Year Zero: Difference between revisions

== Anime ==

* ''[[Gundam]]'' has a different Year Zero for each of its [[Alternate Universe|Alternate Universes]], though they were invented by the creators rather than the fans. Interestingly, each series takes place decades after its timeline's Year Zero, and only rarely is the [[Year Zero]] explicitly tied to a specific event.

** In ''[[Gundam Seed]]'', the Year Zero appears to be a Year 1: The Cosmic Era calendar is adopted in roughly 9 CE, and is retroactively dated to begin when [[Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It|nuclear weapons were used in Kashmir]] nearly a decade before. Three new superpowers and a number of new smaller powers also emerge from the radically changed national order. Following other Gundam timelines, the UN also announces a new Space Exploration and Colonization program. Much like other timelines, it's not mentioned when the exact date AD became CE, other than that it was sometime in the mid- or late-twenty first century.

** Fans tend to attempt to create the regular version of this with at least the Universal Century timeline, since there are a handful of specific dates given that are tied to a day of the week. This can be used to narrow down 2045 as the earliest possible year for the switch to the new calendar.

** The After Colony calendar in ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' on the other hand, is implied begin from the launch of Skylab in the 1970s. Though it's never mentioned exactly when AC replaced AD.

* When Kagome travels to the past in ''[[Inuyasha]]'', she plops down into Japan's Warring States era, a century of continuous civil war and bloodshed. Because no exact dates are mentioned it would be anyone's guess as to what year it is when she goes back in time. The main clue the fandom has used to try to put a date to the era comes from one of the very first episodes, where a young samurai mentions real life Japanese warlord [[Oda Nobunaga]], but considers him to be unimportant and an idiot<ref>Nobunaga eventually brutally conquered much of Japan and his successors finished the unification and established the government that ran the country for the next 250 years</ref>. Since there is a rather short window of time where Nobunaga was known, but ''not'' as a terrifying, ruthless, slaughter-happy [[Badass]], fandom uses this to get a rough idea of when the story is supposed to be taking place.

* The [[Year Zero]] event in ''[[One Piece]]'' is generally portrayed as the founding of the World Government, which occurred approximately 800 years ago. This event is the foundation of the ''One Piece'' world as it is now and the end of the Blank Century, a period which has very few surviving historical records and is illegal to study.

** Ironically, many fans object to this [[Fandom Nod]], considering the [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Endor Battle of Endor] in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' to be a more logical date to base an in-universe calendar around (since the events of ''ROTJ'' had far more in-universe significance).

** The Star Wars BBY/ABY (Before/After Battle of Yavin) calendar differs from most real-life examples in that 1 BBY and 1 ABY are the same year. The transition between BBY and ABY happens at the exact moment that the Death Star was destroyed.

* ''Germania anno zero'' (English trans. ''Germany, Year Zero'') was a 1948 Italian film set in post-WWII Berlin. Protagonist Edmund Kohler [[Coming of Age Story|(age twelve)]] struggles to survive in a chaotic world: little rebuilding has been accomplished, food and necessary supplies are rationed & shortages are common. Edmund escapes the tense, claustrophobic apartment--in which he resides, along with remnants of five families--to the streets, hoping to scavenge useful items or information. [[It Got Worse|Things get worse]].

 

* ''[[Andromeda]]'' measures years in Commonwealth Years, which starts with the beginning of the Vedran Empire, making time in the series very non-specific. However, [[All There in the Manual|extended material]] gives the Commonwealth date for when Friedrich Nietzsche published "Thus Spake Zarathustra", a definite date in our time system, so assuming they use the same years as we do (years based on the cycle of Tarn Vedra rather than Earth, though the difference can't be too much), it creates a good guess of the timeline of the series.

* The [http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_(RDM) Battlestar Wiki Timeline] measures time from the Cylon holocaust depicted in the ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' miniseries. The in-universe calendar is only referred to once, in the season 3 episode "Hero", where readable text in a printed copy of Adama's dossier indicates that the 'present day' of that episode is the Colonial year 21356, {{spoiler|somewhere around the year 148000 B.C.}}

** Day 1: Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004

** Day 2: A Saturday in September 2005

* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', Year Zero in the Seven Kingdoms is dated from the crowning of King Aegon I the Conqueror, founder of the Targaryen dynasty. The main series starts 298 years later.

* At the end of ''[[Anathem]]'', the main character notes that the current day is "Day Zero, Year Zero". Given that {{spoiler|their discovery of, and contact with, other universes has changed society a lot}}, this is to be expected.

 

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' universe has several Year Zeros, at the beginning of every new 'era'. It's common practice to put the era before the year when announcing a date, for example "Third Era, Year 433". The first four games take place in the 5th century of the third era (roughly - ''Arena'' covers the last year of the 4th century), and ''Skyrim'' takes place in the third century of the fourth era.

 

 

== Webcomics ==