History Main / CityInABottle

-> ''"For on the fateful day, when fire rained from the sky, the giant steel door of Vault 101 slid closed -- and never reopened. It was here you were born. It is here you will die. Because, in Vault 101: no one ever enters and no one ever leaves."''
-->-- '''Opening narration''', ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}''

** If by "fine" you mean a flawed system where people are forced to pick a job at random, no matter what they aspire for, or are capable of. Oh, and also, [[spoiler: The city is run by a corrupt Bill Murray.]]

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's novel ''The City And the Stars'' is the UrExample of this trope. And it's original version, ''Against The Fall of Night''. Both have a remarkably utopian vision compared to most examples, however. Diaspar really has achieved a technological utopia, so why leave? And then, of course, we're [[spoiler:introduced to Lys, the ''other'' utopian vision...]]

* ''AeonFlux'': the rulers of Bregna go to great lengths to prevent their citizens from learning that their city and its mortal enemy Monica were once the nation of Berognica, never mind anything about the world outside of the two walled cities.

* DeltoraQuest 2 features Lief, Barda and Jasmine attempting to collect three pieces of a magic pipe. One piece was being held on a literally bubble-enclosed island, citizens of said island banishing the part of their group who told the truth and acknowledged the past. What brings down the bubble is [[spoiler:Jasmine's insistence on telling the truth, rocking the faith of the one sorcerer still left alive on the island.]]

* Jim Henson's 1980s children's show ''FraggleRock'' featured small creatures living in a cave which exits to a mousehole in a tinker's shop (or a lighthouse, if you saw the UK version). One fraggle, "Uncle Traveling Matt," wanders the outside world, sending postcards which show great places of geography (and mundane, everyday objects) from an innocent's point of view.

** A recurring metaphor throughout the series is the RealLife bromeliad plant, which, to the frogs who live inside, is the entire world.
*** Indeed, ''Truckers'' and its sequels, ''Diggers'' and ''Wings'' are collectively known as ''The Bromeliad Trilogy''.
* Agatean Empire (an {{Expy}} of China) from {{Discworld}}. It is completely surrounded by a high wall and general population only knows outside as a desert wasteland populated by homicidal vampire ghosts. Their word for foreigner also means ghost.
** Until Twoflowers' (Discworld first [[{{HawaiianShirtedTourist}} tourist]]) book "What I did last summer" kick-starts a revolution.

** There is a slightly more conventional example in Fallout New Vegas, Nellis Air force base with its population of explosive loving Boomers. They trace their origins to Vault 34 and have a strict isolationists policy, enforced upon the outside world with artillery fire. The Boomers make everything they need inside the airbase, and only have one goal oustside its walls. No one has entered or left the base in decades by the time the game starts.

* ''Phoenix Without Ashes'' by HarlanEllison is set on a massive GenerationShip composed of hundreds of completely independent and isolated biospheres, each featuring a different civilization. Originally written as a screenplay for a television series, the main character is from a SpaceAmish biosphere, whose inhabitants threaten to execute him for blasphemy when he tries to inform them of his recent discovery -- that they are all on a giant spaceship.

* The 1973 Canadian production ''TheStarlost'' featured a generation ship where disaster had killed the crew, while the passengers had lost the knowledge that they were indeed aboard a ship. Not to mention the disaster had altered the ship's course to collide with a star. The premise was interesting, but HarlanEllison was disappointed enough with the end results to affix his [[AlanSmithee Cordwainer Bird]] pseudonym to it.

* Agatean Empire from {{Discworld}}. It is completely surrounded by a high wall and general population only knows outside as a desert wasteland populated by homicidal vampire ghosts.

* In Discworld/InterestingTimes, the entire Agatean Empire (an {{Expy}} of China) is treated like this. There is a Great Wall which entire surrounds the country, and their word for foreigner also means ghost.
** Not to mention the revolution that is kicked off by the revelatory tract [[spoiler:'What I Did On My Holidays', based on Twoflower's experiences in the first two Discworld books]].

* In the Malibu Comics ''[[TheUltraverse Ultraverse]]'' continuity, the Fire People were an offshoot of humanity that lived in a hidden community BeneathTheEarth for so long that the "world of light and air" was considered a myth.

* [[StargateVerse Stargate]] has a small one where the SG-1 team is mind-swapped with some stored memories about working in a mine. Said mine was actually underneath a magnificent city and was used to keep said magnificent city running. But it was sold as a city in a bottle. They were told they kept it going or else the cold feezing air above the mine would kill them all. They thought that nothing else was above them. They thought that if they didn't work, they'd die, or at least, no longer get fed. It wasn't as bad as normal city in bottles, But it was pretty bad.

* Pretty much the entire plot of the Gamecube ''CustomRobo''. The world outside ''is'' pretty much barren and lifeless, but nearly everyone alive believes that the dome they live in is the entire world thanks to the GovernmentConspiracy. The protagonists are shocked to discover the existence of trees that aren't made of metal, and grass that isn't plastic.

* Pretty much the entire plot of the Gamecube CustomRobo. The world outside ''is'' pretty much barren and lifeless, but nearly everyone alive believes that the dome they live in is the entire world thanks to the GovernmentConspiracy. The protagonists are shocked to discover the existence of trees that aren't made of metal, and grass that isn't plastic.

Not to be confused with the Bottle City of Kandor, part of the {{Superman}} mythos: Kandor really is a literal city in a bottle (shrunken by an alien robot), but isn't part of this trope. For a community that knows about the outside, but just wants nothing to do with it, see HiddenElfVillage.

See also EscapeFromTheCrazyPlace. If you want to get ''really'' dark, the heroes may escape the GovernmentConspiracy only to find that the outside world really ''is'' barren and desolate.

[[AC: Anime & Manga]]

*** Actually, the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series plays this trope straight -- the Vaults ''weren't'' intended to shield humanity from a nuclear attack, they were a series of social experiments designed to test the occupants' reactions to stressful situations. One Vault contained population of 999 women (and one man), one was rigged to open six months after it was sealed (when the inhabitants were told it would be sealed for the next 200 years), one was even rigged so that it ''couldn't'' close, and so on. Needless to say, this is pretty much a CrapSackWorld combined with this trope, with a hearty dash of AfterTheEnd thrown in for good measure.
**** It isn't clear that the 'Vaults as experiments' notion isn't a {{Retcon}}, they may or may not have been in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'', were mentioned to be by the Enclave president in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', were confused by the addition of 'Vault Zero' in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'', and were vastly expanded upon in ''Fallout 3''. Whether or not the experiments had a ''point'' is a matter of opinion, but then again, it was the [[GovernmentConspiracy Old Enclave]] that did it. They weren't exactly concerned with human life other than themselves.

* The One State in ''Literature/{{We}}''.

* The D'ni, as seen in the {{Myst}} novel "The Book of Tiana", are a strange example. The central hub of D'ni culture is indeed located underground, tunelling deep and wide in all directions. But they also have access to special books which can transport them to a theoretically infinite number of Ages, many of which are outdoorsy. But when Aitrus and his team are building upwards through disused tunnels, they still encounter resistance from politicians who believe that, in their homeworld, the "Surface" is an impossibility!

* 'The Allegory of the Cave' from Plato's ''Literature/{{Republic}}'' uses such a society as a metaphor for the human soul and the philosopher.

* Kandor, quite literally in SilverAge {{Superman}} tales. It's where {{Supergirl}} was from, and where Superman and JimmyOlsen became {{Batman}} and {{Robin}} {{Expies}}.

*** Which is true, if they left the forest they would start aging.

** Then there's [[http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/newyorker2.JPG this]] famous cover of The New Yorker depicting the [[FlyoverCountry city dweller's view of America]].

* In the early [[DungeonsAndDragons D&D]] module ''The Lost City'', the few residents of the underground city who aren't drugged out of their minds by the evil priesthood are still convinced there's nothing but desert on the surface, and nothing but unbeatable monsters in the surrounding tunnels.