History Main / SmallSecludedWorld

* The titular setting of ''VideoGame/MonsterSanctuary'' was created to protect monsters and their keepers from people who wanted to exploit nature, and is magically sealed off from the outside world with an invisible barrier.

May often have a WallAroundTheWorld. 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.

-->-- ''Literature/ItsAGoodLife''

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E8ItsAGoodLife It's a Good Life]]" 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''.

-->-- ''Literature/ItsAGoodLife'' by Jerome Bixby

* ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' movies have a few examples where the gang discovers another world during the adventures:
** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheHauntsOfEvil'' have 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.
** Another story, ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheWindmasters'' have 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 have technology including ships and windmills, but they do not have interests of expanding to the world outside.
** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheRobotKingdom'' have 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.
* 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.

* [[ComicBook/{{Druuna}} ''Morbus Gravis'']] takes 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.]]
* In ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} story ''ComicBook/DemonSpawn'', the Innerverse is a secluded pocket dimension created by Supergirl's dark side which exists inside her mind and outside of the physical world. Is a kind of hell inhabited by demonic monsters.

* ''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:Film]]

* In ''Film/BlastFromThePast'', the main character is born and lives the first 35 years of his life in a 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/DarkCity'' appears to be an ordinary city on earth. But it's actually [[spoiler:some kind of space-station.]]

* In ''Film/MenInBlackII'' one of K's lockers is an entire world to small aliens, but then in the {{stinger}} we realize that [[spoiler: our entire world is a locker to other aliens. Or something.]]

* ''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 an European-style ship mounted on it, providing him with hope that there ''must'' be some other place to go]].

[[folder:Literature]]

* In ''Literature/{{Flatland}}'', the [[IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance King Of Pointland]] lives in a nothingness that he mistakes for infinity.
* Hender's Island in the sci-fi novel ''Literature/{{Fragment}}'' by Warren Fahy 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}} 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.

* 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:Until he's fifty, when another man comes to the island to meditate.]]

* ''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.
* The Jacob's Ladder, the eponymous GenerationShip 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.
* 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.
** 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/SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish'', Wonko the Sane built an inverted house to contain an insane world, and by living inside the house he lives outside the world.

* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' feature a group of British school boys stuck on a DesertedIsland. Because the story is a satire against the Robinson Crusoe optimism about human nature, they quickly go wild instead of building a new little civilization.
* In the titular Literature/{{Mallworld}} by Somtow Sucharitkul 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 Terry Pratchett's ''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.
** Well... [[spoiler: not since the last Ice Age, anyway]].
* 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 GenerationShip, but they generally mock it, considering the ship to be all of existence.
* ''Literature/OrphansOfTheSky'' is set on a generation ship 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/ParadisesLost'': The generation ship. 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/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'': The Refugium, ''Literature/ReapersGale'', book seven, 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 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 deserted island.
* ''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 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.

* In "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederick Pohl, 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.]]

* 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/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 "Remember Me", the USS ''Enterprise'' fits in a very disturbing way. [[AGlitchInTheMatrix Dr Crusher has started noticing that 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: and 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. Eventually she realizes: "If there's nothing wrong with me, then there has to be something wrong with the universe".]]
* In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Random Thoughts", the trope is discussed by Seven Of Nine. She argues that the ship ''ought'' to seclude itself, in order to avoid the dangers of the surrounding civilizations.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "It's a Good Life" takes place in a small town and its environs that were removed from the Earth by a young boy with RealityWarper powers. ''Possibly'' removed from the Earth. It's just as feasible that Anthony ''removed the Earth from around it''.

* ''Series/WonderWoman'': 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]].

* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' examples:

* Rapture from ''VideoGame/BioShock'' is an underwater city 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 lead 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]].]]

** ''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.
* ''VideoGame/{{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.
* 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 of ''VideoGame/{{Firewatch}}'' tries to use this trope to get away from his problems.

* ''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/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]].]]

* ''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/XenobladeChroniclesX'' [[spoiler: it's implied to be 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.]]

* In ''[[Webcomic/XkcdTime Time]]'', Megan and Cueball know next to nothing about the world outside their seaside community.
* ''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.

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''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.]]

* In ''Film/MenInBlackII'' one of K's lockers is an entire world to small aliens, but then in the {{stinger}} we realize that [[spoiler: our entire world is a locker to other aliens. Or something.]] Not to mention the first movie, where [[spoiler: our galaxy is just a marble in an alien game]].

* The Greene tribe in ''Literature/NonStop'' are familiar with the idea that they're living in a GenerationShip, but they generally mock it, considering the ship to be all of existence.
* ''Literature/OrphansOfTheSky'' also includes a generation ship 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.

* The generation ship in the short story ''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.
* The Refugium in ''Literature/ReapersGale'', book seven of the ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'', 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 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.
* For most of ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'', the title character is stuck on a deserted island.
* ''Literature/{{Room}}'' is narrated by a 5-year-old who is unaware of anything outside the 12' x 12' room he lives in. Eventually, his mother reveals that [[spoiler: they are locked in her kidnapper's garden shed.]]

** ''VideoGame/Deathloop'': The Island contains a supernatural anomaly that was refined into 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 in total ruins and everyone dead, and assume they were just a suicide cult, meaning they wouldn't investigate the anomaly further and risk catching the hedonistic Loopers in an alternate universe with time travel. In reality, something has gone horrifyingly wrong, and the loop has apparently become an existential threat.