Bigger on the Inside/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A room or building looks of a perfectly normal size on the outside, but appears abnormally large when you step inside.

  • Straight: Alice opens the door to a portaloo and steps into a large hall.
  • Exaggerated: The hall has a portaloo standing in the middle which leads to a huge cathedral.
  • Downplayed: Alice opens the door to a portaloo and steps into a wardrobe.
  • Justified: It is actually a portal to another universe where everything is bigger.
  • Inverted: Alice enters a huge gateway and ends up in a tiny privy.
  • Subverted: It seems to be bigger on the inside at first, but it is later shown that it was all a trick of the light.
  • Double Subverted: The trick of the light was that the portaloo is actually a lot smaller.
  • Parodied: Alice steps into the portaloo and ends up in a huge golden mansion. She heads off to look for the toilets.
  • Zig Zagged: The portaloo is actually a huge building deliberately made to look smaller, but the inside is still abnormally huge, but occasionally its interior takes the size and shape of a portaloo anyway, except that when you leave the exit turns out to be a large gateway that fades back to portaloo shape when you blink again.
  • Averted: Alice opens the door to the portalooa and steps into a portaloo.
  • Enforced: The editor REALLY has a thing for bigger-on-the-inside spacecraft and wanted to slip in a reference to one.
  • Lampshaded: Alice comments "Why are these places always bigger than they look?"
  • Invoked: The owner of the portaloo deliberately makes the interior bigger than normal in order to have room for his concert hall.
  • Exploited: Alice uses the portaloo to hide because the portaloo is the last place they'd look in.
  • Defied: Alice refuses to enter the portaloo, "I'll walk in there and it'll be the size of a planet and I'll gasp in astonishment and question my own sanity. I'm not going."
  • Discussed: "This isn't a sci-fi film! In the REAL world portaloos are small, cramped and uncomfortable!"
  • Conversed: "Quick! Head for the portaloo! If we're lucky it'll lead to a huge mansion we can hide in!"

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