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Bazaar of the Bizarre
aka: Bizarre Bazaar

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"Hawkers in the market offered to sell me ambrosia-on-a-stick, and a new shield, and a genuine glitter-weave replica of the Golden Fleece, as seen on Hephaestus-TV."
Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thief

An exotic street bazaar from "Arabian Nights" Days, juiced up on nonsensteroids. All manner of strange, unearthly, forbidden, and fantastic items can be found in a Bazaar of the Bizarre. Usually, the rules of a Truce Zone are in effect, and sworn enemies can meet safely there (though arriving and leaving can be tricky). This may just be sacred custom or may be enforced by Functional Magic or other Applied Phlebotinum.

Often encountered by the heroes early on, to drive home the otherworldliness of a place and establish that anything can happen. If the characters are traveled enough, they may own a small version themselves as a Trophy Room. Modern-day fairy tales set in cities often feature a fairy market appearing as the Bazaar.

Roguelike computer games often feature these. On a shop level, you'll tend to find a general store (food, drink, and tools), a weapons and armaments shop, a shop that caters to the clergy (defensive and healing spells and potions, appropriate clothing, and blunt weapons), one for mages (attack spells, staves and rods, and such), and one may sell just anything, occasionally including seriously out-of-level artifacts. It can also be a great place for Shop Fodder, where players can sell things that aren't useful to them but that buyers will pay a fortune for.

The Trope Namer is Fritz Leiber's short story "Bazaar of the Bizarre," although the 'bazaar' of that story is actually The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday with a sinister twist.

Compare with

Contrast with

  • Kitsch Collection is for ordinary, if weird, collections of items, but they are not usually for sale.
  • Bar Full of Aliens is also a place of overwhelming variety, but it isn't necessarily hidden from mundanes—and it need not sell anything unusual, let alone magical.
  • The Secret Shop need not be magical, just hidden; it doesn't even need to be illicit.
  • The Black Market is always illicit, but isn't necessarily magical. (They can, of course, overlap.)
  • Grail in the Garbage might be found in the bazaar's trash heap.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Monstress: According to Professor Tam Tam, Zamora used to be this — a trading port between the Federation of Man and the Arcanic Empire, where all sorts of oddities and valuables, including stories and friendships, were exchanged. It's now a no-man's-land city on the edge of the truce lands, whose inhabitants are tough from constant war and always prepared for an attack from either the Cumaea or the Arcanics.
  • Rick and Morty (Oni): The asteroid on which Jerryboree is situated more or less qualifies.
  • Smax: Signs in a city point out a Goblin Market and Knockturn Alley.
  • Star Wars (Marvel 1977): There's a rather dangerous one in a large space station called Bazarre, whose main function is to serve as a black market hub safe from the prying eyes of the Galactic Empire. As such, the big attractions, at least to the protagonists, are TIE fighter parts. Immediately after arrival, Luke, Lando, and Chewie are looked over by a being who would like to buy them as meat, and the administrator who dismisses them, when he sells them intact TIE fighters at an external location, booby-trapped the thing and sabotaged their shuttle. Fortunately, they left Chewbacca with him, and the Wookiee was strong and smart enough that his relatively hasty efforts to kill him and escape came to nothing.
  • Valérian: Syrte is the greatest market in the empire of a thousand planets and sells living stones and telepathic pets among other things.

    Fan Works 
  • Becoming a True Invader: Zim's group's first stop after leaving Earth is at Fuelia Portia, a planet that serves as a giant trading market for aliens of all kinds.
  • Rocketship Voyager. The crew of Voyager attempt to buy Faster-Than-Light Travel technology at the Junkers Market, which sells technology captured by the Space Pirates who are based on the Array. Afterwards Captain Janeway complains about being pestered by salesmen hawking fake technological wonders and dodgy investment schemes.

    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin: The Marketplace. In the movie, it seems to be selling mostly normal things, such as necklaces, fruit, and fresh fish. In Aladdin: The Series however, there's a shop run by a witch that definitely makes the marketplace a little stranger.
  • Iblard Jikan has some, one can be glimpsed in the more fantastic sections of Whisper of the Heart, and there are more in Naohisa Inoue's other works.
  • Spirited Away: The abandoned amusement park shops, which become filled with gods, spirits, and other creatures when the evening and the spirit world comes in.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Bedknobs and Broomsticks: Portobello Road. It's the one place to go if you need a magic book. "Anything and everything a chap can unload/ Is sold off the barrow in Portobello Road." Based on the real-life Portobello Road Market in London.
  • Place Cachée is a hidden wizard street in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. It's basically the Paris equivalent to Diagon Alley from Harry Potter.
  • Hellboy II: The Golden Army: The Troll Market. Quite similar to the market in The Books of Magic listed above, it's a secret place for The Fair Folk to trade all sorts of knick-knacks.
  • Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: There is a popular tourist destination, appropriately called Big Market, that adores this trope. For one thing, it's on a desert planet but exists in a completely separate dimension, and can only be accessed with Hard Light VR headgear. It boasts over a million different shops that sell all kinds of things, from standard-issue tourist knick-knacks to rare exotic creatures. Just to drive the point home, the tour guide at the gate is dressed and acts like a stereotypical Arabian merchant.

    Literature 
  • Downplayed in The Angel of Khan el-Khalili — Khan el-Khalili is a sprawling marketplace selling everything from non-magical carpets to steampunk automaton repair services to alchemically powered appliances, but the protagonist goes to the market looking to hire the services of a supernatural creature that can perform a miracle and heal her mortally wounded sister.
  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy has such markets, but they're mainly used by Muggle tourists who know next to nothing about magic. The only protection their trinkets offer is that they let a real magician know that you aren't a threat to him.
  • "Did You Hear the One About...", one of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon short stories, features Al Phee, "intergalactic traveling salesman". He uses the phrase "Bazaar of the Bizarre" to describe the things he sells but is ultimately revealed to be a time-traveling con artist by Time Police officer (and possibly the daughter of Philip José Farmer) Josie Bauer. Making this a classic "Shaggy Dog" Story about a Traveling Salesman and a Farmer's Daughter.
  • Discworld
    • Thaumatalogical Park, just outside Unseen University. Although, in keeping with the skewed Magitek of the setting, it's closer to Silicon Valley than a Goblin Market.
    • Ankh-Morpork itself is an example for the races of Discworld: it's a trade city that hasn't warred for years and years (until Jingo, that is) and is about the only place where dwarves, trolls, vampires, werewolves and other living and unliving creatures would all trade rather than fight. Quite a few plots of the books of the Night Watch series are dedicated to keeping it that way. This has been a far better defense than walls or armies ever were, as any barbarian horde that attacks the city quickly finds itself either spit out with sacks of souvenirs or integrating into the city in yet another ethnic business district.
  • Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser gives its name to the magic item section in Dragon magazine.
  • Filthy Henry Fairy Detective, by Derek Power, says that Real Life Dublin market, Moore Street is full of fairy stalls and shops that are Invisible to Normals.
  • Neil Gaiman uses this trope in a number of his works:
    • The short story "Invocation of Incuriosity" has a flea market that's otherwise normal but has one stall run by a time-travelling refugee from the Dying Earth.
    • Neverwhere: The Floating Market is a major, if transient, hub in London Below, where almost anything can be traded for almost anything else: information for a handkerchief, an iron rose for a bag of cheese, a choice corpse for three-quarters of a bottle of Chanel N°5, a Hand of Glory ("Guaranteed to work") for some junk and a somewhat alive guide for... unspecified Liquid Assets, among many others. There's also some great curry.
    • Stardust: The fairy Market at Wall, with vendor cries including "Bottled dreams, a shilling a bottle!" and "Swords of fortune! Wands of power! Rings of eternity! Cards of grace!" Some of the traders require payment in Insubstantial Ingredients, such as memories. The street entertainment is just as weird as the stalls, including a reverse dancing bear (large men dancing to a bear playing a hurdy-gurdy).
  • Goblin Market, a lengthy 19th-century poem by Christina Rossetti (sister of Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who illustrated the poem), is the Trope Maker for this trope, at least for all of these fantasy examples given. In it, there is a literal "goblin market" wherein little goblin beast-men of diverse appearance hawk their wares to innocent passers-by, tempting them with all kinds of exotic and luscious fruits.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Diagon Alley, the go-to marketplace for young wizards preparing for a new school year, hosts shops selling such things as magic wands, potion supplies, astrological equipment, Crystal Balls, wizards' Familiars and assorted things of use to fledgling magic users.
    • Nearby Knockturn Alley is the Black Market equivalent of this. While Diagon Alley hosts reputable shops selling the magical equivalent of household goods and school supplies, Knockturn Alley is where you go if you want to purchase morally dubious or openly illegal items such as poisonous candles, hangman's rope, human bones and fingernails, cursed necklaces, shrunken heads and the like.
  • In On a Pale Horse, there are "cloud malls" which apparently sell a wide variety of magical items. Some of them are Black Magic (i.e. powered by Satan) and hence are illegal. But the mall will merely pull up moorings and float away if there's trouble.
  • Realm of the Elderlings: Bingtown has the Rain Wild Street, where the exotic and expensive, potentially magically imbued merchandise of the mysterious Rain Wild Traders can be bought. It's so expensive, many of the shops have hired guards. Fitz mentions how just walking down the street dizzied him due to his heightened senses of the Wit and the Skill.
  • The Reynard Cycle: Reynard the Fox features one that appears to have fallen on ... hard times. Fighting there is punishable by death via robot.
  • Rivers of London: The nazareth (illegal London street market) in Whispers Under Ground. According to Nightingale, the standard term for a magical nazareth is a goblin market.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Daenerys Targaryen explores a few bazaars filled with exotic people, strange merchandise, and of course danger at every turn. The most notable of these is probably the one at Vaes Dothrak, where various Dothraki warlords (who are constantly trying to kill each other) can meet in relative safety. In fact, because of the strict rules against weapons and bloodshed, assassins and guards who prevent theft have to know how to bloodlessly strangle their victims
  • Time Out of Time has The Traveler's Market, where items both magical and not can be bought. Timothy, Sarah, and Jessica visit it in "Beyond The Door" to find a cure for Timothy's brother's rat fever infection.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Auction Kings, Paul is proud that his auction house sells many strange items. Bob will sometimes bring pieces to Paul that would do poorly at his own antique furniture auction house.
  • Charmed (1998): There's one run by demons, which has power hawkers and offers fresh Eye of Newt among other things.
  • The Promenade on Deep Space Nine is a downplayed example of this trope. According to the series bible it was originally supposed to look like something out of Bladerunner, but that was dropped for cost-saving reasons. Instead the shops are discreetly tucked away to be shown as separate sets when needed. Quarks and Garak's tailor shop are the ones most often used, but a display panel of businesses on the Promenade includes tongue-in-cheek Shout Outs like Spacely Sprockets or Tom Servo's Used Robots.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Doctor seems to like introducing new companions to the universe by way of these. Amy and Clara were both brought to one in their first TARDIS trips ("The Beast Below" and "The Rings of Akhaten", respectively). Martha also saw one in her second trip, the first off-planet, in "Gridlock".
    • "Turn Left": The street market on the planet Shan Shen. It was vaguely Chinese in flavour, and led to Donna having a most peculiar encounter with a fortuneteller and a giant beetle which let her see her own alternate past.
  • Farscape:
    • "That Old Black Magic" introduces the crew to one of these. Technically speaking, Crichton's the only one who finds any of it weird at first; then of course, it's revealed that the building at the end of the bazaar is owned by the Evil Sorcerer Maldis, and things only get stranger from there...
    • There's also the commerce settlement in "Bringing Home the Beacon". Quite apart from being a dead Leviathan embedded in the side of a small planetoid, it's also home to a number of strange stalls and shops — not least of which is the massage parlour that has a sideline business in genetic transformations. It's also a meeting ground for Commandant Grayza and War Minister Ahkna.
  • Firefly:
    • "The Message" features a winding marketplace filled with circus sideshows and exotic food, including an "ice planet" (presumably a flavored ice ball) dangling from a stick, which River deems "problematic" when she can't figure out how to eat it.
    • There's also the Eavesdown Docks of Persephone, which the crew visits twice (In "Serenity" and "Shindig") which seem to be a major mercantile area. This is Badger's stomping ground.
  • M*A*S*H: In "Snap Judgement", Klinger finds out about a mobile bazaar called "Little Chicago" that sells mostly stolen items, so he investigates, finding his own watch and the Polaroid camera that was stolen from Pierce and Hunnicutt. When heading back, he is stopped at a checkpoint and is found with the camera, which he had personally reported as stolen. Little Chicago packs up and leaves before the MPs can find it; this, coupled with the unfortunate circumstances and Rosie advising Hawkeye to tell Klinger not to sell anything there for a while causes a previously-closed investigation on him to be reopened.
  • Oddities: The Obscura Antiquities shop is all about this. Straightjackets, skulls, malformed foetuses in jars, bull testicle elixir, barber-surgeon equipment... if they don't have it, they probably know someone who does.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): In "Rule of Law", the Daedalus colony has a marketplace with many different alien species.

    Music 
  • In A Persian Market is one of several exotica pieces by Albert Ketèlbey. In six minutes he gives you a marketplace mind movie with a caravan, vendors and their goods, entertainers, beggars asking for alms, and a princess arriving on a litter, greeted by the Caliph himself.
  • "Renaissance Fair" by the Byrds (written by Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, recorded in 1966) describes the first Renaissance Pleasure Faire near Los Angeles. This was a pretty influential event, versions of which still exist today. There was also a band called Pleasure Faire.
  • There's a European version of this in the second act of Puccini's Opera La Bohème which takes place in Paris, on the Rive Gauche, right before Christmas. Behind the main characters' lighthearted chatter and romantic gestures, street vendors proclaim their goods, little kids run around yelling, students and off-duty guards drink and banter, and there's a high moment when toymaker Parpignol shows up with his cart and the kids go wild.

    Pinballs 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Ars Magica: Faerie markets sometimes crop up among the ordinary markets and fairs of Mythic Europe, offering strange variants of everyday items, ordinary-looking objects with curious properties, and oddities of Wrong Context Magic. Human customers need to be well-informed, well-connected, or (un)lucky to find them, and are advised to study the fay notion of what constitutes fair exchange.
  • Changeling: The Lost: The Goblin Markets, derived, at least in name, from the poem Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti, in which half-animal men sell tempting but poisonous fruit. Buy magic swords, second-hand skills, supernatural powers that Fell Off the Back of a Truck, even slaves. All it's going to cost you is three whiskers from a housecat, a week of dreams, or your ability to cry...
  • Don't Rest Your Head offers the Bizarre Bazaar, where dreams and memories, as well as other oddities, can be exchanged for goods and services. Strangely, while those at the Bazaar tend to be at truce, the gathering is illegal, and therefore subject to raids by the terrifying Officer Tock. Worse, it only occurs at 13 o'clock, when the Mad City is at its most deadly.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Dragon Magazine had a regular feature of unique (and often quite warped and twisted) magical items which it called "The Bazaar of the Bizarre". While not a physical location even in a fictional sense, the feature often served the same purpose for Game Masters and Players looking for something new and unusual.
    • Sigil from Planescape (regularly misappropriated for other settings and cosmologies, even the non-Great Wheel-using 4th edition). The whole city. Though any mercantile districts would probably have even stranger things you can buy or trade for than the rest of the city already does. A dagger of Baator steel? Behind that corner. Breath Radiance spell? Someone willing to sell a scroll or two can be found. A more specific example is the shop of A'kin the Friendly Fiend (exactly how friendly depends on the source), whilst another is "Vrischika's Curiousity Shoppe".
    • Merchant cities of Forgotten Realms.
      • Waterdeep isn't called "City of Splendors" for nothing, it's a major trade center where they don't bat an eye at weird stuff and minor magic items. The Old Xoblob Shop has anything adventurers can pick up in forgotten ruins, from random weapons to treasure maps to weird curio like drow sculptures or lizardman boundary poles, and uses an iron golem as candelabra/bouncer.
      • Calimport actually has a bazaar in a pocket dimension known as the Dark Bazaar. "Invitations" are given out by shadowy figures, and it's a neutral ground for various fiends, celestials, monsters, and, of course, people.
      • Sshamath is a drow magocracy rumored to have anything for sale, up to lesser artifacts. They may well do at Dark Weavings Bazaar, and services to get a few absent things too; The Genie's Wish is mostly a glittering version aimed at the visitors too clueless to get all implications of its name.
      • The Red Wizards of Thay were known for their making deals with demons, using The Undead as a nearly-limitless supply of Mooks, and their attempts to conquer and enslave their neighbors. Fortunately, their attempts at conquest were often undermined by their propensity for infighting and Enemy Civil Wars. By 3rd Edition, many of the Red Wizards switched from attacking other countries to trading with them, opening enclaves across Faerun. These enclaves sold all kinds of magical trinkets, making the Red Wizards huge amounts of money, improving their relations with other countries...and allowing some of them ways to hatch further dark plots.
      • The 3rd edition Tome of Magic has Fark's Road, a bazaar hidden by shadow magic where shadowcasters, illusionists, and odd critters trade cross-planar goods. Since it isn't tied to any particular city and is hidden by an illusion, it can pop up anywhere the GM wants it to, even in established settings.
      • While Graz'zt's entire triple realm, three connected layers of the Abyss known as Azzagrat, is already a very commercial area of the plane, the second layer of the capital Zelatar, Gallenghast, is by far its most prominent mercantile area. Traders from all over the Great Wheel gather there, offering everything from spices to slaves, powerful magic items, and other alien goods of any nature one could imagine. It's thought to be a relatively "safe" area, but this is not exactly true. The entire capital of Zelatar is something of a haven for merchants, Graz'zt's decree giving protection to them, but it's not always an enforced rule. The word of the Dark Prince may be the closest thing to law in Azzagrat, but if those who guard the merchant think they can get away with it, they will rob or extort the merchant. Graz'zt himself even occasionally invites people of interest to his estate so as to take anything he may want from them, simply because.
  • Exalted: You can buy all kinds of things in the bazaars of Malfeas or the "goblin markets" of The Fair Folk. Even among the former, however, the bazaars of Makarios, the Sigil's Dreamer, are unique.
  • Pathfinder:
    • One such location in the City of Brass, the thriving trade capital of the Plane of Fire. Mortals, outsiders, and everything in between risk life and limb to earn extraplanar transport to the city, where everything, meaning literally everything, is for sale. If it can't be purchased at the City of Brass, it's likely one-of-a-kind and/or lost to the ages.
    • The Sunken Plaza in Port Peril, built into one of the caverns riddling the cliffs behind the city, is a complex three-dimensional agglomeration of shops, walkways, and stairs that caters to both the city's poorer classes and people looking for unusual wares. There, besides cheap household fares, one can purchase potions, juju fetishes, every sort of magic item, assorted artifacts of suspicious origins, and exotic beasts from throughout the tropical continent of Garund.
  • Planebreaker: The Worldswept Market is an always-open bazaar for shoppers and sellers hailing from a variety of planes. The breadth of goods available among its stalls is enormous, spanning common needful things like food and equipment, goods brought in by extradimensional travellers (such as especially exotic spices, trinkets, art, and so on), and the weird stuff that lucky beachcombers find along the Sea of Uncertainty's shore.
  • Rifts:
    • A whole world book is devoted to the Splynn Dimensional Market on Atlantis, where both the merchants and customers tend to be demons, aliens, and dimensional travelers and with all the bizarre goods and services one would expect from such beings in massive variety, including plenty of live, intelligent merchandise.
    • The hidden city of Cibola in South America is a smaller competitor of the Splynn Market that specializes in drugs, potions, and medicine. Its good counterpart, Manoa, also has a yet smaller, but non-evil dimensional market.
    • Phase World in the Three Galaxies has a gigantic interdimensional market, with sections run by many dimensional dealers, each section large enough to be its own Bazaar of the Bizarre. A number of worlds throughout the multiverse have their own markets, but no known ones compare in scale to Phase World or the Splynn Market and their overwhelming variety of goods.
  • Rogue Trader: The spaceport of Footfall, due to being the closest thing the Kornus Expanse has to civilization (ie. not very close) and the meeting points of rogue traders, mercenaries (both human and xeno), and other unsavory characters, is an excellent place to find whatever it is you might be looking for. It's gotten to the point where inquisitors stationed there don't even bother trying to stop the black market sale of alien artifacts, just limit the damage. One adventure there features an Auctionhouse of the Bizarre, but that is actually an inversion: the bidders are expected to offer unusual and valuable items to trade instead of bidding for money.

    Video Games 
  • Bookworm Adventures has a level called Crazy Murray's Bizarre Bazaar, although it's arguably not an example of this trope because you can't buy anything there (you do get attacked by the merchandise, most of which flies).
  • Dragon Age II has the Black Emporium, run by a creepy immortal mage and full of such things as a Box of Screaming, an invisible nude statue of the Prophetess Andraste, a vase full of tears, a portrait of the late King Cailan painted on black velvet Elvis-style, and sundry magical weapons, armor, and potions. The Box of Screaming (which mentions a "bronze sphere") makes it clear that it's an homage to Planescape: Torment. The Black Emporium is so beloved by players that it makes a return for Dragon Age: Inquisition. In both games, it's only available as DLC.
  • Fallen London: The economy of London centers around the Echo Bazaar. Guess where you can go to buy things. You can buy souls (other people's, that is), combat veteran weasels, banned books, stolen letters, secrets that come in three flavors, a drug that teleports you into your own dreams, guns made by blacksmith rats, the actual blacksmith rats themselves, brass from Hell which never cools, fungus hats, live hats (with teeth), live gloves (also with teeth), "ridiculous" hats (no teeth, but exceptionally silly), cats, bats, lizards, eyeball-stealing spiders, pet tigers, poisoned umbrellas, glowing beetles for decoration/lighting, an elixir of immortality (though only three people have ever scraped together enough money, and two of them used Fate), clothes made out of fabric that drinks light, clothes made out of fabric woven from nightmares, vaguely-Mongolian armor, coats covered in nothing but pockets full of helpful gadgets, demonic rifles from an alternate timeline and expired contracts for aforementioned souls. And let's not get into the kind of stuff you can sell at it. The characters in it are possibly weirder. Oh, and the Bazaar itself is also a Genius Loci.
  • Fallout 4 has an in-universe example in the collectible comic from the Unstoppables! issue "Visit the Ux-ron Galaxy". It shows a cover of a bazaar full of the most weird and creative alien creatures the designer could think of, including a crabman arm wrestling with a barbarian, a slug taking its robot out for a stroll (it walks on disturbingly human-like legs), and a man with a submachine gun talking to a gaseous cloud with shoes and a bowler. Somehow, reading this will let the player permanently gain +1% chance of avoiding all damage from an attack.
  • Gaia Online:
    • Cash Shop seems to be either this or The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: You can buy anything from, say, an ancient curse (Death Whisper) to an incredibly dangerous plant or egg.
    • There's also the Gaia Marketplace, which sells all items on the site, from clothes to food to said ancient curses to heartwarming orphans.
  • NetHack: The Black Market, an enormous shop containing potent items at ridiculously high prices, guarded by creatures that make even the regular shopkeepers look like wimps.
  • Planescape: Torment has one where you can buy lots of fantastical spices with impossible tastes, all sorts of exotic magical weapons, and... cloth? It also has Vrischika's Curiosity Shoppe, mentioned above, where you can buy Deva's Tears, a modron action figure, a Monster Jug (which is a jug that has a monster in it), Yevrah's Ring of Almost Invisibility, and Baby Oil. In fact, a lot of quests require the strange items that can be bought here — a chocolate quasit, deva's tears and a fiend's tongue, a rune-inscribed ale stein, Gorgon Salve, and an Elixir of Horrific Seperation. Also, the modron action figure is the key to finding the Secret Character Nordom.
  • Quest for Glory: One can find the Baazar of Shapeir in the plazas of Shapeir in Quest for Glory II. In Quest for Glory III, the Baazar of Tarna sells cloth, leather, beads, ropes, honey, oils, and junk items including a World War I gas mask. The Baazar of Gaza is mentioned being in Egypt to the north.
  • The Rewinder depicts the Chinese underworld as such. You see stalls and booths filled with nature spirits, ghosts, and benevolent supernatural creatures, from the Ox-Head and Bull-Face playing chess, to andromorphic plants smoking in an opium joint, a purple ghost with an oversized head selling candied dolls, an Oni-like creature in a gambling joint, a Chinese Vampire in a storytelling parlor, ghost children running about and all that.
  • Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is where players can sell and buy items to and from other players. Any item from the game can be bought, as long as a player brings it to the exchange. It may take a while for one to do so, but it'll likely happen.
  • Secret of Evermore: Nobilia houses one. Stocked goods range from bags of rice, to ceramic pots, to golden jackals, and even to priceless artifacts, all of it being traded and sold amongst each other. Ebon Keep in Gothica has a much smaller variation.
  • Team Fortress 2 implies a few of these in the backstory. For example, weapons manufacturer Mann Co. is occasionally in the business of "collecting" and selling haunted swords, and the Sniper made the Bazaar Bargain weapon from a bunch of inexpensive junk at an unnamed Arabian bazaar.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Mr. Ox's shop, found late in the game in Chinatown. The shop itself is treated as a combat zone, and Mr. Ox himself is an Ambiguously Human old man who talks you into retrieving a pair of eyeballs and putting a bad luck charm in a goon's locker. Though while Mr. Ox does reward you with mystical artifacts, you can't actually buy anything from him without patches or mods.
  • World of Warcraft has the Darkmoon Faire that comes to one of the major capitals once a month. You have to take a portal to the island, so it's unclear exactly where on Azeroth (if on Azeroth) the fair is located. Inside are a number of rides (much like a travelling carnival) and contests where you can earn tokens. The tokens are primarily exchanged for cosmetic items like appearance transmogs and gag items (like funny hats).

    Visual Novels 
  • Sweet Enchantments: The cast shops for supplies at the Goblin Market, depicted here as an expansive multi-level shopping mall with shops marketing a nigh-unlimited variety of goods both mundane and magical. The cafe staff go there because the Goblin Market offers the freshest produce, but other items mentioned for sale include jeweled golden birds popular for their unique song and the ever-popular lamps that grant wishes.

    Webcomics 
  • In El Goonish Shive, there is a shop that stocks a variety of magical items, including a toothbrush that transforms one's teeth and jaws with every use, shrink soda, femme cola, furry juice and a cursed boardgame.
  • In Girl Genius the Black Market of Paris is an underground bazaar where one can find all sorts of things that are not available in the more well-regulated markets as well as plenty that is, like parts scavenged off old clanks or other salvaged and stolen Spark made artifacts, stealthy weapons, steamy romance novels, beer, and baguettes.
  • The Property of Hate has the Black Market, a rather large area under the ocean where all sorts of bartering is going on. RGB sells one of his hands there (he gets another) for a favour and buys both shoes he and Hero need for trekking the Sands of Regret and a jumper to protect her from the schizm for the ____ they found earlier. He also steals a kiss (represented by an x) from a kiss stall which he later gives Madras as a farewell gift. Hero sells two of her fingers to buy something for her friend, Assok. Other things you can buy include ground fears. There are also rather strict rules about fighting and destruction, as Click finds out.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation:
    • The Utterly Bazaar is located at a multiversal crossroads like the Wanderer's Library and full of people selling anomalous products — things that are definitionally unexplainable or impossible according to the laws of reality as we understand them.
    • Meanwhile, SCP-2444 is a flea market with alternate-dimension vendors carrying fairly harmless but very strange alternate-universe products.
  • Whateley Universe: The Whateley Weapons Fair, an annual semi-covert gathering of the various Devisor and Gadgeteer Genius students that showcases their various inventions, being a combination of this and a Mad Science Fair. While the majority of the items on sale are weapons and defensive systems of various sorts, different students offer items ranging from a Hyperspace Arsenal Utility Belt, a number of anti-eavesdropping gadgets, a suite of nanotech feminine hygiene products, technomantic protective amulets, and a specialized shower system very specifically aimed at women. Also, the Fair itself almost invariably ends with some piece of Mad Science 'going Westworld' and attacking the customers...

    Western Animation 
  • American Dragon: Jake Long: The Magus Bazaar is accessed through a portal in the last stop of the New York subway.
  • Amphibia has a Bazaar of the Bizarre called The Bizarre Bazaar. Anne and Sprig find an invitation to this place in the hollow of a tree and venture there despite lacking Hop Pop's permission. The quest was made in an effort to discover more about the music Box that sent her Amphibia in the first place. It doubles as a Wretched Hive where thievery, cheating, and mischief are common.
  • Ben 10: Mr. Bauman's market in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Ben 10: Omniverse caters specifically to the aliens secretly living on Earth.
  • Futurama: In "Spanish Fry", the crew visit the Galactic Bazaar Space Station — which announces itself with an electronic billboard reading "Legal Items, etc." — to visit the Beast with Two Bucks alien sex shop to try and recover Fry's lost nose, as "human horns" are thought to powerful aphrodisiacs by aliens.
  • The Simpsons: Several appear, usually during Treehouse of Horror specials. In "Treehouse of Horror II", Homer buys a monkey's paw at one while visiting Marrakesh.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Bizarre Bazaar

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Fake Moustache

The hero has disguised himself to expose a gang of con-men in the bazaar. However, the seasoned con-men turn the tables on him.

How well does it match the trope?

4.33 (6 votes)

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Main / OutGambitted

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