Trapped In Another World / Western Animation

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• An episode of Adventure Time had Finn the Human get transported to another world made entirely out of pillows. (The landscape, the wildlife, the people, etc.) He ended up spending the rest of his life there, forming a family and dying of old age, then somehow got sent back to his world a few minutes after his disappearance, with no memory of his time there. It's left ambiguous as to whether or not this actually happened.
• Amphibia is about three girls from Earth who, on Anne Boonchuy's 13th birthday, are transported to the world of Amphibia, a medieval world populated by anthropomorphic amphibians. The show spends a great deal of time showing how the girls all deal with this; Anne tries her best to adjust while maintaining the Series Goal of returning home, being taken in by a kindly frog family. Sasha Waybright develops a main character syndrome and starts treating the world like a playground she can do with as she wants before eventually returning home. Marcy Wu adjusts perfectly to the world, having been a fantasy nerd on Earth and befriending the King, living what she describes as a fun fantasy adventure. Then the season 2 finale, "True Colors", massively deconstructs this: Marcy isn't trapped in another world, she went there on purpose, having tricked her friends into going with her against their will and never told them. She also has a main character syndrome way worse than Sasha, she just expresses it differently. Finally, the reason she adjusted so well is not because she's Genre Savvy; it's because the King is actively deceiving her by playing into her expectations of a fantasy genre for his own villainous goals.
  • The end of Season 2 also flips this concept on its head as Anne and the Plantars are teleported to Earth, bringing her home but leaving the three frogs now being the ones stranded in another world. The first half of Season 3 thus has the overarching goal of trying to find a way back to Amphibia, both to get the Plantars home and to rescue Sasha and Marcy, who were left behind.
• In Animalia, Alex and Zoe enter a mysterious portal in the town library and find themselves in Animalia, a World of Funny Animals. They're not too preoccupied about finding a way home, however.
• Blackstar is about astronaut John Blackstar getting "swept through a black hole into an ancient, alien universe" where magic and science coexist. Filmation had earlier produced a very faithful adaptation of Flash Gordon, itself an example of this trope, and it's clearly an influence on Blackstar.
• Captain N: The Game Master involved the main character Kevin Keene being sucked into "Videoland", a world where Nintendo games were real (and often very misrepresented in comparison to their actual video game counterparts). Strangely Kevin seems to have no interest in going back to the real world and very rarely, if ever, expresses a desire to go home. What must his mother think...
• Centaurworld is about an ordinary horse from a land of dark fantasy who ends up in the colorful, magical Sugar Bowl of Centaurworld thanks to a mysterious artifact. The first season's plot is driven by her quest to return home to her rider, and it is soon revealed that both worlds used to be connected at some point in the past. At the end of the series, both worlds are reconnected, though Horse decides to remain on the Centaurworld half of the portal.
• Da Boom Crew is about a group of kids who create their own video game, but one day, they end up trapped in a world that they claim is identical to the game that they made. Despite this, they don’t recognize a thing that they encounter.
• Dungeons & Dragons (1983): One weird rollercoaster ride later, and the kids are in a world resembling a D&D campaign setting.
• Philip J. Fry from Futurama gets frozen in 1999 and wakes up 1000 years later. However, it's subverted since even with the robots, aliens, mutants, and new technology, The Future isn't really all that different and Fry adapts fairly quickly.
• Goliath and the remains of his clan in Gargoyles are trapped in stone for 1000 years, thus arriving in 1994 New York from 994 Scotland.
• In Here Comes the Grump, Terry Dexter comes from Earth. We never learn how he got trapped in the Magical Land, though.
  • Inverted in The Movie — the Grump's girlfriend Mary is banished to Earth as punishment for helping him and becomes Terry's grandmother.
• In Infinity Train, the titular train is an Epiphanic Prison that picks up anyone who is having issues in their lives and keeps them there with the idea that running through the infinite pocket universes within its cars will eventually help them solve their problems. Progress is conveniently displayed to them via a number on their hand. Improve, and your number gets to zero and you can go home. Do everything possible not to solve your issues, and you can end up with a number so large that no amount of self-reflections and epiphanies will get you off the train before old age (or the train cars themselves) claims you.
• Jumanji: The Animated Series is a spin-off of the original film. Unlike the film, where players Peter and Judy free Alan from the board game's imprisonment in the middle of the plot, the cartoon has them travel to and from the game's world in hopes of helping him escape.
• Kaeloo: At the end of Episode 70, Mr. Cat manages to get all the Alternate Universe counterparts back through the Portal Door and then smashes the door so they can't come back. As it turns out, he got rid of the wrong Kaeloo; now he is stuck with Alternate Universe!Kaeloo and the Alternate Universe main four are stuck with Kaeloo.
• Kidd Video: A teen rock band is abducted by the evil Master Blaster and transported to a cartoon fantasy world. They are rescued by a fairy, and spend each episode trying to find their way home.
• In King Arthur & the Knights of Justice, Merlin needs replacements for King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, who have been captured by the series' Big Bad. His odd solution is to bring a contemporary American high school football team (whose quarterback happens to be named Arthur King) to Dark Age Europe to become Camelot's new defenders.
• Over the Garden Wall is about teenage Wirt and his young brother Greg being trapped in a world called The Unknown.
• In The Owl House, Luz Noceda ends up in a world called the Boiling Isles, a land inhabited by magical beings and mythical creatures. Unlike most examples, however, she doesn't stay stuck there for long; she's got a way to leave by the end of the first episode, but chooses to stay there for her summer vacation in order to learn magic. At least until the Season 1 finale, where she personally destroys the portal back to Earth so Emperor Belos can't use it, leaving her actually stranded. Much like with Amphibia, this ends up flipped on its head at the end of the second season due to her being in the epicenter of the world she was stuck in becoming a Villain World. In "King's Tide", Luz is forced to flee back to Earth with four natives—girlfriend Amity Blight, best friends Gus Porter and Willow Park, and former enemy Hunter—in tow.
  • Interestingly, there was already a fifth native there—Vee, a basilisk who accidentally took over Luz' life upon managing to flee to the Human Realm, and due to her horrific pre-series life, had long since fallen in love with the Human Realm prior to Luz fully stranding her there. Luz is initially furious at being impersonated and Camila is overwhelmed by what is going on, but both accept her as part of the family after discovering her.
• The parents of the eponymous Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero are experienced heroes that are currently trapped in an extremely dangerous dimension and can only communicate with their son via the MUHU, a small hologram-projecting device that Penn keeps with him at all times.
• Samurai Jack plays with this. On the one hand, Jack's still on Earth, but on the other, he's on a far-future sci-fi Earth world populated by countless alien races, and magic and the supernatural aren't uncommon.
• In Shazzan, Chuck and Nancy are transported to an Arabian Nights-esque world, and will only be sent home once they find Shazzan's true owner.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, where Mario and Luigi are from Brooklyn, but were transported to the Mushroom Kingdom through a warp pipe.
• Super Wish: Jesse, Sadie, Xander, and Winnie are trapped in the Happy Land of Birthdays because of Jesse super wishing his birthday party would disappear. They have to find Jesse's super wish to get back home.

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