History Main / Cyberspace

* ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'' revolves around the concept, taking place in a VirtualReality MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame (VR MMORPG) in which thousands of players immerse their consciousness completely within a virtual reality, but find that they can no longer log out. The creator of the game issues an ultimatum: if anyone completes the game by defeating the FinalBoss on the 100th floor, they will be allowed to log out. However, if their avatar dies, then [[TheMostDangerousVideoGame the helmet used to play the game will unleash a pulse of microwave radiation that will fry their brain, killing them in real life]]. The game aspect is much like a {{Roguelike}}, the main virtual reality aspect is just the visual and audio realism... and the imminent death.Subsequent story arcs take place in different VR MMO games, but without the dangers from having one's consciousness trapped in the game.

->''"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding." ''
-->-- '''Creator/WilliamGibson''', ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}''

* The anime series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', originally a 2001 novel, revolves around the concept. It takes place in a VirtualReality MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame (VR MMORPG), where thousands of players immerse their consciousness completely within a virtual reality, but remain trapped there for several years, being forced to adapt to the new virtual environment. Subsequent story arcs take place in different VR MMO games, but without the dangers from having one's consciousness trapped in the game.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'': A VRMMORPG where players login to find that they can no longer logout. The creator of the game issues an ultimatum: complete the game by defeating the Final Boss on the 100th floor, and you will be allowed to log out. However, if your avatar dies, then the helmet used to play the game will unleash a pulse of microwave radiation that will fry your brain, [[KilledOffForReal killing you in real life]]. The game aspect is much like a {{Roguelike}}, the main virtual reality aspect is just the visual and audio realism... and the imminent death.
* The backstory of ''LightNovel/Overlord2012'' features the DMMORPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) known as Yggdrasil, a fully immersive virtual fantasy world. As the story starts, it's being shut down, with the protagonist staying online until the final moments... and then finds himself somehow transformed into his player avatar (an obscenely-powerful lich sorcerer) and transported along with his guild base and all its [=NPCs=] into a new world.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin "The Deadly Assassin"]], set on the Doctor's home planet Gallifrey, has the Doctor venturing into a cyber dreamscape called the Matrix. It's unique, however, in that it's not meant for a living person to go into AT ALL. It's basically a library of dead Time Lords' neural impulses, which are used to forecast future events and figure out how to deal with them. It only serves the "alternate dimension" function because the Master has tampered with it big-time.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]]: The Library's data core is a computer large and powerful enough to create one of these capable of [[spoiler:holding ''thousands'' of people inside it, living mostly unaware of what's going on, for a century. And the cyberspace was intended as the playground of a terminally ill little girl who underwent BrainUploading.]]

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Human Trials", Captains Kelvin Parkhurst, Eric Woodward, Alice Wheeler and William Hinman, members of the Free Alliance military, participate in a test to determine which of them is the best qualified for a secret solo mission. The test involves placing the subjects in a virtual environment via a neural stimulator to gauge their reactions to the scenarios presented. Clips are shown from "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E20Nightmare Nightmare]]", "Hearts and Minds", "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S5E7TheHumanOperators The Human Operators]]", "In the Blood", "Monster", "The Voyage Home", "Tempests" and "Worlds Within" to represent the virtual scenarios.
* In ''Series/RoboCopTheSeries'' after Diana is murdered and her brain used to control traffic lights (and other things too) in Delta City her consciousness is trapped in one of these. We occasionally see it when she's affected with viruses or when other characters use VR equipment.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog:''

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' serves as the game's HackingMinigame. The game frequently requires the player to log into a cyberspace representation of the Citadel Station network in order to retrieve passwords and disable door locks while fighting against security programs. [[spoiler: And eventually take down SHODAN herself.]]
** It's also used as tutorial levels in the sequel. [[spoiler: And at the end, SHODAN hijacks the ''Von Braun's'' Faster-than-light drive to create a portal into cyberspace that has a reconstruction of Citadel Station's first level, still under construction. A passage inside that leads to the ''second takedown of SHODAN''. It goes away when she's defeated...although she's not fully dead yet.]]

* The ''Literature/{{Idlewild}}'' series has Immersive Virtual Reality. Users can meet in common areas or build their own domains from scratch.

* ''Literature/{{Murderworld}}'' features the Loka, a virtual space that hosts a variety of entertainments and experiences, the most popular being the violent Murderworld game itself. The user interface for this system is described as a kind of skull-fitted webbing that deciphers brain patterns, which allows users to generate in-Loka actions, and they in return receive feedback in the form of a limited range of sensations.
* Creator/TadWilliams' ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' books combine Sci-Fi and Fantasy tropes by being set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, and creating Fantasy environments within the bounds of cyberspace. It's worth mentioning that travel time is normally nearly instantaneous, but specific virtual environments can be configured to simulate realistic movement, and this is considered something of a cachet of the eccentric and well-off.

* ''VideoGame/BeneathASteelSky'' sees you revisit a Cyberspace environment as a number of different users to gain clues for the "real world" adventure.

* In ''LightNovel/AccelWorld'', [[TheMetaverse VR and AR spaces are everywhere]] thanks to the ubiquitous [[BrainComputerInterface Neurolinkers]], but a form of cyberspace exists in the form of the underground game/"lifehacking tool" Brain Burst, which creates a YearInsideHourOutside effect by accelerating the user's mind to 1000 times its normal speed. The client program can only be installed by people with high full-dive compatibility (i.e. [[TeenageWasteland those young enough to have grown up wearing a Neurolinker]]) and has ways of enforcing its own secrecy. It has three main modes:

* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' has the Matrix, which plays this to its conclusion as nerds obviously would. Systems can use the default ''Franchise/{{Tron}}''-inspired iconography, but can be programmed to be anything; libraries with books for files and librarians for security to overgrown jungle ruins with treasures for files and angry natives for security. Deckers in turn can be anything from underage wizards with wands and glasses to BFG-toting commandos. Which leads to the awesome possibilities of Franchise/{{Rambo}} clones getting their asses kicked by librarians or teenage wizards disabling angry natives with butterscotch syrup.
** In 2075 the Matrix was reformatted again and centralized through a massive server called "The Foundation", [[spoiler: formed by networking together 100 technomancers, until they were killed and the Foundation continued running due to the massive amounts of Resonance and Dissonance energy they channeled converting the Matrix into a full-blown metaplane.]]
* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' has the Cyberrealm, which is pretty much the same as the Digital Web except the latter is exclusive to Mages, whereas Cyberrealm is a playground for Glass Walkers and other tech-savvy Werewolves.

* Much like its Chapter 1, Chapter 2 of ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'' takes place in a mysterious parallel dimension known as a "Dark World" which is sustained by a Dark fountain capable of turning inanimate objects and ordinary locations into living beings and new worlds. Unlike Chapter 1, the Dark World in Chapter 2 is themed after computers, and features a futuristic city in a "cyber world" due to the dark fountain being created in a computer lab. The cyber Dark World is inhabited by many computer and electronics-themed creatures, some hostile and some friendly.

* Certain platforming segments of ''VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}}'' take place in a dazzling digital world within the main character's mind. Murky and gltichy platforms made of blue, red, and orange light constantly materialize as you move forward and test out abilities you gained in the real world.

%%This page's examples section is sorted alphabetically. It would be lovely if you'd maintain this, thanks.

Sometimes, a HolodeckMalfunction turns Cyberspace outright dangerous — not just online, but in real life, because YourMindMakesItReal. It may take an OrpheanRescue to get those trapped out.

** The Duel Field, a sort of "social FightingGame" in which accelerated Burst Linkers control a duel avatar whose appearance and powers are [[PersonalityPowers assigned by the system based on their personality]]. The field appears as a distorted version of the real world, with normal buildings warped into fantastic shapes, and with impossibly detailed graphics and physics. Winning fights allows a Burst Linker to conquer territory for their Legion, as well as to earn Burst Points - used as a currency for accelerating, for improving their avatar, and also for special commands like "Physical Burst" (which grants the user a few seconds of SuperReflexes in real life, making it a favorite of athletes).

* Creator/VernorVinge's 1981 novella "Literature/TrueNames" is an early, pre-{{Cyberpunk}} exploration of the idea that is still considered one of the most realistic and plausible depictions, based on video game concepts. Complete with travel time, which is justified, as it's part of the game. The game was designed by hackers, however, and provides access to sites across the broader network--it's a game/hacking tool. Vinge was quite knowledgeable about the networking technology available at the time, and it shows.

* In the interactive fiction game ''Frederik Pohl's VideoGame/{{Gateway}}'' (loosely based on the ''Literature/HeecheeSaga'') Virtual Realities are fairly common and play an important part in the story. Typically, the player will have to break the VR they're in somehow - for example, by causing it to run out of memory or doing something that confuses the simulation.

* ''VideoGame/{{Rez}}'', an on-rails shooter/[[RhythmGame rhythm action game]] for the Dreamcast, [=PS2=] and the Xbox 360 based entirely around the process of of hacking into a MasterComputer that is [[MemeticMutation doubting her existence]]. Very much an example of HollywoodHacking via ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation - the obligatory vector graphics are present and correct. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation But the main character could also be a virus]].

* WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet mostly takes place inside of the internet, with Ralph and Vanellope walking around it like one of their arcade games in [[WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph the first film.]] Many alements of the internet are [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Anthropomorphised]] such as [=KnowsMore=] being a search engine and Yesss being an algorithm.

* Like its inspiration ''Anime/DotHack'' and ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork,'' ''WebAnimation/{{TOME}}'' features Cyberspace as an interface used to access the world of the game. This is most noticeable in ''WebAnimation/TvTomeAdventures,'' which features the most [[SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness soft]] Sci-Fi compared to the reboot universe and especially the RPG adaptation (where TOME is just a video game with no sci-fi cyberspace elements).

* Like its inspiration ''Anime/DotHack'' and ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork,'' ''WebAnimation/{{TOME}}'' features Cyberspace as an interface used to access the world of the game. This is most noticeable in ''WebAnimation/TvTomeAdventures,'' which features the most [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness soft]] Sci-Fi compared to the reboot universe and especially the RPG adaptation (where TOME is just a video game with no sci-fi cyberspace elements).

* The Warner 5000 Serververse in ''Film/SpaceJamANewLegacy'' is a virtual universe contained in Creator/WarnerBros' servers containing several planets based on various movies and TV shows they own.

* Much like it's Chapter 1, Chapter 2 of ''Deltarune'' takes place in a mysterious parallel dimension known as a "Dark World" which is sustained by a Dark fountain capable of turning inanimate objects and ordinary locations into living beings and new worlds. Unlike Chapter 1, the Dark World in Chapter 2 is themed after computers, and features a futuristic city in a "cyber world" due to the dark fountain being created in a computer lab. The cyber Dark World is inhabited by many computer and electronics-themed creatures, some hostile and some friendly.

* The Warner 5000 Serververse

* ''Film/TheMatrix'' is about Earth's people in the future being tricked into thinking Cyberspace is actually normal present-day reality.

* Neal Stephenson's ''Literature/SnowCrash'' is another notable example of the "cyberspace qua operating system" network and is the trope namer for TheMetaverse. It's a particularly bad offender with respect to UI inconvenience... walking between sites in the metaverse takes time, and in one particularly unpleasant example a giant animated, unskippable intro flight sequence was required to visit a particular site. It also notes how inconvenient the general interface is; Hiro works in Flatspace (a plain 2D GUI like the one that you are probably using right now) when he gets serious.

* ''Film/SocialMediaIsBad'': The business model for social media is demonstrated through three manipulative men within Ben's phone who react to all his online activity and try to keep him using the app.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* [[http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/ This program]] allows you to manage processes on your Unix machine while playing ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''.
[[/folder]]

* Creator/KenAkamatsu has a way of depicting the internet as an endless ocean, as in his first work ''Manga/AILoveYou'' and later work ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima''. Tuna is a DOS attack...

* The anime series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', originally a 2001 novel, revolves around the concept. It takes place in a {{Virtual Reality}} {{Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game}} (VR MMORPG), where thousands of players immerse their consciousness completely within a virtual reality, but remain trapped there for several years, being forced to adapt to the new virtual environment. Subsequent story arcs take place in different VR MMO games, but without the dangers from having one's consciousness trapped in the game.

* ''Anime/YuGiOhVRAINS'', like ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', takes place in {{Virtual Reality}} where VR Duels are set in cyberspace constructed with the latest technology.

* ''Lightnovel/SwordArtOnline'': A VRMMORPG where players login to find that they can no longer logout. The creator of the game issues an ultimatum: complete the game by defeating the Final Boss on the 100th floor, and you will be allowed to log out. However, if your avatar dies, then the helmet used to play the game will unleash a pulse of microwave radiation that will fry your brain, [[KilledOffForReal killing you in real life]]. The game aspect is much like a {{Roguelike}}, the main virtual reality aspect is just the visual and audio realism... and the imminent death.

* The ''Series/{{Warehouse 13}}'' episode "Don't Hate The Player" involves a stereotypical rescue mission into an Artefact-enhanced VR computer game. Pete takes the opportunity to be a [[WalkingShirtlessScene gladiator]], Leena gets enhanced with an impressive pair of... [[LastSecondWordSwap wings]], and Claudia is horrified to discover that her image has been used for an insipid princess. Oh, and the VR sequences are [[{{Rotoscoping}} rotoscoped]].

* ''TableTopGame/ServerCrash'', a 4chan-made pen and paper game, is about all of humanity being trapped in cyberspace forever.

** ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance'' allows Sora and Riku to enter The Grid, which is the computer world based on ''Film/TronLegacy''. Unlike the other computer worlds, The Grid can be directly selected from the "World Selection", though in this case, it's because it's a Dream World. This is the only time in the series where a program [[spoiler: ([[{{ActionGirl}} Quorra]])]] actually gets to leave their computer world.

* ''Videogame/PlanetSide'' and its sequel have virtual training areas for soldiers to try out all available equipment [[FriendlyFireproof without endangering their fellow soldiers]]. In the first game, OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture and all objects in the virtual training area have thick outlines, with wireframe terrain. In the second game, everything looks normal up close but everything past a few hundred meters fades out to black-and-white wireframe.

* ''VideoGame/{{Rez}}'' (pictured), an on-rails shooter/[[RhythmGame rhythm action game]] for the Dreamcast, [=PS2=] and the Xbox 360 based entirely around the process of of hacking into a MasterComputer that is [[MemeticMutation doubting her existence]]. Very much an example of HollywoodHacking via ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation - the obligatory vector graphics are present and correct. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation But the main character could also be a virus]].

* Befitting the franchise, most of ''[[VideoGame/{{Tron20}} Tron 2.0]]'' was set here. The plot involved a greedy rival corporation planning to exploit the digital world by digitizing a squad of mercenaries to steal and manipulate everything from state secrets to global finance in a bid to TakeOverTheWorld.

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' frequently requires the player to log into a cyberspace representation of the Citadel Station network in order to retrieve passwords and disable door locks while fighting against security programs. [[spoiler: And eventually take down SHODAN herself.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'', four of the main characters travel to a virtual world to battle a malevolent A.I. bent on world domination. Everything in the digital universe is rendered in 3D, sharply contrasting the traditional 2D animation of the real world segments.

* ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'' is focused on the virtual world of Oasis, originally conceived as a next-gen MMO game using a VR headset that uses low-power lasers to project the image onto the user's retina (thus making the user "see" everything without the tunneled way we see things on a computer screen) and haptic gloves that allow the user to control his or her character and receive touch feedback. Eventually, Oasis grew to contain thousands upon thousands of worlds, to the point where the terms "Oasis" and "the Internet" are interchangeable. The protagonist attends school exclusively through VR and loves it, especially since he doesn't have to deal with bullies in RealLife (the school planet is a non-[=PvP=] zone, meaning fighting is not allowed, so all bullies can do is hurl insults, but muting them is an easy counter).

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' has the future Internet depicted as a classic cyberspace set-up, with a huge skyscraper as Google's home page, and all the porn sites in the red light district.