History Main / RealityIsOutToLunch

* In ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'' the Khert is simultaneously a BackgroundMagicField that regulates reality and a timeless, nondimensional EldritchLocation in itself. Powerful enough magic can disrupt the Khert in an area so that physical laws malfunction: fire burns cold, ghosts escape into the physical world, mugs of coffee learn to fly and socialize, and the like. [[spoiler:Inside the Khert, the memories of everyone who has ever and will ever live are manifested and remade into the scenery, it's possible to glance down one vista of the fractal landscape and watch the time you visited last night, and you can fall headfirst into a vision of the future -- [[MindScrew or a possible future?]]]]

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]].

* In ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'', there is the phenomenon known as the Pale. It is basically a collection of strange enormous patches of anti-reality where all human history and memory of the past collects. The Pale separate the world's continents and covers most of the planet. While just being in the Pale may not immediately kill you, the longer you stay and deeper you go, the more the laws of physics stop working, such distance, time, and you find yourself going increasingly insane as you lose the ability to seperate present and past. The only way civilization has found to reliably navigate them is to plot a precise course with as little exposure as possible and shoot straight through as fast as they can with specially designed airships.

* 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, 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.

* 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, 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.

-->'''[[spoiler: Bill Cipher:]]''' It's time we do a little redecorating -- I could really use a ''[[PyramidPower castle]]'' of some kind! And how about some bubbles of ''[[MindRape pure madness?!]]'' This party never stops! [[TimeCrash Time is dead]] and [[MindScrew meaning has no meaning!]] Existence is upside down and I reign supreme! Welcome, one and all, to Weirdmageddon!

* Dreaming is an example of this. With sufficient practice, dreams can even be shaped.
* Quantum physics:
** Quantum tunneling. Imagine a real-life example: you can't push something up a hill if you don't supply enough energy to it, but it gets that energy back when it rolls down on the other side. If you don't have enough energy to get it up in the first place, in real life you're out of luck. On the quantum scale, this doesn't seem to matter as much. There's a good chance that if you aren't being observed, you can pass right through the hill and be on the other side of it when reality comes back from lunch.
** Quantum physics postulates some wacky stuff, even in the macroscopic realm (i.e. the parts of the universe we can see with our own eyes). For instance, like electrons, massy objects have waveforms, which predict where the object is likely to be found at any given moment. Waveforms for humans have been shown to extend some 250,000 miles, meaning it's theoretically possible for someone to randomly teleport to the Moon. However, the probability of it happening is so low, that it would take longer than the projected life of the Universe for it to actually happen.
** Quantum physics is really an inversion. ''Reality'' works perfectly fine and even consistently at that level, it's ''we'' who have trouble fully understanding how it does so.

* If upset, LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya can unwittingly create "Closed Space", which looks pretty much like copies of parts of the real world, minus people plus large scary rampaging blue {{Kaiju}}-like things. Within said Closed Space, espers can also generate energy fields they can't otherwise generate in the real world. Also, she can also 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.
* In the void between worlds between Earth and the Digital World in ''Anime/DigimonTamers'', the cast are wandering the dark void wondering what's going on. Then Jeri mentions that "she thinks that way is 'down'". Renamon: "... oh dear." Gravity comes into being and they begin falling.

* 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 raped.

** And then there's [[MindScrew horrid fish storming out of the sky, five wild event maelstroms spewing up pavement, the highest prime number hiding itself forever, flying horses carrying reinforced railings, huge children bouncing along the Southend seafront, a million-gallon vat of custard, a team of seven three-foot high market analysts,]] [[MonkeysOnATypewriter and an infinite number of monkeys who appear to have written]] ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}''.

** "Reality is frequently inaccurate."

** And some realm s-- like Death's abode or the tower of the Tooth Fairy -- have problems with basic essential laws, like time. Or space. [[spoiler:Or even death... kinda]].

** Perhaps especially notable is how Unseen University uses Hex; knowing that many impossible things are in fact possible ''until'' reality notices, they can use a half Magitech, half BambooTechnology computer to violate the laws of physics in very many ''extremely'' similar but distinct ways, very quickly, too quickly for the universe itself to adjust!

** Then there's the Scar, in the Swollen Ocean, where long gone reality altering beings once entered the world and 'broke it'. What actually happens there is unknown to the main protagonist, [[spoiler:but a person who goes missing returns from an alternate timeline claiming that he saw everyone fall into a massive chasm into the bowels of the earth. The protagonist has several theories as to whether this was a hoax or not, but quits that line of reasoning in disgust]].

** Then there's whatever lies ''beyond'' the Nevernever. So far, it hasn't made many appearances in the books, but things from it have--the Outsiders (EldritchAbomination types who are extremely resistant to magic) and mordite (a material that is basically calcified death). [[spoiler:Faerie and TheFairFolk exist in part to protect the physical world from Outside.]]

* ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'': Nowhere. It's an amalgamation of all areas of the city that Harry's been through, organized in such a bizarre and nonsensical way that the only thing a room has in common with the ones it's connected to is the size of the door they share. It's not restricted to the Otherworl areas as it seems at first, either: some Fog/Dark World locations are present, such as the school classroom. To make it worse, even the savegame screen isn't immune: ''it can't identify the place you saved the game in''. All save points but the final one register the save location as "Nowhere".

* ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' has a long running bug known by the community as the "Deep Space Kraken" that has been known to make planets invisible, tear apart spaceships for no apparent reason, and in general wreak havoc on your save. The original Kraken was caused by a floating point error, but since its fixing multiple different Krakens have thence spawned.

* In the climax of the Team Galactic plot of ''VideoGame/PokemonPlatinum'', you, Cyrus and Cynthia enter the Distortion World, the realm of [[OlympusMons Giratina]] described as being on the reverse of the normal one. It is defined by its disconnection from natural space and time -- platforms appear out of nowhere, obstacles vanish (or spontaneously generate) as you walk towards them and gravity changes on a whim. At one rather impressive point, you surf up a waterfall simply by holding the D-Pad -- a waterfall that flows from the bottom of the screen to the top. Cynthia remarks that although you appear to keep moving downwards toward the centre, in a world such as this its impossible to know.

* ''VideoGamee/KingdomHeartsI'':

Sample conditions of a place where reality is out to lunch include AlienGeometries (constant relation [[YourHeadASplode between skull volume and its surface]] is a good thing to have) and {{time dilation}}.[[note]]Except for Relativity physics. Reality is perfectly real in that case[[/note]]. PerspectiveMagic is another common trick. A RealityWarper has this as a superpower. Related to HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace, only the place in question isn't necessarily used for travel purposes. See also EldritchLocation, where this often happens, and WorldOfChaos for when the effect is so widespread it makes up the whole of existence. May result in someone GivingUpOnLogic. Fairly common, or at least not out of the ordinary, in SurrealHorror.

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]].

** In the series' backstory, during the 1st Era, the Marukhati Selectives, an elite group within the rabidly [[FantasticRacism anti-Elven]] [[TheTheocracy Alessian Order]], carried out a ritual in an attempt to purge Akatosh, the [[DragonsAreDivine draconic]] God of Time, of the elven aspects of his mythological basis -- the [[OurElvesAreBetter Aldmeri]] [[NobleBirdOfPrey golden eagle]] god Auri-El. This proceeded to [[TimeCrash break time]] and reality for a period of a 1008 years, an event that came to be known as the Middle Dawn. During the Middle Dawn, reality didn't just go out for lunch, it went out for supper with friends, got wasted and passed out, waking up butt-naked in a dumpster on the other side of town with no wallet. Bizarre and impossible events occurred during this time; people gave birth to their own parents, some sources mention wars and major events which never happened according to other sources, the sun changed color depending on the witness, and the gods either walked among the mortals or they didn't. How could they measure that period of time? They used the phases of Nirn's moons, said to be [[GodIsDead Lorkhan]]'s decaying "flesh divinity", to measure time as they were not affected by the event. Even the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Elder Scrolls]] themselves cannot rationalize the events of the Middle Dawn. When the Scrolls are attuned to that time period, their glyphs disappear.

* ''Videogame/FallenLondon'': The Neath in general has tons of weirdness, like honey that physically teleports you into your own dreams, people selling their souls in bottles like nothing and death being a bit of a temporary inconvenience. But the Iron Republic takes this to new levels; the laws of reality are nonexistant, very, very malleable or ''literally'' debatable, changing at the behest of its rather insane inhabitants' protests. The laws of mathematics change so often doing any sort of accounting is irritating, and figuring out theorems is blatantly impossible. Make a convincing argument and it'll rain upwards just because you asked, until someone else asks for something blatantly impossible instead, which will happen anyways. Why all this chaos? Because this is the Iron Republic's idea of true freedom: There shall be no law. This includes things like physics.
** The Iron Republic retains its weirdness in ''VideoGame/SunlessSea'', to the point where even trying to write a report about it for the Admiralty causes the paragraphs to bud eyes and the paper will either go blank or catch fire when handed in to the Admiralty, but you can also visit Irem. Irem is a place where time isn't entirely stable, so every time it's discussed, the tenses used in the sentences change at random. You can throw a skull into a pool to see visions and journey into the dimension behind mirrors by paying someone a sack of coffee beans.

* More so than most of the other episodes in the series, 'A World With No Sadness, Baby' in ''Anime/SpaceDandy'' is nonsensical in the extreme. The majority of it takes place in some bizarre limbo world inhabited by completely unexplained creatures. A choir of caricatured bears with disembodied human hands that, despite not having mouths, carry on conversation in abstract phrasing by singing? Unexplained. An otherwise normal looking lady that has the front half of a cat sticking out of her chest - and speaks through that cat's mouth instead of her own? Unexplained. That's not even getting into all the minutiae of the setting.

** And some realms--like Death's abode or the tower of the Tooth Fairy--have problems with basic essential laws, like time. Or space. [[spoiler:Or even death...kinda]].

** In the same author's ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'', an Amberite can travel to any Shadow (aka parallel universe) they can imagine by simply visualizing the changes they desire as they move. At one point, Merlin is dosed with very strong hallucinogens. It...goes badly. (Even just regular Shadow travel can end in this situation if it's taken out far enough towards Chaos.)

* 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 [[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]].

** And in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', you get the [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Eye of Terror.]] Trust us - ''it lives up to the name.''
* ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness''
** The Abyss from ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'' is pretty much established as "anti-reality." No one actually goes in there, [[CosmicHorror but plenty of things come]] ''[[CosmicHorror out]]'' [[CosmicHorror of there]]... Well, OK, a few go in, it's just that they don't come ''out''. Unless they happen to be Archmages, and even then, they can only go in for a short while.

** And then there are the Lower Depths. If the Abyss is "anti-reality," then the Lower Depths are "lack of reality" - a ever-shifting series of planes where at least one of the Arcana (such as Death, or Life, or Mind, or Fate...) is missing entirely.
** Faerie/Arcadia from ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' is a much better example. Like the Wyld, it serves as home turf for TheFairFolk, and everything within its boundaries is defined not by physics but by contracts and pledges (for instance, if you haven't agreed to let fire warm you up, you can stand in the middle of an inferno and not feel any heat -- though you will get burned). Not only does time work on the YearInsideHourOutside principle according to Earth, but it works ''both ways'', meaning ten days on Earth could pass in three years' time in Arcadia, or vice versa (and those are ''not'' fixed values). Also, those of the aforementioned Mages that control Time and Fate may come here to awaken (the Arcadia of the Mages is within human experience, the Arcadia of the Fair Folk is ''not'', and the nature of their connection is debated even by the Archmages - Arcadia is that screwy).

* At the very end of ''[[Videogame/{{Inca}} Inca II]]'', the protagonist winds up inside an asteroid comprised of his memories, as well as some sort of bomb which needs to be wrapped back in around itself. The maze alone is suitable enough to warp one's mind, but the puzzles - even for a game which has ''already'' been out there and back -- are sublime.
* In the climax of the Team Galactic plot of ''VideoGame/PokemonPlatinum'', you, Cyrus and Cynthia enter the Distortion World, the realm of [[OlympusMons Giratina]] described as being on the reverse of the normal one. It is defined by its disconnection from natural space and time - platforms appear out of nowhere, obstacles vanish (or spontaneously generate) as you walk towards them and gravity changes on a whim. At one rather impressive point, you surf up a waterfall simply by holding the D-Pad - a waterfall that flows from the bottom of the screen to the top. Cynthia remarks that although you appear to keep moving downwards toward the centre, in a world such as this its impossible to know.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'': This tends to happen during events known as "Dragon Breaks", {{Time Crash}}es during which the usual forward flow of time is disrupted in some way, usually by mortals wielding a divine-level power. They also often [[CosmicRetcon alter reality]], with consequences persisting even after they end. To note some specific examples:
** In the series' backstory, during the 1st Era, the Marukhati Selectives, an elite group within the rabidly [[FantasticRacism anti-Elven]] [[TheTheocracy Alessian Order]], carried out a ritual in an attempt to purge Akatosh, the [[DragonsAreDivine draconic]] God of Time, of the elven aspects of his mythological basis - the [[OurElvesAreBetter Aldmeri]] [[NobleBirdOfPrey golden eagle]] god Auri-El. This proceeded to [[TimeCrash break time]] and reality for a period of a 1008 years, an event that came to be known as the Middle Dawn. During the Middle Dawn, reality didn't just go out for lunch, it went out for supper with friends, got wasted and passed out, waking up butt-naked in a dumpster on the other side of town with no wallet. Bizarre and impossible events occurred during this time; people gave birth to their own parents, some sources mention wars and major events which never happened according to other sources, the sun changed color depending on the witness, and the gods either walked among the mortals or they didn't. How could they measure that period of time? They used the phases of Nirn's moons, said to be [[GodIsDead Lorkhan]]'s decaying "flesh divinity", to measure time as they were not affected by the event. Even the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Elder Scrolls]] themselves cannot rationalize the events of the Middle Dawn. When the Scrolls are attuned to that time period, their glyphs disappear.

* 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 particle physics reactions, there can exist "virtual" particles which have invariant mass much different than what would be that particle's usual mass (if that particle weren't extant only as part of a reaction). Example: An electron and an antielectron (positron) annihilate, to form a single photon that has mass equal to the total center-of-mass energy of the two electrons, then that photon decays after a time to an electron and a positron with the same center-of-mass energies as the originals. A free photon would normally have zero mass and not decay, but here the virtual photon has mass, but decays - almost literally it is "Reality is Out to Lunch," and when reality "catches up" with the improperly-massed particle, it decays. Or at least that's one way to think about it. Of course, this is a "cartoon" picture, since in real life it's impossible to "see" the virtual particles, so it's hard to say whether they "exist" or not.

--> ''Sam'': "Gravity has taken a holiday and lost its luggage!".

** Quantum physics postulates some wacky stuff, even in the macroscopic realm (i.e. the parts of the universe we can see with our own eyes). For instance, like electrons, massy objects have waveforms, which predict where the object is likely to be found at any given moment. Waveforms for humans have been shown to extend as far as the Moon, meaning it's theoretically possible for someone to randomly teleport to the Moon. However, the probability of it happening is so low, that it would take longer than the projected life of the Universe for it to actually happen.

* 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.

* Earth in ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' has also been invaded by other strange realities.

* Wackyland in the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoons. Like Wonderland, but with more dodos.
** Wackyland is an actual place in ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'', situated on the outer edges of Acme Acres. A few episodes focus on it, like one in which Babs briefly became their queen or the time Gogo Dodo took Montana Max to task for dumping sewage in it and spoiling his surreal surroundings.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', this happens to Ponyville in the season 2 premiere "The Return of Harmony (Part 1)", thanks to Discord's influence. The weirdness includes cotton candy clouds that rain chocolate milk, [[PopcornOnTheCob ears of corn popping while still on the stalk]], and rabbits growing long, deer-like legs. It gets progressively weirder in "The Return of Harmony (Part 2)", where Discord throws in things like dirt roads turning into wet soap, day and night cycling at random, buildings floating in midair, [[AstralCheckerboardDecor the ground developing a checkerboard pattern]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjD4umwKSLI drinking an exploding chocolate milk of glass,]][[note]]You read that right. As seen in the video, when Discord tips of the glass into his mouth, the glass itself flows into his mouth, leaving the chocolate milk inside untouched and still holding the shape of the glass.[[/note]] and more.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' episode, "Weirdmageddon", [[spoiler: Bill Cipher finally escapes to Earth and turns Gravity Falls into his own personal playground, unleashing all sorts of bizarre and horrifying transformations on the townsfolk and partying it up with some of his fellow {{Eldritch Abomination}}s from his previous home dimension.]]

Sample conditions of a place where reality is out to lunch include AlienGeometries (constant relation [[YourHeadASplode between skull volume and its surface]] is a good thing to have) and [[YearInsideHourOutside time dilation]][[note]]Except for Relativity physics. Reality is perfectly real in that case[[/note]]. PerspectiveMagic is another common trick. A RealityWarper has this as a superpower. Related to HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace, only the place in question isn't necessarily used for travel purposes. See also EldritchLocation, where this often happens, and WorldOfChaos for when the effect is so widespread it makes up the whole of existence. May result in someone GivingUpOnLogic. Fairly common, or at least not out of the ordinary, in SurrealHorror.

* In the void between worlds between Earth and the Digital World in ''Anime/DigimonTamers'' the cast are wandering the dark void wondering what's going on. Then Jeri mentions that "she thinks that way is 'down'". Renamon: "... oh dear." Gravity comes into being and they begin falling.

* In the titular desert town of ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'', reality is on a permanent bad acid trip.

* The Mystery Vortex in ''SamAndMaxHitTheRoad''. Almost every single room of this tourist trap appears to feature some disruption of reality, from the Creator/MCEscher entrance hall where visitors become too small or too tall to enter certain doors, to the permanently upside-down gift shop.

** In the series' backstory, during the 1st Era, the Marukhati Selectives, an elite group within the rabidly [[FantasticRacism anti-Elven]] [[TheTheocracy Alessian Order]], carried out a ritual in an attempt to purge Akatosh, the [[DragonsAreDivine draconic]] God of Time, of the elven aspects of his mythological basis - the [[OurElvesAreBetter Aldmeri]] [[NobleBirdOfPrey golden eagle]] god Auri-El. This proceeded to [[TimeCrash break time]] and reality for a period of a 1008 years, an event that came to be known as the Middle Dawn. During the Middle Dawn, reality didn't just go out for lunch, it went out for supper with friends, got wasted and passed out, waking up with no clothes and no wallet in a dumpster on the other side of town. Bizarre and impossible events occurred during this time; people gave birth to their own parents, some sources mention wars and major events which never happened according to other sources, the sun changed color depending on the witness, and the gods either walked among the mortals or they didn't. How could they measure that period of time? They used the phases of Nirn's moons, said to be [[GodIsDead Lorkhan]]'s decaying "flesh divinity", to measure time as they were not affected by the event. Even the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Elder Scrolls]] themselves cannot rationalize the events of the Middle Dawn. When the Scrolls are attuned to that time period, their glyphs disappear.