As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.

It is set in the year 421 AC (After Cataclysm), also known as 38 SC (Second Cataclysm).

The Tower Heart was broken shortly after the old Overlord's disappearance, causing a cataclysm, which destroyed much of the old land and started a magical plague.

Because he was an elf, but of a non-magical variety, he attempted to harness the power of the abandoned Tower Heart, but instead caused the Cataclysm and inadvertently spawned the fear of magic.

To avert this cataclysm, he issued calls to world peace in the 1980s and 90s.

His ultimate goal is to control the Earth by humans and for humans, and do so by attacking anything and everyone that is foreign to Earth as it was before the cataclysm.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police managed to survive the great cataclysm, though Canada itself did not.

"Mad Haven" is what the ruins of Manhattan Island is now known as although tectonic forces during the cataclysm have moved it into the coast creating a peninsula, and is seen by most denizens of Rifts Earth as a refuge of demons and madness.

Despite their ardent anti-technology sentiments, one of the New Empire's closest allies is the Republic of Japan, an alliance centered on three pre-Rifts cities (Hiroshima, Iwakuni, and Kure) accidentally rifted off the planet at the exact moment of the Great Cataclysm, and sent hundreds of years into their future.

The lost continent of Atlantis appeared after the cataclysm that caused the rifts.

The track "Amerika i Engleska (biće zemlja proleterska)" was originally supposed to be named "Kataklizma komunizma" (Cataclysm of Communism) but powers that be wouldn't allow it.

In the roguelike game Cataclysm there are graboids and giant worms who behave in a similar pattern to Graboids in Tremors Both the graboid worm form, and the Shrieker form can be seen on display at the Lone Pine Film History Museum in Lone Pine, California.