Sunken City

One of the easiest ways to indicate that a major, Earth-changing event has taken place is to show a city half-sunken, with buildings at unsafe and possibly nausea-inducing cants. This is sometimes the result of a Green Aesop about Global Warming, but more often it's just used to show that something is not right in the story's setting.

Given the natural fears that arise in an island nation, this happens to Japan a lot.


 * Tokyo in Ghost in the Shell.
 * Tokyo in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * Blue Submarine 6
 * Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
 * Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (in a strangely lighthearted way)
 * New York in AI
 * Sunken City (possibly the Trope Namer) in The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons, flooded not by rising seawater (it's quite far from the ocean) but by melting snow from the mountains.
 * New York in The Day After Tomorrow
 * Atlanta in Futurama, Played for Laughs of course. "The Lost City of Atlanta!"
 * The 1987 novel Drowning Towers (or The Sea and the Summer) by George Turner describes a future in which Melbourne was partially submerged in water. As the tops of sky scrapers are above the water level, they are still inhabited by the cities' poorer classes.
 * The namless ruined city in El-Hazard used to showcase the ancient destructive power of the demoness Ifurita.
 * In an episode of Captain Planet, the characters go forward in time and see New York underwater. And yes, it was a Green Aesop about Global Warming.