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[[quoteright:350:[[Film/TheTrumanShow https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/truman_show_sce_489_resize.png]]]]

->''"Peaksville was just someplace. Someplace away from the world. It was wherever it had been since that day three years ago when Anthony had... done the thing. Had taken the village someplace. Or had destroyed the world and left only the village, nobody knew which."''
-->-- "Literature/ItsAGoodLife"

The character(s) live in a small, secluded world. It could be a PocketDimension, MiddleOfNowhereStreet, an island without communication with TheOutsideWorld, a spaceship lost in the void, a LostColony, a special kind of prison, or something else that has the same effect. If there is any contact at all with an outside world, then this contact is very limited.

When there doesn't seem to ''be'' any world outside the Small, Secluded World, then this trope overlaps with WorldLimitedToThePlot. If there ''is'' an outside world, characters who grew up secluded from it are very likely to be naïve to it. They might mistakenly believe themselves to understand their world -- be IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance. Alternatively, the characters are ''completely unaware'' that there exists an outside world at all: there's only the CityInABottle.

In any case, living in such narrow boundaries is likely to affect the characters negatively. They might get depressed, desperate to get out, or even fail to comprehend that anything larger then their Small, Secluded World exists.

May often have a [[TheWallAroundTheWorld Wall Around the World]]. Any HiddenElfVillage or OminousFloatingCastle is likely to qualify for this trope if the characters are forced to live there for a while. Also, any case of OntologicalMystery is likely to also be a case of Small, Secluded World or WorldLimitedToThePlot, or both.

Compare with BottleEpisode, where the characters are only locked in a secluded world, the bottle, for a single episode. Contrast with TheOutsideWorld. See also WainscotSociety, where the world is within a larger world, and its inhabitants are usually aware of this.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', the remnants of humanity live encircled within three enormous walls, with only a few daring to brave the Titan-infested outside; one of Armin's main reasons for joining the military was to fulfill his dream of seeing the outside world. [[spoiler:Later, the main cast discovers that their community is ''not'' humanity's last bastion, and that the humans living outside are doing just fine; in fact, their homeland (Paradis Island) is the only place on Earth that's overrun with Titans. Also in keeping with the trope, Paradis Island is ''far'' behind the rest of the world, being stuck with mostly early Industrial Age technology while everyone else has advanced to the early 20th century.]]
* In ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', the village where Simon and Kamina live is secluded from the rest of the world and is only big enough for the inhabitants. Each of the underground villages where humans are hidden are one of these.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/DemonSpawn'': The Innerverse is a secluded pocket dimension created by ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s dark side which exists inside her mind and outside of the physical world. Is a kind of hell inhabited by demonic monsters.
* ''ComicBook/{{Druuna}}'': The ''Morbus Gravis'' albums take place in a barbaric world simply called "The City". [[spoiler:It is really a spaceship, but everyone forgot. Drifting aimlessly through space, its ruling priesthood no longer understands that space and stars even exist.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': In "The Box", the entire story is set inside the title container in which Bolt is first trapped and then shipped to New York.
* ''Fanfic/ADifferentMedius'''s titular world is actually one of these, [[spoiler:residing in a PocketDimension]].
%%* Most all ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' fanfics portray the wizarding world as such. ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'' is a notable example.
* ''Fanfic/TheOutside'' begins with this. Because she's being raised by an agoraphobic older sibling, Ryuuko lived in isolation for much of her life and doesn't know much of anything about the outside world other than what she's experienced. However, this instance is played with, as she's aware that there are things around outside of her house, but she's not allowed to experience them and is pretty unaware of what most things are, including any potential dangers. In that vein, because she's agoraphobic, this could apply to Satsuki, as she can't be bothered to leave their house, to her, the idea is dangerous.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Animation]]
* ''Anime/DoraemonFilmSeries'' movies have a few examples where the gang discovers another world during the adventures:
** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheHauntsOfEvil'' has the gang going to Africa to investigate a mysterious statue, and finding themselves in the kingdom of Bauwan, a world populated by sentient dog-people which is cut off from the rest of the human world. What's even better is that Nobita's dog Pekko, which he adopted as a stray from the streets of Tokyo earlier, is Bauwan's ''prince'', who intends to reclaim his throne from TheUsurper and save his people.
** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheWindmasters'' has the gang entering the Village of the Wind located in the plains of Mongolia, whose citizens are still dressed in traditional, ancient Mongolian garb. Their civilization has technology including ships and windmills, but they do not have interests of expanding to the world outside.
** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheRobotKingdom'' has the gang discovering an underground world on an alien planet, cut off from the surface where the tyrannical human queen enforces removal of emotion chips in robot citizens, while in the hidden world, humans and robots alike are able to coexist in peace.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
* The protagonist in ''Film/BadBoyBubby'' lives in a bunker-like place until he reaches the age of 35.
* In ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}'', the main characters are stuck in their house, unable to have any contact with the surrounding world. [[spoiler:At first, they do not realize that they are dead and haunting the house in which they lived.]]
* In ''Film/BlastFromThePast'', the main character is born and lives the first 35 years of his life in an underground bomb shelter. He is raised by his parents, who incorrectly believe that there has been a nuclear war and that the surface has been rendered uninhabitable.
%%* The coffin in ''Film/{{Buried}}''.
* ''Film/DarkCity1998'': The eponymous location appears to be an ordinary city on Earth, but it's actually [[spoiler:some kind of space station]].
* ''Film/{{Dogtooth}}'' revolves around three children who have been confined their entire lives to a small country estate and told almost nothing about the outside world.
* ''Film/{{Dogville}}'', set in a small mountain town, takes this idea and turns it into an emotional nightmare.
* All of ''Film/{{Lifeboat}}'' takes place on said lifeboat, which the cast is stuck in after a German U-boat sinks their ship.
* In ''Film/MenInBlackII'', one of K's lockers is an entire world to small aliens, but then at the end, we realize that [[spoiler:our entire world is a locker to other aliens... or something]].
* In ''Film/TheOthers2001'', the main character keeps her children locked in the darkened house due to their genetic disorder which makes sunlight lethal to them.
* ''Film/RapaNui1994'' uses it for dramatic effect. Since Easter Island is the only land within hundreds of miles, as far as the islanders are aware, there is no other land. And nobody ever returned from attempts to find other places. [[spoiler:In the finale, the main character escapes the island on a sailing canoe with a piece of a flotsam beam from a European-style ship mounted on it, providing him with hope that there ''must'' be some other place to go.]]
* Most of ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' takes place in a small society that is extremely secluded from the outside world although the main character is unaware of the artificial nature of the situation (it's all to keep him from ever leaving the fake town where everyone else is a paid actor).
* ''Film/WelcomeToDongmakgol'' centers around a rural mountain Korean village in September 1950, which is so isolated that not only do the villagers not know that UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar is raging, they don't even know what a rifle is.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Folklore]]
* The fable about the frog who lives in a well who is one day visited by a frog from the ocean and simply can't understand that the sea is so much bigger than his well.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In ''Literature/BeingThere'', mentally challenged Chance the Gardener knows no home aside from The Old Man's residence until he is middle-aged and his benefactor's death means he must leave it. He is aware of the outside world, but only through television.
* ''Literature/TheBooksOfEmber'': Ember is the only known settlement in a world covered in darkness. Nobody knows what's outside of the city, and everyone who's tried to find out has failed. [[spoiler:It was built underground as a refuge from a nuclear apocalypse]], but the instructions for escape were lost long ago, and now the city's supplies are running out.
* The title character of ''Literature/EnochArden'' is shipwrecked on a DesertedIsland for over ten years.
* In ''Literature/{{Flatland}}'', [[IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance the King of Pointland]] lives in a nothingness that he mistakes for infinity.
* Hender's Island in ''Literature/{{Fragment}}'' is the last surviving remnant of the original supercontinent, where evolution has progressed in complete isolation for over 400 million years. Most of the island's life forms, including the single intelligent species, are highly evolved terrestrial stomatopods -- i.e. mantis shrimp.
* ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'': The Gormenghast castle may as well exist in a PocketDimension for all the reference made to any kind of outside world. The only way to even vaguely judge what ''time period'' it's set in is by the few descriptions of people's clothes. The whole thing is played for the seclusion and oppression it creates in the inhabitants, especially Titus, who longs to escape and explore the world.
* The Bellegerins in ''Literature/TheGreatGodsWar'' are theoretically aware that the world is far larger than their own kingdom and the neighboring one that they are in a ForeverWar with, but they have no knowledge of anything else. The first book has the protagonist struggling to deal with the discovery that there is a huge, sprawling world out there filled with a dizzying array of other cultures that neither knows nor cares about Belleger and its problems.
* In ''Literature/HayyIbnYaqzan'', the titular WildChild lives from infancy on a DesertedIsland. He doesn't realize that there are landmasses other than his island, so as far as he knows, he's the only human being in the world. [[spoiler:He learns otherwise by the time he's fifty, when another man comes to the island to meditate.]]
* In ''Literature/{{Helliconia}}'', some maggots are mentioned which live in nuts, and people in-story think that the maggots must be very surprised when someone eats the nut, and the maggots suddenly realize (if they could think) that the world is much bigger than they thought. Yuli, protagonist of the prologue, compares his companions who spent their whole life in a cave to the maggots. The occupants of ''Avernus'', the Earth-made observational outpost that monitors Helliconia, have degenerated into savagery and madness by the end of the trilogy, sealed away in a Small, Secluded Space Station.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxyTrilogy'':
** In ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse'', the ruler of the universe lives on a world shrouded in secrecy by the few people who know who he is. In his own perspective, his shack is all that exists, making it its own small, secluded world.
** In ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'', the planet of Krikkit has a thick haze covering the outer atmosphere, so its inhabitants can't even see the stars. They eventually build a spaceship, and see for the first time that the universe exists. This collides so harshly with their iron-bound belief that ''they'' are the only things that exist in the universe, that their only reaction is to make plans to destroy the rest of the universe.
** Wonko the Sane from ''Literature/SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish'' built an inverted house to contain an insane world, and by living inside the house he lives outside the world.
* ''Literature/{{Incandescence}}'' has the Splinterites, small insectoid aliens who live in tunnels in a small meteor just a few meters across. They have everything they need inside -- two less intelligent species they can use for meat and other animal products, and fungi that not only feed them but also automatically repair damage to the walls. It turns out that their ancestors designed the environment during a HomeworldEvacuation, and genetically engineered themselves to be complacent and incurious so they and their descendants wouldn't go crazy from boredom.
* "Literature/ItsAGoodLife" takes place in a small town and its environs that were ''possibly'' removed from the Earth by a young boy with RealityWarper powers -- though it's just as feasible that Anthony ''removed the Earth from around it''.
* The Jacob's Ladder, the eponymous {{Generation Ship|s}} from the ''Literature/JacobsLadderTrilogy'', is all its inhabitants know. They even call it the World, and though they are aware of Earth's existence, it's just something their ship at some point started from. The ship is partitioned in various areas with their own cultures, inhabitants and purposes, creating even smaller worlds some of which are inaccessible but functional due to a catastrophic fallout prior to the trilogy's story.
* ''Literature/JoelSuzuki'': Spectraland is an island that no one has ever been able to leave, except through a rift, which can only transport people to Earth and not other regions of the planet, and which is rarely used anyway. When people try to leave the island, they get as far as an area called the Forbidden Tides, where hundred-foot waves suddenly rise up, usually killing them. After the natives used Joel's explanation of aerodynamics to develop a flight spell, Fireflower tried to fly over the waves, but the farther she got from the island, the weaker the Aura got, until she fell into the ocean near the Forbidden Tides and almost drowned. It isn't until ''Legend of the Loudstone'' that Wavemakers, using the titular stones to store Aura, are able to keep flying past the point where there isn't enough Aura in the atmosphere.
* Most of the places in ''Literature/TheLittlePrince'', if the story is to be taken literally at all.
* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' features a group of British school boys stuck on a DesertedIsland. Because the story is a {{Satire}} of the optimism about human nature in stories like ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'' (below), they quickly go wild instead of building a new little civilization.
* In the titular ''Literature/{{Mallworld}}'' by Creator/SPSomtow, the Earth's solar system (except sadly for Pluto and the outer areas) have been sealed away from the rest of the universe by self-appointed guardians of the universe, aliens that seal off alien worlds until they consider them mature enough to have access to the rest of the universe. Having been sealed away in a pocket dimension humanity no longer has the stars and have an instinctive longing for them.
* In ''Literature/{{Nation}}'', the main character's world only includes a few islands since no one in his tribe ever sailed far enough to see the continent [[spoiler:since the last Ice Age]].
* The titular city of ''Literature/{{Nevermoor}}'' is located in the Free State, which is an entire ''country'' that's like this; not only is it completely cut off from the rest of the world, but no one except high-ranking government officials from other countries even know it's ''there''. The concept of a hidden, magical world is {{deconstructed}} as we learn more about the politics of this sort of thing; specifically, the Free State is ''isolationist'', not giving or accepting help from any other country. This is very bad for ''everyone'' when shit hits the fan. And even though the Free State is much safer for persecuted people and minorities, they don't accept refugees or allow people to seek asylum, forcing the few who even know there even ''is'' a safer place for them to be smuggled in illegally.
* ''Literature/NonStop'': The Greene tribe are familiar with the idea that they're living in a {{Generation Ship|s}}, but they generally mock it, considering the ship to be all of existence.
* ''Literature/OrphansOfTheSky'' is set on a {{Generation Ship|s}} where a mutiny left most of the officers dead. Without a command structure the society gradually devolved into a superstitious CargoCult that believes the ship is the only thing in existence. Narby flat-out states the stars seen from the one window on the ship are nothing more than an elaborate trick by their ancestors.
* ''Literature/{{Pale}}'': Thea and her friend group accidentally threw themselves into a Small, Secluded World when they were little, which is how she was introduced to the magical world, and now she specializes in building such spaces. An Other in [[spoiler:Kennet Found]] once lived in a Small, Secluded World that consists of a boarding school and that she believes was built by the school's headmaster.
* The {{Generation Ship|s}} in ''Literature/ParadisesLost''. Communication with Earth is infrequent, difficult to understand, and has been known to fail for years at a time. Most people simply don't pay any attention to it at all. It gets to the point where the religious sect Bliss bases its entire system of belief on the conviction that there is ''nothing'' outside the ship at all.
* ''Literature/ReapersGale'': The Refugium is a small chunk of primeval tundra that's been squirreled away from any outside influence hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is populated by the last remnants of living, flesh-and-bone Imass (FantasyCounterpartCulture of [[AllCavemenWereNeanderthals Neanderthals]]) and can be reached from the outside, but only by knowing where it is or by first traversing the icy Jaghut Realm of Death. Rud Elalle, who grew up among the Imass of the Refugium, is at first eager to see more of the outside world, but changes his mind quickly when he finds out its existence is at risk and becomes just as eager to die in the Refugium's defense.
* ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'': For most of the book, the title character is stuck on a DesertedIsland.
* ''Literature/{{Room}}'' is narrated by a five-year-old who is unaware of anything outside the 12' x 12' room he lives in. Eventually, his mother reveals that [[spoiler:they are [[BunkerWoman locked in her kidnapper's garden shed]]]].
* ''Literature/RunningOutOfTime'' has this with the village of Clifton, set up as a historical village cut off from the outside world. The children have no idea it's not really 1840 and is instead 1996 -- and there's an entire world outside -- while the parents and adults who know better are obligated to keep up the {{Masquerade}} or be punished for breaking the illusion.
* ''Literature/TheScholomance'': The titular WizardingSchool is built in the VoidBetweenTheWorlds and completely isolated, except for freshmen being teleported in and seniors trying to [[UltimateFinalExam escape on Graduation Day]]. All other communications are blocked because they could let monsters into the Scholomance -- not that it has any shortage of those -- so the students are [[ThereAreNoAdults left to their own devices]].
* In "The Tunnel Under the World" by Creator/FrederikPohl, a man wakes up from a terrible nightmare and it's always the same day, over and over again. He doesn't realize this until he falls asleep in his basement and then sees what is happening. As it turns out the entire town was destroyed by a chemical plant explosion and the minds of the dead bodies were put in robot bodies to test advertising. They repeat the same day over and over again so the missing people and the lack of contact with the outside world don't have time to alert the people. The man thinks he can escape, but [[spoiler:to save money, the robots are miniatures, and the entire recreated town is basically on a tabletop]].
* ''Literature/UnderTheDome'' is this trope personified in a small town in Maine that is suddenly enclosed in an impenetrable dome that covers the entire town
* The exiled brother and sister Ged encounters on a small island in ''Literature/AWizardOfEarthsea''. They were marooned on the island as small children, and having spent their whole lives there have "forgotten that there were other people in the world."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/TheArk2023'': The SleeperShip is the sole setting for long chunks of time, although it does encounter other ships and eventually reach another planet.
* ''Series/GilligansIsland'': the island that Gilligan and the others never seem able to leave.
* In ''Series/{{Lost}}'', the island usually works so that no one gets in and no one gets out. [[spoiler:This is because Jacob said so.]] In the final episode, [[spoiler:Hugo takes over as the guardian of the island and changes the rules]].
* In ''Series/OnceUponATime'', people got transferred from the Enchanted Forest to ''Storybrooke'', a town in "our world" where a curse prevents Magic and many people from leaving Storybrooke (although this changes season to season), and only sporadically do people from outside the town visit.
* In ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'', humanity is confined to Corinth, which is protected by a force field dome, with the rest of the world a desert wasteland controlled by Venjix technology.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E5RememberMe Remember Me]]", the USS ''Enterprise'' fits in a very disturbing way. Dr. Crusher has started noticing that [[AGlitchInTheMatrix people and places are disappearing, without anyone but her even remembering them]]. After a while, the starship is all that's left of the universe, and the few crewmen who are left still treat her like a WindmillCrusader for believing that a universe outside the ship ever existed. [[spoiler:In this case, it is ''not'' a case of NoMereWindmill. It turns out that Dr. Crusher was a Don Quixote after all... but the misguided kind, not the insane kind. She eventually realizes that "If there's nothing wrong with me, then there has to be something wrong with the universe".]]
* Discussed in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E9RandomThoughts Random Thoughts]]" by Seven Of Nine. She argues that the ship ''ought'' to seclude itself in order to avoid the dangers of the surrounding civilizations.
* ''Series/UnderTheDome'' is this trope personified in a small town in Maine that is suddenly enclosed in an impenetrable dome that covers the entire town.
* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': The amazons claim [[HiddenElfVillage Paradise Island]] is this: the youngest of these immortals [[LadyLand have never seen a man before]]. However, [[PlotHole Princess Diana recognizes a parachute, and the Queen can read Trevor's English written documents without any problem]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Multiple Media]]
* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'':
** In the first three arcs, the island Mata Nui and the tunnels underneath it were all that everyone knew. Then the tribe elders revealed there was an entire universe of [[DomedHometown domed underground islands]] below, where the Matoran islanders had originally lived, they just kept it a secret to deter anyone from trying to find it until [[BigBad the Makuta]], [[GateGuardian who watched over the gate]], was dealt with.
** Prior to the Mata Nui events, Makuta aimed to take over the island city Metru Nui, blocking all but a few hard to access passageways connecting its dome to the rest of the Matoran Universe. His plan was foiled, but not before he caused the Great Cataclysm, wiping the Matoran's memory in the process, hence only a few people on Mata Nui remembered their original home.
** The land of Karzahni was located in a dried-up sea south of Metru Nui's dome, cut off from civilization because its ruler and namesake was such a horrible healer that no more patients were sent there, while those unlucky enough to be already there became sick and twisted prisoners living as mindless ghouls. Karzahni knew absolutely nothing of the universe for 100,000 years, until he suddenly learned way too much, which spurred him to abandoned his realm.
** The island and sea of Artakha, Karzahni's benevolent brother was purposely erased from all maps and outsiders who knew its location were killed or forced to keep it secret, following a raid where one of the universe's most important artefacts was stolen. Since then, the only way to access the island was Artakha choosing to teleport people there, while the inhabitants were blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world. In-universe, Artakha was seen as ''BIONICLE'''s version of Heaven, while Karzahni was Hell, places of myth whose existence no one was sure about.
** Both Voya Nui and Mahri Nui became isolated following the Great Cataclysm. Voya Nui burst out of the Matoran Universe and floated in the Endless Ocean for a thousand years, too far away from Mata Nui to establish contact. Mahri Nui was a part of Voya Nui that sank beneath the water, the few survivors forced to live in the UnderwaterCity and farm airweed to breathe, as the ocean was too deadly to explore.
** [[spoiler:By the end, all of these places end up destroyed and their people (at least those who survived the evacuation) came together to unite.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* This is how looks the world in ''TabletopGame/AnimaBeyondFantasy'''s setting, being divided by magic in three parts[[note]]Plus a few others much smaller that weren't included in them[[/note]] that for all purposes are -almost- independent of each other and look spherical for their respective inhabitants. Note, however, that the planet itself ''is'' in one piece.
* ''TabletopGame/ChuubosMarvelousWishGrantingEngine'' takes place in the aptly named Town, an idyllic locale reminiscent of the setting of a Studio Ghibli film. It has amenities, some varied countryside, and enough water for boats to be a thing, and beyond those boundaries reality rapidly begins to dissolve. The inhabitants are unsure if they're the preserved last bastion of a destroyed world or if everything else still exists but they've been isolated from it for some purpose.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' is primarily set in Alpha Complex, a [[CityInABottle self-contained city under a dome]]. Few citizens are authorized to know what Outdoors is like (or that it's even habitable at all), much less actually go there. (And in some variations, Alpha Complex is trying to leave Earth, or already has.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/BioShock'':
** Rapture is an UnderwaterCity that was secretly built in the early 20th century by a cabal of wealthy elites, to get away from communism, socialism, theocracy, and anything else that prevented capitalists from keeping their wealth. They planned to cut all remaining ties with the surface from the start, believing that it was only a matter of time before World War III stole everything from those living on the surface. Unfortunately for them, they (or rather, the workers they needed to maintain the city) were more dependent on the surface than they realized; when the city's founder decided to crack down on smugglers and completely shut all travel down forever, it only took a few years before the starving, drug-addicted, and partially-mutated population snapped and unleashed a civil war that destroyed the city, leaving it an isolated anarchic hellhole for a decade as life support systems slowly died off.
** Colombia in ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is in the same boat, as there are few ways to escape a floating city, though their impact on the rest of the world is much of the focus. Bound by a strict racial caste system, Colombia was designed to occasionally trade and communicate with the surface world, but was extremely provincial and racked up a bounty for 'interfering' with foreign affairs by ''committing genocide'' with their aerial artillery, which exacerbated the ongoing tensions between the workers who were constantly starved and even murdered for sport, and the soldiers who were growing increasingly radical and fascist under their founder's regime. Much like Rapture, the once shining city is led to ruin by a civil war [[spoiler:[[BadFuture or by Elizabeth Comstock becoming what her father wanted, turning Colombia into a theocratic police state that starts its war on Earth in New York]]]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', the Hunter's Dream is a cozy little cottage located in a separate dream world that serves as your PlayerHeadquarters.
* ''VideoGame/{{Deathloop}}'': The Island contains a supernatural anomaly that was utilized to create an infinite time loop. The grand plan was to destroy all outside communications and any means of escape, and then blow up the island in an orgy of hedonistic chaos -- only to wake up the next day with their lives and resources restored, and do it all again, forever. Theoretically, the rest of the planet would eventually find the island, but in total ruins and littered in skeletons, and assume they were just a suicide cult, meaning they wouldn't research the anomaly further and risk disrupting the hedonistic Loopers in each of their infinite alternate universe iterations. In reality, something has gone horrifyingly wrong, and the loop has apparently become an existential threat.
* In the ''Franchise/{{Dishonored}}'' universe, the apparent entirety of human civilization exists on a single chain of islands in the middle of the ocean. The only other known landmass is an unexplored DeathWorld of a continent separated from the Isles by a huge stretch of water that people have barely even begun to brave.
* ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'': The iconic Vaults, massive underground shelters constructed a few years before the Great War in 2077 that destroyed the world. The Vaults were designed to be self-sufficient and allow the survivors to repopulate the U.S after around 20 years or so when the radiation had gone down. However, unbeknownst to all but a few, Vault-Tec, the corporation behind the Vault system, had actually planned the Vaults as part of a sinister social experiment, and out of 122 Vaults, only 10 "control Vaults" functioned as advertised. While many of the Vaults consisted of cruel and inhumane tests and experiments of various kinds, some, such as Vault 101 and Vault 13, were intended to study long-term isolation, and were meant to be kept sealed far longer than advertised; Vault 13 for 200 years, and Vault 101 indefinitely, with the inhabitants having no contact at all with the outside world.
* Cocoon from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII''. It's "only" the size of North America. Most, if not all, of the people of Cocoon have never even glimpsed the world of Gran Pulse below [[spoiler:until the ending]] and have been raised to believe that it's hell. [[DeathWorld Given all of the horrible monsters that live there]], they're not entirely wrong.
* ''VideoGame/{{Firewatch}}'': As noted below under RealLife, forest wildfire watch persons in the US are cut off from the world for months at a time. The protagonist tries to use this trope to get away from his problems.
* ''VideoGame/FlipDimensions'': Each world is very small by RPG Maker standards and usually has very few locations. Justified [[spoiler:when it turns out that each world is a fictional one created in Lily's imagination, which means they won't have any more detail than is necessary for her stories.]]
* In ''VideoGame/FlowerSunAndRain'', the setting of Lospass Island has effectively been cut off from the rest of the world, thanks to a magnetic field that causes it to [[GroundhogDayLoop relive the same day]]. It's played much straighter with a character who never left the island since she was born and explicitly refers to it as a world.
* ''VideoGame/{{Inversion}}'': [[spoiler:The city you start out in is revealed to be one of many moon-sized pod worlds, each containing a similar city, and the inhabitants have forgotten that other cities used to exist. The core 'world-between-worlds' is a ColonyShip whose crew has mysteriously disappeared -- whether or not they were originally human is unknown.]] Unfortunately for everyone, one of these tiny worlds suffered a tiny ''apocalypse'', driving the inhabitants insane and coalescing them into a military dictatorship, which then spilled out into the 'world between worlds' to invade and conquer all the other tiny worlds.
* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' has numerous worlds which exemplify this trope. According to the backstory, travel between them was impossible until Ansem's tomfoolery and the discovery of gummi blocks (unless, as in the prequel, you had a Keyblade or powerful magic). From any given world, all the others appear only as stars in the sky. The heroes' home, Destiny Islands, apparently consists of a handful of islands almost designed to inspire wanderlust in powerful individuals. Take a look at Riku or [[spoiler:Master Xehanort]]...
-->''"This world is just...''too small''."''
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'' has Koholint Island, a small and isolated place that Link washes up upon at the beginning of the game. All of its residents are surprised to meet Link -- nobody new has ever arrived or left before. Asking people questions about where ''they'' came from causes them to short out, as they've simply never thought about it before. Only [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Marin]] seems to know about the outside world, and she yearns to be free, against the wishes of her father Tarin. [[spoiler:Of course, all of this is foreshadowing for the game's twist that Koholint is merely a dream of the Wind Fish, who Link has to awaken if he's ever to leave]].
* In ''VideoGame/MaglamLord'', [[spoiler:Arcadio]] is eventually revealed to be a small part of the world that had been magically isolated from the rest of the realm by a barrier, with the citizens trapped inside blissfully unaware of it.
* ''VideoGame/Mother3'' takes place entirely on two small neighboring islands in the middle of the ocean, [[spoiler:which are [[AfterTheEnd the last bastion of human civilization]]]].
* The ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' series is all about exploring Small, Secluded Worlds.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', there is an example with a [[RingWorldPlanet Ring World]] in the Sanctuary system, where four pre-FTL civilizations exist in such conditions at once, one per each habitable segment. Due to the lack of connection between their ring segments, these primitive civilizations are totally unable to establish contacts with each other. In addition, they are secluded from the rest of the galaxy as well: apart from the star of their system and neighboring ring segments, the only thing they can possibly see in their sky is [[spoiler:automated defense platforms, constructed once by the {{Precursors}}[[note]]who created this ring world, which was originally a preserve of rare non-sapient species from all the galaxy[[/note]], and which are very aggressive towards any spaceship what will go into the system.]] Thus, the complete loneliness of all four primitive civilizations can be expected to last for several centuries from the start of the game, or even forever.
* Gensokyo from ''Franchise/TouhouProject'', a magical realm which was specifically sealed off from the outside world to keep [[TheMagicGoesAway the magic from going away]]. The border separating the two realms, however, isn't entirely stable, and things and people from outside are constantly drifting into it by accident.
* Norzelia in ''VideoGame/TriangleStrategy''. It's small enough to march across half a kingdom in one day, and near the beginning it's noted that nobody knows what lies beyond the southern waterfall over the mountains or beyond the Hyzantian desert because there simply isn't enough salt to equip such a voyage properly.
* In ''VideoGame/Wasteland2'', after the patterns of the radiation clouds shifted, Arizona was cut off from the rest of the world. Opinion on the outside range from "Arizona is the only place on Earth which actually is a wasteland, and the only reason for that is that nothing gets through the radiation." to "The radiation clouds stretch from here to the end of the Universe and the outside doesn't exist.". [[spoiler:The radio transmissions coming in from outside and the Ranger's expeditions to California show that California is still around, and in roughly the same shape as Arizona.]] ''VideoGame/Wasteland3'' expands this to Colorado, which is not ''completely'' this because some outside contact does exist (mostly unfriendly), but it might as well be given the constant nuclear winter snowstorms and insular nature of the (sane) locals.
* In ''VideoGame/WeHappyFew'', Wellington Wells became isolated from the rest of the world once the town started taking Joy. A document found in Arthur's story reveals that they used to trade with farmers just outside the border until the farmers got tired of receiving only clothes and junk.
* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'', [[spoiler:it's implied that this is the case with planet Mira. The Ganglion mention that they are unable to leave the immediate space around the planet and previous attempts to leave resulted in them just ending up back at the planet and a random Manon NPC will mention that their sensors indicate that the space around the planet is very small, implying the planet is in some kind of sub-dimension]].
* Zenozoik from ''VideoGame/ZenoClash'' is a roughly square-shaped world surrounded by impassable barriers (at least to the primitive, caveman-like inhabitants). To the north is the Endworld, a world of darkness with guardians attacking people who try to pass; to the south: ice and freezing cold; to the west: a vast ocean; and to the east: steep mountains. In ''VideoGame/ZenoClash2'' we find out that [[spoiler:Zenozoik is in fact a tiny part of the actual world. The civilized people who inhabit the rest of the world use advanced technology and live under the rule of law. They believe the inhabitants of Zenozoik are not capable of life under such a system, so they keep them locked in Zenozoik and don't let anyone in or out.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* ''WebAnimation/MyStoryAnimated'': The narrator of "I Didn’t Know Males Existed Until I Was 17" lives in an all-female cult, while the narrator of "I didn't know what music was until I was 17" lives in a compound of religious fundamentalists. Both of them eventually escape and discover males and music respectively.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* The titular camp from ''Webcomic/CampWeedonwantcha'' is this, although there are occasional flashbacks to before the campers arrived there.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Glorianna}}'', the Mountain King rules a small colony of castaways stranded on the Moon.
* ''Webcomic/{{Nebula}}'': The solar system (and star systems in general); no one new comes in, no one who was born there has ever been outside of it, and no one really knows what's beyond it, if anything. Sun forbids the planets from leaving, saying that the void outside is a DeathWorld, and implies that it would be in Earth's best interest to stop asking so many questions.
* ''Webcomic/SplittingImage'': Aeolia, the main setting, is closed off by an unbreakable barrier that makes any landmass beyond appear as an indistinct mist, and other than a few rare occurrences and ancient history, there is no contact with the outside world.
* ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': The expedition in a DeathWorld around which the story is centered is the mobile variant, with the only contacts with the Known World being with MissionControl via radio and the mage TalkingInYourDreams system. In practice, the latter only enables Reynir-Onni communication.
* In ''Webcomic/XkcdTime'', Megan and Cueball know next to nothing about the world outside their seaside community.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Originals]]
* ''WebOriginal/BosunsJournal'':
** The ''Nebukadnezar'' itself a MileLongShip that became stranded in the void of space, cutting its passengers' world down to just its four rotating habitat sections and life-support systems.
** After the Nebu-Kadn war, the Kadn habitat is entirely destroyed and vented into space. The only survivors are the staff of an aviary and genetic research center, who were able to seal their home off from the vacuum of space but remained stranded within afterwards. The researchers were able to engineer a population of diminutive humans who were able to endure in the confines of their isolated, now 0-G environment, and who gradually lost all knowledge of life outside of the confines of their three habitat domes and connecting hallways.
* Lo and behold, [[JustForFun/RecycledInSpace the website version of this trope]], named the "Bloody Board". The Bloody Board was a forum on [=ProBoards=] dedicated to ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''; or specifically, one of the actors of the show, Creator/JamesMarsters. The board was owned and moderated by an Aussie fangirl, who spent nearly 6 years staying active by posting news articles on James Marsters on the forum. What made it "small" and "secluded" was that [[DancingBear the only member active on the forum during its entire existence was the owner herself]] -- she had posted 37,650 posts on the forum for '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis SIX. YEARS. STRAIGHT!]]''' That's almost 99,9% of all the forum's posts. That is one persistent Buffista. But of course, all things must come to an end. On October 26, 2010, Website/{{Cracked}} [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18792_the-7-most-unintentionally-creepy-places-internet.html unveiled the Bloody Board's existence to the world]]. Cracked's article caught the attention of [[Website/FourChan Anonymous]], who decided to pay a visit to the board. The board [[AlphaStrike was flooded with all signs of]] [[InternetJerk Anonymous' pervasive culture of]] [[ForTheEvulz trolling and lulz]]. Soon, shit hit the fan; after a few minutes of failed attempts at getting rid of Anonymous' presence, [[DownerEnding the board's owner shutted down the Bloody Board for good]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' is set almost entirely in a tiny cul-de-sac and its surrounding area, [[MinimalistCast and no characters outside the core cast ever appear]]. In this case, its done purely to keep the timeless, small-town feel intact; the outside world definitely exists, but the main cast are just some normal kids in summer vacation so their neighborhood pretty much ''is'' their world. The only time this is broken is during the BigDamnMovie, and even then they didn't go ''that'' far away from the neighborhood (another county or two at most) and only ''one'' new character appears.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Motorcity}}'' takes place within the city of Detroit, with the outside world [[AmbiguousSituation thought]] to be [[AfterTheEnd an irradiated, uninhabitable wasteland]] that may as well not exist. The one time [[OutsideContextProblem someone claiming to be from another city]] shows up, [[spoiler:they turn out to be the BigBad in disguise, and everybody goes right back to not caring about the anything outside Detroit]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Some of the first major civilizations in the Middle East believed that there was nothing outside their city but endless desert and that anyone who ventured out would perish.
* [[LighthousePoint Isolated lighthouses]], back when they weren't automated and there was no radio communication. If the lighthouse was on an island off the coast, the keepers had to stay on their own for weeks or even much longer.
* Easter Island became this trope for its natives, after all the trees were gone and boats could no longer be constructed to leave.
* Bluewater sailing on a yacht. A transoceanic leg may take weeks, perhaps months. Before the solar panels and wind turbines, electricity (and hence communication) was on very short supply.
* Even the most remote islands in the world aren't as secluded from the rest of the world as they once used to be. Still, many lonely islands and archipelagos in the South Atlantic and the southern Antarctic seas are amongst the most secluded places on the Earth (to the point that you might feel like on a different planet entirely). Case in point : [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha Tristan da Cunha]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crozet_islands the Crozet Islands]], the islands of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Amsterdam Amsterdam]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul St. Paul]]...
** It is not all that surprising that many of the more isolated island groups developed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_restoration#Islands.2C_endemism_and_extinction their own endemic flora and fauna]] after many millennia of gradual local evolution. There are lots of species of herbs or sea birds that only live on one small island in the entire world (and are all the more vulnerable to introduced species they aren't used to).
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island North Sentinel Island]]. Despite being relatively close to mainland India, the natives that live there are among the last groups of people to be completely untouched by modern civilization. This is due to both the Indian government's ban on any travel to the islands to protect the natives, as well as natives being extremely aggressive towards any outsiders.
* Forest wildfire watch persons in the US spend many weeks alone during the summer and early fall months high up in a small post. There's minimal furnishings and the only human contact they get are runners who get them supplies once in a while. See ''VideoGame/{{Firewatch}}'' in VideoGames above.
* Natural caves can remain isolated from the world above for tens or hundreds of centuries, disturbed only by the occasional sub-surface tremor or seasonal variations in water level.
* In 1978 a Soviet geology expedition to Siberia discovered a family of six living in in a hut in the Taiga. They were Old Believers (an offshoot of Orthodox Christianity often considered heretical) and fled to Siberia over 40 years earlier to escape Communist persecution. The geologists introduced them to aircraft, television, cellophane (which utterly fascinated them), and bread, which only the parents had ever eaten. They had no idea World War Two happened and the for the children the only knowledge of the outside world came from their parents stories and the family Bible.
* While almost all Aboriginal tribes in Australia had interacted with White people by the end of the 19th century, there was one tribe that remained uncontacted and completely unaware of the outside world until 1984. Initially they were discovered by Westernized Aboriginal people and later studied by the first white people they had ever seen. They promptly abandoned their traditional nomadic lifestyle and settled in with assimilated Aboriginal towns.
* Reportedly Daufuskie Island was this for a long time. People from many places have lived/settled there since [[OlderThanDirt Before the Beginning]]. Following UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, white plantation owners fled leaving their slaves, who went on to establish their own independent world. There are no bridges to the island, and a strong isolationist mindset still exists. Daufuskie's Gullah language and culture, evolved and preserved from African and West Indian roots, is legendary. When educator/author Creator/PatConroy came there in the late 1960s, most of the children could not read or write, believed Savannah to be one of the largest cities in the world, and thought of Daufuskie as the center of the universe.
* An animal version of some note is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Hole_pupfish Devils Hole Pupfish]], which has the smallest range of any vertebrate on the planet. Their entire breeding, feeding, and main habitat is a whopping 2 by 4 meters of algae-covered shallows in a small hole filled with water in the desert. While the hole itself is significantly larger, the fish cannot live far from its food and breeding areas, and is critically endangered.
[[/folder]]
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