I consider lore and worldbuilding to be related but different concepts. Lore is the details of your world, worldbuilding is the way you deliver those details.

My favorite example of worldbuilding is The Dark Crystal, both the film and series. The lore is standard fantasy stuff, but the intricacies of the world are so rich and they unfold so naturally. It felt like a real world, and I felt like very little of what I learned about that world was simply narrated to me. The world was built through tiny details, interactions and observations, throwaway lines of dialogue, and effectively so.

The Expanse.

I love the idea of sovereign nations Earth and Mars, and the political conflicts of not just diferent people, but different people living in different atmospheres, unlike different nations on earth, the difference between a Earther’s and Martian’s live is so different: Gravity, Breathable Atmosphere, the Ocean.

Also there are people that live outside of the planets in space stations that have never experienced a planet’s gravity and their bodies and unable to survive on planets. The story expands to other star systems.

Its originally a book series but it has been adapted into TV, although they canceled the TV series before it was finished :(

But still worth a watch tho, the politics is more fun than irl politics.

You know, I’ve always liked the Avatar:TLA’s worldbuilding

Most recently, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, had great world building and character development.

Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi by Ryouko Kui.

It has wonderful world building introducing it slowly over time without info dumping, or better said, there is a nerd in the world info dumping on his friends, who don’t always appreciate it =D

Magic: the Gathering.

It churns out a ton of unique settings and ideas for worlds.

I’ve enjoyed the world building of the Warhammer 40k setting.i started out with the models in high school and moved into the books to not have to deal with sweaty, agro nerds wanting to rules lawyer the game into no fun. So many interesting stories set in the grimdark universe, and a ton of great characters to follow.

Peter F Hamilton is another good one, though his world building is rather dense. Hell tell you all about how the roads on some alien world are enzyme bonded concrete or how the magic paths traverse entire worlds and systems. Definitely not for everyone, but the audiobooks are great (John Lee has such a soothing voice) and I’ve heard them so many times they make a great media to fall asleep to when I’m traveling.

BattleTech/mechwarrior. I think it started as a tabletop game? Lots of media came from it, and video games pop up every few years starting in 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech

The series began with FASA’s debut of the board game BattleTech (originally named Battledroids) by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babcock III and has since grown to include numerous expansions to the original game, several board games, role playing games, video games, a collectible card game, a series of more than 100 novels, and an animated television series.[3]

serious answer: Discworld. every storyline starts out completely separate but through the years they wove together into a world rushing headlong into a new age.

shitpost answer: ace attorney. eat your hamburgers, Apollo.

The original StarCraft and Brood War. I’ve always hoped a movie would be made about the story/lore but hollywood doesn’t exactly have a good track record with turning games into movies.

Chinese xianxia and wuxia shows. I’m a brown person from the American southwest who grew up with mostly European mythology and fantasy stories. Learning about a very different world of myth and lore has been endlessly fascinating and exciting for me. I even homebrewed a ttrpg around it so I can share some of the cool concepts and stories I have learned.

DrakeNier series: Starting by red dragon falling from sky in 2000s. Through guy in medieval, postapocalyptic 3400s trying to save his sister. Ending on androids in maid suits fighting a war against machine lifeforms and preparing Earth for return of humanity, in 11945.

Also I didn’t tell about origins of the dragon, because I haven’t played Drakengard series yet.

I really love Jack Vance’s world building. His Gaean Reach setting gives an endless variety of cultures, customs and beliefs. And the Dying Earth novels formed the basis for magic system of DnD.

But the real treasure is in how he can let these worlds come alive with his descriptions. Often he would spend a whole paragraph describing something that will never be part of the story but manages to perfectly set the tone of the local atmosphere.

I grew with these books (thanks to my dad’s impressive personal SF library) and they’ve always managed to spark my imagination like no other book.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series.

Just a breathtaking setting that begins with the first hundred settlers and traces the intrigue, terraforming, conflicts, and dreams of the colonists. It’s a sweeping epic written on a human scale.

The Elder Scrolls is probably the one I’ve had the most fun theory-crafting about, but I will admit that you have to pick and choose what to care about.

Also the old Wipeout racing games had a remarkable amount of background plot going on that was really pretty fun. The self-awareness to poke fun at Fusion’s poorly-received changes as being the in-universe result of megacorp meddling for mass market appeal gave me a good laugh, but you can piece together a surprising amount of the world from random references in team flavour text