History Main / AlienGeometries

* In ''ComicBook/{{Bizarrogirl}}'', Characters/{{Supergirl|TheCharacter}} visits Bizarro World's Metropolis', an odd, unsettling place where buildings bend and twist in ways that completely ignore gravity and other laws of physics.
* The Bojeffries' house in ''ComicBook/TheBojeffriesSaga'' has a trapdoor that ought to lead to the loft but which opens in the back garden.
* During the Troll War sequence in ''ComicBook/ElfQuest'' Wendy Pini drew one panel with deliberately Escheresque geometry, showing a spiral staircase from the side with the characters at the top appearing much bigger than those at the bottom.
* A scene from Creator/FirstComics' ''[[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate]]'' depicts Elric in the captain's cabin, leaning down to look at a model ship. The viewpoint zooms in through the model ship's porthole, revealing Elric and the captain inside.
* This is generally how much of [[Characters/MarvelComicsGalactus Galactus]]'s technology is portrayed in Creator/MarvelComics. An alternate universe version of Reed Richards once spent decades figuring out the technology of a single room in the alien creature's massive home. Galactus's house, the Worldship Taa II, also qualifies; it's a gigantic spaceship that dwarfs nearby planets without altering their gravitational fields.
* In ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmericaRockOfAges'', [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker the Joker]] nearly drives Characters/{{Superman|TheCharacter}} and the ComicBook/MartianManhunter mad by trapping them in a maze-like satellite, the structure of which is controlled by his subconscious mind.

* The crashed alien spaceship in ''Comicbook/{{Miracleman}}'' is probably one of the most distinct of Moore's uses of the trope, and is thus very difficult to describe. The people who board the ship all suffer from headaches and dizziness from the sheer disorientation that navigation of the craft causes.
* At one point in ''ComicBook/SuperboyAndTheRavers'' Marx moves Event Horizon to a small sub-dimension that looks straight out of an Creator/MCEscher drawing with partiers dancing on multiple surfaces of the bizarre, disjointed and in most cases lazily spinning architecture with gravity working just fine for them, even if they're standing on opposite sides of the floor/ceiling/wall.
* In his Silver-Age ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' wrap-up, ''ComicBook/WhateverHappenedToTheManOfTomorrow'', Creator/AlanMoore reveals Mr. Mxyzptlk's "true" form, described by Lois Lane as consisting of "height, length, breadth, and a couple of ''other'' things... looking at it made my head hurt". Moore likes having characters encounter and be upset by non-Euclidean phenomena; later in the same comic the room containing the Phantom Zone portal is described as eerie and unpleasant.
* ''ComicBook/SwampThing'': The Demon Comicbook/{{Etrigan}} employed Alien Geometries in an incantation to create a path from here back to Earth during Creator/AlanMoore's run, when Swamp Thing rescued his beloved Abigail from Hell:

* Creator/AlanMoore does this again in ''ComicBook/TomStrong's Terrific Tales'' where Strong and Svetlana X find a Russian space station has become crystal-filled and BiggerOnTheInside with multiple centers of gravity. [[spoiler:The whole thing was caused by a chance encounter with a higher-dimensional cosmic particle.]]
* In ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'' Olympus was given its iconic Escheresque look. Whatever you're standing on is "down" for you; almost everything is a "floor" if you step onto the surface in question. Just try not to fall out any windows because the whole place is a floating mass of waterfalls, gardens and jutting Greek architecture in a pocket dimension and you'll be falling for centuries if no one catches you (also you land in Tartarus so bad move all around).

* The LP sleeves of the first two Music/BlueOysterCult records (''Blue Oyster Cult'' and ''Tyranny and Mutation'') depict strangely alien geometries and structures under strange skies on strange otherworlds. While nothing violates perspective rules, they still look eye-wateringly odd.

* The sleeve designs for the first two [=LP=]s by the Music/BlueOysterCult revolve around bizarre and unsettlingly alien landscapes and architectures. The cover designs for the first two albums, ''Music/BlueOysterCult1972'' and ''Music/TyrannyAndMutation'', are credited to [[https://wearethemutants.com/2017/06/12/a-final-outrage-the-album-art-of-blue-oyster-cult/ Bill Gawlik]], who was also responsible for the specific design of the hooked cross used as the band logo. Gawlik is said to have been heavily influenced by the monumental architecture of dictatorships, specifically Albert Speer's grandiose ideas for remodelling Nazi Berlin.

* The neighbourhood affected by the supernatural forces in ''Film/Terrified'' has a few examples, such a man becoming sealed inside a cupboard, but only being visible when the back of the cupboard is broken into and not when the cupboard door is opened, as well as some demonic creatures hiding under a man's bed which can only be seen when viewed through from the bottom of the bed and not from the sides.
%%* The Tanz Akademie from ''Film/Suspiria1977'', an art deco nightmare from hell.

* In the ComicBook/{{J|usticeLeagueOfAmerica}}LA storyline ''Rock of Ages'' [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker The Joker]] nearly drives Characters/{{Superman|TheCharacter}} and the ComicBook/MartianManhunter mad by trapping them in a maze-like satellite, the structure of which is controlled by his subconscious mind.

* ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' starts with a [[color:blue:house]] that is 3/8ths inch BiggerOnTheInside than on the outside. They are only able to measure all the way across because [[spoiler:a closet mysteriously appeared in the house when they left for a week]]. They also get slightly different measurements with every method they try until confirming the final number with a very accurate method -- you'd ''normally'' think this is because of measurement deficiencies, but in retrospect... Also, this discrepancy disappearing is, believe it or not, the cue for things to get worse.

* In ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", a little girl falls through a portal in the wall of her bedroom into an alternate dimension, in which space is twisted, distorted and nonsensical to ordinary human perception. Fortunately, the family dog's superior hearing and sense of smell help get the little girl back into our dimension [[spoiler:before the portal closes forever]].

* A video by ''WebOriginal/{{Birchpunk}}'' features a commercial for Tesseract residential complex, selling apartments at the starting price of 50000 rubles for a meter to the power of five. It looks like a standard apartment building, but in the shape of, well, a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract tesseract], or a four-dimensional cube. The slogan is "The ability to live in impossible geometry!"

The term [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry "Non-Euclidean"]] gets used often to describe shapes and structures that don't make logical sense, though it's not always correct. It was used by Creator/HPLovecraft to describe the impossible angles and shapes found in alien structures in his works, though not all impossible geometries would be counted as "non-Euclidean"; that term refers to certain geometric forms that don't behave like a "flat" surface but still form a consistent and logical geometry. (It's possible to construct a 2-dimensional geometry on a curved Euclidean surface that is non-Euclidean, but a three-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry requires spacial distortion, such as might be induced by a powerful gravitational field.)

** An in-universe example, when Calvin's dad tries to show Calvin a fun fact about how the outer and inner edge of a vinyl disc complete a full rotation at the same speed, but any one point on the outer edge moves a much greater distance much faster than a point on the inner edge. The last panel shows Calvin wide awake in his bed, late at night, still struggling to wrap his head around this idea.

A staple of CosmicHorrorStory and of MindScrew artworks. [[EldritchAbomination Elder Gods, Old Ones,]] the RealityWarper, TheOmnipotent and other {{cosmic entit|y}}ies tend to bend the laws of physics to suit them. Why make a triangle where the angles add up to 180 degrees, when you can make one where they add up to 200 degrees in a flat space and get some extra room? Even the very ''body'' of a particularly squamous thing may exhibit this, though more often it shows up in architecture as physically-impossible buildings — [[GeniusLoci occasionally sentient themselves]].

--->The edge which should have been closest to Ditzy was now farthest away—the pillar now appeared concave rather than convex—without a single atom of the pillar being disturbed from its place.

%%[[folder:Film — Animated]]

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

** ''Literature/NightShift'' -- Inverted in the short story "I Am the Doorway". An alien lifeform [[HumansThroughAlienEyes sees]] a boy walking with a sieve under his arm: "an abominated creature that moved and respired and carried a device of wood and wire under its arm, a device constructed of geometrically impossible right angles".
** In the short story ''Literature/FourteenOhEight'', the titular room's door is crooked to both the left and the right. Or not at all. Maybe it can move? And it gets worse from there.
** In the novel ''Literature/FromABuick8,'' the titular car is actually an interdimensional portal/device that only looks like a car. It's noted that the human eye perceives it as a car because that's the only image the mind can supply for the actual shape of the device.

** In ''Literature/ThatHideousStrength'', one character is briefly imprisoned in the "Objectivity Room", where everything is slightly off—the spots on the table are arranged ''just'' short of obeying a pattern (even a broken one), the similar specks on the ceiling are ''almost'' the mirror-image of the table, and the peak of the arched entryway looks like it might be just a ''fraction'' off-center to the left. Or not. Maybe the right? And let's not start on the paintings... JustifiedTrope: The room was specifically built this way to drive people crazy so they'd be suitable hosts for the demonic powers.

* ''Literature/TheBelgariad:'' The Wizard Beldin has a twisted stick with only one end. [[MundaneUtility He uses it to keep children occupied so they don't bother him.]]

* In Creator/JohnCWright's ''Literature/ChroniclesOfChaos'', Vanity's secret passages often don't add up, geometrically, with the places they go to and lead from.

*** Empirical Crescent, a row of terraced houses where every door and window leads somewhere other than where you'd expect it to lead. At least it makes it easier to get rid of rubbish—just toss it into the garden. After all, it might not be your garden. The reason for this corruption of dimensions occurs because the row of houses is crescent-shaped on the outside only. Inside, it's supposedly laid out like a straight row. Presumably the two configurations conflict. Occupants had a tendency to leave in the middle of the night, often without stopping to pack...

* ''Literature/{{Eon}}'', by Greg Bear, features an asteroid hollowed out by people from ..elsewhere, with seven chambers running along its internal axis. The first six contain cities, parks, a spaceport and loading area, and power generators. The seventh chamber [[spoiler:goes on forever, contains objects made from redistributing probability over space, and a mathematical singularity running along its centre]]. And ''then'' things start to get weird.

* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/{{Protector}}'', the Brennan Monster amuses himself by creating full scale replicas of some of Escher's art, using things like artificial gravity to make them work.

* Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': In ''A Clash of Kings'', Daenerys enters the House of the Undying Ones in Qarth. Once in the antechamber, she makes four consecutive right-hand turns without returning to her starting point.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': A rare franchise example can be found in ''Literature/LandoCalrissianAndTheMindharpOfSharu''. In it the titular character finds the titular artifact — which seems to exist in several dimensions simultaneously and as such it really hurts just to look at it. Lando then uses it to unlock the passage into the Great Pyramid of Sharu — where he is expanded in size several dozen times, while his droid companion is shrunk to the size of a louse. There are even more examples in the book: the aliens who built it were [[StarfishAliens very, very alien indeed]] by ''Franchise/StarWars'' standards.

* In ''Time's Eye'', by Creator/ArthurCClarke, there are spherical alien objects that apparently have a 1-to-3 ratio for their diameters and circumferences, instead of a one-to-pi ratio.

* In Creator/StephenBaxter's short story collection ''Vacuum Diagrams'', the story [[http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf906 The Eighth Room]] deals with something similar to Heinlein's story. However, in this case, the room was not created accidentally... it's more of a logic puzzle. There's also another short story by Baxter called "[[http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf907 Shell]]", set on a planet that is ''folded in on itself''. There is no sky — people looking up see [[HollowWorld the other side of the planet curving over them, as if it's a shell]]. When one character uses a hot-air balloon to explore the other side, she witnesses the "shell" flatten out and then become curved normally, while the land she just left curves into a shell over the sky.

* This happens a lot in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' when the Powers of Chaos are involved.
** In Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Warhammer 40000'' ''Literature/{{Ultramarines}}'' novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', the city in the [[{{Mordor}} Eye of Chaos]] features this — producing a MobileMaze with it.

** In Creator/DanAbnett's Literature/GauntsGhosts novel ''His Last Command'', a [[CoolGate Chaos warp gate]] throws Maggs and Mkoll into a place where [[AlienSky stones hang in the sky and the stars are all wrong (both)]], as well as being [[EvilIsDeathlyCold bitterly cold]]. Also, their vox units register as both within ten kilometers and out of range.
** In Creator/BenCounter's ''Literature/HorusHeresy'' novel ''Galaxy In Flames'', Death's Tomb is bigger on the inside than the outside — as well as other repulsive features.
** In Graham [=McNeill’s=] novel ''[[Literature/ForgesOfMars Gods of Mars]]'', the physical form of the Breath of the Gods—an alien machine which can revive dying stars and create entire solar systems—is a swarm of metal blades whirling around a core of glowing energy. The machine is not connected to or supported by anything, and the blades occasionally pass through each other as if they were intangible. The sight of it does funny things to the human mind.
* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'': The Aelfinn and Eelfinn ("the Finn") inhabit one or more separate dimensions described by the author as having radically different natural laws. Successive windows do not show what one might expect. That the magic system in the series is heavily geometric likely has a great deal to do with why its use is explicitly forbidden there. The doorways into their realm also resemble this in the "real world", and are described as "twisted".\\\
Though it's less apparent, the same is true of the Ways, an artificially constructed dimension meant for quick travel. Except in one dream sequence (which, for complicated reasons, probably reflects the reality of the Ways), the realm is extremely dark, but travelers there have noted that by the arc of the bridges they're walking on, the platform they've just arrived at should be directly beneath the last. During the dream sequence, it becomes apparent that the platform-islands extend infinitely downward—and unless you follow the bridges with your eyes, appear to be on the same plane. The doorways seem to be a description of a three-dimensional Möbius strip.
* A significant plot device in Creator/MadeleineLEngle's ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'' deals with folding space-time through a fourth space-dimension for teleportation.

* String theory (or hypothesis) predicts the existence of over 10 spatial dimensions; most of them, however, would be curved into themselves in an extremely small scale (think a millionth of a proton) so we cannot perceive them. One way to imagine them would be like drawing a line on a piece of paper; it looks like it only has one dimension, but if you zoom in really close, the drawn line would also have a width and a height.

* The ''WebOriginal/UnforgottenRealmsLive'' universe is one giant Cube; in the center of this cube is an island with a guy living there. This island? It's where the sun is. The guy on the Island's job is to turn the Sun on and off. And the stars of the Night sky? They are the lights coming from other cities in the Sky. Did I mention that this isn't a [[EldritchAbomination Cosmic Horror]] series, but a Fantasy series?

* ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'': The Hospital is one of many overlapping "Zones" in the whacked-out {{Multiverse}} of the Perception Range -- Like AnotherDimension, except what you see and how it's structured depends on your ability and willingness to perceive it. To complicate it further, it's shot through with links into other Zones and is heavily implied to be unraveling under attack by {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. One new feature is the Plank Maze, which consumes random locations within the Hospital and links them with a nonsensical network of passages.

* UsefulNotes/AIGeneratedArtwork can often have this effect. The way in which pieces of different things like faces, buildings, landscapes, or animals are somewhat recognizable but are interspersed within one another and drawn in such a way that they don't look completely recognizable can often lead to an unsettling feeling in the viewer.

* ''WebOriginal/SuicideMouse'': At first glance, the scenery appears to be a standard WraparoundBackground of buildings, but during the part where there is disturbing murmuring and screaming in place of the music, the sidewalks start to warp in impossible directions and the buildings become floating rubble.

* ''TabletopGame/GURPSIlluminatiUniversity'' describes a campus which teaches human students and everything else capable of paying the exorbitant university fees how to function as {{Mad Scientist}}s, World-Conquering Dictators, Marketing Specialists, and other strange jobs. The campus is a stereotypical university: the campus has an open area or "Quad" in which students and staff may pause for reflection, study, impromptu lectures and other activities from which [[HilarityEnsues adventures may spring]]. Illuminated University has ''The Pent'', which has five sides for [[RuleOfCool no particular reason]]; students who happen to have a protractor handy will discover that all five of the corners have 90-degree angles. One of the dorms is stated as having rather similar angles.

-->The edge which should have been closest to Ditzy was now farthest away—the pillar now appeared concave rather than convex—without a single atom of the pillar being disturbed from its place.

** The Halls of Mandos are a minor example. They are an underground network of halls, tunnels and corridors dug under the Aman’s Western ranges. The stonework and architectural style is plainly different of anything built by men, walls and rooms can be rearranged with enough will force and distance and direction work in strange ways, but at least you can understand the designs.
* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'': there's Hogwarts, which is a bit eerie, as per canon (even more so, since it's explicitly alive), but it's far from the weirdest example.

* In ''WebOriginal/{{Mortasheen}}'', this is where the [[http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/xenogog.htm Xenogog]] lives naturally, only coming into ours with a screw up in a time travel experiment.

** ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'', as well: we're only seeing dimensions x, y, z; but there are at least three others which can be rotated around or extended along, and which apparently can be used to travel between universes. This is a conceit to let him run through every literary universe ever, and have a massive CrossOver event. The novel culminates in a party, in what is effectively the Crooked House, with every single character he created attending (plus several guests). Special mention goes to the [[AcceptableTargets literary]] [[TakeThat critics]] lounge, which was shaped like a Klein bottle... once you were inside.

* Paintings by Creator/HRGiger, famous for his design of the Xenomorph in ''Film/{{Alien}}'', though his work tends more to towards the horror aspect than the impossible. He also likes to paint landscapes having sex with themselves. Think about that for "scenery porn."

* In his Silver-Age ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' wrap-up, ''ComicBook/WhateverHappenedToTheManOfTomorrow'', Creator/AlanMoore reveals Mr. Mxyzptlk's "true" form, described by Lois Lane as consisting of "height, length, breadth, and a couple of ''other'' things... looking at it made my head hurt." Moore likes having characters encounter and be upset by non-Euclidean phenomena; later in the same comic the room containing the Phantom Zone portal is described as eerie and unpleasant.

Between the folds of rare geometry."

* ''Film/TheHaunting1963'' uses this to emphasize Hill House's surreal and unsettling atmosphere. All the doors are hung just slightly off-center and the rooms are built on strange angles. "There isn't a square corner in the place."

** ''Literature/GloryRoad'' had the hero and companions invading a tower "where the architect used a pretzel for a straight-edge." It's so convoluted that it took hundreds of spies decades to figure out a route to the MacGuffin.

** ''Literature/NightShift'' -- Inverted in the short story "I Am the Doorway". An alien lifeform [[HumansThroughAlienEyes sees]] a boy walking with a sieve under his arm: "an abominated creature that moved and respired and carried a device of wood and wire under its arm, a device constructed of geometrically impossible right angles."

** ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes'' -- Played straight within the short story "Crouch End", a CosmicHorrorStory within the Franchise/CthulhuMythos. Within the DarkWorld alternate London, "She said it was as if she were no longer on earth but on a different planet, a place so alien that the human mind could not even begin to comprehend it. The angles seemed different, she said. The colors seemed different."

*** In one book, this is rather beautifully summed up as "Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass. A good bookstore is just a genteel black hole with a smile."

* In the fifth volume of Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/{{Spellsinger}}'' series, Jon-Tom encounters a perambulating prime, a creature/artifact/object which embodies mathematical chaos and constant change. It is described as "good-sized," and as "beautiful," but otherwise consists of impossible shape after impossible shape constantly sliding into one another. How much of the perambulator's appearance is "real" and how much is the mind struggling to make sense of something truly alien isn't clear.

** In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' novel ''The Final Fury'', Captain Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix arrive aboard a Fury planet wherein the hallways and doors meet at angles that aren't quite "right" -- literally and figuratively -- and the aliens themselves despise those who follow the "right-angle" or "right-hand path."

* The ''WesternAnimation/FoghornLeghorn'' cartoon "Little Boy Boo" plays this for laughs. Foghorn is playing hide and seek with a child genius and hides in the coal bin. The kid performs a few calculations and then ''digs Foghorn out of the lawn''. A very befuddled Foghorn protests that he was in the coal bin, but the kid just shakes his head and holds up the calculations. Foghorn then goes to look inside the coal bin, but decides "No, I'd better not look. I just ''might'' be in there."
* The titular ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' sometimes exhibits a non-malevolent version of this combined with BiggerOnTheInside. In one episode, Mac is attempting to leave for dinner from the house's roof, but they go down a flight of stairs and through a door to end up back on the roof (prompting Mac to confusedly remark "[[HowIsThatEvenPossible But we went]] ''[[HowIsThatEvenPossible down]]''."). They later fall down a trap door from somewhere in the middle of the house, sending them back to the roof ''again'', and Mac declares "This is downright unnatural."

* The sleeve designs for the first two [=LP=]s by the Music/BlueOysterCult revolve around bizarre and unsettlingly alien landscapes and architectures. The cover designs for the first two albums, ''Music/BlueOysterCult1972'' and ''Music/TyrannyAndmutation'', are credited to [[https://wearethemutants.com/2017/06/12/a-final-outrage-the-album-art-of-blue-oyster-cult/ Bill Gawlik]], who was also responsible for the specific design of the hooked cross used as the band logo. Gawlik is said to have been heavily influenced by the monumental architecture of dictatorships, specifically Albert Speer's grandiose ideas for remodelling Nazi Berlin.

* ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'':