History Main / RecursiveReality

** One Creator/KidsWB ad for the show has Robin and Starfire sitting on the couch in front of the TV. Starfire asks Robin what he's watching; he says he's watching ''Teen Titans''. Zoom out to show a recursive image and Starfire asking Robin the same question. They do this enough times to put it ''barely'' short of an OverlyLongGag, then Starfire BreaksTheFourthWall, asking the audience what ''they're'' watching.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': In "The Farnsworth Parabox", Farnsworth ends up creating a box containing a portal to an alternate universe, the other end of which is a box the alternate Farnsworth created. At the end of the episode, the two Farnsworths somehow manage to trade boxes through the portal, meaning the box "our" Planet Express crew currently have contains their own universe.
** In another episode, one character is playing Virtual Skeeball - they have on a headset and gloves, and are moving like they're playing skeeball. Next to them, Amy is playing a game of virtual virtual skeeball -- she's sitting serenely on a chair with a headset on, being presented with a virtual reality in which she is wearing a different headset and playing virtual skeeball.
** In yet another episode, Leela experiences the Dream Within A Dream type. She slowly realizes she's in a dream (or going insane) and keeps trying to escape only to end up in more bizarre situations. She meets Fry each time who tells her she needs to "wake up". Turns out [[spoiler: she was in a coma, and she was hearing the real Fry (at her bedside) pleading with her to "wake up".]]
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': Rick builds a battery for his car that contains a tiny universe. In the universe, a sentient species evolves and Rick introduces them to electricity by doing an ancient aliens schtick, and then siphons off their grid to produce real-world electricity. The battery stops working when a Rick-like scientist from that world (played by Creator/StephenColbert) invents a similar sub-universe battery. There is another scientist in the sub-sub-universe that is working on his own sub-sub-sub-universe.
** Also in "Lawnmower Dog", Rick and Morty enter the dreams of Morty's math teacher to incept the idea that Morty should get an A in the class. As they wind up in trouble, they escape to the dreams of people in the dreams until they hit "dream bedrock."
** The ''Rick and Morty'' creators seem to be fans of this trope. Comes up again in "M. Night Shaym-aliens": Rick, Morty and Jerry are captured by Zigerian scammers and placed in a simulation, inside a simulation, inside of another simulation.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Bummer Vacation", [=SpongeBob=] is made to go on forced vacation, so he consoles himself with the Official Krusty Krab Playset. Toy![=SpongeBob=] ends up accumulating too much vacation time as well, so ''he's'' forced to go on vacation, resulting in Toy![=SpongeBob=] playing with Toy!Toy![=SpongeBob=] and... yeah, the real [=SpongeBob=] decided to cut it off there.
** In the episode "Truth or Square", [=SpongeBob=], Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs go to the Krusty Krab's surveillance room when trying to find a way out of the building's duct system. One of the video feeds they watch is showing them watching the video feed. Then it is revealed that [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment the surveillance room was recorded by two fish who appeared out of nowhere and run away when noticed]].
** In the episode "No Free Rides", when Mrs. Puff enters the house during the surprise party held by Spongebob's parents, there's a picture on the wall that depicts the exact same situation of Mrs. Puff entering the house. And there's a picture on the wall as well, which also shows Mrs. Puff entering the house the same way...

* The ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "The Real You."
** Also the season 6 episode "The Mountain", where Lemongrab and Finn are seen running on their own respective bodies.
*** In the show, there is a GenderBender {{fanfiction}} called "Fiona and Cake", mostly written by Ice King, but other characters have added to it. Occasionally there are episodes depicting this. According to the episode "Five Short Tables", the Ice Queen writes genderbending fanfiction called "Flint the Human and Jacques the Raccoon." In THAT fanfiction, the Ice President writes fanfiction about "Lynn the Person and Janet the Fox."

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' revolves around Weasel, Baboon and Red Guy trying to find out where everybody in the world has gone to, leaving every public place empty. It turns out everybody is home, watching ''I Am Weasel''. And yes, it DID in fact include a shot of Weasel in front of a TV showing him in front of a TV showing him in front of a TV showing him... To be honest though, this wasn't [[WidgetSeries even one of the]] [[MindScrew weirdest episodes]].

Compare with most OtherworldTropes, particularly ExpendableAlternateUniverse, where the importance of all these alternates is downplayed by the assertion of a "real world", MatrixHypothesis (also known as [[ShapedLikeItself Recursive Reality]]), and UpTheRealRabbitHole, where the "prime" level of existence is called into question. The latter is often paired with [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Recursive Reality]] for its [[MindScrew headache-inducing]] potential. See also DaydreamBeliever, WelcomeToTheRealWorld.

* ''{{ComicBook/Fables}}'' mentions this trope with a side-character. A queen is punished for her infidelity to her sorcerer-king husband by being transformed into a tortoise, cursed to wander with a fragile teacup balanced on her shell, with the teacup containing the archipelago on which she grew up. Later we see a short story where there is a tradition amongst the people of the archipelago to touch the "wall" surrounding their sea, and it turns out there is a debate in their community between people who hold different views on whether the tortoise exists or not, and whether there are TurtlesAllTheWayDown. As far as the reader can tell, both schools of thought are wrong, unless it subsequently turns out that the greater Fables multiverse is on a tortoise of its own.

* The video to Music/PeterGabriel's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt87bLX7m_o ''Steam'']] begins with the view of space and stars with Earth closing in and ends with zooming in on somebody's skin, brief glimpse of cellular structure, DNA, individual atoms and interatomic space [[RecursiveReality which becomes the interstellar space again]].

* The ending of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue: Revelation'' leaves room for the interpretation that the entirety of the ''Recollection'' trilogy is [[spoiler:a [[MatrixHypothesis digital world created by some version of Epsilon where he lives out the rest of his life in a memory (including the part where he created a digital world).]]]] [[WordOfGod Burnie Burns]] stated in an interview that the setting of ''Blood Gulch Chronicles'' was real, but deliberately left the rest open to [[WildMassGuessing debate]].

* The website Wiki/TVTropes has a page devoted to this concept, called "RecursiveReality", along with a long list of examples. Humorously, one of the examples actually links to the TV Tropes page itself.

'''Man #2:''' Don't be a fool. It's TurtlesAllTheWayDown!

* The song "Yakko's Universe" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' had the entire universe turn out to be inside Yakko Warner's snowglobe ''twice''.

* In ''Literature/{{Boneland}}'', [[TwoLinesDifferentTimes Colin and the Watcher are playing out the same issues of loss and trauma]], in much the same geological place but separated by up to half a million years in time. Both are struggling to work out what is happening to them according to their conditioning and cultural preconceptions. Creator/AlanGarner even hints that this is vitally necessary for both to pass on from their respective traumas and emerge into their own lives again. The key lies in the ancient cave-sculptures noted by Colin, which are a representation of Colin's face as it appeared to the Watcher... possibly the very first act of Magic ever to happen on Alderley Edge.

* In ''Literature/{{Boneland}}'', [[MeanwhileInTheFuture Colin and the Watcher are playing out the same issues of loss and trauma]], in much the same geological place but separated by up to half a million years in time. Both are struggling to work out what is happening to them according to their conditioning and cultural preconceptions. Creator/AlanGarner even hints that this is vitally necessary for both to pass on from their respective traumas and emerge into their own lives again. The key lies in the ancient cave-sculptures noted by Colin, which are a representation of Colin's face as it appeared to the Watcher... possibly the very first act of Magic ever to happen on Alderley Edge.

* In the John Crowley novel ''Literature/LittleBig'', the world of the Fae is smaller than the human world and exists in cracks and crevices of the latter. By the time a slow-motion EndOfAnAge comes around, [[spoiler: the Fae have abandoned their world, apparently for another, smaller one, and the few humans aware of the Fae have taken their places in the Fae world.]] The further in you go, the bigger it gets.

** Another Literature/{{Discworld}} example, this time from the main series. In ''Discworld/{{Sourcery}}'', the main characters have to travel across the Circle Sea, and do so in the djinn's lamp being carried by one of the characters, which they still have in their hands ''inside the lamp''. This only works because one of them is carrying the lamp and is moving... because they are inside the lamp being carried. It stops working when the universe realises what's going on, so they are told not to think it through, leading to one of them doing exactly that...
** And in ''Discworld/EqualRites'', Esk stands between two mirrors and marvels at her reflections stretching to infinity... and [[RuleOfFunny one of them waves at her]]. This becomes a plot point in ''Discworld/WitchesAbroad''.

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* The ending of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue: Revelation'' leaves room for the interpretation that the entirety of the ''Recollection'' trilogy is [[spoiler:a [[MatrixHypothesis digital world created by some version of Epsilon where he lives out the rest of his life in a memory (including the part where he created a digital world).]]]] [[WordOfGod Burnie Burns]] stated in an interview that the setting of ''Blood Gulch Chronicles'' was real, but deliberately left the rest open to [[WildMassGuessing debate]].
* ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/600022 Macrocosm]]'' is an animation about a scientist who creates an infinitely-recursive chain of identical realities, only to realize that he is part of the chain himself. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well.]]
* The end of the ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' episode of ''WebAnimation/HowItShouldHaveEnded'' has Bing Bong ask Joy if she has little people inside ''her'' head (this is while she's crying over a fading memory while stuck in the Memory Pit). Cut to five Joy-shaped emotions inside her head, then cut back to her replying [[MST3KMantra "It's better if you just don't think about that!"]].
* One ''WebAnimation/CyanideAndHappiness'' short involves a couple attending marriage counseling. The counselor suggests using hand puppets for role-playing, and the puppets role-play going to marriage counseling, where they role-play using puppets for role-playing who role-play going to marriage counseling... it ends up many, many layers deep, but this turns out to be an effective way to work through their issues.
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* The Wiki/SCPFoundation has a page of Wiki/ThisVeryWiki [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4445-j right here]].
* In the Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} page on "Infinite regression", one of the "See also" items is sometimes "Infinite regression".
* The [[http://www.infinitecat.com/ Infinite Cat Project]].
* The website Wiki/TVTropes has a page devoted to this concept, called "RecursiveReality", along with a long list of examples. Humorously, one of the examples actually links to the TV Tropes page itself.
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-->'''Man #1:''' If Earth is the back of a giant turtle, then [[GravityIsAHarshMistress what's holding up]] the ''turtle?''
-->'''Man #2:''' Don't be a fool. It's TurtlesAllTheWayDown!

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[[quoteright:350:[[ComicStrip/ThePerryBibleFellowship https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Freaking_Vortex_-_2_panel_6067.jpg]]]]

* Both ''Pinball/{{Deadpool}}''' tables feature this trope.

* When nothing is going on, ''Pinball/{{Deadpool}}'''s display depicts Deadpool playing the ''Deadpool'' pinball machine.

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* Hasse's ''He Who Shrank'' inspired a number of similar comic book stories: ''Lost In The Microcosm'' (originally printed in the EC series Weird Science #12, 1950), ''The World Beyond'' (Strange Tales #122, 1954) and ''I Shrunk Away to Nothing!'' (Journey Into Mystery #56, 1960), the latter two published by Atlas, the predecessor to Creator/MarvelComics.

* Hasse's ''He Who Shrank'' inspired a number of similar comic book stories: ''Lost In The Microcosm'' (originally printed in the EC series Weird Science #12, 1950), ''The World Beyond'' (Strange Tales #32, 1954) and ''I Shrunk Away to Nothing!'' (Journey Into Mystery #56, 1960), the latter two published by Atlas, the predecessor to Creator/MarvelComics.

* The short films ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJj_NMhYwf0 Room 8]]'' and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhKt_CkXD0 Doodlebug]]'' explore the idea of recursive realities.

->''"One day, I found a big book buried deep in the ground. I opened it, but all of the pages were blank. Then, to my surprise, it started writing itself: 'One day, I found a big book buried deep in the ground...'"''
-->-- '''Music/{{Bjork}}''', "Bachelorette"