History Main / MageInManhattan

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': In the Reign of Winter campaign path, the [[PerspectiveFlip player characters]] assuume this role as a group of magically-equipped and powerful adventurers storming a prison in [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia Siberia]]. [[DownplayedTrope Unfortunately for players expecting an easy win]], Russian soldiers who survived the horrors of the Great War don't flinch in the face of supernatural threats, instead using [[CombatPragmatist mines, grenades and urban warfare tactics]] against [[SoldierVsWarrior the PCs]] without fear. After all, once you've seen [[WarIsHell your comrades and families drown on dry land in a cloud of mustard gas]], at least the elf casting ''Cloudkill'' is something you can shoot back at.

* ''Series/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'': In the second season, the Mage (yes, that's literally his name) decides that Wendimoor is no longer worth his time, and decides to take over our world instead.

* Queen Narissa from ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' as seen in the image.

[[quoteright:349:[[Film/{{Enchanted}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/narissablast.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:349:''Not'' the green light you want at rush hour.]]

* Like in the [[Film/SuperMarioBros1993 1993]], the climax of ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'' has [[spoiler:Bowser coming to Brooklyn for a final fight with the Mario Brothers]].

A Mage in Manhattan situation is where an evil character from a MagicalLand enters our own with the intent of causing destruction. Hilarity ensues. VillainsBlendInBetter, but they ''do'' still want to TakeOverTheWorld, so such an appearance has a tendency to [[TheUnmasquedWorld blast any masquerade to pieces]].

* ''LightNovel/TheDevilIsAPartTimer'' has an EvilOverlord from a MagicalLand fleeing to modern day Tokyo after being nearly defeated by the local hero. There he finds [[YourMagicsNoGoodHere his magic powers don't work as they used to]] and ends up taking a job at a fast-food joint to make ends meet. He still intends to TakeOverTheWorld, though he's actually [[GoingNative more worried about getting a promotion]] for the time being.

* Inverted in Bill Willingham's ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', in which fairy tale characters have fled from their magical homelands, which were conquered by the evil Adversary, to the mundane world, with most settling in New York. [[spoiler:Eventually played straight when the Adversary sends the witch Baba Yaga leading an army of wooden soldiers to New York to conquer Fabletown.]] The Mundies never notice, because they think they are marching young Republicans.

* ComicBook/RedSonja's enemy, the evil wizard Kulan Gath, attempted to conquer Creator/MarvelComics version of New York City in an issue of ''Marvel Team-Up'' in the 1970s. Spider-Man and Red Sonja (in Mary Jane Watson's body) managed to drive him back. He tried again in 2007, brainwashing the population and remaking the city as a bronze-age nightmare.
* In Creator/DonRosa's [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Scrooge McDuck]] story ''The Quest for Kalevala'', the witch Louhi and the sea monster Iku-Turso from [[Literature/TheKalevala Finnish mythology]] wreak havoc in 20th century Helsinki.

* ''Curse Words'' starts with a wizard from AnotherDimension appearing in New York, on a mission to destroy the Earth but decides the HumansAreSpecial and stays living there as a sort of superhero. Sadly his boss cuts off his magic and sends more wizards to stop him and finish the job.
* ComicBook/DoctorStrange is an inversion: a good man who uses his arcane magic skills to help mankind ward off the evils of the mystic beyond in a modern world long separated from the age of such things.

* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse
** ''Film/TheAvengers2012'': TricksterGod Loki forces the people of Stuttgart, Germany to [[KneelBeforeZod kneel before him]].
** ''Film/DoctorStrange2016'': In the climax, Strange and Kaecilius have a magical duel in the city.

* In the SoBadItsGood ''[[Film/TheBeastmaster Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time]],'' EvilOverlord Arklon finds his way into 1980s Los Angeles and proceeds to live it up.
* In the ''Film/SuperMarioBros1993'' movie, Koopa zips over to our universe with an army of Goombas armed with [[EvolutionaryLevels Devo guns]] to chimpify some locals and take back "their" world.

* {{Dracula}} himself in ''Film/LoveAtFirstBite''.
* The Wizard is a bit of a non-evil (or at least neutral-ish) example in ''Film/JustVisiting''
* ''Film/HighlanderIIITheSorcerer'' has the immortal Kane waking up from centuries of slumber and using his magic in New York City.
* In ''Film/LastActionHero'', Benedict uses the magic ticket to leave his movie and enter the real world. He realizes that outside of movies bad guys can win and plans to take over the world by releasing villains from various horror films. Luckily the heroes stop him.

* At the end of ''Film/BillAndTedsBogusJourney'', Chuck De Nomolos travels back from the 27th century to kill Bill and Ted at The Battle of The Bands competition when his robot assassins fail. He even broadcasts himself on every [=TV=] channel in the world.

* The climactic end battle from ''[[Literature/YoungWizards So You Want to Be a Wizard]]''. The [[{{Satan}} Lone Power]] comes to New York and tries to turn it evil. When they try to stop It, It [[spoiler: puts out the Sun.]] It helps that they have the canonical copy of reality in book form as their weapon.
* The main plot of the third arc of ''[[Literature/Touch2017 Touch]]'' involves a duo of elves entering New York from another reality in an attempt to kidnap people with powerful enough magical potential.
* This trope is OlderThanTelevision, occurring in Chapter 8 of the 1906 children's novel ''The Story of the Amulet'' (Creator/ENesbit's second sequel to ''Literature/FiveChildrenAndIt''). A queen from ancient Babylon (who doesn't have magical powers, though they do exist in the novel) {{time travel}}s to UsefulNotes/{{London}} during TheEdwardianEra.
* A lift of this occurs in ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'', Creator/CSLewis's {{prequel}} to ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. Jadis, a former empress from [[WhereIWasBornAndRazed a world that she herself destroyed]], invades London in roughly the same era as ''The Story of the Amulet''. Or at least she tries. Magic is inherent to a dimension here, and so she has no power in our world, though she does have SuperStrength. She threatens to invade our world in ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe''--by which point she's known as the White Witch--but that's a clear bluff.
* Creator/MercedesLackey's modern fantasies usually involve some version of this, with the monster usually being one of the [[TheFairFolk Unseleighe Sidhe]] (Dark Court Elves). Most representative of this trope is ''Mad Maudlin'', in which Aerune, self-styled Lord of Death and Pain, tries to open a Nexus to [[MagicalLand Underhill]] in Central Park and a Sidhe driven mad by the presence of cold iron turns into a literal [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore) Bloody Mary]], murdering people left and right.

* TheFairFolk in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld II: The Globe'' and the [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Auditors]] in ''The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch''. Both set to slow down human progress so that we can't create a colony ship before the world becomes a giant snowball again.

* Bluebeard (Caster) from ''LightNovel/FateZero'', so much so that the supervisor temporarily put the war on hold and offered a reward of an extra command seal to whoever killed him. Then he summoned a [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster]] [[TheWormThatWalks made of slugs]] and the JSDF called in some F-15Js. [[spoiler:One gets eaten by supersonic tentacles, the other gets hijacked by an epic hero summoned from beyond the grave, and proceeds to have an aerial dogfight against another epic hero flying a magitech airplane.]] Somehow TheMasquerade survived.
* At first, the alien needle monsters in ''Literature/EdenGreen'' only appear in abandoned areas of a single Arkansas city, but right as the main characters are trying to figure out how to deal with them, a swarm takes over the heavily-populated center of the city and blows the problem into an internationally-known incident.
* In ''Literature/InSearchOfDorothy'', the Wicked Witch eventually follows Scarecrow to Kansas to find Dorothy and the Magic Shoes, which she needs to fully resurrect.
* In the ''Kingdom Keepers'' books, the protaganists are holographic theme park guides (based on real teenagers) who battle Creator/{{Disney}} villains, known collectively as 'Overtakers', after dark, usually at Ride/DisneyThemeParks. The series starts off [[OnlyInFlorida at Walt Disney World, Florida.]]

* Inverted and played literally in ''VideoGame/DungeonFighterOnline''. The Mage class's backstory starts her off being chased down by evil acolytes in Brooklyn, leading to Central Park, where the Mage eventually finds her way into the world that the game takes place in.

* ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'': The first nine kingdoms are all typical fairy tale places, while the legendary "Tenth Kingdom" is New York.

* In the ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' movie, Koopa zips over to our universe with an army of Goombas armed with [[EvolutionaryLevels Devo guns]] to chimpify some locals and take back "their" world.

* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}''. Happened at least once a season, and once in reverse with [[Anime/DigimonSavers Kurata]].

* In the ''Kingdom Keepers'' books, the protaganists are holographic theme park guides (based on real teenagers) who battle Creator/{{Disney}} villains, known collectively as 'Overtakers', after dark, usually at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks]]. The series starts off [[OnlyInFlorida at Walt Disney World, Florida.]]

* In the ''Kingdom Keepers'' books, the protaganists are holographic theme park guides (based on real teenagers) who battle [[Creator/{{Disney}}]] villains, known collectively as 'Overtakers', after dark, usually at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks]]. The series starts off [[OnlyInFlorida at Walt Disney World, Florida.]]

* In ''Webcomic/WitchesAmongHumans'', Luz escaped the Boiling Isles in the human world. In-fact it looks like it take place in Manhattan.

* The base premise of [[http://sooniwillrule.blogspot.com/ this blog]]

* Semi interestingly done in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheCyberChase,'' where the evil character who enters the 'real world' is a computer virus. Who then chases the characters into another game, and then proceeds to cause havoc in each level of the video game world.
* Though it featured dimension hopping villains quite prominently, it was never more so than in the season 2 finale of ''WesternAnimation/{{WITCH}}'', when a super sized Cedric invades Heatherfield with the intent of conquering earth. TheMasquerade was preserved, mostly, through the use of some [[RealityWarper reality warping]] powers.

* ''LightNovel/TheDevilIsAPartTimer!'' has an EvilOverlord from a MagicalLand fleeing to modern day Tokyo after being nearly defeated by the local hero. There he finds [[YourMagicsNoGoodHere his magic powers don't work as they used to]] and ends up taking a job at a fast-food joint to make ends meet. He still intends to TakeOverTheWorld, though he's actually [[GoingNative more worried about getting a promotion]] for the time being.