneurs sold content-free websites for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Nineties also saw the largest government budget surplus in American history.

The Ford Explorer became the first SUV^note unless you count the original Jeep Cherokee, Jeep Wagoneer, Chevy Suburban, Land Rover, Toyota Land Cruiser, Nissan Pathfinder, Suzuki Samurai and/or the Ford Bronco as SUVs, and the GM EV-1 became the first (production, consumer) modern electric car. The Explorer would be successful, while the EV-1 would not for the same reason as the Sega Game Gear of the same decade, as indeed was a problem for many of the decade's portable devices, the incredible new technology drained batteries too fast, as GM insisted it be fitted with the same lead-acid batteries as all its cars. The Lithium batteries that would power the cars and electronics of future decades were still in their infancy, and still far too expensive and unproven for most manufacturers or consumers to bother with. The gas crisis of the next decade had its origins in the shortsightedness of a decade when gasoline was much cheaper. Cars from this decade are easy to spot thanks to a cartoonishly curvy look, moving beyond the unaerodynamic box-on-wheels design that dominated The '70s and The '80s, thanks to computer-aided drafting and design, but still not quite like the more aerodynamic angular cut corners look that dominated in the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s.

Electronics underwent a similar change in design from depressingly boxy to cartoonishly curvy, culminating in the first iMac, and from analog to digital for exactly the same reason. In terms of media technology, this was the decade of Cable TV and the first emerging direct-broadcast satellite TV services.^note The latter seems to have taken off much more in the UK than in the US... Movies ran on VHS or in Multiplex theaters with digital sound systems. DVD emerged at the end of the decade, but was in its infancy and ridiculously expensive. Music came on CDs or cassette tapes in the very early '90s, to a more CD dominated culture until the invention of Napster.

Internet dollars gentrified the inner city, turning what had been viewed as an irredeemable wasteland into a playpen for the rich. Every building, sneaker, and coffee shop was painted in pastel colors with the black lights at the rave club making them all glow, along with that mustard stain you thought you got out weeks ago.

Everyone attended music festivals like Lollapalooza or Lilith Fair — or at least, claimed to their friends that they did, as they were just as likely doing either "Lambada" or "The Macarena". In the US Grunge dominated the real life soundtrack for five years, before collapsing into an identity crisis. Kurt Cobain continued chart-topping for two years after his death, alongside Alanis Morissette and Alice in Chains, eventually replaced by pop music, which had managed to reinvent itself following the Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal (which itself played a partial role in Grunge's rise), during the latter half of the decade. Across the pond, meanwhile, Britpop and the Cool Britannia movement soared; Oasis and Blur had their famous chart war, while the Spice Girls became cultural icons. In academia, modernism was out and relativism was in; the magazine Social Text published a word salad hoax by an angry physicist as the "Culture Wars" smoldered between scientists, anti-abortionists, and radical academicians. Alternative Rock took over rock music, along with the Perishing Alt-Rock Voice. Boy bands and girl groups began to dominate the market, and two major Gangsta Rap stars were killed within months of each other following a war of egos between the east and west coasts. Electronic Music continued to refine itself over this decade, spawning numerous different genres (and sub-genres) and growing massive fan scenes across the globe (except in the USA which took longer to catch on), with all-night dance parties, AKA "raves", becoming the new target of moral panic among politicians and moral guardians (not helped by the deep associations with drug use).

CGI completely changed what you could see on the silver screen. Blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Titanic (1997) made full use of cutting-edge visual effects on their way to record-smashing box-offices. The first animated films created entirely in CGI also began their slow but steady takeover of the animated marketplace. On the other side of the spectrum, indie films became hot commodities as young, self-made filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater used the advances in filmmaking technology to create unique, edgy films on shoestring budgets. For a whole year, America lost its collective mind in the woods of Maryland over a film made on handheld cameras. Seinfeld, after a shaky start in 1989, shot to wild popularity. The Simpsons redefined both animation and the family Sitcom. Reality Television started. The millennial decade's comedy superstars were getting themselves known on Saturday Night Live, including future (now-retired) senator Al Franken. Mystery Science Theater 3000 got really good, then was canceled twice. After people got the answer as to who killed Laura Palmer, Special Agents Mulder and Scully chased aliens, monsters, and other creepy creatures, Buffy Summers chased vampires, demons, and vampire boyfriends, while Hercules and Xena fought the tyranny of the gods in ancient Greece. Surfing and going to the beach became even more popular thanks to Baywatch, which became the most popular syndicated television show on the planet and turned Pamela Anderson into probably the most famous sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe. This was also the heyday of modern-era Star Trek, with TNG, DS9 and Voyager all airing in the same decade. Furthermore, that franchise finally got real competition from Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1. The UK, meanwhile, would be at a bit of a loss, what with their most famous science-fiction series getting canned in 1989 and not returning for 16 years, save for an American-produced telemovie in 1996. This did, however, give enough time for Doctor Who to reclaim a sizeable enough following on both sides of the pond (partly thanks to its syndication on PBS) as people began to reflect on the factors that led to the show's downfall in the late '80s, eventually culminating in the show's return in 2005.

Adventure Games hit it big in the mid-1990s; Strategy Sim games with orthographic landscapes were invented. People bought games in boxes with elaborate supplements and funky midi music. Or pirated off their neighborhood BBS, along with the copy protect page. "The 3D revolution" meant vector graphics, which meant "virtual reality" and Wolfenstein. Superman came back (albeit with a horrible game). Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Pokémon scared the Moral Guardians.

Games like Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, and the Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy series introduced Western gamers to the concept of the Japanese Role-Playing Game, and with the arrival of Final Fantasy VII and Pokémon in the latter part of the decade, the genre went mainstream: Pokémon became a worldwide phenomenon of unprecedented scale, while SquareSoft became a household name for any video game enthusiast, and their games came to exemplify the cutting edge of innovation in graphics, sound and storytelling in games for years to come.

Kids and adolescents played Street Fighter in the arcade leading to a Fighting Game boom led by Capcom, SNK, Sega and Namco. On the PC side of things, Doom helped make the First-Person Shooter mainstream and StarCraft was starting to conquer Korea.

However, when it comes to gaming in the 1990s, nothing defines it better than one phrase: "Genesis does what Nintendon't". Created for the Sega Genesis's initial North American ad campaign in 1989, this would mark the first spark in the inferno that was the fourth-generation Console Wars, with Sega's new 16-bit system butting heads with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, an attempt by Nintendo to stay relevant after having their late-'80s domination crushed by competition from evolving technology. With Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog and crass ad campaign preaching to teens that Nintendo was nothing more than a washed-up kiddie company, Nintendo would fight back with full-force, as both companies repeatedly attempted to outdo each other with various advertisements, technological marvels, and blockbuster titles as their fanbases picked fights on the playground over whether they were loyal to the slick black Sonic system or the boxy gray Mario machine. Despite a decade of brisk competition from Sega, Nintendo would end up winning this battle, with the SNES outselling the Genesis by 50%, or roughly 15 million units. However, both Nintendo and Sega would end up being blindsided by the sudden success of the PlayStation, Sony's fifth-gen revenge against both companies for backstabbing the consumer electronics company (itself another lengthy story detailed on the PlayStation's own page). Sega would find themselves in a mountain of debt with the failures of the 32X (a 32-bit stopgap add-on for the Genesis) and the Sega Saturn (the result of internal feuding and mismanagement); they'd release one last console at the very end of the decade before the inability to recoup their losses forced them out of the hardware business in 2001. As for Nintendo, while they remained persistent with the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube, not until 2006 would they be the kings of the hill again, partly due to their adherence to cartridges when CDs had already become the dominant physical medium in the industry. Overall, the '90s marked both the golden and dark ages for the two biggest names in the console market.

Virtual pets, Pogs, yo-yos, laser pointers and Beanie Babies were all the rage with kids. The Razor scooter and roller blades were invented and quickly considered two of the must have items, and the Discman began to replace the Walkman. In Japan, we saw a farewell to the Darker and Edgier Metal Heroes and Kamen Rider as well as Ultra Series as they went through an ice age while Super Sentai prospered and was beginning to be adapted for western audiences as Power Rangers.

Michael Jordan reigned, retired, and returned. Mark McGwire and other beefy dudes beat out Roger Maris as home-run king, totally legitimately. The New York Yankees "dream team" inspired Americans with good old-fashioned teamwork from 1997-2001. David Beckham became a star. The NHL introduced a ridiculous new rule which they would abolish after it brought extreme controversy in the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals. Fox Sports, after a sudden establishment following their snatching of the NFL rights from CBS (resulting in a Disaster Dominoes situation when they upgraded their affiliate base), introduced a glowing puck for American audiences. This also crashed and burned. The game's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky, retired at the close of the decade. American Gladiators, having debuted at the tail-end of the 80s, came out of nowhere and became a cultural icon with their superhero-esque Gladiators and determined contenders, as well as the frankly-bizarre events (dueling with giant Q-tips, rushing around inside giant metal hamster balls, etc.), with a British version becoming even more successful.

The Dark Age of Comic Books was going strong, and Rob Liefeld was at his peak of popularity as comics became gradually Darker and Edgier, before hitting the brick wall of the comics crash, while the likes of Kingdom Come killed the "Grim and Gritty" mid-decade.

AKIRA, originally released in Japan in 1988, became a surprise cult hit on home video in the West, ushering in an entire generation of anime fandom and helping, along with The Simpsons, to mount a serious offensive against the Animation Age Ghetto. Following in its footsteps, Ghost in the Shell (1995), Princess Mononoke, and Perfect Blue would go on to grab the attention of serious film critics the world over and signal the arrival of adult-oriented animation as an artistic presence. Meanwhile, Pokémon redefined "Cash-Cow Franchise" for millions of children (and adults) around the world. Sailor Moon gave girls strong female heroes to idolize besides Wonder Woman;^note  while introducing many a young boy to *ahem* "mature" sensibilities. From Barenaked Ladies: "Gotta get in tune with Sailor Moon, 'Cause that cartoon has got the 'boom;' anime babes, that make me think the wrong things." on the flipside, Dragon Ball Z redefined "action cartoon", and would be responsible for more kids taking martial arts than anything since The Karate Kid;^* while also introducing many a teenage girl to *ahem* "mature" sensibilities. Buff, handsome, sweaty men slamming into each other every episode... this series alone could be cited for the rise of Yaoi in the US. Ranma ½ became the most famous and funniest show to never be able to be shown on US Television.^* [adult swim] once stated, when they said fans could request shows, "And before you ask... NO RANMA! THAT WILL NEVER BE SHOWN HERE! EVER!!!" Slayers and Record of Lodoss War showed the D&D community that Japan was just as nerdy as we are. The Toonami Cartoon Network block was launched, bringing Anime to the viewing options of The Nineties children en masse. Even though it took almost a decade for it to be widely accepted as "mainstream" media in the United States (it was already mainstream in Latin America before that), and its influence should be obvious by now.

Back in Japan, the surprise breakthrough of Neon Genesis Evangelion shook the anime world with its dark Deconstruction of the medium; its unexpected success proved not only a Genre Turning Point but an outright Medium Turning Point, changing the landscape of televised anime forever. TV anime had up until Evangelion been a very mainstream affair, consisting pretty much exclusively of family-oriented shows and adaptations of popular manga, with only the more niche Original Video Animation market trying to push the medium's artistic limits. In Evangelion's wake a torrent of imitators sprung up, attempting (with varying degrees of success) to copy its visceral mecha combat, trippy plot, and unconventional use of Judeo-Christian symbolism. But more importantly, Evangelion also proved that more mature Anime First properties could be profitable on the TV circuit, leading to more original, experimental, and darker shows starting to appear throughout the last half of the decade, the most successful examples of which were The Vision of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Serial Experiments Lain, The Big O, and Now and Then, Here and There. Still, the new era of more experiential TV-anime started by Evangelion would first truly kick into high gear in the early years of the next decade, and the show's influence would continue to be felt as a constant background hum throughout it. Some argue that Evangelion's shadow even still looms over the anime industry in The New '10s.

The US saw what amounted to a cartoon revolution in this decade. The 80s has seen a somewhat increase in quality from the 60s and 70s, especially on TV, but there were still a lot of issues like Animation Age Ghetto and Limited Animation at play (not to mention that most tv cartoons were Merchandise-Driven, thanks to 80s deregulation). Towards the end of the decade, movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988 and The Little Mermaid in 1989 showed the world an unprecedented return to form, and reminded them that cartoons could be a serious art form. Disney also started releasing TV shows based on their classic characters, like DuckTales (1987) and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, which contained a level of quality never seen on TV before. With this in mind, the 90s saw both Disney and Warner Bros. get back to their roots. Disney started producing lavishly animated films again, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Their success was more mixed in the latter half of the decade, but still, there’s a reason people tend to call this the Disney Renaissance. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. decided to mostly stick to TV, meaning they made some of the most influential tv shows in history during this time. Under Steven Spielberg himself, Looney Tunes saw a big revival, and their zany style of humor carried over to the insanely popular Animaniacs. On the other end of the spectrum, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini started work on grim and gritty Batman: The Animated Series. Not only did it defy the age ghetto through its amazing writing and dark tone, but it was so popular that it started a whole animated universe of spin-off shows! Finally, as mentioned previously, Pixar came in to its own in the 90s after previously sticking to commercials and special effects. The success of Toy Story, as well as the hit shows Reboot and Beast Wars by Mainframe Entertainment, proved that CGI was the future of animation. The departure of Jeffery Katzenberg from Disney after The Lion King to found DreamWorks Animation only further solidified this idea, not to mention started a rivalry that lasts to this very day.

The Nineties politically started with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolving on December 26, 1991, and ended with both the 2000 Presidential election which saw the victory of George W. Bush and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 which left people so stupefied that it functioned as something of a cultural reset button. Pop-culturally, it started with the release of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on September 10, 1991, and in 1992 with both the rise of Grunge and the emergence of the heroin chic fad and ended with the increased rise of online sharing and when the September 11 terrorist attacks happened making this one of the longest cultural decades. To distinguish the era from the "Turn Of The Millennium", look for the twin towers of the original World Trade Center in establishing shots or title sequences of TV shows and films set in New York City. Of course, this is also true for the 1970s, 1980s, and the very early 2000s. One could argue though that the cultural 1990s instead ended with the rise of Boy Bands in 1997, the premiere of Total Request Live on MTV in 1998, the quashed Seattle rebellion of November 30, 1999, the bursting of the Dot-Com Bubble on March 11, 2000 and subsequent 2001-2002 recession (which marked a jobless turning point for the new generation) or in 2002 when MTV stopped playing music videos.

Because most media is Two Decades Behind, Fictionland ended up being set in this decade in The New '10s, and at the start of The New '20s this decade still looms large in pop culture.

The word "Nineties" means a very different thing in post-Soviet Russia, a thing much more cynical on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

Not to be confused with The Gay '90s, which were a century earlier. But these Nineties were probably just as gay.

See Also: The '70s, The '80s, the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s.

Now has a totally fresh Useful Notes page!

^<stop>:

Hammertime.

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Tropes associated with the 1990s:

Naturally, a lot of technology tropes due to the rapid pace of technology and the Internet:

Tropes

• The '70s: Nothing says the '90s more than nostalgia for the '70s.
  • Bellbottoms came back in style for a brief moment. Dazed and Confused, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, That '70s Show, The Brady Bunch movies, Scooby-Doo jokes, etc. The '90s itself, alongside with the '80s, subsequently became the nostalgic decade of The New '10s.
  • N-Trance basically built their career around sampling old Disco songs (now that America had gotten over the intense hatred of the genre that existed in The '80s) and remixing them with Hip-Hop and Electronic Dance.
  • A lot of Grunge acts were inspired by '70s hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
  • Earth tones became popular again in interior design and fashion.
• '70s Hair: Long male hair made a comeback in the '90s thanks to Grunge.
• '90s Anti-Hero: This era and many of its comics are the Trope Namer.
• '90s Hair: Exemplified by long hair that fits the Grunge look, or bald shaven heads to go clubbing, or with curtains. In the case of African-Americans, hi-top fades and box braids were the style.
• Action Girl: Arrived with a bang in this decade. Terminator 2: Judgment Day saw Sarah Connor undergoing Xenafication to become a huge paragon of feminism in the public eye. On television we got Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, as well as the Power Rangers increasing the female presence by adapting the male Yellow Ranger to a female to make it Two Girls to a Team, while the Sailor Moon anime became one of the Toonami block's flagship shows. Starting with Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Disney heroines became more proactive and the majority of them were now Action Girls too. It didn't necessarily translate well to film — as The Long Kiss Goodnight was a flop, as were Tank Girl and Barb Wire, but Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later turned the franchise's Final Girl Laurie Strode into one. The love interest in action movies usually would get in on the action too, even if only in a Designated Girl Fight or Action Survivor sort of way.
• All Animation Is Disney: Re-established by the "Disney Renaissance" lasting from 1989 to 1999, which returned the company to prominence over the animation industry.
• All-CGI Cartoon: The earliest ones that are still remembered today were made during this decade, with Toy Story as the pioneer for future CGI feature films.
• Animated Shock Comedy: Almost every animated series aimed for adults, even the The Simpsons, commonly used shock value to gear themselves towards older audiences. This genre is popularized by South Park, which debuted in 1997.
• Anime and Manga of the 1990s: Even with Japan experiencing an economic bubble burst during this decade, and a moral backlash against anime with ultraviolent and hypersexual content after the "Otaku Killer" incident, the Japanese animation industry still upped the ante with lunar-powered or card-wielding Magical Girls, mind screwing child-powered angel- alien-fighting mecha, multinational peacekeeping mecha pilots, hair-raising-powered cosmic guardians, genderbending martial artists, spacefaring bounty hunters, high school basketball, high school spirit detectives, a high school sleuth in a kid's body, a teenage seer sucked into a war torn planet, two girls trapped in an old Chinese book, a fire-wielding ninja, a giant sword-wielding demon slayer, and a kid destined to be a master by catching monsters.
• Award-Bait Song: Disney just loved this about this time. And who could ever forget "My Heart Will Go On"?
• Axes at School: This was the first time school shootings received national media coverage and was seen as an actual issue. While there had been school shootings in the United States every year since The '60s, it wasn't until the tragedies at Paducah, Springfield, and especially Columbine, that it was considered a real issue by the public.
• Badass Longcoat: Became really popular towards the end of the decade and leading into the first few years of the 2000s.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: It was in this decade that crop tops became less a specific, intentionally sexy look, and more shorthand for 'teenage girl'.
• The Bard on Board: The decade was noticeable with adaptations of Shakespeare's works, such as artistic takes of Hamlet by Kenneth Branagh and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann, both in 1996; derivations like The Lion King (based on Hamlet), and 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew); and even historical fiction him like Shakespeare in Love. No coincidence that much of his plays passed the 400-year milestones.
• Blaxploitation Parody: It became acceptable in the Nineties to make fun of (and occasionally homage) the Blaxploitation films of the Seventies.
• Boyish Short Hair: Pixie cuts were quite popular, and some daring women in the rave scene would shave their heads completely.
• Breather Episode: This decade is often portrayed as such in American works. With the Cold War finally ending in 1991, the United States was left to enjoy the longest-lasting period of economic expansion in its history (at the time), while suffering few-to-no disasters or military conflicts. As such, the '90s are nostalgically remembered in America as being a peaceful, affluent and overall nicer period of history, especially compared to what came before or after.
• Chupacabra: Although reports of farm animals drained of blood began in the 1970s, the term "Chupacabra" and the description of the creature as we know it originated in 1995, probably inspired by Species.
• Collectible Card Game: Started with Magic: The Gathering in 1993, and now everything has a CCG (no matter how short-lived).
• Covered in Gunge: Showed up in kids' shows and cartoons a lot in this era. Nickelodeon was famous for its green slime in these days.
• Crapsaccharine World: A favorite theme of pop culture of the decade (particularly science-fiction). Many of the decade's most popular films — like Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, Mulholland Dr., The Game (1997), A Beautiful Mind, The Truman Show, Office Space, American Beauty, Dark City and The Matrix — dealt with the artificiality and mundanity of middle-class life, and the implicit horror of seemingly perfect worlds. Notably, this came crashing down in a big way at the beginning of the following decade. After the one-two punch of the 9/11 attacks and the 2007 recession, artificiality and mundanity suddenly seemed like a nice alternative to terror and poverty.
• Cyber Punk Is Techno: Every cyberpunk film got a techno soundtrack during this era. Electronic Music and rave culture entered the popular lexicon throughout Europe, North America, and other scattered loactions throughout the world.
• Cyclic National Fascination:
  • With the growing popularity of the Grunge scene, a brewing coffee culture, and a rising tech and video game industry, Seattle becomes the forefront of pop culture starting throughout the decade.
  • Oireland, in response to the cool down after the The Troubles, and owing to the economic boom, and a blossoming Celtic revival, became a center of cultural attention starting in the second half of the decade. Music acts of a myriad of genres were everywhere such as Sinéad O'Connor, The Cranberries, B*Witched, The Corrs, Westlife, and Boyzone.
  • Chinoiserie becomes a hot topic in two waves. The first wave came in 1993 following the premiere of The Joy Luck Club and the death of Brendan Lee that also triggered the nostalgia of kung-fu films, and also brought forth Hong Kong stars like director John Woo and actor Jackie Chan to Hollywood. The second wave came with Hong Kong's handover in 1997 and the premiere of Disney's Mulan in 1998 with odangos, mini-qipaos, yin-and-yang, tiger and dragon motifs, and sometimes embarrassingly inaccurate tattoos of Chinese characters, becoming fashionable.
  • The 90s was also the decade of the anime boom, slowly gaining a growing fandom through sales of VHS tapes, then exploding into mainstream popularity in 1996 with Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokémon, followed by Toonami bringing other shows to promenence. By the end of the decade over 80% of young people between the ages of 14 and 35 watched at least one hour of anime a week.
• Dance Sensation:
  • Vogueing, coming from the black and Latin LGBT community in Harlem, became mainstream after the release of Madonna's "Vogue" in 1990.
  • The release of Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart" put western style line dancing into dance floors everywhere.
  • The Macarena. Everyone danced to it, everywhere, and no other dance craze has arguably come close to it since.
• Darker and Edgier: The early part of the decade could be best described for many like a bad hangover, with many disillusioned former yuppies finding emotional emptiness and the rest suffering from the ailing economy, and a new generation coming into adulthood with an appropriately pessimistic outlook. Pop culture also reflected this, with The Simpsons, for one, reflecting upon familial dysfunction, and the frivolous Hair Metal subgenre was driven out by the rise of darker sounding Alternative Rock in the mainstream.
• Delinquent Hair: The trend of young men's hairstyles combining spikes and dye. "Frosted tips", or spiked hair with the ends bleached-blond, became as much of a style icon of the late '90s as big hair was in the '80s.
• Denser and Wackier: Art and animation styles and techniques became more surreal and deconstructive in this era. Animated shows produced by Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon like Cow and Chicken and Ren & Stimpy respectively, with its exaggerated reactions, distorted art styles, Large Ham voice acting, and Gainax Endings, became popular in this era. Other examples were MTV's Liquid Television block with experimental avant-garde animation projects such as '"Æon Flux and Klasky-Csupo introducing Eastern European Animation techniques to mainstream TV, exemplified by grotesque, crude and surreal cartoons such as Duckman and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
• Edutainment Show: If kids shows in this decade were not about slime and grossouts, then they were these. In contrast to the celebrity-based animated shows and 30 minute commercial cartoons of the previous decade, and taking advantage of the certain laws such as the American Children's Television Act of 1990, which limited advertisements on kids shows, this decade focused on shows about teaching kids and teens on topics ranging from science to literature to morals to the environment to dinosaurs while also not losing the zaniness.
• Extreme Sports Plot: Ever since extreme sports like skateboarding, motorcross, surfing, snowboarding, and rock climbing became popular in the decade, shows that never done this before or don't necessarily need this got on with it due to its themes of new hobbies, passion, physical activity, sportsmanship, and teamwork.
• Everything Is Online: "If it exists you'll find it on the Internet" became a popular slogan.
• Five-Token Band: In this decade, more and more kids from different nationalities would group together in different shows or advertisements.
• Gyaru Girl: Famous Japanese youth subcultures such as ganguro took off during this decade, which featured tans, bleached hair and heavy chalky makeup as a Take That! towards traditional Japanese beauty standards.
• Hide Your Gays: Was becoming more of a discredited trope in this decade as more LGBT people started coming out, some of the most famous including Ellen Degeneres (who did it in an episode of her self-titled sitcom) and singer Melissa Etheridge, leading to a slow but certain wider acceptance of LGBT people. It wasn't all positive though — the majority of society still disapproved of gays marrying, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was established, and homophobic bullying reached brutal heights, culminating in the murder of Matthew Shepard (though on the positive side, his killers were sentenced to life behind bars).
• Hipster: Trope codification of early-'90s geek-chic, emulating beatniks and the Seattle culture.
• Hollywood Action Hero: Basically the same action heroes from the decade before, with one newcomer, Bruce Willis.
• Hollywood Thin: Thin was in for women this decade, as shown with the svelte supermodels in the first half and the nearly emaciated "heroin chic" look in the next half.
• Hood Film: The genre began in the 1980s but was codified in the early 1990s.
• The Internet Is for Porn: The '90s may very well be the 2nd Sexual Revolution because of this!
• Kids Love Dinosaurs: When Jurassic Park became a box office success and after Barney & Friends and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in 1992 and 1993 respectively, became massive hits with kids, everything from toys and books to underwear and television shows featured dinosaurs. This got so big that when the NBA expanded into Canada in 1995, one of the new teams was named the Toronto Raptors.
• Lighter and Softer: In America, due to the end of the Cold War and being before The War on Terror and the general affluence of the era, Nineties nostalgia tends to remember this decade as a relatively more stable and peaceful time, in contrast to the decades before and after it.
• Lingerie Scene: The underwear-as-outerwear trend started in this decade, with articles like slips, bras and panties designed for everyday use much to the chagrin of Moral Guardians and the delight of rappers and eager men and women.
• Little Black Dress: Especially popular in this decade.
• Merchandise-Driven: All those toy-centered franchises in The '80s were nothing compared to Pokémon's sheer amount of commercialization; the '90s were all about this at this point.
• Memetic Mutation: Thanks to The Internet, it could flourish.
• Millennium Bug: In which people considered New Years 1999-2000 a set date for The End of the World as We Know It until it actually (failed to have) happened.
• Minimalism: This style became the aesthetic force after the last two decades of over-detail and excess.
• Music of the 1990s: Despite MTV going off-track in the decade, music remained a powerful force of expression after the turbulence of the Cold War and the excesses of 1980s consumerism, with an angsty, no-nonsense attitude and voice (though that didn't mean lighthearted fun was out of fashion). Here we have the genres that originated and/or popularized in this decade:
  • Alternative Rock: Burst to the mainstream thanks to the success of Grunge.
  • Brit Pop: Bands like Oasis, Blur, The Spice Girls tried to create a second British Invasion.
  • Country Music: "The Class of '89" consisting of Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, and Travis Tritt brought alternative elements to country music, Billy Ray Cyrus brought forth line dancing whiled tuned in to "Achy Breaky Heart" to the dancefloor, and later in the decade, female acts such as the Dixie Chicks, LeAnn Rimes, and Shania Twain had crossed over country, rock, and pop over to an international scale.
  • Euro Pop: Continental bands, mostly Scandinavian bands, like Roxette, Ace of Base, and Aqua, with their sugary Word Salad Lyrics became popular in this era.
  • Gangsta Rap: The New Rock & Roll of the early nineties, causing quite a moral panic, most memorably when Charlton Heston protested "Cop Killer" at the Time Warner shareholders' meeting.
  • Girl Group: Girl groups almost out numbered Boy Bands in this decade. To name a few: TLC, SWV, Spice Girls, and En Vogue.
  • The Golden Age of Hip Hop: Arguably started in the 1980s but its biggest impact was the '90s overall. Multiple styles started to emerge from different regions outside of the east coast. A large array of indie hip-hop labels found success and countless highly regarded albums came out in these years.
  • Goth: Became mainstream in the '90s thanks to The Crow, Trent Reznor, Tim Burton, Marilyn Manson, Anne Rice, and Dead Can Dance.
  • Grunge: Exploded onto the scene in the early Nineties, then quickly collapsed onto itself and became Post-Grunge by the end of the decade. Nevermind was the biggest and most influential album of the decade.
  • House Music: Popularized by Madonna in her single, "Vogue", the genre remained popular throughout the decade, spawning sub-genres like deep house, rave, and acid house.
  • Intercourse with You: Many of the biggest hits of the '90s had sexual lyrics that were more explicit than earlier decades. The music videos themselves also featured more and more scantily clad women moving their breasts and buttocks around.
  • Melodic Death Metal: Crystalized into the Metal Scene around 1994 by the bands from Sweden and Finland as well as the English band Carcass.
  • New Age: Taking advantage of the post-Cold War era sentimentality and of the new experimentations of electronic music, "New Age music" that fuses elements of Ambient and World Music became en vogue during the decade.
  • Reggae: Regained popularity during the decade. Adding elements of pop, rock, R&B, and electronic, it formed reggae fusion. Panama and Puerto Rico gave their own spin by combining dancehall with Latin American and Caribbean music, forming reggaeton.
  • R&B: A more pop-flavored version became popular, spawning "urban pop".
  • Scatting: Always around, but it got a little boost in popularity.
  • Techno: While developed in Detroit in the mid-80s, the genre would really begin to hit its stride in this decade, finding popularity in the European club scene.
  • Trance: Originated in Europe in the early years of this decade and spread all over the world, spawning subgenres such as Goa trance in India and psychedelic trance in Israel. Some of the genre's biggest artists began their careers in this decade and are still going strong.
• Must Have Caffeine: While coffee culture had its waves of impact since The Middle Ages, this decade gave coffee culture a massive boost on an international level with shows such as Friends and coffeehouse franchises such as Starbucks making you want to crave a cup of espresso.
• Nostalgia Filter: For Western millennials, this decade's clear demarcation as "pre-9/11 times" means that it will probably never lose its luster for this generation in hindsight.
• Parodies for Dummies: The "...For Dummies" book series became popular and thus a subject for parody.
• Postmodern Irony: The '90s were when irony went from an unheard-of artistic stance to becoming a Dead Horse Trope.
• Real Is Brown: For an eclectic decade, the color palette of the 1990s went for a laid-back approach.
  • If any color palette in the early to mid '90s wasn't garishly neon, or a holdover from the '80s Memphis style, it was dingy shades of brown, gray, forest green, and rust, especially within the Grunge subculture.
  • Incidentally, shades of brown became en vogue due to coffee and the coffee culture prevailing on it.
  • Aside from brown and tan, muted jewel tones such as garnet red, mustard, teal, denim blue, electric indigo, and raspberry became the rage, while candy colors and fluorescent colors are picked by the rave scene.
  • As the new millennium was fast approaching, grunge colors were pushed aside in favor of shiny metallics like silver and chrome, pearlescents, bubblegum pinks, sunset oranges, icy blues, and digital greens.
  • In actuality, for the entire '90s, Real is Teal. From sports teams to paper cups, and from the default wallpapers of Windows 95◊ and Windows 98◊ to the translucent casing◊ of the iMac G3, teal, with the occasional accents of purple, was everywhere.
• Reality TV: Really took off in this decade, with reality itself (thanks to 24 hour news cycles, media circuses, and scandals) providing entertainment to the masses.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Probably one of the most infamous things about the mid-90s, coinciding with Bill Clinton's first years in office. Having a progressive (for the time) president in office at a time when gay rights, government-sponsored healthcare, and gun control became hot button issues meant that there was a significant backlash from conservative groups.
• Satanic Panic: The final years of panic around Devil worship and perceived "counterculture".
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Though the decade is remembered today in places like America as a happier and simpler time, the actual tone of the decade often slid back and forth between the two extremes.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Was a male fanservice trope during the first half of the decade with the shirtless vest look.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: After the '80s romantic portrayals of yuppies and corporate fun, media in the '90s focus on disgruntled and disassociated white collar workers, with movies being called "Cubicle films". 1999 alone is filled with cubicle films such as The Matrix, American Beauty, Office Space and Fight Club, that deal with themes of monotony in the workplace, cynicism of corporate life, and escapism.
• Trope Maker: Along with Trope Codifier, with The Internet and Video Games becoming a force in media, and not just mere fads, new ideas and concepts were brought by and catered to the members of Generation X and the Millennials growing up with it. Stock parodies include:
  • I See Dead People: Popularized by The Sixth Sense.
  • Kid Hero: While not a new trope, Macaulay Culkin as Kevin in Home Alone really got the ball rolling. The character and the film itself spawned other films that empowered children to do decent grown-up activities, or venturing into the great outdoors by saving the environment or the places around them. The films usually end with the kids stopping the villains by using their wits or with teamwork. Video games got in on the action with Ness and Red.
  • The Men in Black: These badasses in their nice black suits were popularized as heroes by Men in Black and as villains by The Matrix.
  • "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Popularized by Mission: Impossible (1996).
  • NOT!: The way to sarcastically end all jokes, popularized by Wayne's World.
  • Raging Stiffie: Following the creation of Sildenafil, better known by its genericized name Viagra in 1989, which was originally created to alleviate hypertension only to find out it alleviated erectile dysfunction, men were delighted, and sex comedies, and internet porn, followed suit when the drug was approved using the side effect in 1998.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: Popularized not just by the trope namer, but also Pulp Fiction.
  • The 'Verse: This is the decade where works with a Shared Universe started getting traction. X-Men: The Animated Series, Iron Man: The Animated Series, Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series had plenty of Crossovers, making them predecessors to Marvel Comics adaptations with such concept (which would really take-off the following decade). Super Sentai introduced the concept of having the Crisis Crossover between the current and previous year's team during the middle of the decade. The very end of the decade was when Angel premiered, officially launching the BuffyVerse. Concurrently, the Law & Order franchise's very first Spin-Off also premiered.
  • You Can't Handle the Parody: Popularized by A Few Good Men.
• Unkempt Beauty: A 70s trend that returned big after women spent the previous decade wearing heavy amounts of make-up.
• Vapor Wear: Another '70s trend that returned. Many women went braless or wore bras with material thin enough for nipples to be visible. Some even used fake nipples!
• Video Games of the 1990s: As video games became more sophisticated, more technologically and visually appealing, and more widespread; ranging from the arcade platform, to the home console, to the handhelds, to the personal computer; the industry became an inevitable force of media, spawning new genres and tropes with it. The era gave us:
  • 4X: The genre was popularized by the first installment of Civilization in 1991.
  • Adventure Games: All the rage prior to Doom and the triumph of the First-Person Shooter. Though really a carryover from The '80s.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: Developed in the '90s.
  • Console Wars: Practically began in earnest with Sega Genesis vs. Super Nintendo. Genesis Does What Nintendon't, anyone?
  • Fighting Game: Popularized by Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
  • First-Person Shooter: Pioneered by Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom.
  • Mascot with Attitude: Every annoying video game character made was this. Some of the best remembered include Crash Bandicoot, Jazz Jackrabbit, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Spyro the Dragon.
  • Pop Up Video Games: Video games introduced pop-ups in this decade.
  • Real-Time Strategy: Although the genre originated in the 80s, games such as Warcraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empires wouldn't have been popular if not for Dune II in 1992.
  • Rhythm Game: DanceDanceRevolution revolutionized this genre.
  • Simulation Game: The genre in its modern form came to be with SimCity in 1989.
  • Survival Horror: Resident Evil coined the term in 1996.
• Western Animation of the 1990s: Coincided almost precisely with this decade, with the debut of The Simpsons which catered adult-oriented entertainment in 1989, Nickelodeon's debut of Rugrats in 1991, the launching of Cartoon Network in 1992, and Disney starting their "Disney Renaissance" with The Little Mermaid in 1989 and finishing with Tarzan in 1999.
• Why We Are Bummed Communism Fell: After the USSR officially dissolved in late 1991, many factions in the West were left without a common enemy to unite against, and the value of NATO (originally formed to combat the Soviets) was soon called into question. Over in Eastern Europe, meanwhile, the newborn Russian Federation and the former members of the Soviet Bloc were left to pick up the pieces of the Soviet Union's downfall, leaving many people in the older generations nostalgic for the "good old days". Naturally, several works of fiction in the 1990s tackled the end of the Cold War: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which follows the drama of the Federation and Klingon Empire sueing for peace) went into production around the time the Iron Curtain was falling, and was released mere days before the Soviet Union dissolved. James Bond films made after 1991 picked up a Central Theme of 007 and secret agents like him feeling increasingly irrelevant now that the Reds were gone.
• "X" Makes Anything Cool: Alongside Xtremely Kool Letterz, media in this decade totally milked this naming convention to appeal towards the Generation X.
• Zeerust: With the new millennium fast approaching and computer tech accelerating by the minute, consumerist visions of the future in the late '90s and very early '00s were dominated by metallic or pearlescent paintjobs, Cool Code of Source or Matrix Raining Code, rounded and organic-looking plastic (often transparent to show off the complicated electronics inside), and CGI renders of reflective materials like glass, bubbles or water. Retroactively, this style of zeerust is called the "Y2K" aesthetic, after the infamous Millennium Bug.

Many things were created or existed in the 1990s:

• Anime and Manga of the 1990s
• Comic Books of the 1990s
• Fanfics Pre-2000
• Films of the 1990s
  • Films of the 1990s – Franchises
  • Films of 1990–1994
  • Films of 1995–1999
• Literature of the 1990s
• Series of the 1990s
• Music of the 1990s
• Theatre of the 1990s
• Video Games of the 1990s
  • Video Games of 1990–1994
  • Video Games of 1995-1999
• Early Visual Novels
• Western Animation of the 1990s

Advertising

• Absolutely Rose Street
• Big Bill Hell's
• Cartoons on Children's Rights
• Chick-fil-A Cows
• Companies Committed to Kids
• The Crash Dummies. Campaign began in 1985.
• Don't Copy That Floppy
• Dr. Rabbit
• Energizer Bunny
• Foster Imposters
• Got Milk?
• It's Happy Bunny
• It's Thinking
• Jack in the Box
• Jay Bush and Duke
• Julie Knew Her Killer
• Mr. Delicious
• Nintendo Power Promo Videos
• Obey Your Thirst
• Operation Blue Line
• Pepsiman
• The Pizza Head Show
• Segata Sanshiro
• A Sneak Peek at Pokémon
• Spacix
• UFO Kamen Yakisoban
• Ultraman Nice
• Vive Sin Drogas

Asian Animation

• 3000 Whys of Blue Cat

Comic Strips

• Spirou & Fantasio. Series began in 1938.
• Suske en Wiske. Series began in 1945.
• Blake and Mortimer. First appeared in September, 1946.
• Nero . Series began in 1947.
• Lucky Luke. Series began in 1947.
• Piet Pienter en Bert Bibber. Series began in 1951. Ended this decade, in 1995.
• Jommeke. Series began in 1955.
• Jan, Jans en de Kinderen. Series began in 1970.
• De Generaal. Series began in 1971.
• Douwe Dabbert. Series began in 1975.
• De Kiekeboes. Series started in 1977.
• Urbanus Series started in 1982.
• Gillesde Geus. Series began in 1983.
• Doonesbury (started in 1970) and For Better or for Worse (started in 1979) both underwent Cerebus Syndrome in this era, signaling the rise of depressing comic strips. Doonesbury even did a strip about the sobering end of the 1980s for New Year's day, 1990.
  • For Better or for Worse had a 1993 Coming-Out Story for character Lawrence Poirier. Readers were upset enough to send hate mail and death threats to the creator.
• Zippy the Pinhead. First appeared in 1971, went from 1980s Underground Comics to become a mainstream comic strip in the 1990s, suitably enough.
• Calvin and Hobbes started in the 1985 and continued its run to 1995.
• Pierre Tombal. First published in 1986, still continued in this decade.
• FoxTrot. Started in April, 1988. Continued its run through the decade.
• Dilbert strips seemed to be taped on every cubicle in Corporate America. Debuted in 1989 and continued throughout and beyond the 1990s.
• Outland, the Sunday-only 1990s Bloom County's Spinoff. Both it and the 1980s strip were created by Berkeley Breathed. Debuted in 1989 and lasted to 1995.
• The Wacky Adventures of Pedro. Character created in January 1947, started appearing in this comic in January 1990.
• Baby Zoe was born Sunday, January 7, 1990.
• Big Nate. Started in January, 1991.
• Madam & Eve. Started in July 1992.
• Migraine Boy. Started in 1992.
• Pluggers. Started in February, 1993.
• Mutts. Started in 1994.
• Over the Hedge. Started in June, 1995.
• Liberty Meadows. Started in March, 1997.
• The Boondocks. Started in April, 1999.
• Get Fuzzy. Started in September, 1999.

Eastern Animation

• Captain Pronin
• His Wife Is a Hen
• Krisztofóró
• The Seventh Brother

Fan Works

• Devil's Diary
• Dinobot's Old Technology
• Drunkard's Walk
• Harry Potter and the Man of Unknown
• Hearts of Ice
• The Heart, The Soul
• HERZ
• Hope Springs Eternal
• I'm Here to Help
• Marissa Picard
• The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle
• The More Things Change
• Neon Genesis Evangelion II: DELTA Invasion
• Neon Genesis Evangelion R
• The Nowakverse
• The One I Love Is...
• Ozma Sees Herself
• Phoenix Rising Concluded in 2000.
• Pokémon Master
• Rainbow Brite and the War of Darkness
• Revenge Road
• Rhyme and Reason
• The Rod Squad
• Role-Playing (Evangelion)
• Saint Irene Evangelion
• Shinji the Casanova
• Sith Academy
• Slayers Trilogy
• The Story of Silver Ketchum
• Superman and Man
• This Time Round
• Triumph of the Retart
• Undocumented Features
• The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1

Magazines

• Disney Adventures. Launched in October, 1990.
• Loaded, first of the lad-mags in 1994.
• Top Secret
• Nickelodeon Magazine

Pinball

• The Addams Family (1992)
• The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1993)
• Apollo 13 (1993)
• Attack from Mars (1995)
  • Revenge from Mars (1999)
• Back to the Future (1990)
• Batman (Data East) (1991)
• Batman Forever (1995)
• Battle Dome (1994)
  • Doraemon Battle Dome (1999)
• Baywatch (1995)
• Black Rose (1992)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
• Breakshot (1996)
• Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball (1991)
• Cactus Canyon (1998)
• The Champion Pub (1998)
• Checkpoint (1991)
• Cirqus Voltaire (1997)
• Congo (1995)
• Corvette (1994)
• Creature from the Black Lagoon (1992)
• Cue Ball Wizard (1992)
• Demolition Man (1994)
• Diner (1990)
• Doctor Who (1992)
• Dr. Dude (1990)
• Fish Tales (1992)
• The Flintstones (1994)
• Flipper Football (1996)
• FunHouse (1990)
• The Getaway: High Speed 2 (1992)
• Gilligan's Island (1991)
• Gladiators (1993)
• Godzilla (Sega) (1998)
• GoldenEye (1996)
• Guns N' Roses (Data East) (1994)
• Hook (1992)
• Hurricane (1991)
• Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure (1993)
• Indianapolis 500 (1995)
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
• Judge Dredd (1993)
• Junk Yard (1997)
• Jurassic Park (Data East) (1993)
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
• Kingpin (unreleased; 1996)
• Last Action Hero (1993)
• Lethal Weapon 3 (1993)
• The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot (1991)
  • Jack*Bot (1995)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1995)
• Maverick The Movie (1994)
• Medieval Madness (1997)
• Monster Bash (1998)
• NBA Fastbreak (1997)
• No Fear: Dangerous Sports (1994)
• No Good Gofers (1997)
• Operation: Thunder (1992)
• The Party Zone (1991)
• The Phantom of the Opera (1990)
• Pinball Magic (1995)
• Popeye Saves the Earth (1994)
• Red & Ted's Road Show (1994)
• Rescue 911 (1994)
• Rollergames (1990)
• Safe Cracker (1996)
• Scared Stiff (sequel to Elvira and the Party Monsters; 1996)
• The Shadow (1994)
• Shaq Attaq (1995)
• The Simpsons (Data East) (1990)
• South Park (1999)
• Space Jam (1996)
• Star Trek (Data East) (1991)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation {1993)
• Star Trek Pinball (1997)
• Star Wars (Data East) (1991)
• Star Wars Episode I (1999)
• Star Wars Trilogy (1997)
• Stargate (1995)
• Starship Troopers (1997)
• Street Fighter II (1993)
• Super Mario Bros. (1992)
  • Super Mario Bros. Mushroom World (1992)
• Tales from the Crypt (1993)
• Tales of the Arabian Nights (1996)
• Tee'd Off (1993)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Data East) (1991)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
• Theatre of Magic (1995)
• Twilight Zone (1992)
• Whirlwind (1990)
• White Water (1993)
• WHO dunnit (1995)
• The Who's Tommy (1994)
• World Cup Soccer (1994)
• WWF Royal Rumble (1994)
• The X-Files (1997)

Pro Wrestling

Wrestlers

• 2 Cold Scorpio: Debuted in the 1980s, became one of the top high flyers in wrestling in the 1990s.
• Abdullah the Butcher
• Abyss: Debuted in 1995.
• Brian Adams/Crush: Debuted in 1986, arrived in WWE in 1990.
• Chris Adams: Competed in various Texas promotions and had a small run in WCW.
• General Skandor Akbar: Continued managing in Texas indies.
• Captain Lou Albano: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996.
• Gary Albright
• Bill Alfonso
• Arn Anderson
• Ken Anderson: Debuted in 1999.
• André the Giant: Retired in 1992, died the following year which eventually led to him being the inaugural WWE Hall of Fame inductee.
• Kurt Angle: Made his WWE TV debut at Survivor Series 99.
• Yoji Anjo: Debuted in the 80s, became truly popular in the 90s.
• Brad Armstrong
• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin: Peaked in 1996 and became unarguably WWE's breakout star for the duration of the decade.
• Mike Awesome: Debuted in 1989, made his career in Japan in the 1990s.
• Giant Baba: Retired in 1998, died almost two months later in 1999.
• Bob Backlund
• Buff Bagwell: Debuted in 1991.
• The Barbarian
• "Outlaw" Ron Bass. Retired in 1991.
• Batista: Started as "Kahn" in 1997.
• Paul Bearer: The gimmick debuted in 1991.
• Brutus Beefcake
• Chris Benoit
• Big Show: Debuted as The Giant in WCW in 1995, winning its world title shortly after and became the company's youngest world champion at 23.
• Bam Bam Bigelow: Debuted in the 1980s, competed throughout the 1990s.
• Eric Bischoff: Started in the AWA in the 80s, rose to power in WCW in 1993.
• Steve Blackman: Started as a jobber in the 1980s. Officially launched his career in WWE in 1997.
• Freddie Blassie: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1994.
• Matt Bloom: Debuted in 1997, debuted in WWE in 1999.
• The Blue Meanie: Debuted in March 1994, the gimmick debuted in November 1995.
• Booker T
• Tom Brandi/Johnny Gunn/Salvatore Sincere
• Bobo Brazil: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1994. Died in 1998.
• D'Lo Brown: Debuted in 1994.
• Dump Matsumoto
• Mike Bucci: Debuted as Super Nova in 1992.
• King Kong Bundy
• Colt Cabana: Debuted in 1999.
• Don "The Jackyl"/"Cyrus" Callis: Debuted in Canada in 1989, arrived in WWE in 1997.
• Chris Candido: Started in the 1980s, first made his name in ECW and SMW in the 1990s.
• Carlito Colón: Made his wrestling debut in WWC as "Carly" during 1999.
• Stacy "Miss Kitty"/"The Kat" Carter: Debuted in 1999.
• Cheerleader Melissa/Raisha Saaed/Alissa Flash: Debuted in 1999.
• Christian: Debuted in 1995.
• Chyna: Debuted in 1995.
• CIMA: Debuted in 1997.
• Bryan "Adam Bomb"/"Wrath" Clarke: Debuted in 1990.
• Allen Coage/Bad News Allen/Bad News Brown: Continued competing in Japan and Canada and also worked as a TV announcer.
• Michael Cole: Debuted in 1997.
• Rob Conway: Debuted in 1997.
• Jim Cornette: Ran SMW from 1991 to 1995 and made his WWE debut in mid-1993.
• Christopher Daniels: Debuted in 1993.
• Bryan Danielson: Debuted in 1999.
• Barry Darsow
• Dawn Marie. Debuted in 1995.
• Bill DeMott/Hugh Morrus. Debuted in 1990.
• James J Dillon
• Nick Dinsmore/Eugene: Debuted in 1997.
• Doink the Clown: Gimmick debuted in October 1992.
• Shane Douglas
• Tommy Dreamer: Debuted in 1989, best known for his time in ECW in the 1990s.
• Kara Drew: Debuted in 1999, arrived in WWE as Cherry in 2007.
• Spike Dudley: Debuted in 1994, arrived in ECW in 1996.
• "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan
• Dynamite Kid: Finished out his career in Japan, with his final match taking place in 1996.
• Edge: Debuted in 1992, came to the WWF in 1998.
• Paul Ellering
• Nelson Erazo/Homicide. Debuted in 1993.
• Sid Eudy/Sid Vicious/Sycho Sid
• The Fabulous Moolah
• Ed "The Sheik" Farhat.
• Howard Finkel
• Ric Flair
• Mick Foley: Peaked in the final years of the decade, competing in the iconic Hell in a Cell match in 1998 and winning the WWF Championship three times in 1999.
• Francine: Debuted in 1995.
• Kazuyuki Fujita. Debuted in 1996.
• Minoru Fujita. Debuted in 1997.
• Jim Fullington: Debuted in 1989, best known for his time in ECW in the 1990s as the Sandman.
• Masakatsu Funaki: Debuted in the 1980s, gained his fame in the 1990s.
• Dory Funk Jr.
• Terry Funk
• Justin Gabriel: Debuted in his native South Africa in 1997 at the age of 16.
• Nick Gage: Debuted in 1999.
• Giant González: Debuted in 1990 as El Gigante, retired in 1995.
• Giant Haystacks/Loch Ness: Continued competing in Europe and had a 1-month run in WCW in 1996.
• Eddie Gilbert
• Glenn Gilbertti/Disco Inferno: Debuted in 1991, arrived in WCW in 1995.
• Duane Gill/Gillberg: Debuted in 1990, started the "Gillberg" gimmick in 1999.
• Glacier: Started in the late 1980s, gimmick debuted in 1996.
• The Gobbledy Gooker: Debuted, and died out, at Survivor Series 1990
• Goldberg: TV debut on September 22, 1997.
• Goldust: Started the gimmick in 1995.
• Chavo Guerrero Jr.: Debuted in 1994, arrived in WCW in 1996.
• Eddie Guerrero. Started off his U.S. career in ECW in 1995.
• Jillian Hall: Debuted in 1998.
• Scott Hall: Started in 1984, made his career with the Razor Ramon gimmick in 1992.
• Billy Gunn: Started in 1989, debuted in the then-WWF and became Billy Gunn in 1993.
• Volk Han: Debuted in 1991.
• Stan Hansen
• Jeff Hardy: Debuted in 1993.
• Matt Hardy: Debuted in 1992.
• Bret Hart
• Jimmy Hart
• Owen Hart: Died in 1999.
• Shinya Hashimoto
• David "Vampire Warrior"/"Gangrel" Heath
• Bobby "The Brain" Heenan Worked as a commentator for WWE until 1993 and then in WCW until it closed.
• Gregory Helms/Shane Helms/The Hurricane. Debuted in 1991.
• Curt Hennig
• Mark Henry: Debuted in 1996.
• Hercules Hernandez. Retired in 1999.
• Chris Hero: Debuted in 1998.
• Paul Heyman
• Ikuto Hidaka: Debuted in 1997.
• Brian Hildebrand
• Hulk Hogan
• Bob Holly
• Crash Holly: Debuted in 1989, arrived in WWE in 1999.
• Molly Holly: Made her national TV debut on Sunday Night Heat in 1998.
• Barry Horowitz
• King Curtis Iaukea. Had his last run as The Master of the Dungeon of Doom in WCW in 1995.
• Ivory
• Jimmy Jacobs: Debuted in 1999.
• Jacqueline
• Mickie James: Debuted in 1999.
• Marty Jannetty
• Jeff Jarrett
• Jason The Terrible. Gimmick turned up in Puerto Rico, Japan, and various independents.
• Chris Jericho: Debuted in 1990.
• Ahmed Johnson: Debuted in 1989, arrived in WWE in 1995, left in 1998.
• Paul Jones: Retired in 1991.
• Junkyard Dog: Retired in the early 1990s, died in 1998.
• Leilani Kai
• Kamala: Very active in Memphis, as well as Japan and in WCW.
• Kane: Debuted in 1992.
• Hiromitsu Kanehara: Debuted in 1991.
• Koji Kanemoto: debuted in 1990.
• Kanyon: debuted in 1992.
• Kendo Kashin: debuted in 1992.
• Frankie Kazarian: Debuted in 1998.
• Stacy Keibler: Debuted in WCW in late 1999 as Nitro Girl Skye.
• Tyson Kidd: Debuted in 1995.
• Billy Kidman: Debuted in 1994, arrived in WCW in 1996.
• Ron Killings: Debuted in 1997.
• Tsuyoshi Kohsaka: Debuted in 1994.
• Satoshi Kojima: Debuted in 1991.
• Aja Kong
• Konnan: Helped establish AAA, later going on to ECW and WCW.
• Andrei Kopylov: Debuted in 1992.
• Kurrgan: Debuted in 1989, competed a lot in Japan, Canada and elsewhere before arriving in WWE in 1997.
• La Parka
• John Laurinaitis
• Jerry Lawler
• John "Bradshaw" Layfield: Debuted in 1992.
• Jushin Thunder Liger
• Lioness Asuka
• Tiny Lister: Retired in 1996.
• Lita: Debuted in 1999.
• Lodi. Debuted in 1997.
• Steve Lombardi
• Low Ki: Debuted in 1998.
• Lex Luger
• Jerry Lynn
• Madusa
• Magnum TOKYO: Debuted in 1997.
• Balls Mahoney: Earliest confirmed matches were in 1992.
• Dean Malenko
• Tony Mamaluke. Debuted in 1999.
• Little Guido Maritato.: Debuted in 1991, arrived in ECW in 1996.
• Debra Marshall: Debuted in 1995.
• Rick Martel
• Sherri Martel
• Truth Martini: Debuted in 1998.
• Beulah McGillicutty: Debuted at ECW Hostile City Showdown on April 15, 1995.
• Shane McMahon: Debuted as an on-screen character in 1999, though he had been an anonymous ref going back to 1990.
• Stephanie McMahon: Officially debuted as an on-screen character in 1999.
• Vince McMahon
• Meng
• Marc Mero. Debuted in 1991, left wrestling in 1999.
• Hack Meyers. Debuted in 1990
• Shawn Michaels: Peaked in 1996 after winning the WWE Championship, then became the first ever Grand Slam Champion a year later. Seemingly retired in 1998, he came back to the ring in 2002.
• TAKA Michinoku: Debuted in 1992.
• Ernest "The Cat" Miller: Debuted in 1997.
• Mitsuharu Misawa
• Miss Elizabeth
• Mr. Fuji
• James "The Sinister Minister" Mitchell: Debuted in 1989, first break came in SMW.
• Masaaki Mochizuki: Debuted in 1994.
• Gorilla Monsoon: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1994. Died in 1999.
• The Fabulous Moolah: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1995.
• Carlene "Jazz" Moore: Debuted in 1998.
• Shannon Moore: Debuted in 1995.
• Pedro Morales: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1995.
• Don Muraco: He was a 2x NWA ECW Heavyweight Champion.
• Rey Mysterio Jr.: Debuted in AAA in 1992, worked in ECW for about a year before beginning his WCW run from 1996 until the company's demise.
• Yuji Nagata: Debuted in 1992.
• Chigusa Nagayo
• Manabu Nakanishi: Debuted in 1992.
• Bull Nakano: Debuted in the 1980s, had runs in North American promotions WWF and WCW between 1994 and 1996.
• Kevin Nash: Debuted as Master Blaster Steele in September 1990.
• Necro Butcher. Debuted in 1998.
• Jim Neidhart
• New Jack: Debuted in 1992
• John Nord
• Scott Norton
• Naoya Ogawa: Debuted in 1997.
• "Mean" Gene Okerlund
• The One Man Gang
• Paul Orndorff
• Bob Orton Jr.
• Shinjiro Otani: Debuted in 1992.
• Fred Ottman
• Alexander Otsuka: Debuted in 1995.
• Diamond Dallas Page: Started his in-ring career in 1991.
• Iceman King Parsons
• Pat Patterson: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996, and experienced a rebirth as one of Vince McMahon's Stooges with Jerry Brisco.
• Maxx Payne
• Brian Pillman: Died in 1997.
• Roddy Piper
• Terri "Terri Power"/"Tori" Poch: Debuted as a valet in 1988, made her in-ring debut in 1990.
• Lanny Poffo
• Al Poling/911: Debuted in ECW in 1994.
• Mad Man Pondo
• Bruce Prichard
• Prince Nana. Debuted as a wrestler in 1997.
• Psicosis: Debuted in 1989, first made his name in AAA.
• CM Punk: Debuted in 1999.
• Mike Quackenbush: Debuted in 1994.
• Harley Race: Worked as a manager in WCW until 1995.
• Raven: Started in the 1980s, gimmick debuted at the end of 1994.
• Reckless Youth. Debuted in 1995.
• William Regal: Made his US debut in WCW in 1993.
• Ron Reis/The Yeti/Reese: Debuted in 1994.
• Brad Rheingans: Retired in 1993.
• Rhyno/Rhino: Debuted in 1994.
• Stevie Richards. Debuted in the first-ever ECW match on February 25, 1992.
• Scotty Riggs. Debuted in 1992.
• Rikishi
• Road Dogg: Made his WWF debut in 1994 as "The Roadie" before eventually finding true success in the late 1990s by forming one of the most successful tag teams in WWE history, The New Age Outlaws, with Billy Gunn, winning the WWF World Tag Team Titles 5 times.
• Jake Roberts
• Antonino Rocca: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1995.
• The Rock: Debuted in 1996, peaked in 1998, and then became one of the most celebrated wrestlers of all time.
• Johnny Rodz: Working as a trainer and officially retired in 1999.
• Buddy Rogers: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1994.
• "Playboy" Buddy Rose
• Jim Ross
• Mike Rotunda/Irwin R. Schyster
• Jacques Rougeau
• "Ravishing" Rick Rude
• Terri Runnels: Debuted in 1990.
• Vince Russo: Started writing for WWE in 1997.
• Sable: Debuted in 1996.
• Sabu: Debuted in the 1980s, became an icon in ECW and Japan in the 1990s.
• Wataru Sakata. Debuted in 1994.
• Sumie Sakai: Debuted in 1997.
• Samoa Joe: Debuted in 1999.
• The Great Sasuke: Debuted in 1990.
• Tito Santana
• Perry Saturn: Debuted in 1990.
• Randy Savage
• Tony Schiavone: WCW's lead announcer.
• Dan Severn: Debuted in 1995.
• Ken Shamrock: Debuted in 1989, wrestled until he went to MMA in 1993, returned to wrestling in 1997.
• Shark Boy: Debuted in 1997.
• Iron Mike Sharpe
• Mike Shaw/Norman The Lunatic/Bastion Booger
• Katsuyori Shibata: Debuted in 1999.
• Jinsei Shinzaki: Debuted in the 1990s.
• Giant Silva: Debuted in the 1990s.
• Silver King
• Ron Simmons
• Sin Cara: Debuted in 1998.
• Sgt. Slaughter
• Elix Skipper: Debuted in 1998.
• Slick
• Norman Smiley
• "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith
• Al Snow
• Jimmy Snuka: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996.
• Dan Spivey: Debuted in the 1980s, was a regular in All Japan Pro Wrestling and had a brief career revival in WWE in 1995 as Waylon Mercy.
• Ricky Steamboat
• Scott Steiner
• George Steele: Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1995.
• Sting
• Devon Storm: Debuted in 1992.
• Lance Storm: Debuted in 1990.
• AJ Styles: Debuted in 1998.
• Joey Styles: Debuted in 1993.
• Kevin Sullivan
• Super Crazy
• Robert Swenson: Had his last match in 1996 before dying the following year.
• Tammy Lynn Sytch: Debuted in 1993.
• Yoshihiro Tajiri: Debuted in 1994.
• Nobuhiko Takada: Got his fame peak in the 1990s.
• Yoshihiro Takayama: Debuted in 1992.
• Kiyoshi Tamura: Debuted in 1990.
• Masato Tanaka: Debuted in 1993.
• Minoru Tanaka: Debuted in 1994.
• TARU: Debuted in 1996.
• Tatanka: Started in the Carolina indies in the late 1980s, had his one significant run in WWE from 1992-1996.
• Tazz
• Genichiro Tenryu
• John Tenta
• Hiroyoshi Tenzan: Debuted in 1991.
• Sylvester Terkay: Debuted in 1999.
• Test: Debuted in 1994.
• Bruce Tharpe: Wrestled breifly in the early '90s.
• Survival Tobita: Debuted in the 1990s.
• Manami Toyota
• Triple H: Debuted in 1992.
• Jumbo Tsuruta
• Ultimate Warrior
• Último Dragón
• Umaga: Debuted in 1995.
• The Undertaker
• Daffney Unger: Debuted in November 1999.
• Luna Vachon
• Vader
• Rob Van Dam: Debuted in 1990.
• Val Venis: Debuted in 1995.
• Virgil
• Nikolai Volkoff
• Sean Waltman: Debuted in 1992.
• Kimona Wanalaya/Leia Meow: Debuted in 1996.
• Jimmy Wang Yang/Akio/Yang: Debuted in 1999.
• Koko B. Ware
• Mikey Whipwreck: Debuted in 1994.
• Del "The Trooper"/"The Patriot" Wilkes
• "Dr. Death" Steve Williams
• Torrie Wilson: Debuted in 1999.
• Barry Windham
• Harvey Wippleman: Debuted in the 1980s, arrived in WWF in 1991.
• Alex Wright: Debuted in 1994
• Charles Wright: When he was Papa Shango and The Godfather.
• Yokozuna: Debuted in the 1980s, gimmick debuted in October 1992.
• Eric Young: Debuted in 1998.
• Mae Young: Debuted in the WWF in 1999 after a sixty-year career.
• Tom Zenk: Retired in 1996.
• Boris Zhukov: Left WWE in 1991.

Tag Teams and Stables

• The APA: Debuted in 1998 as The Acolytes.
• The Bushwhackers: As the Bushwhackers in WWE and various other promotions.
• The Corporation: Debuted in 1998.
• D-Generation X: Debuted in 1997.
• The Dangerous Alliance: Debuted in 1991, disbanded in 1992.
• The Dudley Boys: Gimmick debuted in July 1995.
• The Dungeon of Doom: Debuted in 1995, disbanded in 1997.
• The Eliminators: Formed in 1993, split up in 1997.
• The Four Horsemen: Briefly reformed in 1993, then reformed in 1995 and continued together until disbanding for good in 1999.
• The Headbangers: Formed in 1994 as The Spiders.
• The Headshrinkers: Debuted in 1985, arrived in WWE in 1992.
• The J.O.B. Squad: Formed in 1998, disbanded in 1999.
• The Kliq: Formed in 1993-1994.
• The Mega Powers: Re-formed in 1994, disbanded again in 1996. Hogan and Savage would occasionally team together throughout 1997 and 1998 as part of the nWo.
• The Ministry of Darkness: Debuted on the January 11, 1999 Raw.
• The Moondogs: Were very successful in Memphis.
• The Nasty Boys: Debuted in the 80s, were very successful in mid-90s WCW.
• The Nation of Domination: Debuted in 1996.
• The Natural Disasters. Formed in 1991, broke up in 1993.
• The New Age Outlaws. Formed in 1997.
• The New World Order: Debuted in 1996.
• The Oddities. Debuted in 1998, disbanded in 1999.
• The Powers of Pain: Were split up in WWE in 1990, briefly reunited in WCW in 1995-1996.
• The Public Enemy (Tag Team): Team debuted on September 18, 1993.
• Raven's Nest: Debuted in 1995, disbanded in 1997.
• The Road Warriors
• The Rock 'n' Roll Express
• The Varsity Club. Originally broke up in 1989, reformed briefly in December 1999.

Promotions

• AAA: Established in 1992.
• CZW: Established in 1999.
• Dragon Gate: Established in 2004.
• Dramatic Dream Team: Established in 1997.
• ECW: Established in 1992.
• FMW: Debuted in 1989, but made their biggest impact in the 1990s.
• Juggalo Championship Wrestling: Debuted in 1999.
• Kaiju Big Battel: Established in 1996.
• Michinoku Pro Wrestling: Established in 1993.
• SMW: Established in 1991.
• Toryumon: Established in 1997.
• UWF (Herb Abrams): Debuted in 1991

Events

• Armageddon (WWE): First event was held in December 12, 1999.
• Attitude Era: Started in 1997, it was a period when the then-WWF began to go with a bolder and more mature direction with their content, causing a resurgence in ratings after WCW had beat them to the punch for years.
• Backlash: First event was held in April 25, 1999.
• Bad Blood: First event was held in October 5, 1997.
• December To Dismember: The original ECW version was held on December 9, 1995.
• The Great American Bash: After WCW seceded from the NWA, the first event was held in July 14, 1991.
• Judgment Day: First event was held in October 18, 1998.
• King of the Ring
• Mass Transit Incident. November 23, 1996.
• Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWE
  • WWF/E Monday Night Raw: Debuted on January 11, 1993.
  • WCW Monday Nitro: Debuted on September 4, 1995.
  • The Montreal Screwjob: November 9, 1997 at that year's Survivor Series.
  • WWF/E SmackDown!: Debuted on April 29, 1999.
• No Mercy: Took place at a UK event in May 16, 1999; officially debuted in October 17, 1999.
• No Way Out: First event was held in February 15, 1998.
• Royal Rumble: Three wrestlers became two-time winners in this decade, in all cases back-to-back: Hulk Hogan (1990 and 1991), Shawn Michaels (1995 and 1996), and Stone Cold (1997 and 1998); Austin would eventually break the record in 2001.
• SummerSlam
• Survivor Series
• Unforgiven: First event was held in April 26, 1998.
• WrestleMania
• WWE Brawl for All
• WWE Golden Age Era: Officially ended in the 1993 King of the Ring.
• WWE Hall of Fame: Launched in 1993 and held until 1996. Relaunched in 2004 and continued since.
• WWE New Generation Era: Circa 1993-1997.

Miscellaneous

• Big Gold Belt: Was mainly used as NWA/WCW's World Title. It made its debut in the WWF on September 1991 when then champion Ric Flair took it with him after having a fallout with NWA, though WWF won't use it until a decade later. The original Cordovan brown strap would be replaced with a new black strap in 1999 (even though, by that point, the original strap had turned black anyway.)
• Grand Slam Champion: Shawn Michaels became the first ever wrestler to achieve this feat in 1997, both in the WWF/E and pro wrestling in general.
• Hell in a Cell: The match debuted during the main event of the aforementioned Bad Blood, but the most famous match is considered to be the one from the 1998 King of the Ring.
• Triple Crown Champion: A lot of wrestlers achieved this feat in the decade.
  • For the WWF/E, Bret Hart became the first wrestler to achieve this feat in 1992. He is then followed by Diesel (1994), Shawn Michaels (1996), Steve Austin (1998) and The Rock (1999).
  • For WCW, Ric Flair became the first wrestler to achieve this feat in January 1991. He is then followed by Lex Luger (also in 1991, July to be precise), Sting (1992), DDP, Goldberg and Bret Hart (all in 1999).

Radio

• See Radio of the 1990s.
• It was during this time that The Howard Stern Show started to become nationally syndicated and eventually became the highest-rated nationally syndicated morning radio show in most major radio markets the United States.
• Chris Evan's (in)famous BBC Radio One Breakfast Show from 1995 until 1997. Initially credited with "saving" the station (the hugely popular national station had suffered a drop in listeners following a serious shake-up under Matthew Bannister starting in 1993 in his attempt to re-position Radio One as a "youth" network following two decades of it being a "housewife's favourite"; Evan's show coincided with an upturn in listener numbers) he increasingly became egotistical, dismissive of BBC and general broadcasting guidelines and often took what many thought was a bullying attitude to his on-air colleagues. Things eventually came to a head when he and the rest of his staff refused to come in for a Friday morning show leading to someone else having to cover for him. Evans was subsequently sacked and his career took a long, very slow nosedive which culminated in several flopped attempts at TV "comebacks" in the 2000s. He has now reached middle age, has regained much (if not all) of his former popularity, and hosts the Radio Two Breakfast Show. He apparently regrets many of his past mistakes and behaviour.
• During this time, Rush Limbaugh became a nationally syndicated star of talk radio who gave the medium an ideological bent that was unchallenged until the middle of the next decade. (Limbaugh also was popular in the mainstream media for a period in this decade, including being given a television show that aired during President Clinton's first term.)
• This was the decade in which Shock Jock Howard Stern became the "King Of All Media" from his radio base in New York; he set the way for many imitators. (The radio show was also broadcast on TV for a time; something which even Limbaugh could not claim.)
• Neal Boortz began his show in 1993.
• Sherlock Holmes (BBC Radio), which began in 1989, continued until 1998.
• The third installment of the Star Wars Radio Dramas, adapting Return of the Jedi, aired in 1996 after spending a decade in Development Hell thanks to Reagan-era cuts to NPR's funding.
• Says You! began in 1997.
• Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me began in 1998.
• Phoenix (1954)

Rides and Attractions

• The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man (1999)
• Back to the Future: The Ride (1991)
• Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue (1992)
• The Cat in the Hat (1999)
• A Day In The Park With Barney (1995)
• Dinosaur (1998)
• Doctor Doom's Fearfall (1999)
• Doomsday (1999) (1999)
• Doug Live! (1999)
• Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls (1999)
• Dueling Dragons (1999)
• Dungeon of Terror (1991)
• Earthquake: The Big One (1990)
• The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad (1999)
• Ellen's Energy Adventure (1996)
• E.T. Adventure (1990)
• ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter (1995)
• Fantasmic! (1992)
• The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera (1990)
• Ghostbusters Spooktacular (1990)
• Hell's High (1998)
• Hell's Kitchen (Universal Studios) (1994)
• Horrorwood (1994)
• Hotel Hell (1997)
• The Incredible Hulk Coaster (1999)
• Indiana Jones Adventure (1995)
• Insanity (1999)
• It's Tough to Be a Bug! (1998)
• JAWS (initially opened in 1990, then shut down, reworked, and re-opened in 1993)
• Journey into YOUR Imagination (1999)
• Jurassic Park River Adventure (1996)
• Kongfrontation (1990)
• La Nouba (1998)
• Midway of the Bizarre (1995)
• Muppet*Vision 3D (1991)
• The Mummy (1999)
• The People Under the Stairs (1992)
• Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges (1999)
• Poseidon's Fury (1999)
• The Psycho Path Maze (1992)
• Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin (1994)
• The Slaughterhouse (1993)
• S.S. Frightanic (1998)
• Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996)
• The Timekeeper (1992)
• Tombs of Terror (1997)
• Toy Hell: Nightmare in the Scream Factory (1996)
• The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (1994)
• Tweetsie Railroad launched its Ghost Train festival in 1990, and it became a smash success and an annual favorite
• Twister...Ride it Out (1998)
• Universal's Horror Make-Up Show (1990)
• Universal's House of Horror (1995)
• Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular (1995)

Tabletop Games

• Alternity. Released in 1998.
• Atmosfear (1991)
• A Klingon Challenge (1993)
• Castle Falkenstein Released in 1994.
• Earthdawn: (1997)
• Heavy Gear (1997)
• Magic: The Gathering. Released in 1993.
• Millenniums End. Released in 1993.
• Rap Rat: Released in 1992.
• Settlers of Catan: Released in 1995.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Redefined the RPG industry in the early and mid-'90s.
  • Chicago By Night was its most famous supplement after Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
  • Vampire: The Eternal Struggle: Collectible Card Game based on the aforementioned RPG, released in 1994.
• Werewolf (1997) (1997)

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Parks:
  • Disneyland Paris opened on April 12, 1992.
  • Blizzard Beach, Walt Disney World's third water park, opened on April 1, 1995.
  • Disney's Animal Kingdom, the fourth theme park of Walt Disney World, opened on April 22, 1998.
• Action Park continued until 1996.
• The Howl-O-Scream event first began at Busch Gardens in 1999.
• Universal Orlando Resort:
  • Universal Studios Florida opened on June 7, 1990.
  • Universal's Halloween Horror Nights had its first year in 1991.
  • Universal's Islands of Adventure opened on May 28, 1999. CityWalk Orlando also opened on the same year.

Toys

• Beanie Babies were introduced in 1993.
• Bitsy Bears
• Furby, the scourge of the 1998 Holiday shopping season.
• Giga Pets
• Gogo's Crazy Bones: Introduced in 1996.
• LEGO Space, the evolution of the Classic LEGO Space line, started on the tail end of the '80s but came into its own early in the new decade.
• Littlest Pet Shop. Introduced in 1992.
• Mighty Max and Polly Pocket miniature playsets.
• Playmates Toys' Star Trek toyline. Notable for covering ALL of the franchise up to that point and for the sheer number (and detail) of the figures.
• Tamagotchi and related virtual pets.
• Tickle Me Elmo, a cackling effigy of Sesame Street's rising star, was to Christmas 1996 what Furby was to 1998.

TV Documentary

• David Attenborough released four series in this decade: The Trials of Life (1990), Life in the Freezer (1993), The Private Life of Plants (1995) and The Life of Birds (1998).
• The Kids Guide to the Internet (a "How To" guide for using the Internet) was released in 1997.
• Walking with Dinosaurs was released in 1999.

Web Animation

• The Banana Splits 1999. One of the first series of Web Premiere Toons added to Cartoon Network's website in the summer of 1999.
• B. Happy. One of the first series of Web Premiere Toons added to Cartoon Network's website in the summer of 1999.
• The God And Devil Show. Debuted in 1999.
• The Goddamn George Liquor Program, a 1997 cartoon series created by John Kricfalusi that was the very first cartoon made exclusively for the internet, and the very first to be made using Adobe Flash.
• Happy Tree Friends. Debuted in 24 December, 1999.
• Hidden Celebrity Webcam. Debuted in 1998.
• Starship Regulars. Debuted in 1999.
• Weekend Pussy Hunt, a 1999 Adobe Flash cartoon parody of the Film Noir genre, created by John Kricfalusi.

Webcomics

• Webcomics period, as the Internet first saw widespread use in the middle of this decade.
• Kevin & Kell. Started in September, 1995.
• Sabrina Online. Started in September, 1996.
• Goats. Started in April, 1997.
• Sluggy Freelance. Started in August, 1997.
• Newshounds. Started in November, 1997.
• Roomies!: Started on September 10, 1997. In-story it takes place from 1997 to 1999.
• User Friendly. Started in November, 1997.
• CoyoteVille. Started in December, 1997.
• The Cyantian Chronicles. The setting and original strip were created in 1998.
• The Class Menagerie. Started in January, 1998.
• Pokey the Penguin. Started in February, 1998.
• Freefall. Started in March, 1998.
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. Started in 1999.
• Women in Refrigerators. Started in 1999.
• Neglected Mario Characters. Started in 1997.
• Real Life Comics. Started on November 15, 1999.
• Avalon. Started in 1999.

Web Original

• Atheist Professor Copypasta: Originated in 1999.
• Claus. Launched in 1995.
• FunBrain. Launched in 1992.
• The Funday Pawpet Show. Started in 1999.
• The Legion of Net.Heroes, a superhero parody shared universe which is one of the oldest and longest-running online fiction projects.
  • The LNH also led to the creation of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup for superhero comics-inspired online fiction. It hosted several other shared worlds such as the Patrol, Omega and Academy of Superheroes. Other writing fora from this period include alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo and alt.pub.dragons-inn
• Neopets. First discussed in 1997, launched on November 15th, 1999.
• StarDestroyer.net. Launched in 1998.
• Diary of a Camper (1996). The first Machinima ever.
• Ill Bethisad started in 1997.

Works set, but not made in the decade:

Anime & Manga

• The first and second parts of 5 Centimeters per Second takes place over the course of the 1990s, the movie aired in 2007.
• 16bit Sensation: Another Layer was made and is set in 2023, but the main character frequently travels back in time to various points during the 90s, when bishoujo games were just taking off and becoming popular.
• Akiba Maid War: Released in 2022, set in 1999.
• Another: Originally published in 2009, anime aired in Winter 2012, begins in spring 1998.
• Ayashimon, started in 2022, is set in 1992.
• Black Lagoon: Manga started in 2002, anime aired in 2006, set in the early and mid 1990s.
• Blue Drop: Begins in 1999, manga started in 2004, anime aired in 2007.
• Chainsaw Man: Chapter 75 reveals that the story takes place in an alternate version of the year 1997. The manga itself began in 2018, with the anime debuting in 2022.
• Daimos takes place in 1999. It was mentioned that in 1995, the very peace conference that caused the Earth-Baam war took place, and this is further emphasized with the UN setting.
• Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated. began serialization in 2018 but takes place in 1998; its main focus is the two main characters bonding over Magic: The Gathering, which was becoming popular during that year.
• The Garden of Sinners: The seven chapters of the anime film series were produced from 2007 to 2009, and set in a time-lapse from 1995 to 1999. It's not meant as a period piece, as the original light novel was published online between October 1998 and August 1999.
• Future Robot Daltanious: Dr. Earl stated that him and Prince Harlin arrived to Earth during 1945, and set his cryo-sleep device to wake them 50 years later. By then, Earth has fallen to the Zaal's Conquering Alien Prince, Kloppen, and is a shell of its former self.
• God Mars: 1981-1982 series set in a futuristic 1999.
• High Score Girl began serialization in 2010; the story is set in the nineties, beginning in 1991 when Street Fighter II was released in arcades.
• Koi Kaze: In one of the last episodes, a note on a 20-year-old says she was born in 1975. The technology in the show also doesn't appear to correspond to when the anime adaptation aired (2004).
• The Place Promised in Our Early Days is set in an alternate 1999 where the Soviet Union never dissolved and it and the United States partitioned Japan after World War II. The short film itself released in 2004.
• Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Made in 1982, set in a futuristic 1999.
• Voltes V takes place in the 90s, with an Alien Invasion significantly reshaping history on Earth, and our main character's efforts to stop them.

Comic Books

• Blue Monday is set in the early 90s (1991-93), but published in the 2000s and 2010s.
• Fantastic Four: Life Story: The fourth part of the 2021 mini-series is set in 1994, 1996, and 1999.
• The fourth part of Spider-Man: Life Story (published in 2019) is set in 1995.

Fanfic

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: Most of the stories are set during the events of the actual books, except the ones which explicitly put the Animorphs in a different setting (like "What if the series was set in modern times?" and "What if they were all pirates?").
• "Calvin's Batman Adventure", a Made-for-TV Movie from Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, is set in a 1992 Batman comic, which Calvin deliberately picked due to his belief that the series went downhill after Robin was replaced.
• Cosmic Warriors: Begun in 2013, set in the early 90s.
• Dear Journal: I'm Crazy: The fic was written in 2020, but it takes place between the months of February and August 1994, though no mention is made to the popular culture around that time.
• Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami: "It was the nineties in America. Everyone was watching Friends and listening to Nirvana and Backseat Boys on records and driving motorbikes and wearing lever jackets everywhere and being all slick and watching films like Ghostbusters and Lord of the Rings! There was no thing as the internet yet so peeps had to download stuff from their TV instead."
• Day of the Broken Fang, a prequel to The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds, set in 1994 then Time Skip to 1999.
• Kitsune: Chapter 13 has a scene set in 1996.

Films — Animation

• The intro scene of Turning Red consists of photos taken mostly in the 90s the first of which is specifically from 1994. In one of the deleted scenes the setup of that aforementioned photo is shown.

Films — Live-Action

• 7 Days in Hell: Made in 2015, the two protagonists' backstory are tied to the 1996 Wimbledon.
• 8 Mile: Made in 2002, set in 1995.
• 1990: The Bronx Warriors: Made in 1982, set in 1990.
• All Eyez on Me: Made in 2017, with most of the movie taking place between 1990-1996.
• The Amazing Spider-Man Series: The flashbacks to Peter Parker's childhood and his parents' Death by Origin Story are set in 1999.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man
  • The Amazing Spider-Man 2
• American Gangster: Made in 2007, the very last shot of the film set in 1991.
• The Apple: Made in 1980, set in 1994.
• Aquaman (2018): Made in 2018, flashback to the eponymous protagonist's teenage years set in 1998.
• As One: 2012 film about the first time ever North and South Korea competed as one team during the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships, plus the prologue taking place a year earlier and the epilogue in 1993.
• As You Are: Made in 2017, set from the fall of 1993 to the summer of 1994.
• August Rush: Made in 2007, prologue set in 1995.
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: Made in 2019, set in 1998.
• The Best of Me: The 2014 film is set in The Present Day but also alternates to 1992.
• Billy Club (2013): Released in 2013, set in 1994.
• Black Christmas (2006): Made in 2006, last part of the prologue set in 1991.
• Black Hawk Down: Made in 2001, set in 1993 (sets the mood with a Stone Temple Pilots song).
• Blood Diamond: Made in 2005, set in 1999.
• Blow: Made in 2001, parts of the story takes place in 1990 and 1994.
• BPM Beats Per Minute: Made in 2017, set in the early ‘90s.
• Bully: Made in 2001, set in 1993.
• Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Made in 2018, set in 1991.
• Carrie (2002): Made and set in 2002, titular protagonist gets A Minor Kidroduction set somewhere in the earliest part of the decade.
• Carrie (2013): Made and set in 2013, the film opens with the titular protagonist's birth in 1995.
• Cast Away: Made in 2000, story set from 1995-1999.
• Chopper: Made in 2000, the epilogue is set during 1992.
• Click: Made and set in 2006, the protagonist travels back to his first meeting with his wife and the their dating years.
• Come Sunday: 2018 film set in 1998.
• Creed: Made in 2015, the prologue is set during 1998.
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Made in 2008 and is set from The '40s up until the early 2000s, but the important parts of the film happens from 1990 to 1997.
• Dallas Buyers Club: Made in 2013, most of the film is set in this decade after beginning in the mid-80s.
• Dark Phoenix: Released in 2019, but set in 1992.
• The Deal (2003), partially (made in 2003, set between 1983-1994)
• The Debt, partially (made in 2007 and 2010, set in 1965 and 1997)
• Definitely, Maybe, partially (made in 2008, but the movie is told during the events that transpired in 1992, 1994, and 1998)
• Destroy All Monsters: Made in 1968, set in 1999.
• Detainment: Made in 2018, set in 1993.
• The Dirt: 2019 Biopic of Mötley Crüe, the final parts of the film before its Distant Finale in 2015 set from 1990-1995.
• The Disaster Artist: Made in 2017, story kicks off in 1998.
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Made in 2007, set in 1995-1997.
• Drive-Away Dolls: Made in 2022, set in 1999.
• Erin Brockovich: Made in 2000, set in 1993.
• Escape from New York: Made in 1981, set in 1997.
• Everest: Made in 2015, set in 1996.
• The Eyes of Tammy Faye: 2021 Tammy Faye Messner Bio Pic.
• Fanboys: Made in 2009, set during the lead-up to the premiere of The Phantom Menace in 1999.
• Fear Street Part One: 1994: Made in 2021, set in 1994.
• The Fighter: Made in 2010, set in 1993-2000.
• Foxcatcher, partially (made in 2014, set mostly in The '80s but the conclusion happens in 1996).
• Get On Up: Made in 2014, the film Book Ends in 1993.
• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past: Made and set in 2009, the protagonist time travels to a pivotal moment in his life set in the first part of the decade.
• The Janjira incident in Godzilla (2014) takes place in 1999.
• Gotti: 2018 John Gotti Bio Pic.
• Green Lantern (2011): Made and set in 2011, but has flashbacks to the protagonist's adolescence set in 1993.
• Harry Potter films:
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Made in 2001, set in mid 1991 to mid 1992 for majority of the story except for the opening, which is set ten years prior.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Made in 2002, set in 31 July 1992 – 29 May 1993.
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Made in 2004, set in 31 July 1993 – 12 June 1994.
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Made in 2005, set in 4 August 1994 – 25 June 1995.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Made in 2007, set in 2 August 1995 – 17 June 1996.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Made in 2009, set in 1 August 1996 – 10 June 1997.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Made in 2010 and 2011 for Part 1 and 2, respectively; set in July 1997–2 May 1998 for majority of the story, except for the epilogue which is set in 2017.
• Hotel Rwanda: Made in 2004, set in 1994.
• House of Gucci: 2021 film set in 1995.
• i am sam: Made in 2001, story begins in 1994.
• I'm Not Ashamed: Made in 2016, set in 1999.
• The Informant!: Made in 2009, set in 1992-98 — although the ads made it look like it was set in The '80s or even The '70s.
• Into the Wild: Made in 2007, set in 1990-1992.
• Invictus: Made in 2009, set in 1995.
• The Iron Claw: 2023 Von Erich Family Bio Pic mainly set from 1979-1993, with the epilogue set sometime after Kevin Von Erich's retirement in 1995.
• I, Tonya: Made in 2017, set mostly during the lead-up to the 1994 Winter Olympics following Nancy Kerrigan's attack.
• Jarhead: Made in 2005, set during the Gulf War.
• Jobs: Made in 2013, partially set in 1996-97.
• Joy (2015): Made in 2015, set in 1990.
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Made in 2017, prologue set in 1996 (which was a year after the original Jumanji was released).
• Kill Boksoon: Made and set in 2023, the protagonist and the Big Bad's backstory set in 1998.
• Kings 2017: Made in 2017, set during the L.A. Riots in 1992.
• Knockout: Made in 2000, mostly set in 1990.
• Lords of Chaos: Mayhem Biopic set from their formation in 1987 to their downfall in 1993.
• Love & Other Drugs: Made in 2010, set in 1996 during the conception and hayday of Viagra.
• The Machine (2023): 2023 film set in 1999.
• Magic Beyond Words: The J. K. Rowling Story: 2011 J. K. Rowling Bio Pic detailing her childhood up to the release of the first Harry Potter movie in 2001.
• Mamma Mia! is rather squishy about the dates (the reference to "flower power" in "Our Last Summer" is particularly awkward, and Hippy!Sam and Headbanger Harry would have been separated by approximately ten years in the real world), but Donna's vaguely confused reference to Sky's website for the inn places it pretty solidly in the late 90s, when the Internet had become popular but a lot of people were still unfamiliar with it.
• Man of Steel: Made in 2013, flashbacks to the eponymous protagonist's teenaged years happened in 1993 and 1998.
• Marley & Me: Made in 2008, starts in the early 1990s and goes on to 2001.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe films:
  • Iron Man 3: Made in 2013, prologue is a flashback to 1999 in the eve of the new millennium.
  • Captain America: Civil War: Made in 2016, flashbacks to Howard and Maria Stark's last minutes leading to their murder happened specifically in December 16, 1991.
  • Black Panther (2018): Made in 2018. Prologue is a flashback to King T'Chaka confronting his brother in Oakland over cooperating with an Arms Dealer to steal Vibranium from their home of Wakanda in late April or early May 1992, during the LA riots.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Made in 2018, flashback to one of the Big Bad Ensemble's Start of Darkness happened somewhere during the middle or latter part of the decade.
  • Captain Marvel (2019): Made in 2019, set in 1995.
  • Black Widow (2021): Made in 2021 and set in 2016, prologue set in 1995.
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Made in 2021 and set in 2023, part of the prologue set from 1996-1999.
• Memorial Day: 2012 film set mainly in 1993.
• Metropolis: Made in the 1920s and set in the year 1999. As could be expected, there's plenty of Zee Rust.
• Monster: Made in 2003, the climax of the film is set in 1990.
• mid90s: Made in 2018, set in 1995.
• The Miseducation of Cameron Post: 2018 film set in 1993.
• No Time to Die: Made in 2019 (released in 2021), part of the prologue is set in the 90s.
• Notorious (2009): Made in 2009, but Biggie's last years was set in the 90s.
• My Dinner with Hervé: Made in 2018, set in 1993.
• The Old Man & the Gun: 2018 Forrest Tucker Bio Pic.
• Oldboy (2013): Made in 2013, prologue set during 1993.
• On the Basis of Sex: 2018 biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• Our Ladies (2019): Released in 2021, set in 1996.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Made in 2012, set during 1991.
• The Perfect Storm: Made in 2000, set during the lead-up to the eponymous storm in 1991.
• The Place Beyond the Pines: Made in 2012, set in 1997.
• The Queen: Made in 2006, set during the aftermath of Princess Diana's death in August 1997.
• Recess: School's Out: Made in 2000, released in 2001, and takes place in the summer of 1998.
  • The DTV sequel, Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade was released in 2003 and takes place in fall 1998.
  • The DTV prequel, Recess: All Growed Down was also released in 2003 and takes place in 1997 or 1998 for the framing material and 1993 for the kindergarten flashback segment.
• Remember Me: Made in 2010 and is set in 2001, but the film's prologue is set during 1991.
• Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City: Made in 2021 and is set on September 30th, 1998.
• Richard Jewell: Made in 2019, set in 1996.
• The Rookie (2002): Made in 2002, set during Jim Morris' Major League Baseball career during the 1999-2000 season.
• Shattered Glass: Made in 2003, story starts off in the middle of the decade concluding in Stephen Glass' fall from glory in 1998.
• She's Dating the Gangster: Made in 2014 and is set in that year, but most of the film takes place during the early 90s.
• Shiri: Made in 1999. Initially set in 1992 before the rest of the movies goes to 1998.
• Steve Jobs: Made in 2015, the film's third act takes place in 1998.
• Straight Outta Compton: Made in 2015, second half of the film takes place from 1990-1995.
• Sunny: The Past Arc of the Japanese (2018), Indonesian (2019), Chinese (2021), and Philippine (2024) remakes take place in the middle to later part of the decade.
• Super Dark Times: 2017 film set in 1996.
• Terminator: Dark Fate: The 2019 film's controversial prologue is set in 1998.
• A Thousand And One: Released in 2023, the first hour is set in 1994.
• tick, tick... BOOM!: 2021 film set in 1990 and 1992.
• The To Do List: Made in 2013, set in 1993.
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Made in 2023, set in 1994.
• The Turning is set in spring 1994 with the prologue featuring a news report on the suicide of Kurt Cobain.
• Venom: Let There Be Carnage: Made in 2021, prologue set in 1996.
• Vice (2018): Made in 2018 and set from 2001-2009, plus flashback during The Gulf War.
• The Void does not mention a specific decade, but most of the background details (boxy cathode ray computer monitors, a reliance on paper records and a mention that the hospital has only just started to convert all of its records to digital, a complete absence of mobile phones, and Carter's late-80s Crown Victoria cruiser, as the town had likely not gotten new cruisers in over a decade) would suggest either the late 1990s or very early 2000s.
• Vox Lux: The 2018 film's prologue is set in 1999.
• The Wackness: Made in 2008, set in 1994.
• A Walk Among the Tombstones: 2014 film set during 1999, with the prologue set in 1991.
• A Walk to Remember: Made in 2002, set mostly in 1998 (except for the epilogue which matches the film's release date).
• The Little Things: Made in 2021, set in October 1990.
• The Wife: Made in 2017, middle part set in 1992.
• Wild: Made in 2014, set in 1995.
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Wonder Park: Made in 2019, set during the late-1990s.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Made in 2012, the prologue briefly shows 1997.
• Zodiac: Made in 2007, epilogue set in 1991.

Literature

• America Is Not the Heart: published 2018, its main plot begins in 1990 and progresses until around 1993, but it has frequent flashbacks and detours that show its characters' past lives going back into The '60s and The '70s.
• Breaking Point (2002): Published in 2002 and set in the 90s, as evidenced by the mention of dial-up internet.
• The Cinderella Murder: The novel is set in 2014 outside of the first few chapters and a flashback, though the decade is significant to the plot. Susan, the titular murder victim, attended UCLA in the early 90s and was murdered on Saturday, May 7th 1994. There's some emphasis on the then-budding World Wide Web and associated technology, especially given Susan was studying computer programming at UCLA. Dwight Cook founded REACH the same year Susan died, which was originally built around a revolutionary search engine that made finding information on the internet much easier (although it was later surpassed by more advanced engines like Google).
• The Electric State takes place in an alternate 1990s where the United States has fallen due to the overuse of VR technology.
• The last few chapters of Fyra systrar by Solveig Olsson-Hultgren.
• Fate/Zero
• Fraternity: Released in 2022, set in the school year of 1991-1992.
• The Ghost Writer (Starts in 1960s, ends in 1990s)
• The Harry Potter books (set in 1991-1998). Although only the last four books fit the "Works set, but not made in the decade" category. They are:
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Made in 2000, set in 4 August 1994 – 25 June 1995.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Made in 2003, set in 2 August 1995 – 17 June 1996.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Made in 2005, set in 1 August 1996 – 10 June 1997.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Made in 2007, set in July 1997–2 May 1998 for majority of the story except for the epilogue, which is set in 2017.
• The Hole We're In: Released in 2010, the first section of the book is set from the early 1990s to 1999.
• I Think I Love You: The second half is set in 1998.
• Jacky Ha Ha, published in 2016 and set in 1990.
• Little Fires Everywhere, published in 2017, set in 1997.
• Never Let Me Go: Made in 2005, the buildup towards the story's end starts in 1994.
• Large parts of Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower (2004), the last two books of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, both released in 2004, are set in 1999.
• The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: Published in 2020, and is set from 1989 to the mid-1990s.
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Published in 2022, main characters Sam and Sadie spend most of the decade in high school and college and meet after a long time apart in 1998.
• Ubik (made in 1969, set in 1992) A case of I Want My Jetpack.
• Unimaa: Completed in 2021, set in December 1999.
• We Need to Talk About Kevin: Book-only (the film seems to be set contemporaneously to its release in the 2010s, although it's not made clear.) The book was released in 2003 and Eva writes letters in 2000, but they primarily look back on Kevin's childhood and adolescence, starting in the mid-1980s through to the late 1990s.

Live-Action TV

• American Crime Story:
  • The People v. O. J. Simpson
  • The Assassination of Gianni Versace
  • Impeachment
• American Horror Story: Murder House: Made and set in 2011, flashback to Tate Langdon's death happened in 1994.
• Answer Me Nineteen Ninety Seven: Made and set in 2012, half of the story takes place in 1997.
• Arrowverse:
  • A Season 3 episode of Arrow is dedicated to Malcolm Merlyn's Start of Darkness by showing flashbacks to his wife's murder in 1994.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: The main characters traveled to this decade quite a few times; twice (1990 and 1993) during the first season to prevent two of their members from being Ret-Gone. Twice in Season 3, first to rectify Zabesi's sacking around 1991-1992, then during the filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1999. They returned in Season 4, visiting 1995.
  • The second episode of Season 3 of The Flash (2014) has the eponymous hero and his mentor Jay Garrick have a heart-to-heart talk in 1998 during when the latter stopped the former from attempting yet another Cosmic Retcon.
  • Supergirl (2015): The second season has a flashback to Lena Luthor's inclusion into the Luthor family in 1997.
  • Superman & Lois: Several flashbacks to Superman's youth are set throughout the decade.
• Birds of Prey (2002): Prologue set in 1995.
• Blackbird begins in November 1996 and continues throughout 1996 and presumably 1997.
• Brand New Cherry Flavor is set in the early 90s, although a specific year is never stated.
• A Season 3 episode (aired in 2001) of Charmed (1998) a Whole Episode Flashback to events six months prior to the series premiere.
• The Crown (2016): Season 4 ends in late 1990. Season 5 covers 1991 to 1997, and Season 6 opens in 1997 and covers the late 1990s before moving into the 2000s.
• Cruel Summer: Season 1 was made in 2021, but is set between 1993-1995.
• Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story opens in 1991 with a series of Dahmer's murders and with his arrest. His trial takes place throughout the 1990s, and it ends in 1994 with his death.
• Daredevil (2015): The first season had flashbacks to the eponymous protagonist's childhood and Super Hero Origin that happened somewhere during the middle or latter part of the decade.
• Derry Girls, which started in 2017 and ended in 2022, is set in the '90s.
• Dopesick aired in 2021, but the first half takes place in the late 90s.
• Doom Patrol (2019): Flashback to when Cliff Steele became Robotman happened in 1995.
• Empire: Made in 2015, several important flashbacks happened in this decade, such as the imprisonment of Cookie in 1998, the peak of Lucious' music career, and the Lyon children's childhood.
• Encantadia: The childhood of two main characters happened in this decade. In the 2016 remake, the decade is moved to be when they were born.
• Everything Sucks!, which premiered (and was canceled) in 2018 and is set in 1996.
• The First Lady: 2022 Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Michelle Obama Bio Pic.
• Fresh Off the Boat, which premiered in 2015 and is set in the mid-'90s.
• Glee: A flashback to one of the main characters' childhood is set during 1997 at the height of Hanson's popularity.
• Halt and Catch Fire: Made in 2014 and the first three seasons were set in The '80s, but the fourth and Finale Season is set during the advent of The Internet.
• Hindsight was created and initially set in 2014, but the main premise is that the protagonist is somehow sent back in time to 1995. The show being aired on VH1, the soundtrack adjusts accordingly.
• Hometown (2021): Most of the drama is set in 1999.
• Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: Made in 2021, flashbacks to the two protagonists' childhood set somewhere in the first half of the decade.
• How I Met Your Mother: The flashbacks to the main characters' backstories happened around this time. Ted, Marshall and Lily's college days were from 1996-2000 plus their high-school years around 1992-1995, Robin's Teen Idol days were from 1993-1995, and Barney's Start of Darkness after being cheated on by his then girlfriend was in 1998.
• Ikaw Lamang: Made in 2014, the second and official protagonist of the Generational Saga gets A Minor Kidroduction in 1990.
• It's a Sin: Made in 2020, it starts in the early 80s and ends in 1991.
• Jane the Virgin: Made in 2014, flashbacks to the eponymous protagonist's childhood years happened in the latter parts of the decade.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Made in 2015, flashbacks to the eponymous protagonist's Dark and Troubled Past set around the middle parts of the decade.
• Lost in Space, made from 1965-68, was set (apparently) in 1997.
• Several flashbacks in Lost episodes.
• Manhunt
  • Manhunt: Unabomber
  • Manhunt Deadly Games
• Marry My Husband: 2024 series set mostly in 2013 via Mental Time Travel, with the protagonist and False Friend's backstories set somewhere in the middle of the decade.
• My Mad Fat Diary, made in 2013 and set (so far) in 1996.
• The Naked Director: Season 2 aired in 2021 and the story takes place during the first half of the decade.
• On Becoming a God in Central Florida: Premiered in 2019, story begins in 1992.
• Pam & Tommy: The story of this 2022 miniseries is set in 1997.
• Mocked in Portlandia, which is set in the 2010s but is all about Portland living the dream of the 1990s.
• Pose: Seasons 2 and 3 of the 2018-2021 series take place in the decade.
• Ang Probinsyano (2015): Much of the flashbacks to Cardp's childhood is set in this decade.
• Several opening flashbacks in episodes of Psych, starting in Season 5 (2010).
• Revenge: Made and set in 2012 onwards, flashback to the protagonist's childhood set in 1993.
• A Season 3 episode of Riverdale is a Whole Episode Flashback to the high school days of the characters' parents.
• Schooled was aired in 2019, but set in the 1990s.
• Show Me a Hero is made in 2015 and started in 1987, but the story concludes in 1994.
• Someday or One Day aired from 2019-2020, but the majority of the series takes place in 1998-1999.
• Space1999. Run from 1975 to 1977, set in 1999.
• Sydney to the Max: Made in 2019, half of the story is a flashback to 1992.
• That '90s Show: Released in 2023, this Sequel Series to That '70s Show in set in 1995, focusing upon Eric Forman and Donna Pinciotti's daughter, Leia.
• This Is Us: Made in 2016, but the flashbacks to the three protagonists' teenage years as well as the show's most important Character Deaths happened in this decade.
• Titans (2018): Made in 2018, had a flashback to Hank and Don Hall's childhood set in 1999.
• Tokyo Vice: Released in 2022. Set in 1999.
• The first season of True Detective takes place in two time periods: one from 1994-2002, the other in the present in 2012. The third season takes place in three: one in 1980, the other in 1990, the last during 2015.
• Waco: 2018 miniseries about the 1993 Waco standoff.
• Winning Time: 2022 Bio Pic about the Los Angeles Lakers during Magic Johnson's tenure from 1979-1991.
• Winter Sonata: Made and set in 2002, story begins in 1992.
• Yellowjackets: Made in 2021, plot concurrently takes place on both 1996 and the present.
• Young Rock: Dwayne Johnson autobiographical Sitcom than begins airing in 2021.
• Young Sheldon: Made in 2017. With the first half of the first season set in 1989, the rest of its run is during this decade.

Music

• "Unbelievable" by Owl City is a nostalgia-fueled throwback to when Adam Young was a kid (the 90s).
• "1999" by Charli XCX, a collaboration with Troye Sivan, is a huge nostalgic love letter to the decade, with lyrics referencing Britney Spears, All That, and Eminem, with the music video directly recreating some of its imagery.

Podcasts

• Brimstone Valley Mall debuted in 2019, and is set in December of 1999, with the first season ending at midnight on January 1, 2000.

Theatre

• The Lieutenant of Inishmore, published in 2001, set in 1993.
• She Kills Monsters, debuted in 2011, set in 1995.
• tick, tick... BOOM!, debuted in 2001, set in 1990.

Video Games

• The actual gameplay of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is set in the eponymous war in 1995.
• Back in 1995. Released in 2016, set in 1995.
• Barn Finders is a game from 2020 that's set in 1991.
• Daymare 1998 starts in 1998.
• Five Nights at Freddy's (Not directly stated in the game itself, but the prequel indicates the first game is at least set in 1993)
• The 20th Anniversary Edition remake of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, which was released in 2014 but retained the original's then-contemporary setting of 1993.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game takes place on Thanksgiving 1991, two years after Ghostbusters II.
• Ghoul Grind: Night of the Necromancer: Set in 199X, released in 2021.
• GoldenEye (Wii): 2010 remake of the 1995 film of the same name.
• The exploration game Gone Home is set on June 7th, 1995, but the story (told in retrospect) starts in 1994. There are so many references to the decade that it can almost be considered a Period Piece.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (early nineties, made in 2004, set in 1992).
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (late nineties, made in 2006, set in 1998).
• Harthorn: Set in winter break of 1991.
• Hiveswap is set in 1994. Joey's room in particular is filled with toys and decorations from the decade, like pogs and Lisa Frank posters.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number: Set in an alternate 1985-1991.
• Hypnospace Outlaw takes place in an Alternate History 1999, with the impending Millennium Bug as a plot point.
• Jurassic Park: The Game: The game features period-appropriate computers and other objects even when not rendering things straight from the film. Also, at one point Gerry jokingly compares himself to Olympic runner Carl Lewis, who would've been a household name in 1993 but became less well-known after his retirement in 1996.
• Kathy Rain: Set in September of 1995.
• Metal Gear : Set in 1995.
• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake: Set in 1999.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Ending set in 1995 during the aforementioned first game.
• The Medium: Set in October-November 1999.
• Not for Broadcast: For the remainder of the game, Part 2 of Episode 3 is set in 1990, and the finale is set at the end of 1991 (December 23). Episode 3 has sure gotten a lot of Time Skips lately.
• Resident Evil 0: Prequel to the entire video game series that began in 1996.
• The survival horror game Silent Hill 2 is set in 1993.
• Skyland 1976 is set on October 15th, 1991.
• The Silver Case is set in Japan in 1999.
• Smile for Me is implied to take place in 1994, as Dr. Habit is 37 and he was born in 1957. In addition, his final diary entry, in which he discusses his plans for the Habitat, is dated to 1990, a few years before the game's events.
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary: 2007 remake of the 1996 pioneer series.
• Yakuza1: The prologue takes place in 1995, the rest of the game takes place in 2005.

Visual Novels

• Murder by Numbers (2020) is set in 1996 Los Angeles. The setting is most evident by the characters' clothing designs, and SCOUT being a robot whose appearance is steeped in Cassette Futurism.
• Secret Little Haven takes place in 1999, and is about a teen coming to terms with being a trans girl and finding solace in online fandoms in the late 90s. The entire game has a Retraux style that emulates 90s OSes and Web 1.0 websites.
• Spirit Hunter: Death Mark is set in the '90s, before cell phones and the Internet are widespread enough to really help the protagonists deal with spirits.
  • Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II is set four months after the first game, so the same still stands.
• Spirit Hunter: NG specifically is set in '99, with Kaoru taking advantage of everyone's doomsday attitude re: Y2K to promote her occult idol gimmick.

Webcomics

• The Boy in Pink Earmuffs seems to be in this period, based on the presence of floppy disk computer games.
• Charby the Vampirate starts in 1994, eventually things progress into the 2000s and the current arc is set in 2004.
• The events of Furry Fight Chronicles take place in 1997, and some background lore about the events prior to the story take place in the same decade.
• The autobiographical Joe vs. Elan School begins in the mid-to-late 1990s.
• Nineteen-Ninety-Something quite obviously takes place during it. If the title doesn’t give it away, then the fact that it’s main Schtick is having its characters live through the decade, constantly reference it’s music, movies, tv shows, video games, news events, etc. might give that away.
• Superego is set sometime in 1995, possibly June 1st.
• [un]Divine is set in the 90s, with Daniel's birthdate of May 7, 1979 revealing that it's set during 1996 in particular.

Web Original

• Atop the Fourth Wall parodies the "extreme" attitude that pervaded superhero comic books in the 90s through the character of "'90s Kid."
• Don't Walk Home Alone After Dark: The Pine Creepers (released in 2022) takes place in the summer of 1995 (with the main character narrating the tale from the present-day). Notably, no one in the protagonists' rural town thinks much of letting three 13-year-olds go camping by themselves in the woods overnight, whereas these days parents would likely be much warier about doing so.
• StarDestroyer.net was launched in 1998 and grew out of a Usenet group dedicated to an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny between Star Wars and Star Trek.
• The CarnEvil Cult is a creepypasta from 2020 but the majority of the events in the story are stated to have taken place in the very late '90s

Western Animation

• Clarence: Ran from 2014-2018, set in an anachronistic 1998.
• Dave the Barbarian: While the show is set in a Theme Park Version of the middle ages, Ned Frischman is from 1994.
• "That '90s Show" (2008): The Simpsons episode, despite being a huge Continuity Snarl.
• Every Recess episode made from 2000 onward, which took place around 1997-1998 (Same goes with the 1999 episodes).
  • Same with Pepper Ann.
• Regular Show: Word of God says this show is in this decade, though there are many inconsistencies and it's mostly for nostalgia purposes.
  • However, considering all the crazy stuff that happens in the show, right down to the talking animals and objects that are the main characters, it's safe to assume it's a alternate reality version of the '90s.
• Skull Island (2023): The series is set in the MonsterVerse and set 20 years after the Vietnam War-set Kong: Skull Island, placing it in 1993.
• Thundarr the Barbarian: Ran 1980-1981, set in 1994.
• Vixen: The prologue happens around 1991-1992.
• X-Men '97: Being a sequel to the 90s animated series, this show remains in the same decade.

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"May the power protect you."

— Zordon, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

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