History Main / WeirdMoon

** The Blue Child returned in most recent expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and the two moons tend to alternate appearances in the sky.

* Many accurate maps of the Moon that were created more than 50 years ago depict it upside-down and flipped left to right, as early techniques to capture its image inverted the Moon's light as it passed through a telescope. More recent maps use digital image-reversal to flip the image again, so it once again matches what's visible to the naked eye from Earth.

* ''VideoGame/{{KerbalSpaceProgram}} has Kerbin and the Mun, which are the game's analogues of Earth and the Moon. But then there's Minmus, Kerbin's other moon, which fits this trope. While Earth has various objects orbiting it other than the Moon, these objects tend to be temporary (see the real-life section below). Minmus, however, appears to be permanent, and apparently doesn't make a whole lot of scientific sense. It's teal and apparently icy, which would be impossible for such a tiny object that orbits the fictional equivalent of Earth (which has enough gravity to keep ice on its surface and in its atmosphere, but is otherwise well within the "Frost line" of the solar system).

** It was also said in legend that the Rikudo Sage created the Moon by catching the Juubi's corpse inside an [[IncrediblyLamePun astronomically]] large Chibaku Tensei before ''tossing the earthen ball to the sky''.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', the moon is an animated minor character with arms, legs, and visible buttocks, who enjoys harassing his sunlit neighbor, The Sun, by [[IncrediblyLamePun mooning him]].

* In ''TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', the moon is an animated minor character with arms, legs, and visible buttocks, who enjoys harassing his sunlit neighbor, The Sun, by [[IncrediblyLamePun mooning him]].

* The moon is full rather more often than not in {{Batman}} comics.

** It now has phases, which show ''round'' sections of shadow moving across it. The one exception is the new moon, where only the outermost edge is visible - and about half as bright as on a full moon. It was round for a short time (during a pre-release update), but then the people who asked for it [[UnpleasableFanbase decided they liked the square one better]]. Despite having phases, it still is always at the opposite side of the Sun.

** By the manga's end, it ends up even weirder: [[spoiler:the covering of Black Blood used to [[SealedEvilInACan seal Asura]], which engulfs all of the surface but the moon's eye and takes a spherical shape,]] has resulted in the moon constantly having the appearance of [[spoiler:an enormous disembodied '''breast''']]!

** By the manga's end, it ends up even weirder: [[spoiler:the covering of Black Blood used to [[SealedEvilInACan seal Asura]]]] has resulted in the moon constantly having the appearance of [[spoiler:an enormous disembodied '''breast''']]!

** By the manga's end, it ends up even weirder: [[spoiler:the covering of Black Blood used to [[SealedEvilInACan seal Asura]]]] has resulted in the moon constantly having the appearance of [[spoiler:an enormous disembodied breast]]!

* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', the Sand Spiral Galaxy has a moon as part of the level (with the end star on it), and in a rather blatant failing of physics, generates LIGHT. Though, seeing as you get burnt when touching it, it might actually be a star (albeit a very small one).

*** An unlabeled map is of marginal usefulness if you're peering through a telescope and trying to figure out what you're looking at. The "right" orientation is the on in which you can ''read the text''. And it helps if the image is oriented the same way as what you're seeing through the scope.

* ''SoulSymphony'': The moon in Olivia's Soul World, where it is always night time, is the source of all energy and life. Supplies strange powers and mutations for Olivia's sidekick. Not only that, but it appears to be permanently crescent because a majority of it actually ''exploded.''
* In ''OurLittleAdventure'', the sun and moon have faces and occasionally make quips about what's going on down at ground level. They transform into one another at dawn and dusk rather than rising or setting.
* ''GunnerkriggCourt'' has a [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=490 scene]] where Coyote apparently pulls the moon from the sky, shrinking it down to about the size of a ping-pong ball in the process, and allows Annie to poke it. She initially wonders if it's AllJustADream, but later on [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=501 Kat discovers]] a [[DefaceOfTheMoon fingerprint]] which has mysteriously appeared on the moon's surface.

* Particularly prevalent in VideoGames with an imbedded day-night cycle, the moon's rise and set will always be in opposition to the sun's, i.e, the moon will always rise just after the sun sets, and vice versa.

** During the 200 years between ''Oblivion'' and ''Skyrim'', both Masser and Secunda disappeared from the sky for two whole years, driving Khajiit society into disarray as many aspects of their culture revolve around their worship. When the Thalmor claimed to have used their magics to return the moons, shortly afterwards Elsewyr joined the Aldermi Dominion.

* The moon is shown much, ''much'' larger than it appears to the naked eye in RealLife -- often filling half the sky, with such detail where you can identify individual craters and canyons. In RealLife the moon is about the size or your little fingernail at arm's length (even when it [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion appears larger at the horizon]]); while it ''can'' be argued that certain ScienceFiction or Fantasy settings may indeed have larger moons than Earth's, "huge moon" shots are usually the result of special effects, such as using a high-powered telephoto lens to shoot the scene from a large distance, making the moon appear comparatively larger to the subject due to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_%28photography%29 perspective distortion]].

** Some astronomers have suggested that 5 billion years in the future, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth#Red_giant_stage before the Earth gets swallowed by the red giant Sun]], the drag caused by the Sun's extended atmosphere will cause the Moon to spiral in until the moment it's at a distance to the Earth of 18,500 kilometers, when Earth's gravity will tear apart the Moon turning it into a ring system. Debris forming these rings will also decay and impact the Earth.

* In ''KurauPhantomMemory'', the full moon looks awfully huge behind the flying silhouettes of Kurau [[spoiler:and later Christmas]], although it makes for lovely E.T.-like scenery, emphasizing the lonely mood. The moon looks weird anyway since it has been {{terraform}}ed.

** Speaking of the Zelda games, the Moon in ''Videogame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' certainly counts.

** It's a minor plot point at least once -- they only remember spending a week or two in Lothlorien, but so much time has gone by outside, the moon passed through a phase-cycle. (Tolkien was paying homage to long-standing legends of mortals visiting the realms of TheFairFolk.)

* Earth actually has temporary natural satellites that go in cycles. One such moon came into orbit for 13 months and is expected back in 21 years. Many of them aren't visible to the naked eye, being incredibly small and distant, but are common enough that NASA thinks at least one is in Earth orbit at any given time.

** One exception, though, is in ''Literature/TheHobbit'', when Bilbo and the dwarves find the secret door on Thror's map at sunset with a thin crescent moon in the sky. A very few days later, Bard shoots Smaug by the light of the ''rising'' moon. Astronomically, those two events would have to be separated by about two weeks.