In the 1980s and 1990s, the world was dealing with the blossoming promise of communism in various corners of the globe, the resurgence of religion as a means of governance, and the questioning of those principals as regimes rose and fell, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1980, the Cultural Revolution began in Iran—during which the authorities purged the country, particularly in academia, from non-Islamic influences—alongside a brutal war of attrition sparked when Iraq invaded the country. Persepolis 2 opens in 1984, four years after the start of the war and the country’s transition to fundamentalist control.

The war lasted until 1988, after which some modernization in the rebuilding was allowed if it did not clash with fundamentalist Islamic values. The cultural revolution resulted in a conservative regime that monitored the population with morality police. Marjane returns to Iran in Persepolis 2 in 1989 after the conclusion of the war and amid the reopening of universities and other public institutions in Iran.

Countercultures emerged as a reaction to extremism that took hold across the globe. These groups established themselves as counter to the social values adopted by the mainstream in the wake of radical social or political changes.