History Main / PatchworkMap

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'' has one bizarre case of this. Most areas on the Bionis are distant enough from each other to avoid this trope (it's generally assumed the characters are travelling a larger distance than what is shown in-game), but Valak Mountain, on the Bionis' right shoulder and upper arm, is right next to Makna Forest, on its upper back. Makna Forest is a tropical jungle (in which the characters complain about the heat), while Valak Mountain is a frozen tundra. It's pretty explicit as well: there's one area of Makna Forest where you can see the jungle very suddenly and jarringly transition to the frozen landscape of Valak. Why Valak would be so cold is unexplained: Eryth Sea is at a higher elevation and is temperate, and the Bionis' left shoulder is a grassy plain.

** ''Four Swords Adventures''. The image and caption at the top of the page highlights the fact that a desert and snowy region are right next door. This is justified in that the snowy region has been in an endless winter due to [[spoiler: the Tower of Winds vanishing]]. The ending even shows what it looks like after thawing out.

* ''VideoGame/HostileWaters'' takes place entirely on an island chicane (artificial archipelago) located somewhere around New Zealand. The environment varies from hot to frozen over. {{Justified|Trope}} by the chicane undergoing rapid, hostile (un)terraformation. Especially visible in the last mission.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' puts the Macalania Forest next to an eternally frozen Lake Macalania. While that could be explained by the presence of the Summon (Shiva, the Ice Summon), nothing explains the fact that the frozen wasteland is still there when [[spoiler: Summons are gone]]. Also, Calm Lands, a lush green field is few tens of meters under snowcapped mountains of MtGagazet at most.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' has the Phon Coast -- a beach map with a very obvious ocean -- which is somehow at the top of a mountain. Jungle next to tundra. Desert next to another forested zone.
*** [[AWizardDidIt The Mist did it]], [[AllThereInTheManual according to the codex]]. The concentration of Mist in a certain area significantly affects its climate, though that still doesn't explain the beach at the top of a mountain.

* Battleworld, from the Creator/MarvelComics crossover ''[[ComicBook/SecretWars1984 The Secret Wars]]''. It was literally cobbled together by landmasses from different planets, including one from Earth.
* The Franchise/GreenLantern storyline ''Mosaic'' featured something similar when a renegade Guardian of the Universe stole parts of a bunch of different planets and pasted them to Oa. They eventually all got sent home.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* Referenced in ''The Literature/{{Discworld}} Mapp'', when Stephen Briggs quotes Pratchett as describing traditional fantasy novel mapmaking as "putting the wiggly river through the pointy mountains", before adding that when he showed Pratchett the first draft (which was indeed drawn that way), he got the response "Do you know what a rain shadow is?" and a brief lecture on climatology.

* Creator/LFrankBaum's ''Literature/LandOfOz'' series, which offers up perhaps both the original and definitive example of this trope: The land of Oz is a [[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-of-Oz.jpg more-or-less perfect rectangle]], filled cheek-and-jowl with every known and unknown variety of bizarre landscape and surrounded on all sides by wide expanses of desert. Baum should also be considered a patron saint of ContinuityDrift, but in one of the books he established that a passing [[AWizardDidIt Wizard (or rather, Fairy Queen) Did It]].

*** Alternately, one could view the Oz in ''Wicked'' as a counterpart to the United States, with urban, forest-filled Gillikin as the Northeast; agricultural Munchkinland as the Midwest; swampy Quadling Country as the South (more specifically, the Mississippi Delta and Florida Everglades regions); and the barren Vinkus as the Mountain West. Even Oz residents' opinions of certain regions mirror American regional stereotypes. Quadlings are seen as filthy and uneducated. Gillikin is where the best universities are and the Gillikinese come off as snobbish. The Vinkus is seen as wild and untamed, and something of a wasteland... etc.

* You just gotta love those rivers in the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' setting ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}''. They start at the northern shore, and wind their way south to the bay.
* D&D setting ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'' has the continent of Xendrik, which works like this explicitly, with such occurrences as sweltering deserts abutting arctic tundra. AWizardDidIt, in that it's all caused by a magical cataclysm in the continent's past.
** Happens in Khorvaire too. Consider Karnnath and The Mror Holds, who have weather like northern Europe or Canada, with lots of snow. Slightly East of them are Lazhaar Principalities, with a Caribbean-like weather and palm trees. Must be a ''really'' warm ocean. Regalport (the main Pirate town in a tropical weather) is further north than Frostmantle and Rekkenmark, both of whom are described as cold. So warm ocean indeed. Similarly, Breland is supposed to be a tropical, rainy country, but most of the neighboring lands are depicted as temperate. [[http://i.imgur.com/xm6M67C.jpg Khorvaire]] also has rivers that start nowhere and occasionally go nowhere, and lakes alone in the middle of nowhere.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' has the ultimate example in Limbo, the Plane of pure Chaos, where pieces of the plane randomly and seamlessly shift between being completely dominated by one element or another.
* D&D setting ''TableTopGame/ForgottenRealms'' has the burning-hot Anauroch desert immediately next to the High Ice, Faerun's equivalent of the North Pole. AWizardDidIt.

* Fully justified in the ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' setting for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. The Land of Mists is composed of artificial landmasses created and sustained by mysterious Dark Powers. Each landmass is separate from the others and bordered by the Mists, in which they drift. The Core (the largest) has a truly patchwork appearance, because each subregion is a "domain" specifically formed to imprison an individual [[BigBad darklord]], and its geography and climate has far more to do with that darklord's culture and personal issues than reality. For example, the domain of Lamordia has a far colder and more wintry climate than its neighbors, and the tropical island of Markovia is less than two hundred miles off the coast. The shape of rivers is even more bizarre, as some rivers literally flow into or out of nowhere, apparently emanating from the Mists themselves. There is also a massive hole (the Shadow Rift) cut straight out of the middle of the Core where other domains used to be (they got relocated during a plane-wide cataclysm).

* In ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'', a desert reaches right up to a forest. It is revealed that a magic talking lion causes everywhere near him to be a desert, but [[NoOntologicalInertia it returns to normal when he's not nearby]]. At another point, it's explicitly mentioned that it's indeed possible in Phantasia that an icy area borders a hot desert. It's Phantasia, after all. In fact, drawing a map would be impossible even if the country weren't infinite -- it's written that the borders between lands aren't always even determinable and are prone to shifting; the lands that a given traveler will encounter tends to have more to do with the nature of their journey than with regular geography and the direction they set off in.

* Battleworld, from the Creator/MarvelComics crossover ''[[ComicBook/SecretWars The Secret Wars1984]]''. It was literally cobbled together by landmasses from different planets, including one from Earth.

* Battleworld, from the Creator/MarvelComics crossover ''[[ComicBook/SecretWars The Secret Wars]]''. It was literally cobbled together by landmasses from different planets, including one from Earth.

** The Smash Run area in ''for [=3DS=]'' has the apparent goal of putting together as many typical VideoGameSettings as it can into one floating island. The surface area alone, from left to right, has a forest, plains, desert, and snowy grounds all within walking distance of each other. Though this does help with quickly identifying where on the map you are, since it would be far more confusing even with the minimap if all locations looked alike.
** The World of Light in ''Ultimate'' is an even more extreme example, as it's literally formed out of various video game settings haphazardly mashed together without regard for the natural consequences. Although in this case it's somewhat justified, as the entire story takes place AfterTheEnd, and the map is basically a pile of what's left over after Galeem blew up the universe.

* ''Disney/TheLionKing'' has a tropical rainforest paradise right beside a large desert. It's made even more confusing in [[Disney/TheLionKingIISimbasPride the sequel]] when it's shown that the jungle is connected to the Pridelands through the barren, dusty gorge. There is a river with a waterfall running through that rain forest. Perhaps it never rains in that region, and so all the wildlife grows right by the river.
* ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'': The titular city has several extremely climate-controlled suburbs -- a snowed-over polar zone is sandwiched between an extremely dry and windy desert and a wet equatorial jungle. Justified in that the city's infrastructure works to transfer atmospheric conditions from one area to another, creating extremes in both. For example, the air conditioners that freeze Tundra Town produce a lot of heat exhaust, which heats the adjacent Sahara Square.

[[caption-width-right:256:Yes, that is a desert on the same latitude as the frozen tundra. [[note]]To be fair, that region isn't normally frozen tundra, and [[JustifiedTrope is currently afflicted by a magical curse that is making it constantly snow.]][[/note]]]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmoggies'': Coral Island has snow-capped mountains, iceburg-filled waters, warm beaches, farmland, forests, and more, all crammed into one tiny island.

* New York State itself, in the terrain sense. It has lowland plains, two plateaus, three sets of mountains one of which is cut off from any other range, and some islands. climate wise it does stay pretty regular.

* ''Videogame/MonsterHunterWorld'': While the game's various settings ([[JungleJapes the Ancient Forest]], [[ShiftingSandLand the Wildspire]] [[BubblegloopSwamp Wastes]], [[UnderTheSea the Coral Highlands]], [[CorpseLand the Rotten Vale]], [[LethalLavaLand Elder's Recess]], and [[SlippySlideyIceWorld Hoarfrost Reach]]) are distant enough to not be obvious, ''Iceborne'' introduces the Guiding Lands, a single zone that contains elements of the first four levels slapped together, which the Research Commission notes is highly unusual.

* It was even worse with the earlier ''{{Toys/Slizers}}'' line. [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qZv7WraxhgE/T34cnbC5GWI/AAAAAAAAABU/FGt7sggHQt0/s1600/Slizerplanet+11-6-98.jpg Just look at the Slizer Planet]]: we've got a perpetual SwirlyEnergyThingy, a MegaCity, a frozen mountain range, an ocean, a LethalLavaLand, a jungle, and a desert, all ''perfectly'' shaped to take up exactly one-seventh of the planet's surface.

* A common complaint about the world in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls2''. While the world of [[VideoGame/DarkSouls1 the previous game]] was very cohesive to the point that you could frequently spot other locations off in the distance, and extreme changes in climate had proper justifications (such as the fire area being hidden deep, ''deep'' underground, and the ice area being its own isolated world inside of a magic painting,) the world of ''2'' had no such cohesion. You could go from the poisonous Harvest Valley up Earthen Peak, an isolated windmill at the end of the valley, and from near the top ride an elevator further up to suddenly find yourself at Iron Keep, another series of ruins inside a massive lake of lava, or from Aldia's Keep up ''another'' elevator and end up at the Dragon Aerie, a castle on top of a series of massive rock pillars with dragons flying all around them, that should be easily visible from multiple locations but isn't.

* A common complaint about the world in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls2''. While the world of [[VideoGame/DarkSouls1 the previous game]] was very cohesive to the point that you could frequently spot other locations off in the distance, and extreme changes in climate had proper justifications (such as the fire area being hidden deep, ''deep'' underground, and the ice area being its own isolated world inside of a magic painting,) the world of ''2'' had no such cohesion. You could go from the coastal Majula through a relatively short tunnel and out into Heide's Tower of Flame, a series of ruins in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, or from the poisonous Harvest Valley up Earthen Peak, an isolated windmill at the end of the valley, and from near the top ride an elevator further up to suddenly find yourself at Iron Keep, another series of ruins inside a massive lake of lava.

* Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/PaperMario''. While two separate areas being next to each other and having different climates isn't rare, there's one part of the game where a forest borders a gulch, and the sky is lit according to which side of a gate you're on. Goombario's description mentions how it's amazing that the scenery can flip between the two so quickly.