History Main / BizArrchitecture

* ''Film/DarkCity'' looks reasonably normal, but when everyone is asleep, the whole city would transform.

* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'', Dio's Palace has a ''tropic island'' in the lower floors, and a MC Escher-esque main room. [[spoiler: It turns out to be the work of the Stand user Kenny G. Once Iggy takes him out effortlessly, the palace turns back to normal]].

* In the second half of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', you fight in Dracula's Castle... which is now upside down. Even weirder, the pools of water in the [[UndergroundLevel underground areas]] now float upside down as well.
* Until ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'', all the save points were identical looking. So you could get Symphony's really nice red carpeted save points... in the underground caverns. And then there's the fact that half of the locations link to each other even if it makes no sense.

* In ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry1'', buildings and surroundings alike get really weird when you travel through the rifts in and out of the Underworld. If it's not WombLevel, it's this. Also happens in the [[VideoGame/DevilMayCry2 second game]] to a lesser extent. In ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'', there's the Temen-ni-gru tower and the Netherworld. In the latter area, the Lost Souls Nirvana is a pristine white version of M.C. Escher's ''Relativity'' stairways. You get to walk up, down and sideways to find gateways leading to the boss battles. There's also a rotating "room" with a giant hourglass.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4: Nuka-World'' has the Grandchester Mystery Mansion (see "Real Life" below) on the outskirts of the titular theme park, a bizarrely-designed pre-War home with stairs abutting solid walls and furniture attached to the ceiling. According to the automated tour guide, these were all deliberate design choices by its owner to confuse the evil spirits she thought were possessing her daughter, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt, since said daughter ended up brutally murdering her. When you visit it in-game, the Mansion's confusing layout is made worse by a series of booby traps set by the paranoid mercenary hiding out there, whose journal entries mention that he keeps hearing a little girl's giggling...
* Ibsen's Castle in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' is mirror-imaged on the underside. And it's nothing compared to Memoria, a place made from peoples memories that mostly looks like a number of runs and cities jumbled together through AlienGeometries and {{Gravity Screw}}s.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' has [[ItsAllUpstairsFromHere the Pharos at Ridorana]], which features floating stairs and walkways circling around a central hollow column that pulls seawater up to the top of the tower where the [[{{Macguffin}} Sun-Cryst]] resides. Giruvegan is also pretty strange, with most of the playable area consisting of an enormous shaft centered on the Great Crystal with walkways made of crystal and HardLight around the sides.
* Cocoon in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' is a floating world above the surface of Gran Pulse. It's a DysonSphere, so the people live ''inside'' Cocoon rather than outside like on normal planets.

** The [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil very first game]] averts this. Aside from the infamous DescendingCeiling room the mansion is aesthetically fairly clean and normal, and there's generally a good reason for the layout to be the way it is; for instance the caves may seem odd but they're the secret entrance to the laboratory. However the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvilRemake remake]] throws this out the window in favor of a much more standard HauntedHouse (the place looks like it's been abandoned for years, not a couple of months) look with some mind-boggling design choices. There are now not one but ''two'' graveyards, one of which conceals an inexplicable ''Silent Hill''-esque dungeon with a boss monster (hidden in a coffin suspended from the ceiling) which must be released by putting four death masks on nearby statues. The caves are now a gigantic abandoned mine that lead to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some reason, and the only way to the labs is through a crypt set over a {{Bottomless Pit|s}}. Though the remake does partly justify it by introducing George Trevor, a MadArtist of an architect and designer of the Spencer Mansion who was hired for what was basically his dream project of having unlimited funding to design whatever bizarre traps and architecture he wanted.

* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'':
** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'': The layout of Hope's Peak Academy is... odd when you examine it. Most of the floors are shaped in ways that don't line up with each other, there's a pool on the second floor that somehow occupies the same space as the gym on the first floor, and many rooms (such as every room in the dorms) have bolted up windows in places that couldn't possibly face the outside of the school. There's also [[spoiler: the hatch in the Monokuma room's floor that apparently leads to the mastermind's bunker, even though a hatch in that location would lead directly into the hallway of the floor below.]]
** ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'': The fourth island has a funhouse split between two areas; [[EdibleThemeNaming Strawberry House and Grape House]]. Its key attraction is a strange tower which is determined to be the same building that can be accessed by both houses which it's right in the middle of, but a setup of sensors and lights changes the tower's appearance and can only be accessed by one house at a time and refuses to change if it's occupied by one side, both of which can only be travelled between by a strange elevator. When a murder breaks out in the tower, a majority of the mystery revolves around figuring out how the funhouse works.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* In ''The Mouse That Jack Built'', a Warner Brothers short featuring [[AnimatedAdaptation mouse expies]] of [[Radio/TheJackBennyProgram Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone]], Benny receives a flyer for the "Kit Kat Club", which is actually the family cat with little tables and chairs in its mouth. Benny thinks it is just a gimmick until the mouth starts to close, with them in it...

* The house in Mark Z. Danielewski's ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' is BiggerOnTheInside, and that's the most normal thing about it. The house changes a lot. The house appears to be [[EldritchLocation non-Euclidean]], and even changes size.

* ''Illusions'' for the UsefulNotes/{{Colecovision}} has level designs inspired by Escher.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' can have its eponymous fortresses lain out however you like. There's nothing wrong with having the barracks and apartment complex sprinkled with random tombs and burial chambers. And then we can move onto the physics, which are [[ArtisticLicensePhysics hilariously bent]]. It starts off with upside-down pyramids and waterwheel {{perpetual motion machine}}s. Then it goes to one tile wide corridors that are [[AlienGeometries somehow]] wide enough that ''100 dragons'' can slip by (as long as 99 of them are laying down), yet 2 dwarves can't go past each other if both are standing up. And finally, you get entire regions completely undermined and only held up by a handful of pillars, made from soap. ''Tallow soap.'' Bizarre constructions that exploit these broken physics (lovingly referred to as "dwarven physics"), along with {{pointless doomsday device}}s, are a rite of passage amongst DF players. {{Succession Game}}s take this even further, as they will inevitably reach a point where even the original players are completely baffled by the design of the fortress. This is not helped by some players' fondness of outright MalevolentArchitecture. If you want a good example of this -- all of this --, look up LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}.

* The Last Resort from ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion3'' is very eccentricly built. Alongside more typical amenities such as a shopping center and high-class restaurant are features such as a vertical botanical garden with overgrown hotel suites, a medieval jousting arena, multiple fully-equipped filming stages, a recreation of an Egyptian pyramid, a pirate-themed restaurant with an entire lagoon and pirate ship inside, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and a swimming pool several stories above ground level]]—[[NoOSHACompliance which is a very unsafe place to put it]]. Moreover, the entire hotel seems to be BiggerOnTheInside since several "floors" [[NonIndicativename are multiple stories in height]] and their floor plans seem to clash with the hotel's outer facade. Perhaps the most bizzare part, though, is that everyone has to use the elevator to get to every floor past the second—there is no stair access between floors aside from a flight connecting the basement to the lobby.

* In one ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' episode, the characters work together to rebuild one character's house. Whether the original blueprints would have created a normal house is debatable, as while the house is being built, [[CloudCuckooLander Lumpy]] folds the blueprints into an origami crane, inexplicably causing the building to be shaped like a giant origami crane that even moves. In any other series, this would be pretty awesome, but since it's [[CrapsaccharineWorld this show]], there are virtually no exits and dozens of [[MalevolentArchitecture death traps]].

* The Michigan League at the UsefulNotes/UniversityOfMichigan. It looks normal enough on the outside, but on the inside it's full of convoluted staircases and hallways that branch off in unusual directions.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''LetsPlay/{{Headshoots}}'': The "Room Outside Space", a seemingly ordinary room that, due to some glitch, became unfindable unless you zoomed to a dwarf already occupying it.

* ''Literature/{{Moonflowers}}'': TheFairFolk have strange buildings: TheWildHunt imprisons Ned and Lucy Song in a glass room that has no windows or doors, which is tough enough that a goddess has to break into it. Then there's the Hawthorn Fort--a castle built around a massive hawthorn maze, with bridges above it that the Wild Hunt use to toss people in. The underground throne-room is a cave covered with prehistoric paintings, with the throne itself carved high into the wall.

** A short documentary on the Best architecture can be [http://archidose.blogspot.com/2009/01/site-best-stores.html found [here.]]

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_House Dancing House]] in Prague, designed by Czech architect Vlado Miluni? with a little help from Frank Gehry.

** Raccoon City takes it to an extreme. What sort of insane architect designs police stations, houses, and cities riddled with mind-numbingly difficult puzzles and deadly traps, and [[NobodyPoops no bathrooms]]? In the same vein, ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'' does it with Ashford Island and the Antarctic facility. ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' has the castle and research island. The remake of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' actually ''answers'' this question by introducing George Trevor, a MadArtist of an architect and designer of the Spencer Mansion who was hired for what was basically his dream project of having unlimited funding to design whatever bizarre traps and architecture he wanted. [[spoiler:You later learn the dream was a ''nightmare'' and they not only intended to kill him after so [[YouKnowTooMuch nobody else would know the secrets of the mansion]] but also used his poor wife and daughter as guinea pigs to develop the T-Virus]].
** The [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil very first game]] averts this. Aside from the infamous DescendingCeiling room the mansion is aesthetically fairly clean and normal, and there's generally a good reason for the layout to be the way it is; for instance the caves may seem odd but they're the secret entrance to the laboratory. However the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvilRemake remake]] throws this out the window in favor of a much more standard HauntedHouse (the place looks like it's been abandoned for years, not a couple of months) look with some mind-boggling design choices. There are now not one but ''two'' graveyards, one of which conceals an inexplicable ''Silent Hill''-esque dungeon with a boss monster (hidden in a coffin suspended from the ceiling) which must be released by putting four death masks on nearby statues. The caves are now a gigantic abandoned mine that lead to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some reason, and the only way to the labs is through a crypt set over a {{Bottomless Pit|s}}.

* In ''VideoGame/TheSexyBrutale'', the basement consists of [[spoiler:a graveyard in the open air, a giant record player, and a bottomless room full of stacks upon stacks of playing cards]]. There's also a bottomless belfry in the same story as the guestrooms.

* Every building in ''VideoGame/TheNeverhood''... especially the giant piece of toast with the fries sticking out of the top. Which also has butter on the inside wall, apparently, so the sandwich is complete. But then, this game is a classic example of WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs

* ''The City Without Streets'' by Creator/JunjiIto takes place in a town with buildings that grow together to the point that the streets are gone and people need to move through the buildings to get around. Any damage done to the buildings regenerates within a day.

* The Lost Precursor "City" from ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxterThePrecursorLegacy'' doesn't resemble a city [[MalevolentArchitecture by any stretch of the imagination.]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Lets Play]]
''LetsPlay/{{Headshoots}}'': The "Room Outside Space", a seemingly ordinary room that, due to some glitch, became unfindable unless you zoomed to a dwarf already occupying it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'':
** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'': The layout of Hope's Peak Academy is... odd when you examine it. Most of the floors are shaped in ways that don't line up with each other, there's a pool on the second floor that somehow occupies the same space as the gym on the first floor, and many rooms (such as every room in the dorms) have bolted up windows in places that couldn't possibly face the outside of the school. There's also [[spoiler: the hatch in the Monokuma room's floor that apparently leads to the mastermind's bunker, even though a hatch in that location would lead directly into the hallway of the floor below.]]
** ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'': The fourth island has a funhouse split between two areas; [[EdibleThemeNaming Strawberry House and Grape House]]. Its key attraction is a strange tower which is determined to be the same building that can be accessed by both houses which it's right in the middle of, but a setup of sensors and lights changes the tower's appearance and can only be accessed by one house at a time and refuses to change if it's occupied by one side, both of which can only be travelled between by a strange elevator. When a murder breaks out in the tower, a majority of the mystery revolves around figuring out how the funhouse works.
[[/folder]]

* TheFairFolk in ''Literature/{{Moonflowers}}'' have strange buildings: TheWildHunt imprisons Ned and Lucy Song in a glass room that has no windows or doors, which is tough enough that a goddess has to break into it. Then there's the Hawthorn Fort--a castle built around a massive hawthorn maze, with bridges above it that the Wild Hunt use to toss people in. The underground throne-room is a cave covered with prehistoric paintings, with the throne itself carved high into the wall.

** The [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil very first game]] averts this. Aside from the infamous DescendingCeiling room the mansion is aesthetically fairly clean and normal, and there's generally a good reason for the layout to be the way it is; for instance the caves may seem odd but they're the secret entrance to the laboratory. However the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvilRemake remake]] throws this out the window in favor of a much more standard HauntedHouse (the place looks like it's been abandoned for years, not a couple of months) look with some mind-boggling design choices. There are now not one but ''two'' graveyards, one of which conceals an inexplicable ''Silent Hill''-esque dungeon with a boss monster (hidden in a coffin suspended from the ceiling) which must be released by putting four death masks on nearby statues. The caves are now a gigantic abandoned mine that lead to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some reason, and the only way to the labs is through a crypt set over a BottomlessPit.

** Raccoon City takes it to an extreme. What sort of insane architect designs police stations, houses, and cities riddled with mind-numbingly difficult puzzles and deadly traps? In the same vein, ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'' does it with Ashford Island and the Antarctic facility. ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' has the castle and research island. The remake of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' actually ''answers'' this question by introducing George Trevor, a MadArtist of an architect and designer of the Spencer Mansion who was hired for what was basically his dream project of having unlimited funding to design whatever bizarre traps and architecture he wanted. [[spoiler:You later learn the dream was a ''nightmare'' and they not only intended to kill him after so [[YouKnowTooMuch nobody else would know the secrets of the mansion]] but also used his poor wife and daughter as guinea pigs to develop the T-Virus]].
** The [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil very first game]] averts this. Aside from the infamous DescendingCeiling room the mansion is aesthetically fairly clean and normal, and there's generally a good reason for the layout to be the way it is; for instance the caves may seem odd but they're the secret entrance to the laboratory. However the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvilRemake remake]] throws this out the window in favor of a much more standard HauntedHouse (the place looks like it's been abandoned for three centuries, not three weeks) look with some mind-boggling design choices. There are now not one but ''two'' graveyards, one of which conceals an inexplicable ''Silent Hill''-esque dungeon with a boss monster (hidden in a coffin suspended from the ceiling) which must be released by putting four BDSM masks on nearby statues. The caves are now a gigantic SewerLevel that lead to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some reason, and there's at least one example of a (permanently locked) door that somehow doesn't exist in the room it's supposed to open into.

* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'': Grout's Mansion looks like an OldDarkHouse on the outside, but the interior is a disjointed nightmare of nonsensical staircases, [[BookcasePassage secret passages]], {{Booby Trap}}s, meandering halls, secret [[MadScientistLaboratory labs]], and truly unsettling decorations. {{Justified|Trope}} since it's the home of a truly insane elder vampire and the prison of the {{Mind Rape}}d test subjects he collected out of nostalgia for his days running an asylum.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City Kowloon Walled City]] is an example almost by the necessity of its circumstances. The city occupied a tiny 6.4 acre enclave of territory under the official control of the mainland Chinese government, surrounded by British-occupied Hong Kong. The sheer jurisdictional nightmare this entailed meant both governments basically told the people of the Walled City they were on their own, resulting in a sprawling, densely-packed, loosely-regulated concrete jungle. Because there were no building codes enforced, the buildings of the Walled City were very strangely designed and tightly packed in order to fit within its borders.

* In Pixar's ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'', Sally Carera's Cozy Cone motel is a set of one-car garages that look like road cones. This was designed as an homage to a similar real-world roadside motel that is composed of plaster tepees. Flo's gas station looks like a giant cylinder head, but that's not so obvious.

* Nearly all of the structures of Santiago Calatrava, the architect who designed this building, would be at home in this category.

** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Pop_Culture The Experience Music Project]] in Seattle. Apparently it's supposed to be a smashed guitar, but obviously [[GovernmentConspiracy this is a cover-up for the crashed alien spacecraft that was aiming for the Space Needle]].