[[quoteright:350:[[Film/AliceInWonderland2010 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wonderland_6325.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Curiouser and curiouser.]]

Most fantasy worlds are unrealistic in some way or another, but at least they are reasonable. Wonderland is... [[AbsurdityAscendant different]]. The details vary, of course, but they are invariably strange places filled with strange phenomena and populated by strange people. But they are not [[WorldOfChaos so far gone as to permit absolutely anything]] - Wonderland still makes sense, but ''not that kind of sense''.

Many will have a theme of some sort, especially if there is AnAesop. The MentalWorld and DreamLand are often wonderlands; there is also a certain amount of overlap with the WorldOfSymbolism or the LandOfFaerie. See also {{Cloudcuckooland}} and {{Wackyland}}.

A type of EldritchLocation. Compare to AnotherDimension, which makes more conventional sense, and the WorldOfChaos, which makes ''less''.
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!!Examples:

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Anime/{{Kamichu}}'': A little girl waking up one day and realizing she's a god is odd enough. The land of the gods, however, where other gods like Laserdisc God reside, is very Wonderland-like.
* [[Franchise/{{Digimon}} The Digital World]] drifts into this on occasion, depending on the continuity and location.

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[[folder:Comic Books]]
* The 1950s strip from the AnthologyComic ''ComicBook/TheBeano'' Pansy Potter in Wonderland.
* The Dreaming from ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989''.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'', Htrae is a Bizarro Earth, a cubical planet where things are the opposite of Earth. It's also very inconsistent due to the fact that various authors chose to focus on different aspects and also had different ideas of "opposite" (which kind of works in a meta-sense since Earth is pretty ''consistent'')
* ''[[ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms Figment]]'' (based on the ''Ride/JourneyIntoImagination'' ride) takes a journey into a world of imagination through a mentally projected portal. The Imaginary realm is divided into various provinces of creative expression such as the Color Wheel, [[WesternAnimation/DonaldInMathmagicland Mathmagicland]], the Audio Archipelago and the Nightmare Nation, though only the latter two are properly visited. As Blair was the one that created the portal with his mind, he has some influence over reality there and in time gains a full mastery of that gift and his "mental energy devices" to properly become the Dreamfinder.
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[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'': Although only Halloween Town and Christmas Town are shown, presumably each of the holiday towns is a themed wonderland following their own logic.
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[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/{{Labyrinth}}'': The Goblin King's kingdom has a structure (both physically and politically). Reason and logic still work there (assuming you take nothing for granted, and take everything literally). Everything that appears in that world also has a 'real-world' referent. And there are rules and laws, although those rules are--to a certain extent--set by and subject to the moods and whims of the king.
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[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'': TropeNamer, though it's debatable whether it's better described as a WorldOfChaos. (Best summarized in the [[Film/AliceInWonderland1999 1999 Hallmark adaptation]], wherein the Caterpillar tells Alice that "everything has a purpose, even here.") Also, many of the characters and events serve as illustrations of mathematical principles. Replace the wacky characters with numbers, and very often it starts to make considerably more sense.
* The Lands Beyond of ''Literature/ThePhantomTollbooth''.
* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': The inside of the factory is a candy-themed wonderland that makes perfect sense...if only to [[TheWonka its creator]].
* Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy. After hitching a ride off Earth, every place just gets weirder and weirder. Then there's the Infinite Improbability Drive, which is capable of [[RealityIsOutToLunch making reality leave the building]].
* ''Literature/TheNutcracker'' is a classic example, and its 1816 publishing date makes it significantly older than the TropeNamer. This is translated both to the Tchaikovsky ballet and its recent adaptation ''Film/TheNutcrackerAndTheFourRealms''.
* ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'': So your house falls down onto a witch, and you meet a talking scarecrow, man made of tin, and lion... the entire Literature/LandOfOz is a strange wonderland.
** The author of the ''Oz'' books, Creator/LFrankBaum, felt it made perfect sense, and was offended that it was compared to ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''!
* Venus in the Creator/RobertRankin book "The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age".
* Fairyland in ''Literature/TheGirlWhoCircumnavigatedFairylandInAShipOfHerOwnMaking'' by Creator/CatherynneMValente.
* Orcus in ''Literature/SummerInOrcus''
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[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* South African childrens' series ''Series/DieLieweHeksie'' is centred on the life of the young Witch Lavinia, who lives in the gloriously sunny and beautiful Bloemmieland ("Land of Flowers"). This wonderland is perpetually threatened by the neighbouring country of Giftappeltjieland ("Poisoned-Apple Country") which is barren, bleak and a wasteland ruled by an evil Witch who is constantly trying to overcome livinia so as to take Bloemmieland for her own.
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[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/JAGSWonderland'' has... well, Wonderland of course. Or more specifically, the deeper "Chessboards" of the LayeredWorld the game takes place in, which stop resembling "our world but crazy", and instead become more symbolic and fantastical.
* The Demiplane of Dread, better known as ''{{TabletopGame/Ravenloft}}'' is a GothicHorror take on this trope. Being made up of cursed realms ruled by immortal Darklords, where even the gods cannot reach. Within their realm, each Dreadlord is practically a PhysicalGod... but their realm is also an IronicHell that they're unable to leave.
* Voivodja, from the sourcebook ''[[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/141032/A-Red--Pleasant-Land A Red And Pleasant Land]]'', is a campaign setting for TabletopGame/LamentationsOfTheFlamePrincess, though it's designed to be adapted into other D20 systems. One could call it "Alice in Wonderland but with Vampires", but doing so severely short-sells it's strange and macabre world of eternal night, where OurVampiresAreDifferent is in full effect.
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[[folder:Theme Parks]]
* In the original version of ''Ride/JourneyIntoImagination'', the Realms of Imagination are this, each embodying different forms of creation: Art, Literature, Theater, Science, and Film.
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[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/KatamariDamacy'': The sky broke, and it can be fixed by rolling a sticky ball around Earth to create replacement stars. Rolling around the world, seeing a child riding a panda bear like a motorcycle is not unusual.
* ''VideoGame/LittleBigPlanet'': Especially owing to the user-created content and the customizable nature of the game.
* The Fairy Land of Neirutvena in ''VideoGame/ChainsOfSatinav'' is one of these. Among other oddities, the season is determined by the orientation of a painting in the royal art gallery, the direction of the wind is determined by the large-nosed crab creature that acts as a weather vane, and the time is determined by a large peacock who lights up his plumage based on the season and the direction of the wind.
* Most of the settings of the ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' series falls into this. As most are strange locales populated by strange people and creatures. The mushrooms that increase Mario's size are even a direct shout out to the mushrooms from ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. This is cranked up further in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosWonder'', where distorted flowers change the entire landscape around them in varying capacities, regular flowers are quite chatty, and floppy-eared and betrunked apples turn their imbibers into anthropomorphic elephants... among other things.
* The Dark World of ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'' can only be accessed when a Dark Fountain is nearby, which turns everything in the vicinity into its citizens. For example, an ordinary [[PlayingCardMotifs jack of spades]] in the real world turns into the lovable [[MinionWithAnFInEvil Lancer]] in the Dark World.
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[[folder:Web Animation]]
* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': In Volume 9, Team RWBY accidentally end up in the Ever After, a strange location that functions on fairy tale logic instead of Remnant's logic. The landscape is split into hexagonal "acres", each linked by bridges that span abyssal gaps that descend into the VoidBetweenTheWorlds. Every acre has a different environment that are shaped to the needs of its denizens, which include talking animals and living toys. The Jungle Acre has golden skies and two suns while the Red Acre has red vegetation, green skies and one sun. At the centre of it all looms an enormous tree that sheds rainbow leaves across the entire realm, and all residents play "roles" that are determined by what they are.
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[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/ThePropertyOfHate'' is set in a world where lies, doubts, fears and ideas are tangible entities. The sun fell out of the sky and turned into trees and a ocean rests on top of a forest.
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'' is set in the Unknown, where the settings and outfits are [[FantasyAmericana based on American history]] [[AnachronismStew from the Colonial Era to the early twentieth century]]. Animals tend to be [[PartiallyCivilizedAnimal partially civilized]] or [[TalkingAnimal talking]], some characters [[HisNameReallyIsBarkeep only go by their job descriptions]], and people tend to act like they would in fairytales--which makes sense, given that witches and evil spirits show up. Also, it's implied that the Unknown is actually [[spoiler:the afterlife, with our protagonists having a NearDeathExperience]].
* The ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "The [=ABCs'=] of Beth", has Beth recount how she and her childhood friend, Tommy, used to play in an imaginary place called [=Froopyland=] as a way to cope with him being murdered and eaten by his father. When he overhears her, Rick becomes indignant and takes her to [=Froopyland=] to brag about how good an inventor he is. In [=Froopyland,=] they discover that [[GoneMadFromTheIsolation after decades of being left there, he went mad]] and became the de-facto [[TheCaligula incestous cannibalistic ruler.]] Rick and Beth fight over [=Froopyland,=] with Rick telling her that he created it because she wanted him to make weapons to terrorize, and murder, the neighborhood kids, and Beth snaps back that the reason she asked for those things is because knowing what [[MadScientist Rick's capable of,]] she wanted some attention from him, and the reason why she left Tommy in [=Froopyland=] is because she was jealous of the fact that Tommy had parents that loved him and paid attention to him. When she goes back for him, [[BackhandedApology she refuses to apologize for how he got stuck there,]] and [[spoiler: after killing him and his subjects, she asks Rick to clone him, and save his father's life.]]
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[[folder:Real Life]]
* The universe as described by quantum physics and special relativity make very little intuitive sense to us feeble-minded humans, but both systems adhere to strict mathematical premises and make internal sense.
* Although logic as it appears in dreams tends to shift erratically from moment to moment, in any given moment there is usually some underlying logical structure that the narrative of the dream is following.
* To early people, any far away land or sea would be like this. Especially when they've only heard about them from others who managed to explore such places. An example would be Australia for European explorers. To them, it was a strange place where there were giant rat-like animals that hopped on two legs and had pouches, beaver-like animals with duck bills and where the swans were black instead of white.
* Our own world would ''seem'' like this trope to a human suddenly perceiving it through BizarreAlienSenses, and presumably the same would be true for a creature with different sensory abilities that found itself seeing, hearing, or otherwise feeling its environment in the way we do.
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