History Main / TheWallAroundTheWorld

* In ''WesternAnimation/OverTheHedge'' the animals wake up in the spring to discover a huge hedge is now running through the middle of their forest, but the main plot of the film involves them finding a new housing community on the other side, and begin to use the humans that live there to their advantage to get their food.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfKells'', Abbot Cellach is obsessed with building a wall that will protect his monastery from Viking invasions. [[spoiler:It doesn't work.]] He is very strict with forbidding his charges from going outside, punishing young Brendan harshly when he disobeys.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Smallfoot}}'': The Yeti are told by the Stonekeeper for generations that their entire world is a snowy island on a sea of clouds on the back of gigantic mountain mammoths. [[spoiler: Beneath the sea of clouds is the Himalaylan Mountains where people live. The Yeti long ago ran away from the humans ((or [[InsistentTerminology Smallfoot]])) that called them monsters and agreed on a collective lie to never go down the mountain. The Stonekeeper is supposed to maintain order, protect the village, and maintain the generations of lies to keep the Yeti safe.]]

* Palm Brinks in ''VideoGame/DarkCloud 2'' was [[CityInABottle sealed off from the rest of the world]] via a titanic wall, far too tall to scale. This was done by the Mayor, to protect the citizens from the incredible devastation taking place in the outside world --but now that the land is healing (and with the heroes having escaped via an underground sewer/aqueduct,) many of Palm Brink's inhabitants dream of exploring and building new cities.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', Vault 101 was intended to never open its door. The line is, "No one ever enters, and no one ever leaves." [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Neither are true]]: your dad is from Rivet City, and you and he both leave.]]
* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' has an invisible border that surrounds the majority of the playable game world, and attempting to go beyond it gives a message "You cannot go that way." This border extends across the edges of the map in the Pip-Boy... except for The Glowing Sea region, which extends some ways past the visible map. [[spoiler:Naturally, these map borders cannot be normally crossed, but a simple edit to the game's '''fallout4.ini''' file can permanently turn off these borders.]]
** In a subversion to this, if the DLC for ''Far Harbor'' or ''Nuka-World'' are installed, new terrain data is loaded into the Commonwealth's regular map cells, which extend beyond the normal barriers of the world. That is, even if the game's standard borders are active, you will be able to travel past the invisible barrier. However, if you travel to either the Far Harbor or Nuka-World areas (which load their own unique world maps), they will each have their own invisible barriers preventing extensive exploration... [[spoiler:unless the aforementioned '''.ini''' file tweak is active.]]

* In ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', the remnants of humanity live inside an area protected by three absolutely massive ring walls. All the lands outside are claimed by man-eating giants that have hunted humanity to near extinction. The plot of the series is kicked off when the walls begin to fail...
** There's also a kind of layered example in how each wall has a quartet of towns situated just outside of it (surrounded by an extended semicircle), serving partially as a waystation in the major gates of the walls, but mostly as a cost reducing factor by baiting the Titans into easily monitored concentrations just outside the towns (the walls there being thinner than the rest). Although there are government incentives to settle such towns, it's offset by needing to live with the constant visual reminder of their enclosure. At least before the first one falls.
* In ''Anime/BackArrow'', the entire continent of Lingalind is surrounded by a wall so massive, you can't see its top - it just blends into the sky. It's revered as God by the inhabitants and they believe that beyond it there's nothing but void. It's made quite explicit that saying otherwise is heresy and could get you killed. This belief is challenged by the title character, who insistently claims to have come from beyond the wall.
* The "spiritual barrier" around the village in ''Literature/FromTheNewWorld''. The humans inside the barrier are told never to cross it, because the outside world is full of horrific monsters. [[spoiler:They are taught this so that their subconscious telekinesis will only create said monsters outside the barrier. The barrier keeps bad things out ''and'' imprisons the characters, by necessity.]]
* Meta-example. The universe in which ''Anime/GlassFleet'' takes place is described as a "closed space". The exact details are unclear, but one thing ''is'' made clear: it's ''shrinking'' as more and more of it crosses the event horizon of the Black Cross: a massive black hole.

* In the oneshot manga ''Island'', by Komi Naoshi, the town the main characters live in is surrounded by a huge wall, much like a well. When the islanders turn 14, they are shown the truth- outside their island is nothing but a vast sea. [[spoiler:The islanders believe that all the land in the world sunk and thus all other countries were drowned, making it useless to go outside the island. It turns out that only the island sank, probably because of land subsidence and earthquakes.]]

* In the first and second seasons of ''Literature/{{Slayers}}'', the world Lina could explore (and put craters into) was restricted by a magical barrier that went down after the BigBad powering it was killed.

* ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'': The city of Houryou, in the Kingdom of En, has many layers of walls, but in this case, is because of the constant population growth, as more people migrate to En from other kingdoms, the city constantly needs to expand more to accommodate them, and since the walls are needed to protect them from the monsters, they have to constantly be build with the expanding city.

* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'': The Hulk occasionally visited the [[ComicBook/RocketRaccoon Keystone Quadrant]] in his old comic-book series... basically a solar-system (possibly more than one) which was somehow 'walled off' from the rest of the universe, it could only be entered and exited through various types of teleportation. It was basically a SugarBowl without the sugar - populated by funny talking animals and hilariously incompetent Keystone Kops... and caught up in a long war between a MadScientist tortoise and his cybernetically-enhanced Black Bunny Brigade (not to mention a small army of robotic [[MonsterClown Monster Clowns]]), and the heroic Animal Resistance, led by a fast-talking Raccoon space-captain.

* The Source Wall is a ''metaphysical wall that surrounds all mortal reality'' in the Franchise/{{DCU}}, named after The Source, Franchise/{{DCU}}'s equivalent of God or the Godhead and introduced in Creator/JackKirby's ComicBook/NewGods epic. The Source Wall separates the extant universe from the Franchise/{{DCU}} equivalent of Heaven. Only those godlike beings who can reach the border of reality itself ever encounter it, and its appearance as a wall is indicated to be metaphorical rather than literal. That said, there are powerful cosmic beings embedded in the wall.
** As to the powerful cosmic beings embedded in it: if you try to breach it and fail you wind up [[AndIMustScream eternally trapped but alive]]. There are some powerful creatures who couldn't make it through. By now the wall is so covered with those trapped by it that it looks like a wall made entirely of screaming faces as far as the eye can see.
** In the New 52, the Source Wall surrounds the entire ''multiverse'' and is a literal wall instead of a metaphorical wall. In this case, we have no idea how the geometry works.

* In the "Age of X" ''ComicBook/XMen'' storyline, there's a massive barrier keeping the bad guys out. Kitty phases through it once and finds out [[spoiler:there's nothing beyond it. It turns out the world isn't real, but made by a RealityWarper who is only good enough at this point to make a world that's only so big]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Smallfoot}}'': The Yeti are told by the Stonekeeper for generations that their entire world is an snowy island on a sea of clouds on the back of gigantic mountain mammoths. [[spoiler: Beneath the sea of clouds is the Himalaylan Mountains where people live. The Yeti long ago ran away from the humans ((or [[InsistentTerminology Smallfoot]])) that called them monsters and agreed on a collective lie to never go down the mountain. The Stonekeeper is supposed to maintain order, protect the village, and maintain the generations of lies to keep the Yeti safe.]]

* In ''Film/TheThirteenthFloor'' the world has no physical wall around it but it does have an edge where the simulated nature is visible to the naked eye. People within the simulated world are just programmed to never think about going anywhere near that edge (of course there are exceptions...)
* In the film version of ''Film/AeonFlux'' the survivors of the "industrial virus" (biological apocalypse) have lived in the walled city of Brenga for generations. The outer perimeter of the wall is periodically sprayed with some sort of poison to keep the outside world at bay.

* The broken bridge in ''Dellamorte Dellamore'', aka ''Film/CemeteryMan''.
* In ''Film/DarkCity'', John Murdoch tries to reach Shell Beach; instead he finds a wall at the edge of the city.

* In ''Film/SexMission'' the survivors of a DepopulationBomb -- only women (reproducing artificially) -- live in a deep mine and are afraid to venture outside, because all their periscope shows is a grey wasteland. [[spoiler:There is a literal wall around the periscope and the surface gate. With very convincing grey wasteland painted on it.]]

* The forest containing ''Film/TheVillage2004'' is closed off from the outside world by a wall. Turns out there's a reason for that.

* Creator/JimButcher's ''Literature/TheCinderSpires'' series has the Mesosphere, a thick layer of mist that covers the surface of the world, and is inhabited by some very large, very ''hungry'' things, and the titular Spires themselves; Two miles wide, tall enough to reach above the Mesosphere, and each populated by a nation of people who are, more often than not, overcome by agoraphobia if they ever actually go outside.

* In ''Literature/TheDosadiExperiment'' the whole planet is encased inside the "God Wall" [[DeflectorShields barrier]] as a part of said experiment. Not that it's ''completely'' impassable, but for [[TheMasquerade most people]] inside it is.
* ''Literature/TheEarTheEyeAndTheArm'': In Zimbabwe in 2194 a large preserve has been set aside where a select few live in the GoodOldWays of pre-colonial Africa. It's large enough to hold at least a couple villages with their livestock and agriculture, and surrounded by an enormous wall to block out the sights and sounds of the modern world, mirrored on the inside to give the impression of going on forever. The residents call the wall "the edge of the word" and aren't even curious what's on the other side, knowing it only as [[HomeOfTheGods Mwari's country]].
* Several stories in the world of ''[[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric of Melniboné]]'' show that its world is surrounded by a WorldOfChaos that is inhospitable to human life. One major guardian of the walls is [[BarrierMaiden the lawful good sorceress Myshella]].
* The prologue to the ''Literature/ForbiddenBorders'' series by Michael Gear tells how SufficientlyAdvancedAliens tried to teach humans "reasonable" non-violent behaviour since they considered extermination unethical. They trapped a score of human colonies inside "gravitic bottles", which humans dubbed Forbidden Borders, and dropped an asteroid on Earth. First they tried to guide humans via a telepathic supercomputer. They managed to slow technological progress and make them forget Earth, but humans contacting the computer ended up forming a cult and keeping its knowledge to themselves. When the aliens tried to force the cult to share their knowledge, the cult just abandoned the computer. As of the series start the aliens were expecting humans to exterminate themselves in the upcoming war of attrition.
* ''Literature/{{Gone}}'': The impenetrable FAYZ Wall which surrounds the area.
* In the novel ''Literature/HardBoiledWonderlandAndTheEndOfTheWorld'', the End of the World sections take place in a town which has a wall around it, and once you come to the town you can't go outside the wall.
* In Creator/DamonKnight's ''Hell's Pavement,'' people in Connecticut (200 years in the future) know nothing of the people in New York, who know nothing of the people in Ohio, and so on. They believe people in the other places are literally monstrous and inhuman. (There are walls between zones.) This happened because supermarket chains used brilliant new brainwashing techniques to make people totally loyal to their brands, and the adherents of different brands formed different zones.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''

* ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'': The spherical Walls of the World, which are only specifically described in ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth,'' although their existence is implied in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''. The walls separate the world from the empty void of the Outer Dark, and are only pierced by a single Door of Night, created by the Valar to thrust [[BigBad Morgoth]] out until TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* The wall (or "Barrier") in Lee Arthur Chane's ''Magebane'' was created long ago by mages as a defense against a [[WhatMeasureIsANonSuper commoner uprising]]. It's assumed that it will last for another two hundred years. [[TheMagicGoesAway This is a bit of an overestimate]].
* ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' (third book of ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive''): Shows up as a myth of people living in a land of shadows surrounded by a wall to keep the monsters out, only for one girl to climb the wall and bring back light, and in the process she discovers the wall is to keep the monsters in. [[spoiler:This appears to be a mythologized account of Shinovar, the first human settlement on Roshar, and how humans eventually conquered the world. The walls are the mountains surrounding Shinovar that act as a windbreak for Highstorms, and the light is Stormlight, glowing {{Mana}} that can only be obtained by leaving a gemstone out in a Highstorm]].
* In Garth Nix's ''Literature/OldKingdom'' series, a huge, ancient and magic-infused wall separates the mundane, magic-free Ancelstierre (which resembles early 20th-century England) to the South from the MedievalStasis land of the Old Kingdom to the North. Passage across the wall from the Ancelstierre side is tightly regulated, with military checkpoints and watchtowers, though they're also watching for threats, particularly [[TheUndead undead ones]], coming from the Old Kingdom.

* Creator/IanMcDonald's ''Out on Blue Six''--the city is surrounded by a giant Wall, and the protagonists explore to see what's on the other side. [[spoiler:Turns out--nothing but toxic waste.]]
* A large portion of the plot in Orson Scott Card's ''Literature/Pathfinder2010'' revolves around one of these. It's revealed decently early on that there are actually 19 "worlds" with Walls.

* In ''Literature/TheSwordOfTruth'' / ''Series/LegendOfTheSeeker'', there is an (almost impenetrable) great barrier around a region called "The Midlands", which is the central geography of the story. That barrier is re-used in ''Naked Empire'' of the same series, to close off a group of people from the rest of the world.
* Creator/TedChiang's ''Tower of Babylon'' is a speculative fiction short story where it's more of a ceiling [[spoiler:or floor]]. The vault of heaven is a literal stone roof to the universe, and the Babylonians have built a tower to talk to God, who they believe resides above it. [[spoiler:One of them makes it, only to emerge from a cavern deep in the Earth, back where he started--the world loops back on itself.]] In another story, ''Exhalation'', the narrator mentions how he has "journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky."
%%* The Void in Creator/PeterFHamilton's ''Literature/VoidTrilogy''.
* Marlen Haushofer's "The Wall" is about a woman one day waking up in a mountain valley with the whole valley suddenly surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable wall. With all life outside the wall apparently dead, the book deals with her trying to survive inside the valley. Wondering if she is the last human alive, she speculates about the origin of the wall, [[spoiler:which in the end is never revealed. She often thinks about trying to leave the valley, but can't bring herself to risk it. What happens to her in the end is left open to the reader.]]
* The TropeNamer is a short story by Theodore R. Cogswell in which it separated a magic-dominated half of the world from a science-dominated one.
* There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke called "The Wall of Darkness" about a planet with a wall that divides it in half. The protagonist spends many years (and most of his wealth) building a staircase to climb the wall to see what's on the other side. [[spoiler:Turns out there is no other side, and the planet is essentially a 3D Möbius strip. The wall was created in the distant past to prevent people from trying to go to the other side, which tends to drive people mad.]]
* Yevgeni Zamyatin's ''Literature/{{We}}'': The Green Wall, separating the civilization of the One State from the forests around it, which in turn separate them from the rest of the world. There are few and conflicting clues as to what actually may exist beyond the forest.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In the story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]", the Doctor pushes through a barrier in time and ends up in a MirrorUniverse.
** Used in the ''[[Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine DWM]]'' comics, most notably in "Oblivion".

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamits provide every country on Earth with the technology to project a forcefield around their borders, ending the possibility of any nation attacking another.

* The city of Houryou, in the Kingdom of En, from ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'' also has many layers of walls, but in this case, is because of the constant population growth, as more people migrate to En from other kingdoms, the city constantly needs to expand more to accommodate them, and since the walls are needed to protect them from the monsters, they have to constantly be build with the expanding city.

* The Veil (actually called a Wall in the original) in ''ComicBook/{{WITCH}}'' serves to keep a powerful evil, identified with [[BigBad Phobos]], on the world of Metamoor and keep the universe safe from him, with most people being able to get through the various portals but Phobos being apparently unable to. The Veil becomes unnecessary and is torn down once Phobos is captured and locked in the Tower of Mists.

* The prologue to the ''Literature/ForbiddenBorders'' series by Michael Gear tells how SufficientlyAdvancedAliens [[ScaryDogmaticAliens tried to teach humans "reasonable" non-violent behaviour]] since they considered extermination unethical. They trapped a score of human colonies inside "gravitic bottles", which humans dubbed Forbidden Borders, and [[ColonyDrop dropped an asteroid]] on Earth. First they tried to guide humans via a telepathic supercomputer. They managed to slow technological progress and make them forget Earth, but humans contacting the computer ended up forming a cult and keeping its knowledge to themselves. When the aliens tried to force the cult to share their knowledge, the cult just abandoned the computer. As of the series start the aliens were expecting humans to exterminate themselves in the upcoming war of attrition.
* The impenetrable FAYZ Wall which surrounds the area in ''Literature/{{Gone}}''.

* A literal example is the spherical Walls of the World from ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'', which are only specifically described in ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth,'' although their existence is implied in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''. The walls separate the world from the empty void of the Outer Dark, and are only pierced by a single Door of Night, created by the Valar to thrust [[BigBad Morgoth]] out until TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
* ''Literature/{{The Land of Elyon}}'', a children's series by Patrick Carman, has walls surrounding the inhabited cities and the roads that link them. The main character finds a way out of the walls, despite the fear of many of the other characters about what is beyond the walls.

* The planet Saraksh in ''Literature/PrisonersOfPower'' by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers has an atmosphere with very high refraction, which leads its inhabitants to believe that they live not on the outer surface of the globe, but on the inner one. They can see the surface around them curving upward, [[AlienSky as far as dense low clouds allow them to see]]. The idea that they live on an outer surface ("mas-saraksh", "inside-out world") is well known, damned by all religions, commonly used [[ForeignCussWord as an expletive]], but gives surprisingly accurate results for plotting trajectories of [=ICBMs=]. Only the insane believe in existence of other worlds, and a crash-landed alien is considered a mutant.

* In ''Literature/TheSwordOfTruth'' / ''Series/LegendOfTheSeeker'', there is an (almost impenetrable) great barrier around a region called "The Midlands", which is the central geography of the story.
** That barrier is also re-used in ''Naked Empire'' of the same series, to close off a group of people from the rest of the world.
* Creator/TedChiang's ''Tower of Babylon'' is a speculative fiction short story where it's more of a ceiling [[spoiler:or floor]]. The vault of heaven is a literal stone roof to the universe, and the Babylonians have built a tower to talk to God, who they believe resides above it. [[spoiler:One of them makes it, only to emerge from a cavern deep in the Earth, back where he started--somewhat similar to the Clarke example above, the world loops back on itself.]] In another story, ''Exhalation'', the narrator mentions how he has "journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky."

* The Green Wall in Yevgeni Zamyatin's ''Literature/{{We}}'', separating the civilization of the One State from the forests around it, which in turn separate them from the rest of the world. We are given few and conflicting clues as to what actually may exist beyond the forest.

** Also used in the ''[[Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine DWM]]'' comics, most notably in "Oblivion".
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Characters refer to the Wall as "the edge of the world." The Wall itself has startling parallels with UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}}'s Wall, a huge, 80 mile long barrier stretching across the top of England which was began in AD 122 and built to protect Roman Britain from Scottish invasion. Unsurprisingly, George R.R. Martin has stated that a visit to Hadrian's Wall was his inspiration.
* In the fourth season of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', Sylar is imprisoned in a section of abandoned Manhattan with a wall around it. Since this is a psychic prison imposed on him by a telepath, there is actually NO "outside".

* In ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'', the mysterious Village is surrounded by unclimbable mountains to the north, and the sea to the south. On several occasions, the eponymous Prisoner attempts to escape by boat, but he always ends up getting caught.

* Jericho, from ''Literature/TheBible'', is now synonymous with its absurdly strong fortifications. Tends to happen when it takes ''God Himself'' to bring them down. There is also reference to the sky being a firmament, a literal wall around the entire world. This is slightly different than the usual application of this trope, as there is nothing outside of the area enclosed by the firmament, which exists to hold back the waters that are the source of rain. Although the Literature/BookOfIsaiah does describe Yahweh as having His throne on top of the firmament.

* In Literature/TheQuran itself, there's a story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn Dhul-Qarnayn]] (Arabic for "The Two-Horned"[[note]]possibly alluding to a horned helmet that he wore?[[/note]]), who [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn#People_identified_with_Dhul-Qarnayn may or may not be the same as one of several historical figures]] (among whom are Alexander the Great and Cyrus the Great), being asked to protect a people from their enemy, the Ya'juj and the Ma'juj (Arabic names of Gog and Magog, but as peoples instead of individuals). He does so by building an exceedingly tall wall entirely made of iron, with a massive iron gate that's difficult to open. There's also a 'wall' (more metaphorical than literal) between this world and the realm of the dead, that absolutely no one can pass. The wall is the reason why there are few (if any) ghost stories in the Islamic world.
* Flat Earthers believe there is an ice wall bordering the edge of the world to stop us from falling off.

[[folder:Other]]
* Some modern believers in a flat Earth (yes, there're people who believe it) say the world is encircled by a ''huge'' (150' (46m) tall) wall of ice located in Antarctica[[note]]See [[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:Flat_earth.png for example this map]] to understand what it means[[/note]], with thousands of {{Super Soldier}}s taking care nobody sees that barrier. [[http://wiki.tfes.org/index.php?title=The_Ice_Wall Quoting from their wiki]] in what refers to what exists beyond said wall:
-->Beyond the 150 foot Ice Wall is anyone's guess. How far the ice extends; how it terminates; and what exists beyond it, are questions to which no present human experience can reply. All we at present know is, that snow and hail, howling winds, and indescribable storms and hurricanes prevail; and that in every direction "human ingress is barred by unsealed escarpments of perpetual ice," extending farther than eye or telescope can penetrate, and becoming lost in gloom and darkness. Some hold that the tundra of ice and snow stretches forever eternally.
[[/folder]]

* Podcast/FriendsAtTheTable’s ''Sangfielle'' takes place in the titular EldritchLocation, a country-sized region in the middle of the continent that suddenly went [[WeirdWest weird]] after centuries of colonization. For fear of Sangfielle’s curse expanding, the nations of the world united to build the “ringed city” of Concentus around it as a physical and magical barrier. Anyone coming in or out of Sangfielle must pass through Concentus first. [[spoiler:The final episode in the epilogue sees Concentus’s wards deliberately breached by one of the players, allowing Sangfielle’s strangeness to inundate the rest of the world.]]

** The planet Krikkit in ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' was surrounded by a thick fog such that they never saw outside their world. [[spoiler:This was done by the remnants of the supercomputer Hactar, making the Krikkiters into an OmnicidalManiac race once they saw the universe. He did this so they would use the universe-destroying bomb he had invented, thus fulfilling a duty he welshed on long ago and getting rid of his long-standing guilt.]]

* The forest containing ''Film/TheVillage'' is closed off from the outside world by a wall. Turns out there's a reason for that.

* A literal example is the spherical Walls of the World from ''Franchise/JRRTolkiensLegendarium'', which are only specifically described in ''Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth,'' although their existence is implied in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''. The walls separate the world from the empty void of the Outer Dark, and are only pierced by a single Door of Night, created by the Valar to thrust [[BigBad Morgoth]] out until TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* ''WebOriginal/SCPFoundation'': Exaggerated with SCP-6218: a solid structure that encloses the entire universe. People who get too close to it start hallucinating, but what's more disturbing is that if one digs a few kilometers into it, [[spoiler:it's organic. And it's alive. The scientists found that they were digging through the skin cells of some kind of absolutely colossal being. An intelligent being. Which claims that it encloses the universe to protect the life within it from something... outside.]]

* Some modern believers in a flat Earth (yes, there're people who believe it) say the world is encircled by a ''huge'' (150' (46m) tall) wall of ice located in Antarctica[[note]]See [[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:Flat_earth.png for example this map]] to understand what it means[[/note]], with thousands of {{Super Soldier}}s taking care nobody sees that barrier. [[http://wiki.tfes.org/index.php?title=The_Ice_Wall Quoting]] [[TheWikiRule from their wiki]] in what refers to what exists beyond said wall:

* In the first and second seasons of ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'', the world Lina could explore (and put craters into) was restricted by a magical barrier that went down after the BigBad powering it was killed.

* A nationwide example happens in ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvoltSeries'' where Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world with the Kamishiro Barrier, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the nation without permission (usually granted by [[MegaCorp Sumeragi]]). This is to prevent a potential invasion by foreign powers and further monopolize Glaive technology. The Kamishiro Barrier was deactivated in ''2'' via sabotage from within which allowed Eden forces to launch an invasion but, after they are thwarted, it was reactivated by the time of ''3'' several decades later. [[spoiler:Unable to rely on similar sabotage, ATEMS instead use specially-designed missiles which emit powerful forcefields to successfully pierce through the barrier and launch their own invasion with the special forces prepped on them.]]

* There aren't any literal walls in ''Literature/TheCityOfEmber'', but there might as well be -- the only light comes from the city, as does all of the food and other necessities, making it impossible to leave. Nobody in the city knows what might exist outside of it, if there's anything there at all. [[spoiler:It turns out that the entire city is actually underground. The original builders included instructions for leaving the city to be used after a certain amount of time had passed, but they were lost and forgotten before they could be used, leaving the citizens trapped in a city with dwindling food and power supplies, and no way of knowing that escape was necessary or possible.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' DLC Apocalypse introduces Colossi, ships capable of causing an EarthShatteringKaboom, a MindControlDevice targetting an entire planet, a DepopulationBomb, or, for a Pacifistic empire, a Global Pacifier which encases the planet in a permanent, unbreakable force field that isolates it from the rest of the universe forever in an act of CruelMercy.

* A nationwide example happens in ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvoltSeries'' where Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world with the Kamishiro Barrier, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the nation without permission (usually granted by [[MegaCorp Sumeragi]]). This is to prevent a potential invasion by foreign powers and further monopolize Glaive technology. The Kamishiro Barrier was deactivated in ''2'' via sabotage from within which allowed Eden forces to launch an invasion but, after they are thwarted, it was reactivated by the time of ''3'' several decades later. Unable to rely on similar sabotage, ATEMS instead use specially-designed missiles which emit powerful forcefields to successfully pierce through the barrier and launch their own invasion with the special forces prepped on them.

* Jericho, from ''Literature/TheBible'', is now synonymous with its absurdly strong fortifications. Tends to happen when it takes ''God Himself'' to bring them down. There is also reference to the sky being a firmament, a literal wall around the entire world. This is slightly different than the usual application of this trope, as there is nothing outside of the area enclosed by the firmament, which exists to hold back the waters that are the source of rain. Although the Book of Isaiah does describe Yahweh as having his throne on top of the firmament.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "A New Life", Daniel and his wife Beth discover that there is a forcefield surrounding the forest in which the religious community is located. Daniel later learns that they have left Earth and that the forest is in fact an artificial environment aboard a spaceship.
* On ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'', the mysterious Village is surrounded by unclimbable mountains to the north, and the sea to the south. On several occasions, the eponymous Prisoner attempts to escape by boat, but he always ends up getting caught.

** The [[TwoDSpace barrier around]] [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale the galaxy]] in the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
** Another old series episode, "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", where the world is a hollow asteroid.

* In the ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat", an alien declares that his people have decided to wall off Earth's solar system to prevent further contact with humans (with a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech [[TakeThat parodying]] Creator/DonaldTrump's remarks about securing the US-Mexico border).

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Characters refer to the Wall as "the edge of the world." The Wall itself has startling parallels with Hadrian's Wall, a huge, 80 mile long barrier stretching across the top of England which was began in AD 122 and built to protect Roman Britain from Scottish invasion. Unsurprisingly, George R.R. Martin has stated that a visit to Hadrian's Wall was his inspiration.

* A nationwide example happens in ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvoltSeries'' where Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world with the Kamishiro Barrier, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the nation without permission (usually granted by [[MegaCorp Sumeragi]]). This is to prevent a potential invasion by foreign powers and further monopolize Glaive technology. The Kamishiro Barrier was deactivated in ''2'' via sabotage from within which allowed Eden forces to launch an invasion but after they are thwarted, it was reactivated by the time of ''3'' several decades later. Unable to rely on similar sabotage, ATEMS instead use specially-designed missiles which emit powerful forcefields to successfully pierce through the barrier and launch their own invasion with the special forces prepped on them.

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* The planet Saraksh in ''Literature/PrisonersOfPower'' by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers has an atmosphere with very high refraction, which leads its inhabitants to believe that they live not on the outer surface of the globe, but on the inner one. They can see the surface around them curving upward, [[AlienSky as far as dense low clouds allow them to see]]. The idea that they live on an outer surface ("mas-saraksh", "inside-out world") is well known, damned by all religions, commonly used [[ForeignCussWord as an expletive]], but gives surprisingly accurate results for plotting trajectories of [=ICBMs=]. Only the insane believe in existence of other worlds, and a crash-landed alien is considered a mutant.
* ''Literature/{{Incarceron}}'', being a giant prison, is surrounded by massive steel walls.
* ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' (third book of ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive''): Shows up as a myth of people living in a land of shadows surrounded by a wall to keep the monsters out, only for one girl to climb the wall and bring back light, and in the process she discovers the wall is to keep the monsters in. [[spoiler:This appears to be a mythologized account of Shinovar, the first human settlement on Roshar, and how humans eventually conquered the world. The walls are the mountains surrounding Shinovar that act as a windbreak for Highstorms, and the light is Stormlight, glowing {{Mana}} that can only be obtained by leaving a gemstone out in a Highstorm]].
* Several stories in the world of [[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric of Melniboné]] show that its world is surrounded by a WorldOfChaos that is inhospitable to human life. One major guardian of the walls is [[BarrierMaiden the lawful good sorceress Myshella]].
* ''Literature/TheEarTheEyeAndTheArm'': In Zimbabwe in 2194 a large preserve has been set aside where a select few live in the GoodOldWays of pre-colonial Africa. It's large enough to hold at least a couple villages with their livestock and agriculture, and surrounded by an enormous wall to block out the sights and sounds of the modern world, mirrored on the inside to give the impression of going on forever. The residents call the wall "the edge of the word" and aren't even curious what's on the other side, knowing it only as [[HomeOfTheGods Mwari's country]].

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In the story "Inferno", the Doctor pushes through a barrier in time and ends up in a MirrorUniverse.
** Also used in the ''[[Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine DWM]]'' comics, most notably in "Oblivion".
* On ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'', the mysterious Village is surrounded by unclimbable mountains to the north, and the sea to the south. On several occasions, the eponymous Prisoner attempts to escape by boat, but he always ends up getting caught.
* In the fourth season of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', Sylar is imprisoned in a section of abandoned Manhattan with a wall around it. Since this is a psychic prison imposed on him by a telepath, there is actually NO "outside".

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "A New Life", Daniel and his wife Beth discover that there is a forcefield surrounding the forest in which the religious community is located. Daniel later learns that they have left Earth and that the forest is in fact an artificial environment aboard a spaceship.
* ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'': In "The Gospel According to Collier", Jordan Collier saw a city surrounded by a wall 1,000 feet high during his visit to the future. In "Terrible Swift Sword", he reveals that it is the last city on Earth.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamits provide every country on Earth with the technology to project a forcefield around their borders, ending the possibility of any nation attacking another.
* ''Series/UtopiaFalls'': New Babyl is (supposedly) the last inhabited city on Earth, with a shield protecting its residents from the danger of the ruined outside world that surrounds it completely. [[spoiler:It's in fact keeping people inside however]].

* The second act of ''Music/RaziasShadow'' starts after the world was split into the light and dark.

* The borders between the physical realm and the spirit worlds in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' RPG line (the Gauntlet and the Shroud) qualify. Most humans have no idea that the spirit realms are real.
** The Gauntlet still stands in the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness, cutting off the Shadow from the material. There's also the Abyss, which severs the Supernal from the Fallen.
** The NWOD is full of these, and [[HoldTheLine generally for the better]]. The Gauntlet is the border between the real world and the spirit world. The Hedge is the border between the real world and [[TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost Arcadia]]. It takes the form of a thick thorny bush that hurts the soul of anyone passing through it. There's also an unnamed wall that prevents interaction between the real world and Inferno.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': Faxai-on-the-Caul, the only [[TheEmpire Realm]] city on the Lunar-controlled island of the Caul, is surrounded by massive walls; not only are they a major reason the city hasn't fallen, they're also partially why the Realm wants to keep a presence there (as legends state they were made by a venerated figure). The lands beyond are largely unknown.
* Partially averted with the magical barriers that divide the setting of ''TabletopGame/AnimaBeyondFantasy'' in three smaller, spherical ones plus a bunch of much smaller territories that did not get included in them. Depending on someone's location, those barriers take different forms - from a large, perpetual tempest that allows circumnavigation of the (sub)world in the case of the human territories to terrain that repeats again and again in the case of some of those separated territories.
* The main continent of the world of ''TabletopGame/PalladiumFantasy'' is surrounded by a vast wall of darkness that disintegrates (or maybe dimensionally teleports) anything that sails or swims into it. This being a Palladium game, this isn't mentioned at all in the corebook description of the world and only comes out in passing in a later supplement.

* In ''VideoGame/WildARMs4'', your first indication that Ciel is not a typical RPG hamlet is when fighter craft shatter the barrier surrounding it that was disguised as sky. The outside world is quite a bit different.
* ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' has the War Walls, [[JustifiedTrope justified]] as barrier against alien invasion, but really there as a level separation.
* Palm Brinks in ''VideoGame/DarkCloud 2'' was [[CityInABottle sealed off from the rest of the world]] via a titanic wall, far too tall to scale. This was done by the Mayor, to protect the citizens from the incredible devastation taking place in the outside world --but now that the land is healing (and with the heroes having escaped via an underground sewer/aqueduct,) many of Palm Brink's inhabitants dream of exploring and building new cities.
* ''VideoGame/StarControl 2'' has slave shields -- barriers around homeworlds of defeated races who don't want to fight on Ur-Quan side.

* Gensokyo, the setting of the ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' games, is walled off from the Outside World by the Great Hakurei Barrier [[FantasticNatureReserve to preserve]] {{Youkai}}, though people and objects occasionally slip through (particularly things the outside world has stopped believing in).
* There's no actual wall on Hillys in ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'', but if the player strays too close to the edge of the map, a series of pillars will rise up out of the water and warn the player that they're leaving territorial waters. Trying to get past them will just lead to them shooting non-lethal lasers at the player's vehicle to turn it around.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', Vault 101 was intended to never open its door. The line is, "No one ever enters, and no one ever leaves." [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Neither are true]]: your dad is from Rivet City, and you and he both leave.]]
* The ''VideoGame/{{Hexen}} II'' [[AllThereInTheManual manual]] states that the universe is surrounded by a crystal barrier, beyond which there is a darkness inhabited by demons. The Serpent Riders are merely the three who slipped through a tiny hole which was sealed almost immediately.

* ''VideoGame/TheAmazingFrog'' features the town of Swindon, which is surrounded on all sides by an enormous wall that's nearly impossible to pass over, unless you either jump high enough or find the secret hold in the wall.
* Exploring the OverworldNotToScale in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'' soon gets the party to a featureless grey wall that looks quite different from the plains and mountain ranges and does not seem to have any openings. [[spoiler:The truth is revealed about 2/3 into the game, near the end of the second generation: The worlds are artificial, and actually part of a giant spaceship. The 'caves' you have been using so far to get from one world to the other are its maintenance tubes.]]

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' the world consists of several behemoth titans in an endless cloud sea. If the group ventures too far into the Cloud Sea until the titans aren't in view anymore the party hits an invisible wall with one of the group remarking that they should turn around.
* Everything related to ''Franchise/DragonAge'' is set on a single continent named Thedas, and although the franchise's lore stretches back for several thousand years, almost nothing is known of the world around Thedas. The continent is walled in by massive mountain ranges to the west, impenetrable jungles to the north, frozen wastelands to the south and endless oceans to the east. Many have tried to explore these regions over the millennia, but scarcely anybody has ever returned, and those that did can't tell much because they didn't get far enough to uncover anything of note. As far as the average Thedosian is concernced, there's nothing beyond Thedas but rumors, legends and death.
* The 2013 ''[[VideoGame/TombRaider2013 Tomb Raider]]'' reboot takes place in the Pacific on the lost island kingdom of Yamatai, an EldritchLocation surrounded by neverending storms that destroy any vessel that tries to approach or leave the place. No wonder the game's ArcWords are "no-one leaves". It's your job to help Lara find a way to defy these words, dissipate the storms and get the hell off the island.

* ''VideoGame/MotocrossMadness'' surrounds its playable region with a high cliff, and [[DevelopersForesight players who manage to surmount this]] [[BorderPatrol will be blown sky high by hidden landmines]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' DLC Apocalypse introduces Colossi, ships capable of causing an EarthShatteringKaboom, a MindControlDevice targetting an entire planet, a DepopulationBomb, or, for a Pacifistic empire, a Global Pacifier which encases the planet in a permanent, unbreakable force field that isolates it from the rest of the universe forever in an act of CruelMercy.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' the "Punyverse" turned out to be surrounded by a giant solid sphere, the inhabitants mostly didn't know that and thought it was an endless void inhabited by "void ghosts" that occasionally attacked (it was really wild shots reflecting off the sphere). Also [[spoiler:their entire universe was artificial.]]
* A massive mountain range in ''Webcomic/LeifAndThorn'' between Sønheim and Ceannis, keeping their magic systems separate. The Sønheim embassy in Ceannis [[http://leifandthorn.com/comic/homecoming-524/ has a big wall around it]] to replicate the effect.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''
** The glass dome enclosing Springfield in TheMovie.
** And the wall made of garbage separating Springfield from New Springfield.

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'' episode ''Exile in Guyville'' had a wall being built down the middle of America, dividing the sexes with Women on the East and Men on the West.
* Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom capital in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', is surrounded by two giant walls. People within the city are generally [[MindControlConspiracy encouraged]] not to even ''think'' about the world outside the walls.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': in "Escape from Phineas Tower", the titular tower traps Phineas and Ferb and their friends in a dome. To escape, they make the tower realize they have friends in multiple places, causing the tower to encase larger and larger areas into its dome, until eventually the dome ends up surrounding the entire Milky Way galaxy.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': in "Love Struck", Timmy wishes for the world's population to be divided by gender, causing the Earth to be split up in a men's half and a woman's half, separated by a large wall circumnavigating the Earth at the poles.
* ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2002'' : The Mystic Wall separates the Light and Dark hemispheres of Eternia. For a time its utterly unbreachable and, as far as inhabitants on either side are concerned, a literal wall around their portion of the world. Right up until current events are kicked off in the series, when Skeletor breaks it down.