Mordor: Difference between revisions

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In the second season of ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'', Cephiro is [[Mordor]] because it lost the mystical ruler who had sustained the land.

* In ''[[Inuyasha]]'', Naraku has a mobile Mordor; a magically generated cloud of poisonous gas that follows him to wherever he chooses to abide.

* Michel in ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' wants to turn the world into a rather odd-looking Mordor: rocks jutting above the clouds, giant neon DNA strands shooting out of the sky, and wings on every animal. Seeing his hideout, which already looks like this, disgusts Lucia and makes her wonder what would possess anyone to like that. Of course, it all has symbolic ties to his own origin.

* Marmo from ''[[Record of Lodoss War]]'' definitely qualifies, particularly it's bleak depiction towards the end of the [[OVA|OVAs]]. The TV series wasn't quite as stark, but [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everything is still trying to kill you.]]

* [[Saint Seiya]]: Death Queen Island, Andromeda Island, and the Underworld.

 

 

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** Said Valley of Dreadful Death is even Mordor [[Up to Eleven]], a place so horrifying that even the orcs of Angband avoid it. All we know is that the water there will kill you or give you horrific nightmares, and it's inhabited by the giant spider descendants of [[Eldritch Abomination]] Ungoliant. Beren, who had survived a litany of trauma and horror (including sneaking through Angband), could never bear to speak of what he experienced in this valley.

* The Dragonlands in ''Shadowslayers'', thanks to magic woven by Derrezen, the fellow who put the "Dragon" into "Dragonlands."

* In the ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]], Korriban, the homeworld of the Sith, is a [[Single Biome Planet]] version of Mordor; in fact, the Sith relocated to another world early in its history and turned the planet into a vast necropolis.

** This wasn't by choice: the Jedi and Republic basically destroyed it from orbit. All of the remaining temples and tombs are in a very small area, the rest is a wasteland.

{{quote| '''Zaphod Beeblebrox:''' This place is the dismalest. Looks like a bomb's hit it, you know.<br />

'''Gargravarr:''' Several have; it's a very unpopular place. }}

** The Three-fold Land, also known as the Aiel waste, is very much a Mordor, with just about everything trying to kill you, and very little water.

* According to ''[[The Areas of My Expertise]]'', ''Oregon'' is "where the shadows lie."

** In ''Traitor General'', the Chaos forces are actively working to make Gereon a Mordor: they are using machines that drain water to other planets, and planting crops that will grow wildly and destroy the land. In ''The Armour of Contempt'', when they return, the process is considerably more advanced, with dead plants everywhere.

* In William King's [[Warhammer 40000]] novel ''[[Space Wolf]]'', when a group of Space Marines are searching for a missing group, they find a tunnel, leading to a dark and enormous cavern, filled with twisted animals and once-human nightgangers, culminating in an [[Religion of Evil|evil temple]].

* Camp Green Lake from ''[[Holes]]''. Flashbacks to the town's past show that it was a pristine lakefront Texas town, until Kissin' Kate Barlow cursed the place. From then until the present, it's a desert hellhole.

* Hotash Slay, [[Satan|Lord Foul's]] hangout, in the ''[[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant|The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever]]''. Suitably, it is even more Mordorer than the other Mordorish settings in the series, which takes some doing.

* [[The Black Company]] in the first book of the series this trope is averted with the Lady's tower at Charm. In fact it is actually discussed by the protagonist that while it would seem dramatically appropriate for the land around the tower to be like this it also doesn't make a lot of sense. Who would want to live in a volcanic wasteland anyways?

* [[Tales of the Sundered Lands]]: There is a "place," which as no name, which is blackened, burned out, covered with smoke and the home of evil spirits called Furies which can possess the unwary.

* The Waste in ''[[When True Night Falls]]'' of the [[Coldfire Trilogy]], designed by the Undying Prince to ward off opponents.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* The Shadow homeworld Z'ha'dum in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' resembles a science-fiction Mordor-analog, complete with a Great Eye that is ever watchful.<ref>Though in name and pronunciation is sounds suspiciously reminiscent of Khazad-dum.</ref>

* Netu in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' is a good example of a science fiction Mordor. Sokar, a Goa'uld who takes the identity of the devil himself bombarded it to resemble hell.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** Another recent example from ''Magic'' is the plane of Shadowmoor, which was once the idyllic sunny world of Lorwyn. After undergoing the cyclic process of the Aurora, the [[Ghibli Hills]]-esque Lorwyn becomes Shadowmoor, a world of perpetual night, filled with sickly vegetation and corrupted life.

** And a third example comes from ''Shards of Alara'': the plane of Grixis, a world completely devoid of white and green magic, ruled by demons and hordes of the undead.

 

== [[Toys]] ==

 

 

** The last stretch before the final palace in Zelda II is very much this.

* The [[Religion of Evil|Death Faith's]] lands in the [[Sierra]] game ''Lords Of Magic'' is basically <s>a</s> teh marshlands of evilness, dominated by a omnious, towering cliff with a skull carved into it... Oh, and the people who live in the land are all since childhood trained murderers and, as such, the life expectancy within their borders isn't especially long. A merchant in the Death capital's marketplace even points out that his "lifetime guarantee" labeled wares are "good up to 30 days".

* ''[[Guild Wars]]'' begins with the characters' kingdom ''becoming'' Mordor when the Charr (the game's stand-in for orcs) unleash a massive sorcerous assault of flame and crystalline meteors, rendering the entire kingdom into a broken desert, featuring rivers of tar and a blood-red sky. The first campaign takes place in a series of Mordors. First your kingdom is razed to ash, then after a brief interlude in the series of hells with an excursion to the Ice Caves and a brief pass through the [[Ghibli Hills|lush jungle]] crawling with with [[The Undead]] and [[Knight Templar|Knight Templars]], you're thrown into a scorching endless desert hell. Then you go to a more standard hell-esque Mordor that makes even Sauron's Mordor look like a pleasant vacation spot. Oddly, the Charr ''homelands'' in the Eye of the North expansion is actually a pretty pleasant place.

** ''Guild Wars: Nightfall'': The Realm of Torment, which is the home of {{spoiler|the fallen god Abaddon}}. Caves made of flesh? Check. Teeth sticking out of the ground? Check. It's even got some fetid swampland of its own. And every part of it has its own delightful status effect to offer.

** By the time it gets like that it has no human population, it's all undead and demons.

* The various worlds named Filgaia in the ''[[Wild Arms]]'' series are virtually always like this, but usually ''long'' after the event that caused it. Sometimes this was caused by a [[Fisher King]] scenario (another of which might also be arriving in the same story), but the original cause has long since departed, leaving the planet's ecosystem to try to slowly clean up after itself. Compare Tatooine from ''[[Star Wars]]''.

* The planet Fargett in ''Star Ocean: First Departure'' is a desolate wasteland, in contrast to the lush, Earth-like environment of Roak, the home planet of the game's main character, Roddick Farrence. The planet Fargett is run by an [[Evil Overlord]] named Jie Revorse, who essentially turned the planet into [[The Empire]].

* Char from ''[[Starcraft]]'' is your standard Planet Mordor, all lava and volcanoes and blasted dead black plains.

* The area around the Sea of Black Tears in ''[[Brutal Legend|Brütal Legend]]'' is designed after Death Metal album covers. All graveyards, twisted and ruined churches, dead trees, and candelabras everywhere.

* Malachor V in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' II. An entire Mordor ''planet'' echoing with the deaths of millions of people who were slaughtered there. High-ranking Sith would bring captured Jedi there because it would break their wills and make them easy to convert to the Dark Side.

* In ''[[Elemental War of Magic]]'' and its sequel ''[[Fallen Enchantress]]'', factions that structure themselves as [[The Empire]] do this to the land they colonize. Of course, the land is already blighted due to the backstory, so [[The Empire]] makes it dark and twisted ''but liveable''. At least for those living in [[The Empire]]...

* In ''[[Sacrifice]]'' Charnel's realm of Stygia a dark and gloomy land inhabited by Charnels minions.

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Drekmoor in Disney's ''[[Gummi Bears]]''. Homeland of ogres, ruled by Duke Igthorne, and a perpetually nasty place-- everything there is either poisonous, carnivorous, explosive, or otherwise dangerous. Even the rabbits are meat eaters.

* Rainbow Land was [[Mordor]] before ''[[Rainbow Brite]]'' came from "somewhere else", freed its Light and defeated [[Black Cloak|The Evil One]].

* On ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'', Dimmsdale became one of these after [[Evil Teacher|Crocker]] [[Took a Level In Badass|took over]].

* In ''[[Re Boot]]'', Mainframe turns into this after {{spoiler|1=Bob is launched into the Web, Enzo, AndrAIa and Frisket are stranded on the Net after a game goes awry, and Megabyte takes over the city}}.

* The Land of Nightmares from ''[[The Dreamstone]]''.

 

 

** [[Stephen King]] nicely noted its [[Eldritch Location]] qualities in the short story "I Am the Doorway":

{{quote| ''And that was Venus. Nothing but nothing--except it scared me. It was like circling a haunted house in deep space. I was scared gutless until we got out of there. I think if our rockets hadn't gone off, I would've cut my throat on the way down. It's not like the moon. The moon is desolate but somehow antiseptic. That world we saw is utterly unlike anything anyone has ever seen. Maybe it's a good thing that cloud cover is there. It was like a skull that's been picked clean--that's the closest I can get.''}}

* Bouvet Island is the most isolated piece of land on earth--1000 miles north of Antarctica and 1500 miles from South Africa. It's also buffeted by frigid hurricane-force winds, its landscape consists of snow and crags...[[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and it stinks of penguin and seal feces]]. Smack in the middle of the South Atlantic with only chartered boat transport available, it's sort of a holy grail for adventure tourists who want to go ''everywhere''...but that's about the only reason to go there.

* Russians sometimes like to call their country Mordor jokingly - the environment and living there can be quite nasty, [[Soviet Russia|plus don't forget it was considered an Evil Empire not so long ago]].