Insignificant Little Blue Planet



""How insignificant we are, with our pygmy little world!- An atom glinting with uncounted myriads of other atom worlds in a broad shaft of light streaming from God's countenance...""

- Mark Twain, The Bible According to Mark Twain

Earth? That old dirtball? Who cares about that boring, useless planet crawling with its clueless lifeforms?

The opposite of Earth Is the Centre of The Universe. Seems if not the above, then the main action is set on another civilized planet, and Earth is either radioactive, lost, forgotten, generally meaningless, or outright nonexistent in the work's setting. It's not on any cosmic Evil Overlord's Take Over list, nor is it covered in any Milky Way Geography classes.

Double points for throwing in a Planet of the Apes Ending.

If the people on Earth think they're the center of the universe, but everyone else thinks they are just an Insignificant Little Blue Planet, then you can probably expect some sort of conflict over this or, at least, a few words about how stupid humans are for thinking that way.

Sci-Fi literature tends to employ this trope more often than television and movies. Also a popular theme in Cosmic Horror Story.

See also: Earth-That-Was and A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away. Puny Earthlings usually goes hand-in-hand with this, for obvious reasons. Earth is also no longer the only planet subject to this -- compare Pluto Is Expendable.

Can provoke Fridge Logic when aliens who plainly evolved in an environment similar to Earth call it this—as if their homeworlds were any different.

Please do not add a Real Life section on this page, because it attracts unnecessary discussions (this trope versus Earth Is the Center of the Universe). Take It to the Forums.

Also, no aversions or kinda-sorta subversions here. Take them to Earth Is the Center of the Universe instead.

Anime & Manga

 * Despite a good number of its cast being from Earth, to the Space/Time Administration of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha it's just "Non-Administrated World #97." Nobody looks down at us, though, and hey, given how the TSAB monitors the whole freaking Space-Time Continuum, being in the top 100 ain't bad. The first two seasons did have Tokyo Uminari Is The Center Of The Universe, though, with both the Jewel Seeds and the Book of Darkness appearing in that city.
 * The serial numbers are apparently granted based on classification and order of acceptance (Mid-Childia is also referred to as "Administrated World #1").
 * In Cowboy Bebop, about half a century before the series, a disaster on the moon left a ring of moon rock orbiting Earth, with pieces regularly plummeting to the surface and causing problems for the inhabitants. Result: Mars is now the center of civilization, while Earth is a ghetto for those who couldn't afford to move off the planet.
 * Initially, the Data Integration Entity almost completely ignored Earth. It's mostly "inhabited" by creatures who actually have to use physical matter to interact with each other, something at best, slightly intresting. But then one Haruhi Suzumiya showed evidence of being capable of "Auto-Evolution" and they had to start paying some real attention. They still don't really care about anyone else on the planet though. (Yuki Nagato doesn't count.)
 * The primary motive of the Terran Cult in Legend of Galactic Heroes revolves around this trope. At one time Earth was the center of a massive colonial empire that spanned galaxies. However, Earth began to brutally exploit and repress the people of its colonies, which led to a bloody revolution. The colonies barely scraped by with a victory and Earth was left a hollow shell of its former self, becoming less and less significant as time passed by. The Terran Cult's plan is to use organized religion and terrorist actions in order to manipulate politics and history so that Earth is made the center of the Universe once again.
 * Furthermore, after they fail what little civilization left on Earth is destroyed. The protagonists respond to this with simple apathy.
 * In the final season of Sailor Moon, the main villain Sailor Galaxia, regards the earth this way. To the point, it's the last place she has in the Galaxy that she hasn't destroyed yet, which is the only reason she even bothers. Obviously she is proven wrong when the Senshi of earth actually beat her.
 * In Tenchi Muyo!, Earth is just an insignificant [unaware] colony/territory of Jurai, the actual center of the universe in importance. Earth is only ever actually relevant to the overall story at all because the Jurian Emperor got one of his wives here, and her son lay low here for a few hundred years.

Comics
"Test question: "What was the significance of the Erie Canal?" Calvin's answer: "In the cosmic sense, probably nil.""
 * Calvin and Hobbes:

"Flash: "Knew it! Johnny DOES have a chink in his armor! Bob and Terry's!" tosses carton of ice cream to Kilowog Kilowog: (Chomp!) "Delicious!""
 * In another strip, Calvin is looking at the stars with Hobbes and talks about how small and insignificant Earth is in the universe... then says: I wonder what's on TV now.
 * Numerous members of the Green Lantern Corps in The DCU look down on Earth--partly because of Hal Jordan's actions as Parallax. Many others have never even heard of the planet or of the species that inhabits it.
 * However, it has been revealed that.
 * They do however like the food.

"Flash: "Ahh, check this out, people's exhibit B! Old Yeller." tosses the video cassette to Kilowog Kilowog: (Chomp!) "Delicious!""
 * However later that scene this notion is made fun of.


 * Maybe Kilowog just has a taste for the bizarre?
 * Also Guy opens up a Warrior (his superhero, namely him, theme restaurant) that does pretty well.
 * Most of the alien races in the Marvel Universe view Earth in this way.
 * Even some humans. Nova rips into Tony Stark for many of Earth's superheroes (some of whom have cosmic-level powers) having been totally wrapped up in what was, at the base, a bureaucratic dispute in the United States while he, entire civilizations, and cosmic entities including Galactus were fighting to save the entire universe.
 * On the other hand, some aliens species fear earth and their heroes since they have defeated several cosmic threats. Specifically, one alien species are scared of earth because they are the only planet in the universe that has stopped Galactus from eating their planet.
 * Similarly, the universe where most of Marvel's stories take place is numbered Earth #616 by at least one inter-dimensional organization.
 * Several stories have subverted this by pointing out that this Earth is the most important one in the Multiverse. The numbering might be an intentional way of disguising its importance.
 * See Number of the Beast. There are conflicting stories about where that number for the "core" universe comes from.

Films
"Johner: Earth, man. What a shithole."
 * Flash Gordon. Ming and Klytus don't think much of the planet... Earth (stressing the word as the synonym for "dirt".)
 * In Battle Beyond the Stars Space Cowboy proudly tells everyone he's from Earth but no one has ever heard of it.
 * Beneath the Planet of the Apes ends with the  The somber voiceover man says,
 * In Battlefield Earth, the aliens stationed on our post apocalyptic planet hate it because it's boring, small and the gravity's too low. They use any humans they can catch as slave labor but the captain of the settlement says that he would much rather use dogs. At first he saw them as more useful, but they lack the appendages needed for certain jobs. Most of the aliens are convinced that humans have no language and are too stupid to learn whatever the aliens speak in.
 * Even the defense wasn't that pathetic; they teleported in a massive number of gas weapons in a move no race had survived in three universes of conquests.
 * Summed up nicely by Ron Perlman in Alien: Resurrection

"Centauri: Earth's in danger, too, isn't it?"
 * Which of course they proceed to make even worse by . Granted, they did so to kill the Xenomorphs, but still...
 * In The Last Starfighter, Earth is an underdeveloped backwater notable mainly for being neutral in the war between the Star League and the Kodan Armada and off-limits for mercenary Starfighter recruiters. That is, until Alex Rogan beat a certain video game...
 * However, it's not that neutral.

"Cochrane: Is that it? It's...so small... Riker: It's about to get a whole lot bigger."
 * The Rocky Horror Show. Implied.
 * The ending of Men in Black suggests that
 * In Star Trek: First Contact, we see how Earth transitions from this trope to Earth Is the Centre of The Universe, after Zefram Cochrane makes his first warp flight and sees the Earth from a distance:


 * In The Avengers, this is  attitude towards Earth, until the Avengers prove them wrong.

Literature
"MATTIA: Oh, dear God, and should I care? We are but on an invisible top, that a sun thread makes spin, on a crazed sand crumb which spins and spins and spins, without knowing why, withouth ever reaching its destiny, as if it liked to roll, just to make us feel now just a bit hotter, now just a bit colder, and to make us die, often regretting a string of trivial nonsense -after fifty or sixty spinnings, aren't we?"
 * The Trope Namer, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth's entire entry in the Guide is "Harmless". After 10 years of research, Ford Prefect has a revised entry to submit to the guide: "Mostly harmless." Ford initially submitted a much longer, painstakingly detailed entry -- part of which later appears in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, to his considerable surprise -- but nobody considered Earth to be important enough to warrant better than two words. Not that it matters, as Earth is dust. Of course, it turns out the Earth actually was the most important planet in the universe, but nobody knew that until it was too late.
 * It's worse than that: not only was the Earth insignificant, but it was located at the "unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy."
 * The Chronicles of Narnia: Our entire universe is insignificant and little, compared with all the others in the Wood Between The Worlds. Very little of the action takes place in our universe--most takes place in Narnia. And Heaven Aslan's Country has this effect on any universe, seeing as it contains perfect versions of all of them.
 * In Isaac Asimov's Robot Detective series, Earth is primitive and backward compared to the Spacer worlds. Later, in his Empire series, humans have spread through the Galaxy and no longer even remember which planet is the homeworld. Earth is one claimant, but most people don't believe it, as it's become a radioactive ghetto. By the Foundation series, no one even knows where Earth is anymore.
 * In Stephen King's Under the Dome, the town of Chester's Mill is shown to not be the target of any terrorist attack, supernatural event, or even coordinated alien experiment, but rather.
 * Iain M. Banks has The Culture roaming the galaxy in the 12th Century, and they're not the only ones. They don't know about Earth until one of their ships visits in 1977, and even then they decide not to contact us. Though Consider Phlebas has an appendix which calls itself part of a "Contact-approved Earth Extro-Information Pack" made in 2110, so presumably they came back by then. Dammit.
 * Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar books have a Planet of Adventure (the namesake Barrayar), though the characters often venture forth across the galaxy. Only one book out of nearly 20 takes place on Earth. However, the first chapter of that book, Brothers in Arms, states, "Earth was still the largest, richest, most varied and populous planet in scattered humanity's entire worm-hole nexus of explored space. Its dearth of good exit points in solar local space and governmental disunity left it militarily and strategically minor... But Earth still reigned, if it did not rule, culturally supreme."
 * In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, the namesake spaceship, en route from Point A to B, zips through the solar system and slingshots around the sun. Earth isn't even an afterthought.
 * If there had been any sequels, they would have involved
 * Taken to its extreme in the short story "Theyre Made Out of Meat": Earth is blacklisted due to the freakishness of its inhabitants. The narrators clearly don't even think of them as people.
 * The Sirens of Titan has the entirety of human existence
 * In Katherine Kerr's Polar City Blues, Earth has been abandoned after ecological collapse. Humanity has spread out to across the stars, but the Human Republic is quite insignificant compared to the two main alien power blocs, the Carli Confederation and H'Allevae Alliance.
 * In the earlier parts of Larry Niven's Known Space chronology, the Earth needs the resources of the (asteroid) Belt more than the Belters need anything from Earth, and both know it.
 * In the later stories and novels, humans native to the various Terran colony worlds see "flatlanders" (that is, people from Earth) as arrogant, overly-restricted xenophobes who think the universe revolves around their little blue mudball. The flatlanders in question see the colonists as quaint rubes who don't know enough to realize that the universe revolves around Earth.
 * In Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat novels, humans are all over the galaxy and their origin has mostly been forgotten. When the Rat has to go back in time, they're not even sure of the name: "Dirt, or Earth, or something" and dubious of its claim to be the ancestral home of mankind.
 * The existence of Earth is also considered dubious in E. C. Tubb's nearly endless Dumarest of Terra series, chronicling the Earth-born hero's attempt to find his home planet. The final stories make clear that a fan theory is in fact Canon:
 * In Mark Twain's Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, the protagonist finds out when dealing with the Celestial Bureaucracy that there are apparently many planets with intelligent species called "world", all of them saved by Jesus, and that our one is known as "Wart".
 * A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Humans have been out in the galaxy so long that Earth is merely a legend; the origin planet most humans feel emotionally attached to is called Nyjora - meaning New Earth.
 * In Frank Herbert's Dune series, humanity rules an Empire of a million worlds that stretches across the galaxy. Thing is, not one of those is Earth.
 * According to The Machine Crusade (written after Frank had died, so possibly not canon), humanity nuked Earth in a first strike against the thinking machines.
 * It's inconsistent in the main series. You'd get that impression most of the time (and maybe the common people on the streets don't know) but information about Old Earth is mentioned in the appendices as being the place where the Ecumenical Council created the Orange Catholic Bible, and Paul mentions it in the sequel (though his information is garbled through thousands of years).
 * On the other hand, the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers certainly should be expected to know the truth, if they bother to want to remember it, via their access to the female ancestral memories of the human race. Leto the Second, the God Emperor, most certainly knows all about Earth from his ancestral memories from both sexes. He knows more about Earth and its history, in fact, than we do today.
 * Well, let's talk about a certain page of Pirandello's "The Late Mattia Pascal". I'm translating from Italian right now, but it goes something like this:

"And turning there with the eternal Twins, I saw the dusty little threshing ground that makes us ravenous for our mad sins, saw it from mountain crest to lowest shore. Then I turned my eyes to Beauty's eyes once more."
 * If someone can provide a professional translation, that would be better, but that's the sense of it.
 * In Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Earth has turned away from science in the name of stability. Unlike most uses of the trope, it is portrayed as a Crapsack World on the single occasion anybody even enters the atmosphere, and nobody visits any of the cities.
 * In Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space series, Earth is only mentioned a handful of times and none of the characters ever go there. Much of the plot takes place around the planet Yellowstone.
 * In Walter William's Dread Empires Fall planets are important based on the number of wormhole connections in their system. Earth's unimportant enough that a character gets assigned there for punishment. The race who for a time managed to defend themselves against the Empire's expansion is the bird-like Lai-Own, humans got steamrolled over like nearly everybody else. It is mentioned that humanity's only contribution to galactic culture is pottery and the equally tempered tonescale.
 * In Dante's Paradisio, he makes this observation in Canto 22 after entering the Eighth Sphere of Heaven:


 * In the Animorphs, the Andalites basically view Earth this way, as they continually refuse to send aid against the Yeerk invasion. It's the Yeerks, actually, who realize that Humans Are Special...in that they make the perfect race to be conquered.
 * Subverted to hell and gone in John D. MacDonald's Ballroom of the Skies. The galactic government deliberately keeps Earth impoverished and war-torn... because that toughens Earthpeople spiritually to the point that they make good recruits -- to run the galactic government. Now you know why Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, and Yitzhak Rabin were assassinated: they might have brought real, lasting peace to Earth.
 * Rebecca Ore's Being Alien trilogy makes Earth this by default because it portrays aliens as "just folks". The main concern for the Federation is that humans are violent xenophobic/philic flip-flops.
 * Older Than Feudalism: The Bible sometimes invokes this trope, at least in the New Testament. The heavens are the glorious abode of God and His angels, where everyone lives forever, where as Earth is a degenerate realm of dirt and sin where all who trod upon it are destined to die after a handful of miserable decades.

Live-Action TV
"Death: This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that’s barely out of its diapers. I’m old, Dean. Very old. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you."
 * Supernatural. Death, after Dean tries to snark at him, gives him the speech:

"Naomi: "Mom thinks I need to learn more about Earth." Seven: "I see. And does studying this image increase your desire to go there?" Naomi: "Not really." Seven: "I concur. It is unremarkable.""
 * Finding Earth may be a big deal to the crew of the Red Dwarf, but most of the galaxy apparently lost interest in it ages ago. The book series takes it a step further by revealing it was eventually selected to be the solar system's landfill.
 * Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda sci-fi TV series: Earth, the origin of the human race, used to be part of the All Systems Commonwealth (an empire spanning three galaxies), but it was just one planet among many, the Commonwealh founded and run mostly by an enigmatic race of aliens. After the fall of the Commonwealth, Earth was taken over by the Nietzscheans and its people enslaved and forced into gulags for cheap labor, and the planet was invaded by the Magog several times. Earth became a Crapsack World, and no-one in the rest of the universe cared, even after the restoration and rebirth of the Commonwealth 2.0.
 * And then finally,
 * Stargate SG-1 starts out this way - Earth is just a source of slave labor for an interstellar alien civilization. After the U.S. Air Force kills a few Goa'uld, they have it in for us, but Earth is still just one human-populated planet among many, and not the most technologically advanced, nor the only one to rebel. However, it's eventually revealed that the Ancients are almost identical to humans and that's because they evolved on Earth millions of years ago. The Ancients were allies of the Asgard and created most of the technology the Goa'uld rely on, so it seems Earth Is the Center of the Universe after all.
 * The spinoff, Stargate Atlantis, makes Earth a main target of the villains in the pilot episode as the Wraith's first reaction to finding out about Earth and its astonishingly huge human population is "feast!".
 * In Star Trek: Voyager Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman are determined not to share the crews' ridiculous emotional attachment to a planet they've never seen in person.


 * Even among the human crew members those actually native to Earth were a minority.
 * Return to Earth meant return to the Federation, and thus, return home. Many of the crew (and not a small number of the adopted Maquis) no doubt found this signifcant in some way, shape or form.
 * The aliens of 3rd Rock from the Sun regarded Earth like this until they discovered that Humans Are Special.
 * The theme of an entire season of Lexx... beginning with the episode "Little Blue Planet."
 * Subverted; Earth is insignificant to the main characters, who find it to be incredibly backwater largely because the technology level requires a giant rocket ship just to reach the moon (compared to their moth shuttles that flap wings and have tiny jets for vacuum travel) and also because the society they come from is so ridiculously different that they can't comprehend Earth cultures at all. However, in the series' cosmology, Earth is actually important; it's the last refuge.
 * The new Battlestar Galactica (and the old one for that matter) centers around a journey across the cosmos to find the legendary planet known as "Earth". Earth is built up to almost mythical status over the course of the series partly due to the fact that perfect habitable planets are few and far between in the BSG universe (never mind that the series starts out in a set of four solar systems where there are, collectively 12 of 'em) and every almost-Earth-but-not-quite planet turns out to be a Crapsack World. When they finally find Earth.
 * Seen many times in the run of Doctor Who by a wide variety of alien races. To the Sontarans, Earth is another front to win in their war against the Rutans. To the Cybermen, Earth is another planet to harvest stock from. To the Daleks, Earth has just gotta go. The only reason it's still in existence is because the Doctor happens to be fond of it.
 * Of course, at the same time, Earth seems like the center of the universe. Its the favourite planet of the most famous Time Lord. Its right on a rift in space-time. Its the exact shape needed to make a reality bomb (one of 27, anyway). Its primary species, the humans, will one day become the most widely spread groups in the universe, lasting right until it is destroyed. So played straight and subverted.
 * Clyde lampshades this in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. After hearing yet another alien call earth insignificant, Clyde says, "Y'know, a planet could start to get a complex."

Tabletop Games

 * A somewhat obscure example: In the out of print RPG Manhunter, the Earth is a polluted husk and all of its cultural sites have been hijacked by the Terran (offworld human) race and removed to the new Terran homeworld, called (with little imagination) Terra. The Earthers are none too pleased by this.
 * Warhammer 40000 either plays this straight or inverts it depending on which faction is in play. To the humans, Earth is Holy Terra, the holy of holies, the motherworld, and home of the God-Emperor. Pilgrims spend lifetimes waiting in line to land on its sacred soil. However, for those not of the Imperium, Holy Terra is only important because of its importance to the Imperium; if it weren't so critical to enemy morale, no one would care. As it is, it's probable that the Necrons and Orks don't care anyway (because they're too mysterious and too stupid, respectively). (The Tyrannids, however, are homing in on Earth specifically because they're drawn by the Astronomican. In WH40k, it sucks to be significant.)
 * In Traveller when they first meet the Terrans think Earth Is the Center of the Universe and the Vilani think that Earth is an Insignificant Little Blue Planet. After they spend two hundred years arguing the point it is finally agreed that Earth Is the Center of the Universe because after all Terrans are warriors, and Asskicking Equals Authority.

Video Games
"Durandal: By Pfhor standards, Earth is a poorly defended low technology world, populated by billions of potential slaves."
 * In the Star Control series of games, Earth is just one of several planets that have banded together to fight the Ur-Quan. By the time of Star Control 2, Earth finds itself defeated and enslaved along with the rest of its allies. Freeing it may be a big deal to the player (as it's his home and all), but ultimately nothing makes its liberation any more important that that of dozens of other planets the Ur-Quan have conquered. In fact, to win the game, other worlds must get priority to free up stocks of Lost Technology to use against the Ur-Quan.
 * Though in terms of gameplay, the trope is averted. Unless you're doing a no-starbase run of the game, Earth's space station is the only place to upgrade your ship, buy new ships (though you can find some elsewhere), get a special escape ability that allows you to run from combat. Basically, in a normal playthrough, you will come back there a lot and often.
 * In Colony Wars, Earth is the Insignificant Little Blue Planet that doesn't realize it is. It's nothing more than a meaningless drain on the colonies, but uses its military power to rule them by force and require them to sustain it... thus provoking the namesake Colony Wars.
 * Spore: As an Easter egg, Maxis included our own solar system in the galaxy, including Earth. However, aside from being in one NASA presentation and part of two achievements, the planet itself is pointless and has a T1 incomplete atmosphere (the lowest inhabitable atmosphere possible), making it even more insignificant that many other insignificant planets outside of novelty. To make things even worse, one of those achievements is gained for blowing it up. Hilariously, the achievement is called "Oh, the humanity!"
 * Mass Effect, to an extent--Earth is important to humanity, culturally, but otherwise has little interest and less relevance on the galactic stage--the Systems Alliance capital is a massive Space Station in the Arcturus system. The player can select the Earthborn origin for Shepard, the protagonist, in which case he/she is an orphan who grew up on the streets of Earth's slums...
 * The codex entry states that the planet is still home to the mass of humanity, the biggest human colony is only 4.4 million strong. Earth is heavily overpopulated as well, and humans are looked down on by other Citadel species for still having things like homelessness, especially on the homeworld.
 * It's also an industrial and scientific powerhouse: half the weapons manufacturers in the game are human, the Systems Alliance Navy is one of the largest and most powerful within Citadel space, medi-gel was created by a human corporation, carriers were a human innovation, and the most advanced ship in the galaxy -- the Normandy -- is a predominately human vessel.
 * Universe At War, Earth would had been on the next to be struck by the Hierarchy's Purfier (aka a Planet Buster meant to collect materials for the war machine) if it wasn't a Plan to destroy the Novus.
 * Earth, and the entire Milky Way Galaxy for that matter, vanished from existence in the Xenosaga universe some 4,000 years before the start of the trilogy and is referred to almost in mythological terms as "Lost Jerusalem", the long-forgotten homeworld of the human race, which has now colonized at least three separate galaxies thanks to the entire universe being devoid of other intelligent life. Getting back to Earth is a key part of a few of the villains' plots, but by-and-large humanity has forgotten about it except as a piece of trivial history.
 * Marathon Trilogy:

Webcomics

 * In Killroy and Tina, aliens consider Earth's only natural resource to be pornography and wonder what could have made Killroy travel there.
 * In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, the Nemesites consider Earth a nature preserve, with humans as part of the local wildlife.
 * In Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire, When the leaders of the human race caught wind of a plan to atomize Earth to find the Winslow, they had a minor Heroic BSOD. Not becasue the Earth was destroyed, but because they realized that humanity had expanded so much as a species that their homeworld had become expendable.

Web Original

 * Tech Infantry, especially in later seasons, when Earth has been devastated by an asteroid strike, abandoned, partially re-colonized by rebels against the now innacurately-named Earth Federation, then effectively destroyed. Mars and the asteroid belt remain important industrial centers, but Earth is a burnt-out cinder whose top several miles of crust melted to magma when the Moon was blown up and the fragments rained down over several years. The Earth Federation moves its capital to the garden planet of Avalon, then to Wilke's Star, and pretty much never looks back.
 * Although Earth is physically the approximate center of the terragen sphere in Orion's Arm, since expansion in any direction is limited by light speed, it isn't really very important any more. Ever since the Great Expulsion, only a tiny population of hippy rianths and other modosophonts live there, under the ongoing rule of the caretaker archailect GAIA, as she continues to restore Earth to its pre-human pristinity. Physically and politically, it's nothing more a wildlife reserve and an exclusive tourist destination, though it is remembered with some sentiment by terragens of all kinds as their original homeworld and one of the richest and most biologically diverse natural planets ever known.

Western Animation

 * Invader Zim: The conqueror Irkens, bent on taking over the entire galaxy, don't even know Earth exists (there's a note stuck to the edge of their vast map of the galaxy that reads "Planet?") until Zim lands there after being sent into a supposedly empty area of space on a cosmic Snipe Hunt. Even then, Earth is the one planet the conquerors are not interested in conquering, hence why they decide it's a safe place to stash the annoying, persistent eponymous character. Though it seems they might want to in the future, this actually.
 * This is further highlighted when Tak tries to conquer the Earth instead of Zim, specifically noting that it has no strategical value. However, since the point is more about retribution against Zim than anything, she just decides to make the planet valuable, hollowing it out and filling it with snacks the Almighty Tallests would like.
 * The general view of Earth in Transformers Animated by many of the Autobots and Decepticons is that Earth is a puny, primitive backwater filled with filthy, disgusting organics, and if the All Spark didn't crash here, no Cybertronian would ever admit going there. There are some exceptions (for instance, Jazz thinks any planet that could design his adopted funky vehicle alt-mode couldn't be all bad and Prowl is a Friend to All Living Things, from bugs to cats to tree, and Earth is absolutely teeming). Pretty much every other continuity averts this, with Earth either being a resource powerhouse, a prison for stranded factions, or housing a MacGuffin worth landing armies on (or sometimes a combination of at least two of the three).
 * In Lilo and Stitch, Earth is considered quite insignificant, but is left alone by the aliens primarily because they have declared it a protected wildlife sanctuary. For mosquitoes. (Since humans are a major food source for mosquitoes, that means humans are also protected.) That was a bit of a diplomatic coup by the black ops division charged with dealing with aliens.
 * The "diplomatic coup" portion at the end was a last-minute decision by the writers when they realized they'd need a good reason for Cobra Bubbles not to be surprised at all the aliens. It also made a neat explanation for why a social worker would look like a Secret Service Agent.
 * In Titan A.E., the aliens don't particularly care that Earth got destroyed. Those that do treat the surviving humanity as scum, teetering at the edge of extinction.
 * The aliens didn't care, but the humans sure did. In fact, the entire movie is based around finding a device that can rebuild Earth.
 * In the Battletoads cartoon, Professor T. Bird explains that Earth is "so backward and insignificant that the Dark Queen never dared to conquer it."

Other

 * This trope was a favorite of Carl Sagan. He played with it in his books, in speeches, and in Cosmos. He famously popularized the Pale Blue Dot photograph, which is now often shown with his quote above.