History Main / RecursiveReality

* During the board game battle between the two Bonapartes in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', you can shrink down and travel on an enlarged version of the board game. This allows you to look inside the windows of the prop houses on the board where, in one house, you can find the two Bonapartes playing the board game!

* ''ComicBook/AllStarSuperman'' shows Superman, wondering how the world will function without him, creating a miniature Earth in a miniature universe. It grows relatively quickly, and the last panel of the issue shows someone drawing a comic-book character, declaring "This time, I'll change everything..." The character is Franchise/{{Superman}} - it's our world, the man doing the drawing is Joe Shuster, and we have a loop.

* 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]].

* The ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' story "Sorrowsday" introduces the Moleculands, an entire set of microscoping realities like Subatomia and the Quarkrealms.

* ''WesternAnimation/HortonHearsAWho1970'' is about an elephant who hears voices from a tiny town called Who-ville, built on a dust mite. At the end, there's a {{Stinger}} where the mayor of Who-ville hears voices coming from a Who-scaled dust mite...

** This is true for all "Darknet" websites and webcontent, which is by definition not searchable since search engines cannot find it and therefore "dark" (Darknet content is not searchable because it requires login credentials, which includes data banks of companies, private citizen information, or special "Deepnet" systems that are intended to be as untraceable as possible, like Tor). It is estimated that the Darknet is at least a quarter the size of the known internet, but by definition it is impossible to know how large it is.

** Spoofed by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy who takes it to ridiculous levels.

* The world of ''Manga/ShimejiSimulation'' is later revealed to be this, as Yomikawa pointed out that their world is a simulated reality within a fusiform-shaped computer presumed to be floating within space.

* There is an island that is nested inside of two larger islands. Vulcan Point Island is located in Crater Lake, which is located on Taal Volcano, which is located in Taal Lake, which is located on the island of Luzon, which is part of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

* ''WesternAnimation/HortonHearsAWho'' is about an elephant who hears voices from a tiny town called Who-ville, built on a dust mite. In the animated version, there's a {{Stinger}} where the mayor of Who-ville hears voices coming from a Who-scaled dust mite...

* In ''Series/CosmosAPersonalVoyage'', Creator/CarlSagan speculates that our universe could be the equivalent of a subatomic particle inside a "superuniverse".

** The season 2 episode [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/AdventureTimeS2E15TheRealYou "The Real You"]] has Finn put on some intelligence-boosting glasses, resulting in an AstronomicZoom on him down to the atomic level, then down to the ''galactic'' level, and finally back down to the level of Finn and Jake themselves. [[spoiler:It gets reversed when Finn's glasses are removed, ultimately zooming out [[JokeOfTheButt on his keister]].]]

%%** The episode "The Real You."

** One episode had the characters being imprisoned by Mumbo in his magic hat. Cyborg points out that Mumbo, appearing in the world inside the hat, is still wearing his hat. Which everyone is still inside. Including Mumbo. And his hat.

* ''VideoGame/TheGameOfLife'' allows for the construction of unit cells, which are large patterns that themselves simulate the Game of Life (or any other cellular automaton, if you so desire). As [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lO0iZDzzXk this video]] shows (albeit with some clever editing), you can theoretically simulate a unit cell with unit cells, and so on.

* Turtles All The Way Down - It's an infinite regress; [[{{Postmodernism}} there is no "reality"]] except in the mind of one character / {{God}} / the author. No matter how far [[UpTheRealRabbitHole up or down you go]], [[ClosedCircle you can't get out]]. Perhaps they AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence or they're in a DyingDream. Perhaps [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness they're simply insane]]. If lucky, it's a [[InteractiveFiction Multi User Shared Hallucination]], not a [[AndIMustScream Solipsistic Nightmare]]. (The name comes from a famous "argument" for the TurtleIsland cosmology as an explanation for [[GravityIsAHarshMistress gravity]].)

* A ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'' comic strip featured Pig meeting [[CriticalResearchFailure Atlas who held the Earth on his shoulders]]. Pig then points to the part of the Earth where he is, and his giant hand comes down and pokes his eye.

* External Gazer, one of the "Snake Tales" included as a bonus in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2: Substance'', revolves around the use of the virtual reality system that is the in-universe explanation of the "VR Missions". It turns out that not only does it work by [[spoiler:locating a parallel universe matching the training scenario and projecting the user's consciousness into the appropriate inhabitant of that universe]], it's also possible for the "simulations" to be nested. Plus, they're nested such that [[spoiler: the player must exit the nested simulation as though exiting that component of the game itself]]. It pretty much bends the fourth wall into the shape of a Klein bottle.

** Take screenshots of an graphics editing program and paste them back into the same program.

* Have two mirrors face each other and look at what you see in them.
** Or for a hi-tech version, hook up a video camera to a monitor and point the camera at the screen.
*** "Who cares. [[http://youtu.be/BqgEm8XWXu8 Go here.]] ''Right-click download'' and Save as '''''OR''''' you can go over here oh! Can we watch ourselves? Will it let us do that on here OH MY GOD!"

** As seen by web archive sites, the Internet also contains (incomplete) copies of the Internet, making it partially recursive.

** This is true for all "Darknet" websites and webcontent, which is by definition not searchable since search engines cannot find it and therefore "dark" (Darknet content is not searchable because it requires login credentials, which includes data banks of companies, private citizen information, or special "Deepnet" systems that are intended to be as untraceable as possible, like Tor). It is estimated that the Darknet is at least a quarter the size of the known internet, but again by definition we cannot know.

** Semi-related: series creator Rebecca Sugar did a short piece years prior called ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgue81LVZ4E Singles]]'', wherein the protagonist's apartment exists within his own chest cavity; he's able to reach in and affect the room, or step out into the infinite void.

* The ending of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue: Revelation'' leaves room for the interpretation that the entirety of the ''Recollection'' trilogy is [[spoiler:a 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]].

* In the movie ''Film/LastActionHero'', in Jack Slater's universe there are movies where Sylvester Stallone takes up Arnold Schwarzenegger's roles. This is a movie within a movie within a movie.