Another Dimension - Television Tropes & Idioms

A point moving in a cube, viewed from the 4th dimension. (Ever17)

Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go.
— E. E. Cummings

"Maybe it got sucked into a parallel dimension."
—ALF trying to explain the disappearance of the family cat.

Grim: Yeah, that's the entrance to wing thirteen: the supernatural wing! It exists in another dimension.

Billy: Another dimension? No one mentioned another dimension.

Grim: Yeah, we step through there and ascend to the home of the ancients!

Billy: I hate to throw a monkey wrench into this ascension to another dimension that wasn't ever mentioned BUT-

Grim: What's with the sudden dissension?

Billy: I'm pulling an abstention to the ascension to another dimension; my mommy said I'm not allowed to.

Grim: Well, I don't want to cause tension with this ascension to...

Mandy: Stop it! Both of you just stop it!''
— The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

Very, very old trope, still used today. Another Dimension refers to universes that are "next" to our own, which require magic or technobabble to travel to and from. In theory, from our world; they are a direction other than the three dimensions we are familiar with. Or the fourth dimension, if you count that as time.

Alternate universes are often just a variety of Another Dimension. Unlike AU's, though, other dimensions don't necessarily have to resemble the "home" universe.

As many writers are fond of ignoring, distances between things in outer space tend to be large, so large that we measure them in terms of the distance light, the fastest thing in the universe, travels in a year. But even if you technobabble up some way of Faster Than Light Travel, many astronomers say that it's likely most of the planets out there are uninhabited by anything higher than pond slime.

That's rather boring. We need our alien invaders, our unexplored worlds with danger and wonder. Sooo... what if there are worlds and universes in a direction other than the traditional 3 dimensions? They aren't necessarily as hard to find, and it pushes science fiction farther than modern science is shining its ever-so-disappointing illumination.

Travel to and from another dimension is usually via some sort of door, vortex, portal, gate, window — the exact term depends on the series. Sometimes some kind of teleportation suffices.

Demonic Invaders always, always use this trope; it's part of their foundation.

Most "fairy worlds" in folklore are effectively Another Dimension, making this Older Than Dirt. It is generally accepted that if Hell and Heaven exist, it's not in the same physical plane that we are in.

Types of Other Dimensions:

Examples

Anime and Manga

Mahou Sensei Negima: Mundus Magicus is technically an alternate plane of reality situated on Mars. The only way to travel to and from it is by way of a Gateport.
HFIL
The Otherworld in Yozakura Quartet

Comic Books

This trope is nearly omnipresent in Super Hero and supernatural comics. A comprehensive list would take up many, many pages.
Mr. Mxyzptlk, of the Superman comics, is from the 5th dimension, a world where everyone's nigh-omnipotent and there's a month called Pants.
Walk-In is based around this premise.
Doctor Strange often travels to other dimensions with typically psychadelic visual effects. His wife Clea was born in one of them.
Shade, the Changing Man comes from a realm with very different dimensional properties.
A Wonder Woman villain called The Angler adopts a weapon that allows him to manipulate dimensions, giving him teleporting, Time Travel and travel of The Multiverse.
Marvel Comics has an Angler, too; a very minor character with only two appearances, he was radically transformed by being in Another Dimension and though he returns from it, isn't quite suited to "normal" space and tends to be in two places at once. Not to mention crazy, deformed and speaking in weird symbols that look like broken glass.
The old Earth-One and Earth-Two of DC Comics, now replaced by the Fifty-Two.
The Marvel Universe is number 616 out of thousands.
Zenith has not only the traditional Alternate Universe setup, but a dimension outside of spece and time which the Lloigor call home.
Although the Fantastic Four often visit the Negative Zone, it's their Ultimate Marvel counterparts who actually use it as part of their Super Hero Origin. And they use the nature of other dimensions as a weapon against Gah Lak Tus.
This is also Marvel's favourite Hand Wave whenever something requires physics-breaking power; the Hulk's extra mass is taken from one, and Cyclops gets his eyebeams from one where relativity works differently.

Film

Ultraviolet has this as a Hand Wave for Violet's Hammerspace weapons.
From Beyond has another dimension that's a scary place.

Literature

Narnia is another dimension in CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series of books, with specific rules about time. Indeed, the sixth book, The Magician's Nephew provides a very good fantasy description of dimensional travel, likening the space between worlds to the rafters in a block of townhouses.
The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones uses a similar "place between" which is clearly written in reaction to The Magician's Nephew's quiet, sleepy Wood Between the Worlds; it's misty, muddy, slippery and somewhat dangerous terrain. There are definitely no guinea pigs.
A Wrinkle In Time features a trio of mysterious guardians who are able to transport the protagonists through space via the fifth dimension. According to them, they are able to tesser, or "wrinkle," by bending space around so that they're in another place in an instant. As one character states: "A straight line is not necessarily the shortest path between two points."
Most of Clive Barker's stories revolve around traveling to and from another dimension, whether through a rug, painting, etc.
Book Of Amber - And how
- To elaborate, after walking a sentient maze and gaining the ability to do so (which nearly all the major characters have done), someone from either Amber or Chaos can walk from world to world, essentially willing the transfer from one to another. The transfer is gradual, but can do literally anything, including taking the traveler to a world whose mythology predicts the arrival of a deity who looks exactly like him or her. It's mentioned that no one is quite sure whether these dimensions actually exist before an Amber or Chaos resident enters it, but there is currently a sort of two-ended multiverse with Amber at one end and Chaos at the other, with the hundreds or thousands of worlds in between being more similar the closer they are, to both Amber and Chaos, and each other. And the laws of nature don't always work the same from one to another—for example, gunpowder doesn't ignite in Amber. Oh, and all of them except Amber and Chaos are called Shadows, because it's believed that they are only inter-dimensional shadows of the two true worlds. And how, indeed.
This troper, though she forgets the name, once read a book where one could get to the fourth dimension by learning to step 'ana' or 'kata' (the extra directions added to make it 4D) and needed special glasses in order to see more than floating blobs, as our eyes weren't designed for the dimension. If anyone knows the name of this book it would be greatly appreciated.
- This is probably something by Rudy Rucker.
- The Boy who Reversed Himself.
- This troper would like to note that "ana" and "kata" are the ancient Greek words for "up" and "down," respectively.
Kay Kenyon's The Entire and The Rose series involves humans discovering a manufactured universe called the Entire. The beings in charge apparently copied sentient species from Earth's universe (the titular Rose) so all the creatures of the Entire supposedly have counterparts elsewhere in our universe that humans just haven't found yet. And there's trouble actually getting to the Entire from the Rose because the beings in charge refuse to share that information. (Those beings themselves and some mysterious attackers called Paion coming from two other universes.)
HP Lovecraft liked this idea and inserted it into many stories, especially the Cthulhu Mythos. It was used not only to explain where the various Eldritch Abominations hid from the world, but also to explain some of the Alien Geometries of the various structures and beings he created.
Robert A Heinlein's Number Of The Beast uses this as a Hand Wave for traveling The Multiverse.
Robert A heinleins short story "—And He Built a Crooked House—" (the quotation marks and dashes are part of the title, by the way) a "graduated architect" named teal decides to build a house in Los Angeles so complicated that an LA earthquake causes it to fold in on itself four dimensionally the night before he was supposed to show the new owners around it. inside they discover that the windows on the upper levels show a view from the top of a skyscraper, an upside down view of seafloor and absolutely nothing, not even blackness, and all the doors and windows lead to other rooms of the house instead of outside. at the end they escape by jumping though a window into what they think is another planet, but is actually just Joshua tree state park, and another earthquake makes it fall out of our universe entirely.
The Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin has multiple dimensions between which the protagonists often travel. Also, almost all the protagonists originate in different dimensions (Skeeve from Klah, Aahz from Perv etc.)
Kenneth Bulmer wrote a series about the Contessa Perdita di Monttevarchi, an interdimensional tyrant, and the various people who opposed here
According to Word Of God, the races of the Codex Alera all arrived in the lands of Carna from other dimensions.

Live Action TV

The demons of Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer often hailed from some hell dimension or another; our heroes on Angel have visited at least three of them. Most of them have different rules on time. For example, on Buffy a demon continuously captured teens to use as slaves, working them until they're in their old age, then finally dumping them crazed and confused back into our world. All of which happened in a matter of a day or two. Also, Connor was sent to the worst dimension imaginable, and came out a couple weeks later as a teenager.
- There is a running joke about shrimp entirely based on this premise, which has been liberally and enthusiastically embraced by online fandom at large: In "Superstar", when explaining the concept of alternate dimensions, Anya says: "You could have, like, a world with no shrimp. Or with, you know, nothing but shrimp."
  - In "Triangle", after Olaf was banished she said that he could have been sent to "the world without shrimp."
  - In the Angel episode "Underneath", Illyria talks about moving between dimensions, she said that she went to "a world with nothing but shrimp" but "tired of it quickly."
- The episode "The Wish" introduces an alternate continuity timeline caused by Anyanka, which was supposedly destroyed when her demonic power source was destroyed. But it gets confusing because this alternate timeline is actually ALSO an alternate dimension, since the episode "Doppleganger" has AU!Willow being pulled from that universe into the primary universe.
Fluidic space, the area inhabited by Species 8472 in Star Trek: Voyager. It's an alternate dimension, only accessed through portals established in the region itself.
Sliders is built on this trope.
Doctor Who used this trope liberally in its 2005-present reboot series, introducing "Pete's world," an alternate dimension with zeppelins but no Time Lords (who only exist in one dimension due to their wibbly wobbly Time Lord-y-ness), where Rose was never born and her father, Pete Tyler, never died.
- The show visits this dimension 3 times so far, twice in the 2006 season with Rose and her family being stranded there, separated forever from the Doctor and again at the end of the 2008 season when the Doctor abandons her and his regenerated half-human self on the same freaking beach in Alternate Norway.

Tabletop Games

Dungeons And Dragons (most notably Forgotten Realms) features planar travel, based on moral alignments, classical elements and various other things. Of course, the world that most of the action takes place in is the "middle ground".
- Or so all the Clueless berks think 'till they reach the Cage.
White Wolf's Old World Of Darkness games featured another set of dimensions called the Umbra, which was based very strongly on human perception, to the point where a shaman and a scientist in the same part of the deep umbra would see it as a surreal swirling nexus of spirit energy populated with arcane ghosts and a section of interstellar space populated by aliens, respectively.
- The New World of Darkness has its own /sets/ of dimensions. There's the Shadow Realm, which is like the Umbra, only it's nearly exclusively animistic. Then there's the Underworld, which is where most ghosts go and not a lot of people have seen first-hand. Then there's the Abyss, which is pretty much anti-reality. Then there's the five Supernal Realms, dimensions of pure magic. Then there's the Astral Realms, which are where the collective unconscious is made flesh. Then there's Arcadia, which is not the Supernal Arcadia (Or Is It?), and is a constantly shifting chaotic wasteland that plays home to The Fair Folk. Then there's the Hedge, the predatory gateway dimension between Earth and Arcadia. And on top of all that, apparently there's Hell.
- Genius The Transgression has smaller Bardos- pocket worlds made of concepts disproved by science. The more prominent ones include an alien-inhabited Mars, the Hollow Earth (home to dinosaurs and cavemen and Nazis), and the Seattle of Tomorrow, which Lemuria tried to bring into this world with disastrous consequences.
In Atlas Games' Feng Shui, players can travel through time by means of "The Netherworld", an alternate dimension made up of gray tunnels which lead to portals which allow access to and from our world at fixed points in time and space. The Netherworld is home to refugees from alternate timelines that have been erased from reality, including four siblings who ruled the earth in an Alternate History.
Warhammer 40000's Warp is Another Dimension... 40k style.
- In essence, Hell.
- They use it for FTL travel. It doesn't always work.
  - The ship might disappear then reappear, with everyone inside turned to dust from age. Or it might reappear hundreds to thousands of years later. Or appear at it's destination before it left. "Time" is a funny thing in the Warp. Not funny Ha-Ha.
The Astral Planes of Shadow Run.

Video Games

The Combine from Half-Life 2 are a cabal of dimension-spanning Planet Looters, and the "nearby" — in 11-dimensional superstring terms, at least — Xen border-world is the neighboring dimension by which they discover our own.
The new Wolfenstein game involves a Dark World-like dimension called "The Veil". It is our world, just viewed from an inch or so down the fourth spatial axis. But that's not the Axis you should be worried about.
Galaxy Angel begins in EDEN, which consists of a lost civilization and the Transbaal Empire; Galaxy Angel II brings in two more dimensions, ABSOLUTE and NEUE.
The Myst games, which visit 'Ages' such as Stoneship (inhabited ship, embedded in an island), Mechanical (a clockwork fortress on the surface of the ocean), Riven (water on the five islands shies away from heat sources), Spire (flying, wind-carved ruinous mountains floating above a star), and Ahnonay (cleverly designed to appear to travel through time, to the uninitiated).
- This may actually be a subversion. The prequel novelizations explain that if the universe is infinite, and planets are distributed relatively uniformly, all possible worlds must exist. The link books only transport the user to existing worlds which match the written descriptions, rather than creating new ones from scratch. This does not explain how Atrus is able to revise the Riven book continuously to delay the world's destruction.
  - One novelization indicates that there are two major philosophical views - that the dimensions are created by writing them, or that they're merely accessed. Characters who are on different sides of the dispute often come into conflict.
Two of the alien races from Star Control II come from Another Dimension: the Arilou come from Quasi Space, while the Orz come from a dimension that they refer to only as *below* (thanks to the trouble the Translator Microbes have with their language).
April Ryan of The Longest Journey jumps between "our" world (Stark) and the mystic Arcadia repeatedly throughout the game.
In City Of Heroes, quite a few of the high-level missions involve visiting other dimensions or fighting invaders from them.
- As well as the Shadow Shard, a series of 4 zones set in an alternate dimension that may very well be the mind of a god, inhabited by aspects of his personality.
- Also, there is the interdimensional dance club Pocket D, a neutral zone where heroes and villains can get together but are incapable of attacking one another.
There's a very literal example in Super Paper Mario where Mario's special move is to "warp" the otherwise flat world, revealing its third dimension.
- Don't forget Bestovius, Dimentio and Merloo, who all have dimension-flipping powers! It's quite popular in this game.
  - Two dimensions was featured in Super Mario RPG, 'The Factory' where the Smithy Gang game from, and 'Vanda' where Final Fantasy-inspired boss Culex originate. Only the former was visited, the latter was 'in-between'.
In the original SNES Star Fox, there is a secret level titled 'Out Of This Dimension' that. has to be seen to be believed.
In Runescape, there exists a series of gates to the Fairy dimension Zanaris, which itself has a central 'hub' to travel to other, decidedly more hostile dimensions, such as the Abyssal Zone, Dimension X, which is host to horned kangaroos, and even a forest. A forest dimension.
Clive Barkers Undying has both Oneiros and Eternal Autumn, magical realms that are either enslaved or created by two mages in the story.
While the two Rush games of the Sonic The Hedgehog series feature an Alternate Universe, the Sonic Rivals 2 game is about Eggman Nega plotting to free a demon that was trap in Another Dimension
- Some theories and other media sources of the Special Zone is Another Dimension. There's also the Twilight Cage from Sonic And The Dark Brotherhood, but that's more of a Phantom Zone.
Magicians Quest Mysterious Times has the spirit world, which crosses over with the real world during Mystery Time. During Mystery Time, new bugs and fish appear (including VAMPIRE SQUID), characters from the spirit world appear in the town and require your help, and Mr. Graves (the sleeping skeleton in the room with the organ and locker) wakes up to teach extracurricular classes. Oh yeah, did I mention that the sky turns an otherworldly shade of red?
Dark Aether of Metroid Prime is a Death Dimension that literally sucks the life from anything that enters it. It is home to the Ing, spiderlike Legions Of Hell that possess creatures of the "Light World" so that they can enter it, as our dimension is just as lethal to them.

Web Comics

This is the main plot of the comic Emergency Exit.
Sluggy Freelance introduced the Dimensional Flux Agitator, a device that opens portals to other dimensions at random, in its second chapter. The device has been brought back many times since then, to the point where a full fledged multiverse has developed.
El Goonish Shive has a sub-plot involving alternate dimensions - however it's really just used as another name for Alternate Universes.
Unicorn Jelly and its spinoffs are set in other-dimensional realms with their own unique physics.

Web Original

Creturia, the parallel world from Dimension Heroes.
Similar to Sliders, the whole point of AH Dot Com The Series.
Adylheim has a great deal of these, including a cosmarchy spanning five alternate realities.

Western Animation

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a villain who came from "Dimension X", a world accessible through glowing portals.
One famous Halloween episode of The Simpsons has Homer entering the third dimension. After causing that dimension to collapse, he ends up in the "real" world, "the worst place yet."
- Like many Simpsons Halloween sketches, this was a parody of a Twilight Zone episode.