Void Between the Worlds

When Gwen does a Frame Break, there's a long way to fall.

"There's all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions, billions of parallel universes all stacked up against each other. The Void is the space in between. Containing absolutely nothing. Can you imagine that, nothing? No light, no dark, no up, no down. No life. No time. Without end. My people called it the Void, the Eternals call it the Howling. But some people call it Hell."

— The Doctor, Doctor Who, "Army of Ghosts"

The no-plane, not-space, non-existence and/or non-reality that surrounds and encloses all other planes, usually referred to as the Void. It's the space between Alternate Dimensions, the darkness between realms, the unreality between alternate realities; it's nothing itself.

Time may not pass in it, or it feels horribly slow. You can almost never leave, and if you can, you won't be the same. You might even suffer permanent psychological or physical trauma from the experience.

The void might be an entirely empty place/plane/reality/whatever, like a Blank White Void (or black) that's the size of the universe, or somewhere(?) that can't even be described as such, since it doesn't exist. A White Void Room is a room designed to look like this.

Anything native to such a place can be reasonably expected to be an Eldritch Abomination. If it isn't native, expect it to be a Sealed Evil in Another World. Obviously a good source for anything using The Power of the Void. See also Hyperspace Is a Scary Place. Almost guaranteed to be where you are if you're festering in The Nothing After Death, in which cases it serves as a kind of Purgatory or Limbo. In its purest form however, this place is the primordial horror of Nothingness itself, and thus shouldn't even have demonic inhabitants — true and absolute Nothing Is Scarier under this trope.

Might have some overlap with Portal Crossroad World or Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, depending on the setting. In its purest form it's just what it says on the tin: blank void between which different universes/worlds are set. In some variations, it can be sort of a half-empty but not entirely hub world (the Woods Between the Worlds in The Chronicles of Narnia). In some iterations, it's another plane of existence overlapping our own (hyperspace in Star Wars, subspace in Star Trek, the hacker shortcuts in The Matrix that look like an endless hallway of white rooms, etc.). The page quote from Doctor Who gives the best straight-up example: pure nothingness between which all the parallel dimensions of Reality are set, not so much a "hub" as such (though you do need to traverse it to get from one to the other).

Compare Place Beyond Time.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach has the Garganta.^note Spanish for "throat", but written with a kanji meaning "black cavity". It is a bridge between the human world, Soul Society, and Hueco Mundo. The part of Garganta that connects the human world and Soul Society is known as Dangai^note "parsing world" and was formerly a penal colony. Time runs 2000 times faster in there, but it has mechanisms preventing people from abusing this time distortion: a thick current that can snatch travelers, leaving them stuck forever, and a train-shaped creature which collects stuck travelers and throws them into a completely different time from the point they entered Dangai. People who do not have access to the Jigokucho are forced to cross Dangai no matter what method they take to travel between worlds. Powerful Soul Reapers can utilize the distortion to their advantage; Ichigo and his father spend many years inside Dangai so the former can train at his leisure before the final confrontation with Aizen. Meanwhile, Hollows regularly use Garganta to travel between Hueco Mundo and the human world, which takes the form of a Crack in the Sky.
• Doraemon: The Records of Nobita, Spaceblazer have Nobita and Doraemon entering Planet Koya Koya, when their new friend Ropporu attempts a hyperspace jump and connects the back exit of his ship to the floorboards of Nobita's bedroom. Towards the ending, the portal between Ropporu's spaceship to Nobita's room had started drifting apart, with a blank dimension in-between a shrinking exit going further and further. Soon it will be lost forever, forcing Nobita and Doraemon to depart and permanently bid their friends on Planet Koya Koya goodbye.
• Dragon Ball Super features the World of Void, a realm of total nothingness outside the twelve known universes. When Zen-Oh declares a multiversal tournament, his Grand Priest constructs an arena there.
• The dimension space (a.k.a. "sea of dimensions") in the Lyrical Nanoha series separates individual dimensional worlds from each other. There is also "imaginary space" but its definition is murky at best and it hasn't been seen since season one.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • The 12th Angel Leliel's body was comprised of an empty vacuum known as a Dirac sea, which Ritsuko hypothesized was connecting another universe to theirs.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion had the Anti-Universe/Minus Space, an Eldritch Location where reality takes its form based on the imaginations and memories of those within it.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero the dimension gap appears as an infinite black space filled with glowing white lights, each of which is a reality. Naofumi travels through it to return after being sent to his homeworld.
• SD Gundam Force has the Minov Boundary Sea, which the Gundam Force first discovers when the Zakurello Gate is tampered with. It was first hinted when Talgeese falls in a crack in a Magic Square by Deathscythe, who speaks of a point between dimensions.
• The Kyokai, the sea that separates the world of The Twelve Kingdoms with the rest of the world, is apparently located somewhere between Japan, China, and Korea, but nobody who has ever tried to cross from the kingdoms to the world through it has ever came back or arrived to the other side. However, many have been carried from one side to the other by massive storms.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: It turns out that while the front of the cards reflect the twelve dimensions (and monsters therein), the back reflect the darkness between them. This becomes an important plot point in the final season because in the Yu-Gi-Oh continuity the void is described as a darkness of raw potential that is easily moulded by people's hearts. And since the most common perception of darkness is that Dark Is Evil...
• In The Vertical World, Ruska and his party reach a hole that allows them to access a place that seems like this. It's quickly revealed this void is in fact the universe outside of their own.

Comic Books

• In Astro City, it's said that the space outside of reality is a black and featureless void, filled with hungry, nasty things. The Point Man accidentally opens a tear in reality into this space.
• The "Ghost Zone" (or purgatory) in The DCU is more akin to this than any traditional portrayal of purgatory. (In fact, the only character to recognize it as such is an angel.) It is a stark white void where "things build crooked."
• ElfQuest:
  • Some elves like Savah can send their souls out of their bodies to perform psychic searches, and the medium through which they travel is called the void. It's depicted as a dark region in which souls appear as the negative image of their owners. Winnowill deliberately traps Savah there on one such search; later Savah and Suntop commune within the void while their bodies are far apart (and Winnowill tries to gatecrash that party as well).
  • There's also a scene where Cutter, wounded and delirious, appears to commune with his dead father Bearclaw in the same way, but it's never made clear if this is real or just a delusion.
• Judge Dredd: For every functioning alternate dimension, there are a thousand others which are nothing but endless nothingness, so finding the right one without the proper set of a coordinates is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Judge Anderson makes good use of this by trapping the Dark Judges there after their latest rampage in the Mega City.
• The Sandman (1989):
  • The Silver City where angels live is located high above Creation, with a void all around it.
  • Dream travels through one when travelling from his own realm to Hell.
• Seconds: The eventual fate of Seconds. After Katie has undone her actions and eaten the mushrooms enough times, the restaurant ends up in a dead world where the house spirit from Lucky's has gained enough fury and power to make sure everything remains that way.
• As she develops in her meta medium manipulating powers, Gwenpool takes to disposing of villains in the space between panels, appearing as a white expanse, that she calls the "Gutterspace". Eventually she discovers that this isn't permanent and villains will inexplicably find themselves back in the world, no memory of ever being sent there.
• Minor Spider-Man villain "The Spot" is basically the Dimension Lord of a dimension that functions like this. From the inside, it's a featureless, gravity-less void of inexplicable light, filled with countless floating black disks. These disks are portals, and whilst many of them just recursively loop back into different spots in the void itself, they can also connect to spots in other dimensions. The Spot's powers let him create portal-disks at will, which can either link two spots in the same dimension, or just open up into the void itself.
• Transformers:
  • The original Marvel Comics The Transformers series has The Void, across which they build the Space Bridge. It's obviously deadly to any Transformer who falls off the Space Bridge.
  • Another Transformers comic series has Ramjet lost in the void between dimensions. Things live there. They aren't friendly. Ramjet was not quite the same when he resurfaced after being torturously unmade and remade until they got bored with him and tossed him back. His presence can corrupt the reality around him.
  • Zero Space, introduced in IDW's Transformers: Regeneration One, serves as the space between the dimensions of The Multiverse. The Dark Matrix creature attempts to breach through it so it can corrupt the entire Multiverse, only to be stopped by Rodimus Prime and many of his multiversal counterparts, along with Spike Witwicky.
• The Bleed in the WildStorm comics universe, now adopted into The DCU, is the "space" separating universes and, at one point, multiverses.
• In the Wonder Woman Vol 1 storyline Judgment In Infinity, the Adjudicator relocates himself to an inter-dimensional limbo, described as an empty, fathomless, black void, while he tests humanity across different parallel universes.
  Meanwhile— if such a word has any meaning in a universe founded upon relativity— in a strange, trans-dimensional limbo, a stark robed figure stands amid rivulets of gleaming fire which harm him not— staring deep into the many-faceted globe he holds before him.

Fan Works

• Jewel of Darkness: The Endless Council meet in a building constructed in the empty plane that exists outside of time and space.
• In the Pony POV Series Chaos Verse, the place Discord's spirit and mind is trapped while his body is trapped in stone is an endless white void (though he and Fluttercruel eventually create a chaos-based copy of Ponyville to fill it). From here, he can only access the Limbo and the dream world, but with some effort, he can split off a part of his consciousness and send it to the real world (which is how he accesses the Truth).
• A Future of Friendship, A History of Hate: The void between dimensions was where Ruinate was sealed away by the original bearers of the Elements of Harmony.
• In the Harry Potter parody fic Xtremly Scray Harry, Draco and the Parody Sue OC have three way sex here.
• In The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, Discord has to go through here to get to alternate worlds. It's described as tasting orange.
• In Bring Me Back Home, Ladybug and Coccinelle each experience this after falling or being thrown into a portal. "She didn’t know what to expect in the barrier between worlds, but it certainly wasn’t a sea of teals and ceruleans melting together, lapping at her suit like some sort of viscous gel. Stars shone in her eyes, brilliant and blinding, and though the air was sucked from her lungs, the peace and the light and the calm of the void was no longer frightening. It was beautiful."
• In Pony POV Series:
  • This exists, and it is evidently not a fun place to be, to the point even gods need a lot of protective spells just to safely exist and is inhabited by horrific Eldritch Abominations. It's also the one place one can be that the Concepts are incapable of directly seeing you. On the other hand, it also seems to be where the Elders' true, universe dwarfing forms naturally exist even while extending into the mortal or spirit worlds.
  • Limbo also seems to be this, being an infinite white void where time as we know it doesn't exist.
• In Undertale fanon, this is where Gaster ended up, and you can go to AUs from there.

Films — Live-Action

• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has the Gap Junction, which 838-Christine describes as "the space between universes", and is where the Book of Vishanti is stored.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The aliens are described as escaping to "the space between spaces" at the climax of the film.
• The Matrix: The demo program that shows/explains to people what the Matrix truly is starts off as a featureless, never-ending room.
• Mortal Kombat (2021) has a scene in 'the Void', a featureless plane between the Realms.
• The Djinn's home dimension in the Wishmaster series is described as this (although it looks more like Hell in actuality), and he boasts about actually being one of the few beings to have walked the abyss between the planes. The Djinn's goal is to merge it with the human realm, and allow his race to rule the Earth.

Literature

• A very odd example is the Wood Between the Worlds in The Chronicles of Narnia. It is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a silent, serene, pleasant, even hypnotic wood, and the various worlds are represented by small pools of water.
• The place where the Outer Gods dwell in the Cthulhu Mythos, usually referred to as the Outer Void or the Audient Void, is usually considered this (it kinda depends on the story and/or the writer. Occasionally the Outer Gods are depicted as dwelling in the depths of regular old space). At the very least, Yog-Sothoth is always described as existing outside the universe/multiverse.
  • Or alternatively, the universe/multiverse exists inside Yog-Sothoth. Or rather, both are true at the same time. There's a reason he's called the "All In One and One In All".
• Todash darkness in The Dark Tower series.
• In Destroyermen, the strange place that USS Walker ends up during the transition to the Lemurian/Grik world is described as a strange vacuum in which water droplets are suspended in place. Anyone who looks overboard feels queasy, since there's nothing down there, a bottomless pit. Captain Reddy feels and hears the ship's engines screaming, since the screws are no longer submerged and nearly tear themselves apart from the speed. The ship's engineer, Brad "Spanky" McFarlane, reacts quickly and shuts down the engines to save them. After fifteen books, no one still has any idea what that place is.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld series features a realm underneath reality where all the half-formed or forgotten ideas are given shape and live, always trying to break through into the real world.
  • Additionally, there is a void outside the universe. According to Death, it's blue.
• When the Dragonriders of Pern teleport on their dragons, they travel between, a void in which young riders and dragons can get lost if they don't visualize their destination well enough first.

song: Black, blacker, blackest / And cold beyond all frozen things

• The Empirium Trilogy: The Deep is an empty pocket of nothing that exists between the world of Avitas and all other dimensions. Only the truly powerful can enter it and keep their physicality, something even the angels couldn't achieve.
• According to Gravity Falls: Journal 3, Bill Cipher's "Nightmare Realm" is described as "not exactly a dimension, but rather a boiling, shifting intergalactic foam between dimensions."
• The Guns of the South: Possible fate of one of the AWB men, who had the misfortune of using the time machine just when Caudell shot it up. He theorizes that the man was either dumped in a different time, or stuck in a time limbo.
• In the Heralds of Valdemar series, the Gate spell allows instantaneous travel from one place to another by reaching across a chaotic magic-filled void; care must be taken when constructing the spell to keep the travelers from becoming lost within it. The Big Bad originally known as Ma'ar develops a form of immortality by constructing a Soul Jar within the Void, Body Surfing into his own descendants, and returning his soul to the Void whenever his body dies. He develops Sanity Slippage over the centuries from spending too much time there, and loses even more of his marbles when another failed spell sends his most recent body there for a time as well.
• The In Ovo in Clive Barker's Imajica, which has been created to separate the Fifth Dominion (Earth) from the other four Dominions, and is populated by not quite mindless soul-eating killer ghouls.
• The Stephen King story The Jaunt, which revolves around a method of instantaneous travel which opens a wormhole between two points in space. Problem is, only the unconscious mind can traverse this way, because while physical matter moves instantly, the mind experiences exactly what lies between the two gateways - a total absence of sense or place that goes on for untold eons due to time dilation. Any conscious being that undergoes the trip either dies immediately on arrival or is mentally shattered.
• In The Lives of Christopher Chant, Christopher can walk to any world by going through a Central Valley that connects to all of them.
• In The Magicians, basically the same thing exists between our world and Fillory as the silent, serene, pleasant, even hypnotic wood in The Chronicles of Narnia. Given that Fillory is a Deconstruction of Narnia, this is not surprising.
• Barbara Hambly's titular Rainbow Abyss.
• In Riddle of the Seven Realms the titular question is why fire cannot be lit in the demon's realm. The answer is that doing so opens a portal into the void, which would destroy all the realms.
• This exists in The Riftwar Cycle. Dragons are the only natural beings that can traverse it, though the Dread are actually from there because, as the last book reveals, they are all avatars of the concept of nonbeing.
• A Void beyond the world certainly exists in Middle-Earth's cosmology, as laid out in The Silmarillion. Whether or not there are other worlds is never established; Word of God on the matter vaguely indicated that there were, but that J. R. R. Tolkien wasn't really interested in exploring that idea further. The Valar cast Morgoth out into the void after his final defeat, and there he will stay until the unmaking of the world when Feanor will return to life to slay him once and for all.
• The Deep of Uncreation in Somewhither. Transdimensional ships travel through it, but outside their enclosed environment, nothing can survive in the void—well, except for immortals. It's filled with the black substance "twilight"; Ilya finds out he can shape and command this substance to some extent, which comes in handy.
• The Wheel of Time: Skimming is a form of rapid transportation that uses portals to take shortcuts through an endless dark void. Opening portals when and where you aren't "supposed to" inside this void yields undefined behavior. The Ways are another shortcut dimension example, accessed by anyone via special stone gateways. The Ways used to be bright and cheery but under the effects of The Corruption have decayed into a crumbling, lightless world inhabited by a soul-devouring wind.
  • In the final book, it's revealed that the Dark One itself is a sentient Void; how it's related to the above voids, if at all, is not addressed.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • The Void, which provides the page quote, which is a Place Beyond Time and space that exists between parallel universes and leaves traces of "void stuff" on whoever passes through it. "Void stuff" becomes visible when viewed through special filters (like those the Doctor has, disguised as a pair of normal 3D glasses). This may or may not be the same as the white void outside the main universe that appears in the first episode of "The Mind Robber", and the white void between N-Space and E-Space that provides the main setting of "Warriors' Gate".
    Second Doctor: We are nowhere. It's as simple as that.
  • As shown in "Army of Ghosts", it is possible to traverse the Void, with a specially designed "void ship". This ship has two modes: normal mode, which has mass/volume/etc. and behaves like a physical object, and "void mode", which is capable of traversing the Void. In void mode, the ship has no mass, no volume, and doesn't register on any instruments, though it can still be seen. Objects with mass and volume aren't capable of navigating the void because there is no space or time there. Even the human characters are unnerved by looking at it in void mode, and the Doctor is downright terrified of it.
  • In "It Takes You Away", the Doctor and companions also explore an antizone, akin to the main universe's immune response around a particularly dangerous Timey-Wimey Ball or Reality-Breaking Paradox. The antizone, a void of dim caves filled with giant flesh-eating Moth Menaces and an eccentric alien guard, turns out to be sequestering a Genius Loci universe that existed as a primordial deity before the Big Bang, and wants to seep back in.
• The Advent Void in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. Being stuck in the Void was originally presented as a Fate Worse than Death for defeated Riders, though it was later revealed that Riders were sent there upon defeat specifically so they wouldn't be killed and could be brought back. It was just that the only guy who could get them out of the place had gone missing.
• The Outer Limits (1963): In the episode "The Premonition", a test pilot and his wife simultaneously crash in a jet and a car, then find themselves out of sync with time, with everything outside of their vehicles immovably stuck. At first, time seems to be frozen, but they're actually Just One Second Out of Sync with the timestream. What happens if the protagonists aren't back in the jet and the car when time resynchronizes? They'll get trapped in "a black, motionless void" of "eternal nothing" — as a character called the "Limbo Being", who was in the same situation but didn't escape, informs them.
• The Outpost: The series finale features a dimension known as the void, a wasteland so cold that anything that arrives there freezes solid in moments. It's here that Talon and her allies send the otherwise unkillable Masters in order to get rid of them for good.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Realm of Fear", Reginald Barclay thinks he can see something in the nothingness where you go when you're being transported. As a result, he thinks he has transporter psychosis. However, it turns out there are creatures living in the transporter stream, microscopic organisms that aren't terribly dangerous. The crew figures out how to filter them from Barclay using the transporter again, and Barclay himself realizes that the missing scientists they've been searching for tried the same thing and got stuck. They are the big creatures he saw, and by grabbing one, he's able to pull him out unharmed into material form ion normal space.
• Season 12 of Supernatural introduces "the void" as a concept, with reaper Billie stating that she's going to send the Winchester brothers there the next time they die to make sure they can't be resurrected again. Season 13 shows us that the void is where angels and demons go when they die, as Castiel wakes up there after being jolted by Jack's psychic cry for help. The void is an infinite, pitch black space ruled by an Eldritch Abomination who hates being awake and can't sleep if any of the dead in its realm are awake. Cas ends up annoying it so much that it sends him back to Earth just to get some peace and quiet.
• In an early episode of Twin Peaks's third season, subtitled The Return, Dale Cooper is tossed from the Black Lodge into an apparently infinite void of blackness occupied only by a strange cube-shaped vessel which transports him to Earth. Three other characters reference this place in passing during the season, one specifically calling it 'a void'.

Myths & Religion

• The Ginnungagap ("yawning abyss") in Norse Mythology, which is the void between Muspellheim and Niflheim at the beginning of the universe.
• In the Jewish Kabbalah, the concept of an uncrossable abyss between God and his creation exists in several variations.
• Some Christian sects teach that Satan and his demons dwell in and rule the second heaven; which is described as a realm between Earth and Heaven respectively. It should also be noted as the "place where the celestial bodies reside".

Podcasts

• Though whether or not it is empty, there is a void outside of reality in The Magnus Archives, in which reside entities that represent every human and animal fear (being watched, dying, being buried alive/drowning, etc.). These entities certainly fulfill the Eldritch Abomination requirement, and though they influence and are influenced by Earth and eventually come here after being summoned in MAG 160, their home is the void.
• Pretending to Be People features an infinite black void that appears to exist outside of time. A handful of background characters wind up banished there. One of their corpses comes back.

Roleplay

• The Void is one of the driving forces of AJCO 's entire plot — the story first started when A_J, the State's leading researcher into Void (with the purpose of turning it into a weapon of mass destruction), had her entire facility dropped through the Void to avoid placing such a weapon into the hands of State tyrants. Several characters have been lost to it since then, most notably after the Trial To End All Days, and others spat back out. Funnily enough, the Void had no presence until A_J's player accidentally dug through bedrock outside of RP.
• The aptly-named Void in Destroy the Godmodder. It's a massive dimension of nothingness that represents the majority of reality, with every universe in existence represented as a bubble of sorts, floating inside. The Void is nearly inhospitable and is home to many Eldritch Abominations, as well as the ruins of many ancient civilizations. The Void itself is highly toxic and corroding to unprotected travelers, so special protection and/or vehicles are required to safely traverse it.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, the Void, or the ghost paths, is a dimension located between other planes of reality which is populated by proto-elementals, revenants, some stray ghosts and other eldritch creatures. The Sinlarine ghost whisperers and shamans have a native ability to access it and travel unhindered, but non-Sinlarine often have to use mind-altering substances like magic mushrooms to travel through the Void without going insane. While in the Void, the traveller can see spiritual, glowing representations of people and cities whose physical forms are located in the Land of the Living.

Tabletop Games

• Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine used to have this (being a spin-off of Nobilis), until the newly killed sun boiled the void, making it into the chaos-matter that now covers the majority of the world.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Astral Plane (also known as the Astral Sea) is a transitive dimension "outside" the true planes, a realm of thought and dream that, according to Planescape, may have spontaneously come into existence when a planar teleport went awry. It consists of an endless expanse of swirling, silvery clouds, broken only by "color pools" leading to other planes, random detritus, and the colossal, petrified corpses of deities that lost all their worshipers. Some visitors arrive there by accident, others use it to get between the planes, and anyone using the astral projection spell creates a spirit-self that passes through the Astral Sea while their material body slumbers elsewhere. The Astral Plane is timeless in regards to aging or bodily needs (unfortunately, this also applies to natural healing - travelers are advised to bring healing magic), and the piratical Githyanki have converted a god's corpse into a sprawling planar metropolis they use as a base between raids on other planes.
  • The Ethereal Plane it's the equivalent for the Prime Material Plane and the Inner Plane (the Elemental and the Energy ones). It's divided into "Border Ethereal", where it touches all those and being in phase with them (sort of), and "Deep Ethereal" (the plane as such) and being formed by the matter that ends forming other planes.
  • In Spelljammer, the Flow is an aether-like medium in which solar systems are suspended in enormous crystal spheres. It is filled with a luminous, massless substance named phlogiston after the old theory on combustion.
• Exalted has the Well of Udr, a strange location where potential universes crash and grind against each other into nothingness, producing horrible things from beyond reality. It causes madness if you get too close to it without proper protection, and it produced the Great Contagion.
• Mage: The Awakening has the Abyss, which separates the Fallen World from the magic of the Supernal Realms. It's also full of things which are anathema to existence, who are just waiting for the chance to get out.
• The Aether in Magic: The Gathering, the nothing-space between planes that only planeswalkers can navigate (those without the planeswalker spark die really horrific deaths upon any exposure at all). It's also known as the Blind Eternities. The Eldrazi are apparently natives; their true forms reside there while they project physical bodies into the planes they devour.
• Nobilis has the Lands Beyond Creation. From there arise the Excrucians, who venture into our world, seeking to end it, piece by piece.

Toys

• In BIONICLE, Makuta talked about something called "the Void" in his iconic pre-Boss Fight speech to the Toa... but he was bluffing. However much later a true "Void" did appear in the form of an inter-dimensional space Takanuva got sent into thanks to a malfunctioning Mask of Dimensional Gates.

Video Games

• As a more literal example, in many 3D games, leaving the level boundaries causes you to find a black void which is literally made of nothing (ie: the space where there is no programmed collision detection or surface) and which is literally the Void Between the Worlds. Also, you sometimes fall into it, which is annoying.
• When Bugs Bunny gets lost in time in Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time the first world where the tutorial takes place is simply named Nowhere and it lives up for the most part to its namelessness, being a foggy wasteland with its only feature a single castle and its two denizens Marilyn of Monroe and his apprentice who apparently live beyond space and time.
• Chrono Trigger has The End of Time, a featureless black void that serves as an access point for the various time periods you visit. The only features in the void are two small floating courtyards surrounded by a metal fence. Its only inhabitants are a strange old man (actually Gaspar, a survivor from the Kingdom of Zeal who was stranded in the End of Time when Lavos arose), and Spekkio, a shapeshifting creature that teaches the player characters magic.
• Disco Elysium shows a variation: the Pale. While the isolas, patches of continent and ocean, are technically all part of the same planet (the technology needed to photograph the planet from low orbit is a fairly recent development), the Pale divides them so thoroughly by its abstraction/negation of normal space that they are akin to worlds unto themselves, with their own oceans and continents. The Pale is a featureless void, extremely difficult to describe in normal language (and not actually shown in-game), which requires specialized airships to traverse and with extended exposure causing cumulative, eventually irreversible damage to the human psyche. It's implied to have been the cause of the protagonists memory loss, not his heavy drinking.
• The Void in Dishonored is a timeless dream realm which contains pieces of the normal world drifting in endless sky-blue absence and the home of the Outsider. Much suggests the Void has a consciousness of its own that observes and meddles in the physical world through (as?) the Outsider himself.
• This is implied to be the Dragon Age universe's equivalent of Hell, according to Chantry teaching; souls not called to the Maker's side wander here instead. Whether or not this is true is unclear.
• In Dungeon Siege 3, the Causeways are described by Odo as passing through "worlds that are forgetting to be". Needless to say it's a strange place and its mutable nature allows the Legion to travel thousands of miles within minutes, which is a great aid to military logistics.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Oblivion is in the void between the knowable worlds. While Oblivion itself is said to be infinite, it contains the 16 known "planes" of Oblivion, each belonging to one of the Daedric Princes, as well as over 37,000 "pocket realities" and "chaos realms". In addition to the Daedric Princes, these planes and realms are home to all manner of lesser Daedra as well. As the Daedra are the et'Ada ("original spirits") who did not make any sacrifices to create Mundus, the mortal realm, they retain their Complete Immortality. While their physical bodies can be slain (within Oblivion or manifested on Mundus), their spirits simply return to Oblivion to reform.
  • Of the Daedric Princes, Namira represents the Ancient Darkness, and is associated with all things revolting, decay, disfiguring diseases, and cannibalism. In Khajiiti mythology, she is known as Namiira and is associated with Lorkhan (Lorkhaj). She is said to be a part of the Void which became self-aware after the birth of Lorkhaj. Her realm is also called the Scuttling Void, of which very little is known to mortals.
  • Likewise, Nocturnal, the Daedric Prince of Darkness and the Night, who is also associated with Thieves and Luck, claims to be an aspect of the original Void itself. This has earned her the title of "Ur-Dra" among the other Princes.
  • Surrounding the totality of creation (Oblivion, Mundus, and Aetherius, the realm of magic) is the Void. The primordial forces of stasis and change, anthropomorphized as Anu and Padomay, respectively, were said to have come from the Void. Sithis, the embodiment of the force of chaos, is believed to be a representation of the Void. The Dark Brotherhood (a combination assassin's guild and Religion of Evil) worships Sithis, and their members claim to serve him in the Void after death.
• Evolve Idle has a superproject in Magic universes called the Mana Syphon, designed to breach the veil and pull magic directly from the void. Constructing too many will result in a vacuum collapse, destroying the universe.
• Final Fantasy: The Rift/The Void. It first appears in Final Fantasy V and it or a very similar dimension have popped up in several games since. Dissidia Final Fantasy heavily implies the games of the series take place in the same multiverse with The Void acting as the space between worlds via which beings can travel between them, in turn implying it is indeed the same concept in each appearance.
• Final Fantasy XIV has a void between the physical world and The Lifestream. It's also how the Ascians are able to avoid truly being killed off when their physical bodies die.
• Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 reveals the existence of the Deep Depths, a realm said to be outside of space, time and reality. Malt ends up in this realm should he die in the real world, allowing him to go back in time and ensure a different outcome for himself and the crew of the Taranis. It's also stated that the desires and memories of those within the Deep Depths impact how the realm is perceived by them, as evidenced by how Malt experienced an illusion of Petit Mona created from his memories.
• Half-Life: Xen is referred to as a "border world" by the scientists; it's mostly composed of asteroids floating in a void and is probably not a world unto itself but a place between proper dimensions.
• Imscared, due to being a Game Maker video game starring a sentient glitch, intentionally features several that would normally seem like walking outside the game, like the darkness where you confront HER after leaving the train. Most notably is White Face's room, which consists of White Face, a chair, and a noose. It is cold, dark and seems to have no walls.
• In Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, it's revealed that following Sora's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Kingdom Hearts III, he's been trapped in a realm known as Quadratum which according to Ansem the Wise exists outside of the fabric of reality itself, with the only known way to access it being through the series' equivalent of Purgatory and Limbo. Rather than an empty void however, it takes the form of Tokyo's Shibuya ward.
• League of Legends: The Void is actually home of a great many Eldritch Abominations dying to break through to the rest of reality. Several of these monsters are playable champions in the game. Two other champions, Malzahar and Kassadin, got their powers by embracing the Void, but while Malzahar works to bring the horrors into the world, Kassadin is trying to stop them.
• The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: Convexity is a dimension that acts as an "airlock" between the world and the dark realms beyond it, and serves as a prison for the Dark Master. It appears as a vast dark void, where clusters of hexagonal stone platforms and large planet-like orbs float against a dark blue backdrop and creatures resembling luminescent sea life float through the emptiness, all circling around one central spire of light.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Phantom Ganon is banished by Ganondorf to "the gap between dimensions."
• Lusternia: Though there is a place called the Void, it's at the outer limits of existence, and no mortal can survive there; exiled Gods (and more than a few omnicidal monsters) roam through it. The actual role of the Void Between The Worlds is served by aetherspace, a vast and monster-infested gap between the known planes. Players can navigate it with the help of aetherships.
• Mass Effect: While only being part of normal space, the games often reference dark space, the open space between galaxies where there are no stars or planets or anything else for millions of lightyears in any direction. It's also where the Reapers spend their time when not currently annihilating all advanced life in the galaxy.
• Middens: The game takes place in such a void, called the Rift. The Rift also appears in Middens' prequel Gingiva albeit portrayed differently. Whereas The Rift in Middens was basically like a dumping ground for the rotten remains of destroyed/collapsed universes, in Gingiva it's akin to an all-devouring black hole, slowly consuming the world and causing the place to fall apart at the seams. It's most likely that Middens shows what happens to the lands that are absorbed by the Rift.
• In Minecraft, anywhere above and below the spaces you can place blocks on the map is called The Void. Normally you can't get to the Void below the map because of "unbreakable" bedrock, but if you manage to find a gap in the bedrock, you'll find that the void is rather plain-looking, and that if you jump into it, you'll die within seconds (unless you're playing the Bedrock Edition). And once you go in, there's no way to leave.
• Myst has the Star Fissure which is claimed to be a passage between Ages. It looks just like outer space, but there is breathable oxygen, and instead of planets, black blobs moving through space represent the Ages. It's first seen in the opening of the original game where Atrus uses the Myst Linking Book, and he sends you through it after the Fissure is reopened in the Age of Riven, in the hopes that you'll be led back to Earth as the Myst book did to begin with.
• In Pokémon, there is an area called the Mystery Zone (though it only had a name in the Generation IV games), which you can only access with glitches/cheats (except in Pokémon Red and Blue, where the game freezes if you try to enter it). It serves as a placeholder between maps, and most of it consists of either total darkness or trees (at least in Generations IV and V).
• The Void in RuneScape, the emptiness between all other planes of existence, where everything is pure white and portals from it are known to spew out annoying pests that are only stopped by the Void Knights. The Abyss serves a similar role as linking various portals and dimensions, but is itself more of a Womb Level.
• In Shadow of Destiny, there is a "place outside of time" where people are free from being erased from time due to paradox. Homunculus hangs out there and "rescues" Eike whenever he dies by dragging him there so he can try and undo his death.
• In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the Lady in Black briefly shows you a vision of universes being created and dying and over again, from a multiversal viewpoint...
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the Expanse is the key of travel between universes, and the White have transformed it into a White Void Room. Destroy them, and the true Expanse will be revealed — a barren plane of red soil, named specifically as the origin of all gods and demons.
• The Time Eater from Sonic Generations is an Eldritch Abomination that erases timelines and dumps them (perhaps literally) into a white void outside of normal space-time. When the monster is defeated, the timelines return to their proper places while Classic Eggman and Modern Eggman are left stranded in the void.
• Soul Series' Astral Chaos, the realm the Soul Swords originate from, is one of these.
• The Abyss in Super Robot Wars Z, a rupture in the dimensional boundary lines connecting the various worlds. Although it only opens at specific times and conditions, it allows safe passage between worlds with correct timing. This explains how characters from the world of UCW in Z can appear in the world of ACW in the Z sequels Hakai-hen and Saisei-hen.
• In Tattered World, the tattered weave is a chaotic pink void of unreality that surrounds remnants of worlds that have managed to survive a multiversal Apocalypse How. Up until kith emerged from it mysteriously, anything or anyone that entered would simply be removed from existence. Even after the kith appeared, entering safely can only be done if one forms an alliance with a kith.
• Terraria Calamity has the Ceaseless Void boss, which is uniquely a living version of this. Created by the Devourer of Gods by accident while he was practicing dimension-jumping, the Ceaseless Void is a semi-sentient void between realities which is driven to absorb any life force in the vicinity, turning anything it absorbs into masses of life-draining Dark Energy. It had to be contained in a super-durable cosmic steel shell for it to be stabilized, and if said shell is ever broken it could either dissolve or expand infinitely, turning the entire universe into a void between the worlds (fortunately, when you kill it, it seems to be the former).
• In the Warcraft cosmology, this is referred to as "The Great Dark Beyond" In World of Warcraft's first expansion, you can even fly into it, and there's no reachable endpoint. Of course, this is somewhat limited by your fatigue bar.

Visual Novels

• In the Shinza Bansho Series, the location that the Throne resides is often described as a blank zone, nothingness or nowhere. It's not a dimension. It is said to be so extreme that it can't be described in any language. The closest it can be called is simply a "place" where concepts do not exist. The closest it's location can be described as is to think of the universe as a artists canvas, and the Singularity that someone would have to open to reach the Throne is that if the painter would use the brush so fiercely that they would tear through it's fabric, causing the brush to end up in the empty air. That empty air is the Thrones location by this analogy.

Webcomics

• In Aecast, mages are able to teleport vast distances instantly through the use of glissade portals. When an end destination is not set, a glissade only shows an infinite black void from which there is no escape called Avidya.
• Reality in Awful Hospital is an infinitely diverse, infinitely weird Multiverse called the Perception Range. Outside all that is the Abyss, which is completely unreal — one can "breathe" in it because the concept of suffocation doesn't exist there. The Abyss itself is exceptionally safe; the lifeforms that inhabit it, far less so.
• The White Space from Bob and George. The Author first sent Mega Man and Proto Man there so he could be able to speak to them normally. It was not mentioned again, until the end of the Helmeted Author arc, when the Author sends himself, Fistandantilus, George and Proto Man there. George and Proto Man meet Rick O'Shay and Chick-Bot while Author and Fistandantilus duel. When Fistandantilus is defeated, everyone returns to Mega Man Universe. Later on, when Alternate Mega Man and Bass defeat Bob the second time, Bob vanishes to the White Space and apparently can't come back. He does find a way to entertain himself however... until Dr. Wily brings him back. It's actually possible that Fistandantilus possessed Bob during that time.
• In Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ethan is transported into this after he uses the failing time machine at the original end of the webcomic. He is able to escape when another time machine is used in a test with no actual date set to it that opens a portal to the void he's in. Unfortunately, the test occurs many years into the future where all of his friends are either elderly or dead, with the exception of Zeke.
• The prologue of Explorers of Souls takes place "somewhere in the void". The Mew silhouette, whilst travelling in it, finds a portal to the human world.
• Homestuck;
  • The Furthest Ring in a nutshell. Described by Feferi Peixes (without using her typing quirk) as "the infinite space which divides all sessions, completely unnavigable and unfathomable, untouched by the time or space of any universe in existence. Its lords are our slumberbuddies now. 38)"
  • Void itself is one of the twelve God Tier aspects, and is heavily associated with the obfuscation or elimination of things, whether it be knowledge, awareness, or actual objects. Roxy was able to use her powers as a Rogue of Void to steal away the concept of nothingness from things, thus allowing her to generate objects out of nothing, and E%ecutor Darkleer (a Page of Void in an alternate universe and Equius's ancestor) was the only being in the multiverse that was outside of Doc Scratch's omniscience because he eliminated all attempts to scry his whereabouts.
• In Kill Six Billion Demons, the Void exists (or rather, doesn't exist) outside the Wheel of Creation. Some of it is close enough to the Wheel to be a navigable, if mutable, Eldritch Location, where angels and devils exist unbound and strong-willed mortals can project shades; the rest is formless nothingness that causes any traveler to flicker out of existence.
• In Nebula, the void is the light-years of empty space that surrounds every star system, and is what keeps the small groups of living beings all separate. Sun is the only one of the solar system who has any knowledge about it, describing it as a cold, empty void that he forbids them from venturing into, and it's inhabited by Black Hole, a malicious Humanoid Abomination who tries to lure people out to join her so that she can consume them.
• Our Little Adventure has 'The Nethar/Planar Void', which was very briefly shown to be an infinite area of nothingness where Grimalar resides. The pantheon section in the website talks about it a bit more than the comic.
• In Problem Sleuth, After PS dies, he is briefly led to a void where he sees the musicbox, and then is quickly revived by the HD.
• In Sluggy Freelance, each dimension is surrounded by Timeless Space, which acts as a kind of buffer to keep the dimension from being damaged. Normally, these are not empty, but containing some geography and populated by people who ended up there by magic or time travel accidents, and who desperately fight against their personal time running out, since every object and living being carries an aura of time that slowly dwindles but can be strengthened by grouping up with others. However, a crisis caused by a particular course of events (more or less duplicated in different parallel dimensions because that's what their being parallel means) in the future of the comic's timeline will involve abuse of interdimensional rift technology threatening the stability of the dimension where it's used — and turn the local Timeless Space into a true void of nothing that's in danger of collapsing and taking out the universe with it.

Web Original

• The Backrooms:
  • The Backrooms revolves around one of these taking the form of an infinite series of hallways, taking advantage of liminal space to evoke an "uncanny valley" feeling.
  • Additionally, there is The Void, which is the completely empty space that is thought to exist between all of the levels of the Backrooms and is where you go when you noclip. However, if you get unlucky when noclipping between levels or from the Frontrooms, or one of various other reasons, you can get stuck there.
• The Void, or Void Between Worlds, of The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids is inhabited by a large number of Eldritch Abominations banished there from their home universes. As a result, it contains something like a sense of Time and Space, but they are keyed to, and subject to the whims of, the entity enforcing them, such as Lord Thymon, who controlled Time in the Void until the Cupids captured him. At any rate, travel between dimensions is achieved via Void Ships, and the Void contains at least one perennial landmark, the Interdimensional Tavern.
• In Receiver of Many ether appears to be a space between different worlds and places, ruled by Hecate. Gods can travel through ether to move faster from place to place.
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-3001 is an endless black void described as a pocket "non-dimension" located between realities that Scranton (the narrator, who got there holding a recording device) entered when going through a wormhole. He describes it as "falling off the bridge" of the wormhole instead of reaching his destination, and reached a zone that literally REFUTES the concept of existence itself, since the place technically shouldn't even exist. Scranton was trapped in it for almost six years, unable to die and his physical body slowly decaying as the void tried to close back down, after a Freak Lab Accident. When his death was eventually coming close, another experiment by the Foundation created waves that sent half of his body back to the real world as a pile of rotting flesh and grey matter. The other half left behind? It stabilized again, and he's still alive.
  • SCP-3930 expands upon this further. This sort of void, or one that is somehow even further below it, is what lays underneath every last layer of reality, like a foundation. Strip away every last trace of existence, and it's what you get: a void so complete it doesn't even have shape or dimension. The SCP in question is precisely that, a patch of complete non-existence where something once stood, and now it's just there. On its own, it's completely harmless. When humanity's tendency to make up patterns and things where there's nothing enters the equation, however, the patterns and things will gladly make matters worse.
  • The town of Lamplight, known to the Foundation as SCP-5005, is situated in a void on the far edge of reality and has residents from several different universes.
• Zoe's teleportation in Void Domain routes her through a frigid, dead-white nothingness that everyone but her finds extremely unsettling. By comparison, one of her students prefers a teleport spell that sucks her piece-by-piece through Hell.

Web Videos

• In Mr Lololoshka's story-based seasons, the void lies between worlds, that can only be crossed by World Travellers, either using a portal or with their own powers. This applies to both original dimensions, and classic Minecraft Overworld-Nether-End travelling (and also any dimensions from mods). Those who don't possess the powers, cannot survive the void. However, they could do that using special devices in the 2nd season, "Game of a God" ("Игра Бога"). In the 4th season, "Voice of Time" ("Голос Времени"), it turns there is a literal island of space in the Interworld. It is the main setting of the season.

Western Animation

• Centaurworld: Centaurworld and the human world are separated by an empty white void, which must be physically walked through when using the magical gates connecting the two dimensions. However, the Void Between the Worlds is also the can holding the series' Big Bad prisoner.
• Danny Phantom: According to Butch Hartman, in between the Ghost Zone and the plane Earth resides on, there is a limbo known as the Unworld. In this dimension, both ghosts and humans are powerless and anyone who finds themself in this dimension is trapped there forever. The only known way to access this place is to make highly inaccurate calculations when trying to open a ghost portal.
• Gravity Falls: After destroying his home universe, the second dimension, Bill Cipher was trapped in Dimension 0 or "the Nightmare Realm". It's an Eldritch Location described as an unstable "crawlspace between worlds" with no consistent physics or dimensions.
• The Owl House: Luz's attempts at rebuilding the portal to Earth in "Yesterday's Lie" ends up leading her into the In Between, a bizarre dimension filled with black-green oily substances, variable gravitational fields, floating cubes that let her see into Earth or the Demon Realm, and creepiest of all, a whispering voice that knows Luz's name and doesn't want her to leave.
  • The Collector was also imprisoned here, because being a Reality Warper means nothing in a place outside of reality. The Grand Finale reveals that the place also serves as a sort of Afterlife Antechamber, with the Titan's spirit lingering there even millenia after his death. He notes that it's a space between a lot of places, not just the two known realms, and that fully sinking into the oily depths leads to the afterlife proper.
• Shows up in the first season finale of Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero as a consequence of the multiverse going out of balance. Presented as holes into a black void appearing in all worlds, growing until they suck in everything and extinguish all life.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode “My Three Suns”, during Jet's Imagine Spot, he eventually ends up in a black void, unable to find anyone.
• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Spot and his portal-studded void-dimension show up about a quarter of the way into the third season. A similar limbo dimension also accessible by the Spot's time-dilation portals also appears in the fifth season, where the Green Goblin and Mary Jane Watson are trapped in it early in the season.
• Squidward ends up in this after breaking a time machine in Spongebob Squarepants first season episode SB-129. At first he was actually happy since there's no Spongebob and Patrick to annoy him. But not even a minute later after hearing the echoing sound of "ALONE", even he was scared by the place and tried to escape.
• Star Wars Rebels: "A World Between Worlds" introduces the titular location, a mystical Force realm that can only be accessed through certain portals, such as the one in the Lothal Jedi Temple. All times and places meet in the world between worlds, which allows for travel between them.
  • At Star Wars Celebration 2019, Dave Filoni admitted that this was in fact partially inspired by the "Wood Between the Worlds" from the Narnia series (see "Literature" above). He also stated that he directly discussed introducing this concept with George Lucas himself.
• The Quintessence Field in Voltron: Legendary Defender is a white void that exists between realities, filled with a potentially unlimited amount of Quintessence. The only known ways to access it are through the material of the trans-reality comets, like the Voltron Lions and Sincline ships are made of, or rifts created by them. Both Zarkon and Lotor attempt to access the Field in order to gain access to the Quintessence.
• Winx Club:
  • Tritannus is banished to Oblivion following the events of the Season 5 finale.
  • The Trix are imprisoned in Limbo by the Stones of Memories in the Season 7 finale. However, Valtor frees them midway through Season 8.
• In Yellow Submarine, the Nowhere in which the Nowhere Man lives probably counts, until The Beatles start singing and it gets all psychedelic.

Real Life

• Interplanetary, interstellar, and intergalactic space from the (relatively) more dense to the less one.
• The large-scale structure of the Universe has galaxies and clusters of galaxies forming long, thin, and web-like filaments and walls surrounding enormous extensions^note Up to billions of light-years of what, besides little more than a very few isolated galaxies, the omnipresent cosmic microwave background, and dark energy, are, pure and simple, void. And, as the Universe expands, they're growing in size.
  • Scientists have categorized the so-called Supervoids, whose sheer sizes and nigh-complete absence of, well, anything are just mind-boggling to say the least. One example is the Boötes void; this roughly spherical area at 330 million light years diameter contains only about 60 galaxy clusters, all of which are extremely sparsely populated, while even the most conservative math would say that there should be over 33 times as many and nobody can really explain why. And then there's the Giant Void; over one billion light years across, and populated only by 17 galaxy clusters^note A far larger one, that was proposed to explain an anomaly in the cosmic microwave background, is unlikely to exist.
  • In order to explain discrepancies of the Universe's expansion speed that appear when using different methods to measure it, it has been proposed we're inside a huge void, two billion light-years across. However those differences could be caused simply by statistical errors instead. The jury is out on this.
• An even better example than the former is presented in some inflationary models, where basically the vacuum is not actually stable and is continually popping with new Universes, each one with their own space-time and physical laws and thus being a sort of void between worlds.

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