History Main / ChaosArchitecture

** Averted in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' for "[[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean The Caribbean]]", the successor world to II's Port Royal. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If--LLqY5zE Each area from the Port Royal section of the world matches the way it was in II,]] albeit with some extra embellishments due to the game's upgraded processing ability.

** An entire castle appears out of nowhere when Dracula comes to town (the characters do comments on this one).

* The look of Gotham City in ''Film/Batman1989'' is drastically different than in ''Film/BatmanReturns'', despite having [[Creator/TimBurton the same director]]. Gotham in ''Film/BatmanForever'' has a noticeably different design æsthetic, where Art Deco is taken to surreal and impractical extremes. Then that's turned up to 11 for ''Film/BatmanAndRobin''. Also, the buildings surrounding previously seen buildings change.

* Seen in any ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' game that happens in the Kingdom of Hyrule: the overworld retains some details yet is always different.

** One exception: ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'' had the "original" Hyrule of the first game recreated at the far southern end of the map, though it looks a lot smaller than in the first game; each tile represents a bigger area in II compared to ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaI''.

** This is possibly justified by the fact that with the exception of direct sequels, all Zelda games are centuries apart, allowing the kingdom's borders to shift, settlements to change, and rivers to change course.

* The ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series has ''three'' Liberty Cities: the one from [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoClassic the original game]], the one from ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'' and ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoLibertyCityStories'', and the one from ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV''. All are supposed to be New York City stand-ins.
** For that matter, Vice City was also a level in the original GTA, it's ''nothing'' like in the [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity eponymous game]]. San Andreas appeared in the first GTA, too, but that one is obviously not referring to the same place as in ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas GTA: San Andreas]]'', as the former is a city and the latter is a state. Such naming conflicts are TruthInTelevision. ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' takes place in a new Los Santos that, while retaining a few locations from the ''GTA: SA'' version as {{Mythology Gag}}s, is otherwise completely different.
** It's completely justified in the fact that they all take place in different canons; the next four games after ''III'' having explicit ties to that one and to each other was the exception for the series at that point.

* Mostly justified in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', where zone overhauls are either works in progress (Faultline) security countermeasures (Rikti Warzone), or were there all along (universities).
** The exception is door missions, which are assigned a random map each visit. You can exit part one of a two-door mission, turn around, and enter the ''same door'' to access a completely different map.
** [[AnotherDimension Praetoria]] mostly averts this, as specific missions with specific maps are tied to specific doors (I.E. A mission directing you to the Ministry of Technology will ''always'' send you to the same building). Of course, Praetoria also lacks random missions, which means that random door assignment isn't necessarily needed.

** The Chaos Landscape between ''Dawn of the New World'' and ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'' may seem extreme, as Olive, the desert oasis town in the latter game, is nowhere ''near'' Triet's location in the former, instead ending up somewhat closer to Asgard's location, but 4,000 years is a pretty long time for things to happen, especially given the climatic and ecological changes that accompany a society of iron age or higher. It would be stranger if nothing had changed at all- just look at the past four millennia IRL.
*** There is also the case of the [[spoiler:meteor strike and mana cannon powered destruction]] between games.

* ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}''

** ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'', being a retelling of the original, is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttLXScfRHcw surprisingly faithful to it]] (down to the same ledges that you jump on, sometimes), but once you kill Mother Brain and finish the game, [[spoiler:the plot goes firmly off the rails and Samus goes to places that never existed in the original, including a couple rooms between the Space Pirates' mothership and the rest of the game which look like the Wrecked Ship from ''Super Metroid''.]]

** The Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban changed between game series, too. In ''VideoGame/JediKnightJediAcademy'', chronologically about four thousand years later, it was in ruins, but that could not explain the changes of layout, especially inside the tomb of Marka Ragnos or that the other tombs around it are not visible. Of course, these games were otherwise unrelated, set thousands of years apart, of different genres (''Academy'' is a FirstPersonShooter), and not made by the same people (Creator/BioWare for ''KOTOR'' vs. Raven Software for ''Academy''). A good comparison is on [[http://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/Update%2036/ this page]] of a ''Knights of the Old Republic II'' LetsPlay. In VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic it has a third completely different layout.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

** Whether Luigi lives alone or with Mario is also inconsistent, most conspicuously in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga'' where he lives with Mario despite there being several references to ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion'', at the end of which Luigi could purchase one of several houses depending on his accumulated funds. On that subject, in ''VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'' the A rank new mansion is visible on Luigi's home course, but in ''VideoGame/LuigisMansionDarkMoon'' the house shown in the opening cutscene is the D Rank new mansion.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'':
** The game re-used many of the same "worlds" as the original, but with radically different layouts. Even specific locations within the worlds, such as the Bazaar in Agrabah, are redesigned.

** The world for the page quote, however, is partially justified. Hollow Bastion was a DoomedHometown, and the past residents had spent the year in between games moving back in and renovating.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun1'', which takes place on one and a half continents, while ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'' takes place [[ExpansionPackWorld all over the world]] ''except'' those one and a half continents.
** There is one small strip of coast on the original continent accessible in the second game, but the dungeon involved wasn't accessible in the original.
** Actually, there's ''quite a bit'' of Gondowan accessible in both games, just not the same parts. Well, ''mostly'' not the same parts, anyway. [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/goldensun/images/0/03/LohoOverworldComparison.gif The area just west of Tolbi seems to be an exception...wait, that's Angara, too!]]
** Happens in the third game, ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn''. The geography of Angara and presumably all of Weyard is radically altered by [[WorldSundering the events]] at the end of The Lost Age. This conveniently solves the problem of the entire world being more or less explored out by the end of the GBA games. How come we didn't see all these ancient kingdoms in the previous games? [[AWizardDidIt The Golden Sun did it.]]
*** It's a bit more justified than that. The ''Golden Sun'' effectively overdosed the world on [[FunctionalMagic magic]]. When that happened, ''everything'' changed. Mountain ranges shot up, an active volcano was bulldozed by its power, waterfalls between ''different levels of the same ocean'' sprung up... and a good portion of the eroded world was restored. It's implied that all of the old technology was excavated from the restored lands following the Golden Sun's rise.

** Cerulean Cave from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' has had its layout changed in every single game it's appeared in (excluding the Gen I remakes, which reuse the layout from the original ''Red & Green'' -- which still counts for non-Japanese players, since they never got those). The only consistent bits between them is that the cave has two floors and a basement, the second floor is a maze, and the basement has [[BonusBoss Mewtwo]] at the end of it.

* Maxwell Sheffield's house in ''Series/TheNanny'' is different in the pilot.

* ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'': It's explained that Dracula's Castle itself is a "Creature of Chaos", constantly changing for different people. This also explains how {{NPC}}s [[TookAShortcut get to areas]] that it takes the player special abilities to get to. Heck, that's how the castle changes every ''game''. One odd result of this pops up in the ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Chronicles of Sorrow]]'' duology. As a result of the events of ''Aria of Sorrow'', the Castle is permanently sealed away. In ''Dawn of Sorrow'', the place you explore is stated to be an "exact replica" of Dracula's Castle. How can you build an "exact replica" of something that has no constant, definitive shape? Other than building an exact replica of how the castle appeared at ''one'' point in time, making this MetaphoricallyTrue, that is.

* Invoked with C'hou of ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached'' and C'hou of ''Fanfic/TheKeysStandAlone: The Soft World''. They're so radically different that only the shapes of the continents and the four moons are the same. For a while [[Franchise/TheBeatles the four]] are convinced they're on an alternate C'hou, until they find out that [[AWizardDidIt the Pyar gods changed everything to make the place more homelike for the G'heddi'onians.]] It's because [[spoiler: they're unknowingly in a giant telepathic {{MMORPG}} based on C'hou. When they leave the gameworld and enter the real C'hou, everything is back to normal, except for changes that time has wrought over the last six years.]]

** This also happens between ''Film/BatmanBegins'' and ''Film/TheDarkKnight''. In Begins, Gotham is much more Gothic/fantasy-looking. In ''TDK'', it looks like...Chicago. Justified, since the most surreal vistas belong to the Narrows, an area based on the slums of Hong Kong, which is effectively destroyed at the end of ''Begins''. Other than that there is no great change between the films.
** The skyline in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' plays this straight. It was filmed in Pittsburgh and New York City and makes no attempt to disguise the fact. We see the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Freedom Tower in the backgrounds. Hell in one scene Gotham suddenly turns into downtown Los Angeles with its steep street hills!

** In season seven, the Sunnydale High School basement keeps shifting, rendering maps useless.

** The Wolfram & Hart building in ''Series/{{Angel}}'' has no less than three completely different versions of its interior. While the first transformation (between the season 4 episodes "Habeas Corpses" and "Home") is somewhat justified and certainly noticed, the second one (between the season 4 finale "Home" and the season 5 premiere "Conviction") is not.

* In Monica's apartment on Series/{{Friends}} there is sometimes an arch between the main room and the kitchen. Sometimes its presence is demanded by the plot, but sometimes it's just there because the director liked it there.

* The sets for ''Series/TheOddCouple1970'' and ''Series/HappyDays'' were completely changed when they went from a SingleCamera setup to Filmed Before A StudioAudience, without the characters moving to a different apartment/house (also Arnold's Drive-In on ''Series/HappyDays'' - the other permanent set). Oh, and one time {{Justified|Trope}} when Arnold's burned to the ground and they built a new Arnold's.

** Averted in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' for "[[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean The Caribbean]]", the successor world to II's Port Royal. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If--LLqY5zE Each area from the Port Royal section of the world matches the way it was in II]], albeit with some extra embellishments due to the game's upgraded processing ability.

*** There is also the case of the [[spoiler: meteor strike and mana cannon powered destruction]] between games.

** Notable in the "Your Baby Is Dead!" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky17Hb_7CxA scene]], where a central upstairs window appears incongruously above the front door just so that Maggie can fall out of it.

* Can be seen in a variety of areas between the original ''VideoGame/TombRaider'' game and ''[[VideoGameRemake Tomb Raider Anniversary]]''. One of the most striking is a fire puzzle in Midas' Palace: what was little more than a sewer with a few flaming pillars that were laughably easy to hop across in the original, became a gigantic room filled with ornate rotating platforms spewing jets of flame in all directions. A more jarring example: Lara's mansion looks quite different in every game, ending up looking something like TheMovie version in ''Tomb Raider Legend''.

{{Roguelike}} games usually feature ChaosArchitecture as part of the genre, in the form of randomly generated dungeons.

* ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery'' has considerably more depth than your standard {{Roguelike}} game, and provides a plot explanation for the in-game ChaosArchitecture. One particularly Chaos-ridden dungeon actually has no bottom, and it continues to evolve for as long as you care to explore it.

This trope can also be seen in VideoGames when a location that is available in multiple games in one series changes considerably between two games without any in-story justification. This is one of the AcceptableBreaksFromReality as no one wants to explore the same actual area game after game (unless the gameplay is focused away from level layout). A clever game designer make things look different by changing the various {{Insurmountable Waist Height Fence}}s and {{Invisible Wall}}s, but often it's as if someone just tore down buildings and geography and rebuilt them from scratch, in different locations. If a JustifiedTrope, it's because something [[WorldSundering changed (or blew up) the world on a fundamental level]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

** Wayne Manor is often subjected to the whims of the artist rather than maintain any sense of consistency, even outside the times there have been in universe justifications such as the need to do major repairs or rebuilding.
** While Gotham has been mapped out even the maps are subject to small changes and areas, like right around Wayne Tower, that are visited frequently are depicted wildly differently under different artists and writers.
* In the ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'', WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck's house achitecture and placement in Duckburg have been depicted inconsistently throughout the comics, including those with the same authors. The same happens with his Uncle Scrooge's money bin. The one constant thing is that it's on top of a hill.
** Not even that remains constant, as even Carl Barks himself sometimes put Uncle Scrooge's money bin on the street level. That was probably deliberate, as Barks told later that he made changes to Duckburg's geography on purpose so that there wouldn't be any standard definition about where it was and what it was like. Of course Don Rosa took a very different approach and wanted to standardize everything.

[[folder:Film]]

** Third film: The location of the Fat Lady's portrait is changed ([[TheOtherDarrin as is the Fat Lady]]). Hagrid's hut is moved next to a newly-added giant sundial, which is accessed across a newly-added bridge attached to a newly-added courtyard at the foot of a newly-added ClockTower. The hospital wing is moved to the top of this tower. The Whomping Willow's position has changed: it's still very close to the woods, but now it's farther away from the main building and in a more mountainous area.

** Final film: The viaduct connecting the entrance courtyard to the other side of the castle is reangled so that it instead connects the entrance courtyard to a cliff in front of the school. The entrance courtyard is made larger. The moving staircases are replaced with wider, stationary staircases.

* The bridge of the ''Enterprise'' seems to change for every one of the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' movies featuring the classic crew. It wasn't that noticeable in the first three movies, which only featured different color schemes and different placements of the various workstations, but the bridges in the second three movies (featuring the NCC-1701-A) were each so different that it's hard to believe they were supposed to be the same ship. There have been fan suggestions that the bridge is a plug-in module that could be easily changed between each movie, but that doesn't really explain how the ''turbolifts'' moved.

[[folder:Multiple Media]]

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* The eponymous street in ''Series/SesameStreet'' has been remodelled several times, with various degrees of plausiblity, but the most notable example is the "Around the Corner" era (1993-1997), where it suddenly turns out that the street continues further than we've previously seen. And later, when the new locations test poorly with the core audience, it doesn't.
[[/folder]]

* ''Franchise/{{EXTRAPOWER}}'': Much like Castlevania, Blackberry's pyramid shifts layout and appearances between ''VideoGame/EXTRAPOWERAttackOfDarkforce'' and ''VideoGame/EXTRAPOWERGiantFist'', explained in the latter as the spirits of the pyramid rearranging the pyramid to make it more difficult for outsiders to challenge. In-universe, Zophy has challenged the pyramid several times in the past, and it's different each time.

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* The interior of the Upton house in ''Webcomic/{{Misfile}}''. It seems to change every 3rd or 4th time we see it.

* Happens in-universe in the Literature/{{Gearworld}}, where space does not mean [[AlienGeometries quite the same thing as elsewhere]]. In the journal, the first hint the characters have of this is that they keep finding new rooms in already-explored areas. At first they aren't sure if the rooms are appearing, or if they somehow missed them previously.

* ''WesternAnimation/Castlevania2017'' subtly references and justifies the shifting architecture of Dracula's Castle from the games by portraying it as a massive ClockPunk edifice that frequently changes its layout.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{The Simpsons}}'' household is somewhat notorious for this, particularly one door below the stairs which can be a closet or the basement depending on the episode. The upstairs floor plan is also difficult to work out.

[[folder:RealLife]]

** Onu-Koro is an underground village inside a closed, pitch black cavern with a river flowing across it. In the canceled ''The Legend of Mata Nui'' game, it was to be in an open cavern, with brown instead of black huts. In the ''Mask of Light'' movie, the huts look totally different, and some are built into the walls. The cavern is ''way'' bigger, gigantic stalagmites appear in the town center, and sunlight is coming in from the ceiling.

*** In one of the comics, Mangaia is a simple room with windows.

** The Bohrok Nests have a common design template across media, but still, in ''MNOG'', the stacked-together Bohrok canisters are hexagon-shaped and see-through at the top, whereas other depictions are more like the actual toy containers in looking like rounded-off parallelograms from the top. Even so, in the CGI ads, they look like green organic cocoons, whereas in the comics they're gray and metallic.

* The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA was the home of Sarah Winchester, heir to the gunmaker's fortune; she kept the home under constant construction for decades until her death, and the lack of any formal construction plan led to a number of oddities in the residence.

* ''VideoGame/Metroid''

* In ''[[Videogame/YsOrigin]]'', one member of the search party describes Darm Tower as having constantly shifting floors.

[[folder: Puppet Shows]]

** In the pilot, Piper got a job in an Italian restaurant in the pilot, but from the second episode onwards she works in a different restaurant named "Quake". While both the set and the outside shots are different, it is stated to be the same place.