Museum of the Strange and Unusual



Welcome to Professor Tropington's Museum of the Strange and Unusual. Within these halls, you will find exhibits dedicated to the mysteries of the world. For example, you will find the UFO displays up the stairs, next to the planetarium. To see the cryptid exhibits, take the hall to your left. To visit the Psychic Powers exhibit, well, you should know where that is.

May I point out at this moment that the laboratories are strictly off-limits to unauthorized personnel. In addition, emergency exits are in place should anything happen. We also guarantee that none of the exhibits will come to life, drive you insane, or open a portal to another dimension. After you leave, you may want to visit the Bazaar of the Bizarre, the Artifact Collection Agency or the Superhero Trophy Shelf. Now, feel free to peruse our fine museum, but beware... You never know what may happen.

Anime and Manga

 * In xxxHolic, in the movie, there was the house of the collector....
 * In Book of Bantorra, despite its name, the Library of Bantorra is better described as a museum since the "books" it deals with are not ordinary paper books written in any alphabet; they are stone tablets spontaneously appearing when someone dies recording the memories of their whole life, that anyone can experience simply touching the tablet. The librarians' job requires having combat training and some kind of super power since monsters prowl the vaults, too. In fact, the only thing that shares with a regular library is that the Library has a Customer Service that borrows the books to the general public (well, most of them).

Comics

 * In Dell (yes, Dell) Comic's Superheroes published in 1967, a group of teens visited the Dell Hall of Heroes where they discovered an unguarded exhibit of android superheroes. At that exact moment an evil ex-Dell employee experimented on an evil robot elsewhere in the city, creating a power surge that zapped the teen's minds into the superhero androids. (Dell was not known for superhero books, hence the title and loony-even-for-Silver-Age plot.)

Film

 * Night at the Museum. At night, an Egyptian artifact brings all the exhibits to life.
 * The Library in The Librarian. Within this building, you have Excalibur, the Shroud of Turin, Poseidon's Trident, Pan's flute, and multiple other legendary artifacts.

Literature

 * Tales from the Wyrd Museum, a fantasy novel trilogy, was set in one.
 * Sarah Monette's short story Draco Campestris takes place in one of these.
 * A Walking Tour Of The Shambles, by Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, includes a brief description of the House of Clocks, of which perhaps all that need be said is that its (actual) website is preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com.

Live Action TV

 * The Framing Device in Night Gallery involved paintings in a museum that represented the various stories in the show.
 * Spellman's Magical Museum of the Circus in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
 * Oddities. Very unusual and pretty strange.
 * Warehouse 13 is more of a subbasement of such a museum.

Music

 * Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9: First Impression Parts 1 and 2" depicts modern life as a funhouse museum of the strange and grotesque.

Real Life

 * The Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditoriums.
 * The Museum of Jurassic Technologyin Los Angeles, California.
 * The Mutter Museum of Medical Anomalies in Philadelphia. Has, among other things: an entire wall-length and height display of human skulls, a woman whose body turned into soap after she died, all sorts of floating things in jars, and a replica of the largest human intestine ever.
 * No replica, that's the real deal.
 * Dave Barry's office was one.
 * What's left of Michael Jackson's estate could be considered this.
 * The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists

Toys

 * The Onu-Metru Archives in Bionicle, home to many dangerous living "exhibits".

Video Games

 * The first Shivers takes place entirely in one.

Web Comics

 * The defunct webcomic the Repository of Dangerous Things was pretty much this.
 * Subnormality's Museum of the Theoretical.
 * The Museum of Magical History in several The Wotch filler comics.

Western Animation

 * In An American Tail, the mice raided one of these to build the Giant Mouse of Minsk.