Atlantis: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

It doesn't necessarily have to be Atlantis ''per se'' to tap into the myth fabric of the setting, but it can be any sort of lost civilization that had great achievements and then were mysteriously lost. Other examples include Mu (Pacific Ocean), Lemuria (Indian Ocean) or Thule (Arctic Ocean)...heck, even "Antediluvia" (literally, "Land Before The Deluge"), in Christian settings. Often the capital city of the [[Precursors]].

[[Atlantis Is Boring|Unfortunately, if it's under the sea, it will be less interesting than it sounds.]]

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Vision of Escaflowne]]'' had Atlanteans as the creators of the world on which the story takes place.

* In ''[[Transformers Super God Masterforce]]'', Atlantis was the tomb of Gilmer.

* ''[[Transformers Cybertron]]'': Atlantis is actually an ancient Cybertronian space ship, part of an initiative to colonize worlds beyond Cybertron and connect civilized planets with a network of space bridges. It suffered a computer crash and sank into Earth's ocean - with one of the plot coupons on board. The Autobots track it down in the present day and reactivate it (it's in good condition thanks to the self-repair systems). It's seemingly destroyed in the battle for the Omega Lock, but turns out to be still around, albeit damaged, twenty-odd episodes later, and plays a role in the show from then on. {{spoiler|Eventually, the ''Atlantis'' and its three sister ships are re-united and combined into the truly massive warship ''Ark'', used as a staging ground in the penultimate battle and as a [[Wave Motion Gun]] by Primus to destroy the Unicron Singularity. Afterwards, the Ark is separated back into its component ships. In the finale, they set off once more to begin the Space Bridge Project anew.}}

* ''[[The Mysterious Cities of Gold]]'' features both Atlantis and [[wikipedia:Mu (lost continent)|Mu]] in the backstory. {{spoiler|They were both destroyed in a nuclear war a few millennia ago.}}

* One episode of the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' was about Ash Ketchum and the gang coming upon an ancient underwater city called Pokelantis, which was said to have been sunk by the Legendary Pokemon Ho-oh to dispose of its evil king. Unfortunately, the evil King of Pokelantis's ghost decides to possess Ash...

 

== Comic Books ==

* Undersea home of superstrong, water-breathing mutated humans in both the [[DC Comics]] ([[Aquaman]]) and [[Marvel Comics]] ([[Sub-Mariner]]) universes.

** Lemuria also exists in the MU. Its people are green skinned as opposed to the Atlanteans, who are blue.

 

* "Al Hanthis" from the ''[[Deva Series]]'' is said to be a civilisation whose out-of-control artificial magecraft threatened Earth before the founders of [[Ancient Conspiracy|the Circles]] destroyed it, with marked similarities to the ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]''-canonical Al Hazred. Eventually, {{spoiler|Al Hanthis resurfaces, with its people still having designs on Earth.}}

 

== Film ==

** Others say he's [[Ancient Astronauts|from space.]]

** The name, however, comes from [[wikipedia:Brasil (mythical island)|another mythical island]].

* As one might expect, Atlantis also features in ''[[MacGyver]]: Lost Treasure of Atlantis''.

* Also fairly predictable is its appearance in ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]''.

** A similar story, but the city was in Canada.

* In ''[[Cocoon]]'', Atlantis was the site of [[Time Abyss|the Antareans']] first base here on Earth.

{{quote|'''Walter''': Everyone else said, "use the North Pole", and I said, "no, too cold". ''Sinking'' never occurred to me.}}

* ''[[Escape From Atlantis]]'', a 1997 film in which an American family winds up in Atlantis after being teleported to another dimension by the [[Bermuda Triangle]].

 

== Literature ==

** Tolkien's notes state that the Atalante bit was purely coincidental. Prof. Tolkien wondered what Numenor would be in a certain in-universe language and got "Atalante". He was actually annoyed with this, since he knew people would assume he was implying this was the origin of the name Atlantis, when as a linguist he knew language change doesn't work that way.

** Incidentally, the Numenoreans then founded Gondor, which Tolkien admitted took quite a few cues from [[Ancient Egypt]]. [[Ancient Astronauts|Coincidence?]]

* "The age when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities" is part of the [[Backstory]] of the ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' stories. [[Kull]], another [[Robert E. Howard]] character, was an Atlantean warlord. In the official timeline, the first civiliazations started in Europe around 40,000 B.C., when the continent was known as Thuria, The greatest nation in Thuria was Valusia. the Thurian age ended in about ten thousand years, and Conan many centureis after Thuria's doom, during the Hyborean age, which also saw the collapse of all civilization.

* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[Neverwhere]]'', the Angel Islington used to be the guardian angel of Atlantis until it sank. Islington serves the main characters Atlantean wine saved from its destruction. {{spoiler|...of course, it's revealed later that Islington is the one who sank it. The only thing he says on the matter is ''"They deserved it!"''}}

* Greg Donegan (pen name of Bob Mayer) wrote a series of books featuring Atlantis' ancient enemy returning.

* [[Andre Norton]]'s SF novel ''Operation Time Search''. In the distant past, both Atlantis and the island of Mu were sunk beneath the surface due to the Atlanteans' misdeeds. At the end of the book, the intervention of a time-traveler from the future (our present) prevents the sinkings from occurring and both islands appear in the modern world.

** And her ''Web of Darkness'' and ''Web of Light'' are set in Atlantis itself.

** ''Ancestors of Avalon'' by [[Diana L Paxson]] bridges the gap between the novels set on Atlantis and the Avalon series, making a connection previosuly only hinted at.

** While he did make some references to Atlantis and the Cthulhu mythos, it was also based partly on a [[wikipedia:Ferdinandea|real event]].

** Or so Uncle Andrew theorizes, but the dust is in fact not from Atlantis, it's from the Wood. He doesn't find this out until Digory and Polly test the rings and come back to report what they found.

* ''The Takers'', a modern [[Two Fisted Tale]] by Jerry Ahern. The Gladstone Log is the [[MacGuffin]] which sends the protagonists off on their adventure. It's the log of a privately-funded 19th Century expedition to seek Atlantis, set up by British Prime Minister William Gladstone. The villain (who came across several translated pages in [[WW 2]]) has spent decades searching for it, in the belief that the 'Atlantis' described is an [[Ancient Astronauts|alien base]] whose technology will give him vast power.

* Subverted in ''The Diamond Age,'' where most of the characters call themselves Atlanteans... but in that case, it just means "people from the trans-Atlantic <s> nation culture civilization</s> tribe."

* The Atlantis in [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Hearts in Atlantis]]'' is the world before the [[Vietnam War]].

* In the ''[[Oera Linda Book]]'' Atlantis is called Atland. It is implied Noah's flood sank it.

* The Submerged World in ''[[Chronicles of the Emerged World]]'' is an underwater nation inhabitated by sea-humans and merfolks alike. Eventually after the second book they're persuaded to join the war against [[Big Bad|The Tyrant]].

* Queen La from the ''[[Tarzan]]'' novels is supposed to be from Atlantis. Also, the [[The Legend of Tarzan|Disney version]] of her for some reason portrayed La with [[Dark-Skinned Blond|dark skin]] and [[White-Haired Pretty Girl|white hair.]]

** Probably an [[Early-Bird Cameo]] - ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire|Atlantis the Lost Empire]]'' was made soon after, filled with dark skinned white haired people.

* The Isles of Syren in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' are described to be the leftover of a sunk land.

* Atlantis was the original Earth base of the Airlia in the ''Area 51'' novels.

** The [[Expanded Universe]] explains this as destroying bits of Atlantis, (the city, the under city and the island) one after the other.

* ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]]'' has had at least one episode dealing with the Atlantis myth.

** "Can't she believe how bloody Australian I am??"

* Another [[Mystery Science Theater 3000]] experiment: ''Hercules and the Captive Women'' had the title character (Hercules, that is, not the Captive Women) stumbling upon the Island of Atlantis and attracting the attention of its vampish queen. Hercules manages to resist her charms and destroy the Island before the Atlanteans can enact their plan to [[Take Over the World]].

** It should be noted that there were no stories, in Greece anyway, of anything like Atlantis until Plato's allegorical account. It seems he [[Mythopoeia|made it up whole-cloth]].

** Not entirely. Plato probably based his account on the destruction of the Greek city of [[wikipedia:Helike|Helike (a.k.a., Elike)]] by an earthquake and tsunami in 373 B.C. and from the volcanic eruption of Thera on the island of Santorini around 1600 B.C. [[wikipedia:Thera|which all but wiped out the Minoan civilization on Crete]].

* In [[Celtic Mythology]] there's Ys which is the famous drowned city off the coast of Brittany, the Welsh kingdom of Cantre'r Gwaelod which met a similar fate, the sunken Cornish kingdom of Lyonesse, and even Avalon which, in some versions of the legend, also sank into the sea. (Actually, this one's damn-near archetypal by now. You'll find submerged cities everywhere you can throw a stone, these days.)

* [[Russian Mythology and Tales|Russian myth and legend]] has [[wikipedia:Kitezh|Kitezh]] which God saved from conquest by the Mongols by having it sink into Svetloyar Lake.

* [[wikipedia:Vineta|Vineta]], a mediaeval city somewhere along the coast of the Baltic Sea, and allegedly with a fate similar to Atlantis. Not much is known about Vineta, and therefore also not much concerning [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story|how big the grain of truth in the Vineta legend is]].

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The [[Old World of Darkness]] was deliberately vague on Atlantis. The sourcebook ''Blood-Dimmed Tides'' gives ideas of what Atlantis could be/might have been, but leaves it up to the storyteller to decide whether to incorporate the city or if it existed at all.

* ''[[Rifts]]'' had a highly-advanced human kingdom on the continent, which disappeared with a powerful ritual that also took most of the magic away from the Earth. The Atlanteans themselves scattered, then the continent returned in a [[World Sundering]] event that [[The End of the World as We Know It|destroyed civilization]]. It was subsequently taken over by a monster and his armies, who basically sees it as his own personal Las Vegas (for evil monsters).

* Pre-sinking Atlantis gets a full ''Fantasy Hero'' sourcebook from Hero Games. Post-sinking Atlantis appears in the ''Hidden Lands'' sourcebook for [[Champions]].

* [[Magic: The Gathering]] has Lord of Atlantis, the first merfolk lord printed. This was later retconned-Atlantis is now a merfolk colony called Etlan Shiis; "Atlantis" is the corrupted pronunciation used by the the (human) Orvadians they traded with.

* ''[[Pathfinder]]'' has the sunken continent of Azlant, complete with Sub-Mariner-looking "gillmen."

* Dozens of lost lands from folklore, including Atlantis, featured in Bard Games' three-volume RPG series ''The Arcanum'', ''The Lexicon'', and ''The Bestiary''.

** Referenced in ''3'' in the battle with Poseidon, who claims that; "Atlantis will be avenged!" hinting that Kratos had a hand in the city's destruction, which is [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|hardly surprising]].

** Kratos travels to Atlantis in ''Ghost Of Sparta''. {{spoiler|You guessed it: Kratos sinks it.}}

* In the world of ''[[Dystopia (video game)|Dystopia]]'', Atlantis is an aquatic city with no definite location in the Atlantic Ocean. One would think that the ''[[Space Elevator]] attached to this free floating city'' would make it easy to find, but [[Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain|poor weather is common]] and the city tends to move often. It nearly sank during a terrorist attack.

* You visit several Atlantis-like places in ''[[Aquaria (video game)|Aquaria]]'', although in this case, none of them sank; they were underwater already, home to an assortment of aquatic sentients (all of them [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|humanoid]], to a greater or lesser degree). Naija is {{spoiler|the last surviving member of the most Atlantis-like of these, the Mithalans, whose society fell when their priests, in the search for eternal life, imprisoned, tortured, and warped their own god; besides Naija, all that remains of the Mithalans are feral, aggressive mutants not totally dissimilar to the Creature from the Black Lagoon}}.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Parodied in an episode of ''[[Futurama]]'', "The Deep South", where the Planet Express crew stumbles upon the lost city of ''[[Atlanta]], GA''. It comes complete with a parody of the ''Atlantis'' song quoted above, sung by Donovan himself.

** The underwater city of Atlantis also showed up in an episode of the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|original cartoon]]. Oddly, one of its inhabitants was a [[Fish Person]], while the rest were human (a dome kept out the water).

** Another version of Atlantis exists in ancient Greece in the original series. This one has the followers of Atlantis make April wear the amulet that makes her queen and resurrect Atlantis from the sea.

** There's also a [[Carl Barks]] story set there.

* In ''[[Ruby Gloom]]'', Misery's disaster-plagued lineage apparently starts at Atlantis, where Misery the First had a summer home. Inexplicably, she has slides.

* Atlantis is where most of the movie ''In Search of the Titanic'' takes place. This animation is a sequel to ''[[Western Animation/The Legend Of The Titanic|The Legend Of The Titanic]]'' which is loosely based on Titanic disaster.

* In ''[[Mighty Max]]'' both Skullmaster and Virgil come from Lemuria. It is unclear whether this is the same place as the undersea city that Skullmater destroyed in order to trick the populace to give him their souls for "safe keeping".

* Visited by the title character of ''[[Alfred J Kwak]]'', and it's inhabited by Dodos, long thought extinct after a massive flood.

 

== Other ==

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[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Hollywood Atlas]]

[[Category:Atlantis]]