History Main / RealityIsOutToLunch

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'' doesn't have anything as normal as reality. Its local take on a {{Multiverse}} is the Perception Range, an infinite expanse of possibilities and subjective realities that people interpret differently based on what they're willing and able to perceive, subdivided into more-or-less discrete "Zones". Locations include the Grey Zones, our own laughably limited reality; a SmallSecludedWorld that grew out of one of the protagonist's corpses, populated by symbolic representations of fungi and bacteria; and The Hospital, the realized concept of medical care, which is under attack by an EldritchAbomination sabotaging the platonic ideals of sickness and health. MindScrew doesn't cover it.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Several places in the Literature/WhateleyUniverse, including the Dreamscape where Sara Waite has to fight The Kellith to the death [[spoiler: even though they are the same person]], or Gothmog's domain, or even the dimension where the demon '''BKCRMWDJVG''' comes from.

* The ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' episode "One Plus One Equals Ed" involves the Eds [[BizarroEpisode taking reality apart to see how it works.]] Among other things, Eddy turns day into night by taking a bite out of the sun and turning it into a crescent moon, steals Jimmy's outline (turning the lad into a puddle of goo), and forces Sarah to go away by generating a WheelOFeet and sticking her in it. Ed uses a hand saw to create an interdimensional hole into the Kanker's bathroom, and then things get ''really'' weird.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' had an episode called "The Magicks of Megas-tu", where the Enterprise enters a part of the universe where reality breaks down. One character has their arm break off of their body and drift away.
* The ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'' episode "Fractured" features the inter-dimensional imp Larry, whose "magic finger" can bend the rules of reality. So, naturally, when he breaks his finger, reality gets broken along with it. This includes making an entire city look like it was drawn in crayon, Starfire's head growing wings and flying away from her body, and mouths becoming easily detachable from people's bodies.

* ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' has this happen occasionally, such as when Mordecai and Rigby go beyond time in the episode "It's Time" where everything is invisible as far as the viewer and Mordecai can tell, and the time-lord exists as a mass of talking clocks.
* The world went this way in the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "A Glitch is a Glitch", due to the Glitch breaking down reality at the fundamental level, bits and parts of people and things disappeared haphazardly.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', Richard got a job delivering pizzas. [[TheSlacker Richard]] getting a job is so alien to the universe as we know it that in every move he makes he [[RealityWarper warps reality]] where ever he passes, such as changing the weather, making stuff float, and reshaping people. [[spoiler:Things go back to normal when he got fired (for eating one of his deliveries).]]

* In ''Literature/StormThief'' by Creator/ChrisWooding, the "horror" version of this is played with: probability storms happen all the time, at random, with no warning, and can change ''anything''. If you get caught in one, it can do anything to you, like change the color of your eye-shadow or give you a terminal case of cancer. Of the novel's two main characters, Moa is an orphan because of this and Rail is forced to wear respirator constantly. The city also has barely any technology because the storms turned off all the power and it was hundreds of years before they turned it back on again. The kicker? [[spoiler:This was done ''on purpose'' to keep the city from stagnating into a cruel dictatorship. It does anyway]].
* Happens in ''[[Literature/IntoTheLookingGlass Claws that Catch]]'', when the ''Vorpal Blade'''s chaos drive interacted with the chaos-based shield of a giant derelict, producing a bizarre effect the crew dubbed "the {{anime}} zone". Mostly it involved massive {{flanderization}} of the appearance of the ship and crew, as well as the crew's personalities.
* This has started happening in All-World, the main setting of ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'', due to the Beams that support the titular tower failing. Resulting in time and space beginning to 'drift', what was east one morning may be north-east the next, the passage of time becoming uncertain, etc... and while it's All-World that is the most effected, due to it being the closest to the Tower, as the strength of the Beams continues to decay this would spread to every world. Or as the book puts it, "the world has moved on."
* Creator/GregBear gives us a particularly {{nightmar|eFuel}}ish case of this in ''The City at the End of Time''. The Chaos is effectively a new universe running on new rules. But the new rules are either incomprehensible to anything that can exist in the normal universe, or constantly changing, and it's eventually implied that they're ''both''. Creatures from our universe need specially designed armor generating a field of reality just to be exposed to it. Even so, they can only see because the armor converts the nearest equivalent it can find into light, and they have to be constantly on the lookout for... [[DeathWorld pretty much everything]].
** Once the Chaos starts actively trying to kill its visitors, this gets worse still. One example sees characters running for their life, chased by future versions of themselves from the possible future in which they did not get away from their future selves, and were instead dragged by them into the stable time loop they are trying to avoid. [[MindScrew Yes, that bad.]]
** In ''Literature/BloodMusic'', the [[spoiler:megaorganism/noocyte collective that used to be the United States]] start observing reality so hard that it starts to perceive new laws of physics which the rest of the planet are unaware of. This in turn stretches local earth reality like a rubber band, and when [[spoiler:the collective decides to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]] it snaps back so hard that the rest of humanity has to live like stone-age people, since the only reliable means of generating power is by burning wood. [[spoiler:At least until they come back...]]
* In ''Literature/SpaceMarineBattles'' novels, xeno temples and daemon worlds alike have a bad habit of wrapping time and space around them like a scarf. AlienGeometries and YearOutsideHourInside abound. In one Salamander story, an Eldar in cryostasis has found a way to use its power to control gravity outside, wrecking a Terminator team that was coming to poison him.

* The Infinite Improbability Drive from ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', which moves the ''Heart of Gold'' vast distances by working from the assumption that the ship has a chance of existing in every place in the universe, then narrowing down the probability so that it merely exists at the plotted destination. When Ford and Arthur are first picked up, they end up in an area improperly shielded from the effects of the drive, and HilarityEnsues as Ford turns into a penguin while Arthur loses his limbs.

* ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'' arc "Entropy in the UK" has the Conspiracy summoning a [[EldritchAbomination big-name horror]] into their base. As a result, the laws of physics go completely random and insufficiently protected characters start developing skin cancer. One psychic character describes trying to read the base as "feel[ing] like someone threw up in my head."
* In the MarvelUniverse, this is the consequence of trying to use [[ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet the Reality Gem]] without the other five Infinity Gems (Time, Space, Soul, Power and Mind) there to act as control rods.
** A cosmic cube can cause similar messes on a smaller scale, as it may cause your subconscious desires to come to life without your consciously willing it.

* RealityWarper supervillain Proteus from ''ComicBook/XMen'' comics, particularly "The Day Reality Went Wild". His powers are especially traumatizing for Wolverine, whose heightened senses give him a greater awareness of reality, and a consequently greater awareness of reality being distorted.
** Doom pulled the same trick on Wolvie by having him trapped in a room full of optical illusions meant to keep him disoriented. One gets the impression Claremont just liked screwing with his heroes.
* In ComicBook/CaptainBritain, the [[RealityWarper reality-warping]] Mad Jim Jaspers' brief but nightmarish rule over Britain resulted in this; had the Fury not stopped him, it would have spread not only to the rest of the world, but to the entire multiverse.

* Part of the premise of FanFic/TheInfiniteLoops is that the multiverse is damaged, which necessitates the eponymous loops. This means minor glitches occur semi-frequently, and occasionally a loop will run that just makes no sense whatsoever.

* The world of ''VideoGame/CookieClicker'' was already a little kooky before you arrive (you can grow farm-grown cookies and mine cookies out of the Earth in the very early game, magic exists and [[spoiler: the Grandmas you've been buying are secretly {{Eldritch Abomination}}s,]]) but your endless pursuit to make more and more cookies eventually leads to you opening portals to other dimensions, travelling back in time to gather cookies before they're eaten, breaking the laws of physics over your knee, and eventually turning all of reality into cookies on a molecular level, and everything understandably gets crazier and more unstable the further you go.

* If upset, LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya can unwittingly create "Closed Spaces", which look pretty much like copies of parts of the real world, minus people, plus large scary rampaging {{Kaiju}}-like things. Within said Closed Spaces, espers can generate energy fields they can't otherwise generate in the real world. Also, she can unknowingly [[RealityWarper warp some aspects of the real world]] (like making pigeons into doves, allowing cats to talk, giving people eyebeams, ''or literally turning someone into Santa Claus'') while not affecting the rest of the world at large. Actions by the rest of the main cast usually revert such changes relatively quickly.

* ''LightNovel/RentalMagica'' has "Magi Night" whenever magical crap hits the {{Ley Line}}s. That a version of this, weakened ''a lot'', is used as an exam in a WizardingSchool should tell you something. Calling it a survival test was a slight exaggeration, but it was a good guts test. [[spoiler:Or it should have been, but our intrepid heroines weren't going to settle until they found the source--and trying to close the faucet, broke it open. Of course.]]

* ''Art/ThePersistenceOfMemory'' is one of the seminal works of surrealism, featuring melting clocks, mysterious creatures, and an ominous landscape.

* A general headache for the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', since it's not only dangerous to explore, but also difficult to contain. MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats") specializes in exploring such locales, especially enclosed and underground locales. [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1730 SCP-1730]] "What Happened to Site-13?" is an entire Foundation site from another reality with a particularly bad case of inconsistent reality. The thing, and the [=SCPs=] still roaming around inside it, swallowed ''four'' mobile task forces before the Foundation sent in [[BadassArmy Samsara]].

-->-- ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' (the novel)

* In ''LetsPlay/TwitchPlaysPokemonFireRed'', the majority of the mons can use moves and abilities that don't even fit their anatomy. The mob was amazed when they encountered an Abra with the Levitate ability (i.e, something that makes sense in the WorldOfChaos that is Kanto during this run).

* The witch labyrinths in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' seem to put significant portions of reality aside in favor of the whims of the local witch. While inside one of these, you might get attacked by evil cotton balls and flying scissors, or [[BodyHorror stretched and warped far beyond what your body could normally sustain without ripping apart]]. Or that tiny creature you just shot to death could [[spoiler:contain a snake much larger than itself, and this topology-defying snake could leap out and devour you.]] [[IHaveThisFriend Hypothetically.]]

* Creator/GregBear gives us a particularly [[NightmareFuel nightmarish]] case of this in ''The City at the End of Time''. The Chaos is effectively a new universe running on new rules. But the new rules are either incomprehensible to anything that can exist in the normal universe, or constantly changing, and it's eventually implied that they're ''both''. Creatures from our universe need specially designed armor generating a field of reality just to be exposed to it. Even so, they can only see because the armor converts the nearest equivalent it can find into light, and they have to be constantly on the lookout for... [[DeathWorld pretty much everything]].
** Once the Chaos starts actively trying to kill its visitors, this gets worse still. One example sees characters running for their life, chased by future versions of themselves from the possible future in which they did not get away from their future selves, and were instead dragged by them into the stable time loop they are trying to avoid. [[MindScrew Yes, that bad]].

* The Chaos Wastes, or anywhere sufficiently exposed to the Chaos Winds, from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}''. Bathed in energy from the same creepy otherspace that plays home to the setting's [[CosmicHorror Cosmic Horrors]], those who spend a good amount of time there usually end up mutating horribly... if they're not already eaten by all the other flora and fauna that's already mutated horribly.
** And in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', you get the [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Eye of Terror.]] Trust us -- ''it lives up to the name.''

* The case in both the {{Chaotic Neutral}} plane known as the Maelstrom, and to a lesser extent, the [[TheFairFolk fey]]-inhabited "rough draft" of creation known as the First World in ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''. Deeper layers of the {{Chaotic Evil}} plane of the Abyss are like this too, due to the lingering influence of the Qlippoth, the original pre-demon inhabitants of that plane.

* In the ''[[VideoGame/{{Stalker}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' series, reality isn't out to lunch as much as it's on extended medical leave. The old Chernobyl power plant exudes... [[EldritchLocation weirdness]], moreso during a blowout, which, even aside from all the potentially fatal radiation, REALLY tends to mess things up. Just for example, you might be walking along a perfectly normal mutant-infested swamp only to have gravity suddenly crush you into the ground, possibly fatally. And that's a rather mild example. There are also the stretches of ordinary unremarkable ground which exude enough heat to burn a human to death ''for no reason at all'', the random massive electrical discharges, the always-entertaining white-hot jets of flame from out of nowhere (that only hurt upon ignition and can be harmlessly traversed after that until they reset), the plants that dissolve skin on contact depending on the speed something passes by it, and [[AlienGeometries the occasional place where space has folded in on itself and created a bizarre maze out of an ordinary room]]. And that's because we haven't said a word about the [[AmplifierArtifact artifacts]] these bizarre occurrences create, and which are very strange in and of themselves.

* Reality in ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' goes out for a smoke break whenever Alma pays a visit. Then it goes to lunch. And visits the gym. And takes a three-day weekend. [[OverlyLongGag And quits its job]]. In the meantime, ghostly horrors and dismembering tentacles will erupt from nowhere, and monsters lurking in pools of blood will erupt without warning, and this is before Alma herself starts ''actively'' transforming the environment around you. Interestingly, the developers [[InvertedTrope invert]] the usual RealIsBrown pattern: a monochromatic or desaturated color palette indicates that some seriously ''[[SurrealHorror unreal]]'' stuff is about to go down.

* In the ''[[VideoGame/{{Stalker}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' series, reality isn't out to lunch as much as [[UpToEleven it's on extended medical leave]]. The old Chernobyl power plant exudes... [[EldritchLocation weirdness]], moreso during a blowout, which, even aside from all the potentially fatal radiation, REALLY tends to mess things up. Just for example, you might be walking along a perfectly normal mutant-infested swamp only to have gravity suddenly crush you into the ground, possibly fatally. And that's a rather mild example. There are also the stretches of ordinary unremarkable ground which exude enough heat to burn a human to death ''for no reason at all'', the random massive electrical discharges, the always-entertaining white-hot jets of flame from out of nowhere (that only hurt upon ignition and can be harmlessly traversed after that until they reset), the plants that dissolve skin on contact depending on the speed something passes by it, and [[AlienGeometries the occasional place where space has folded in on itself and created a bizarre maze out of an ordinary room]]. And that's because we haven't said a word about the [[AmplifierArtifact artifacts]] these bizarre occurrences create, and which are very strange in and of themselves.

[[caption-width-right:350:Raz plumbs the depths of [[ConspiracyTheorist Boyd Cooper's]] [[MentalWorld mind]].]]

As far as we know, reality is pretty much fixed.[[note]]{{Postmodernism}} notwithstanding.[[/note]] We don't randomly sprout limbs, float into the air, or turn into foot stools. Not so here. There is an area, or at least a circumstance, of the setting that throws the laws of physics in the air and plays merry hell with the established rules of reality. This is not always as funny as it sounds; remember, the same laws of reality that keep your friend from spontaneously turning into a camel are also the same laws of reality that keep your lungs on the ''inside'' of your body. As such, regular exposure is not recommended, as you may get... [[BodyHorror altered]].

* The ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' episode "Fractured" features the inter-dimensional imp Larry, whose "magic finger" can bend the rules of reality. So, naturally, when he breaks his finger, reality gets broken along with it. This includes making an entire city look like it was drawn in crayon, Starfire's head growing wings and flying away from her body, and mouths becoming easily detachable from people's bodies.

* In ''WesternAnimation/XMenEvolution'', when the ComicBook/ScarletWitch cut loose against the X-Men in her debut episode, she made the entire area (and the X-Men's powers!) go crazy. It's hard to fit the things she made happen under 'probability alteration,' but damn, if it wasn't ''awesome.''

[[folder:Arts]]
* ''Art/ThePersistenceOfMemory'' is one of the seminal works of surrealism, featuring melting clocks, mysterious creatures, and an ominous landscape.
[[/folder]]

* The [[spoiler: Dark Gods]] of ''Literature/TheExpanse'' are only able to do this is very subtle ways. [[spoiler: This is actually a problem, because nobody realises just how frequently they're staging attacks until they go looking for them and realise they're happening almost constantly. The Dark Gods manage to change light speed, gravity, electron mass and the strength of ionic bonds without so much as breaking a sweat, all with the intention of working out how to destroy humanity.]]