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Bigger on the Inside: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:tardis_biggerontheinside.png|link=Doctor Who
{{quote|'''The Doctor:''' Well, Sergeant? Aren't ''you'' going to say 'it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside'? [[Phrase Catcher|Everybody else does]].<br />
'''Sgt. Benton:''' Well, it's ... [[Defied Trope|pretty obvious]], isn't it?|''[[
An unusual fact of some architecture in fiction is that no matter how small it is on the outside, on the inside it can be any size it darned well pleases. Walk into what looked like a phone booth ([[Doctor Who
'''This trope can appear in two ways:'''
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== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Nextwave]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|hung a lampshade]] on this with the Shockwave Rider, which is noted by the heroes that its interior is larger than its exterior. This is played with in the final issue, where "the thing that makes the ship bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" is destroyed and the heroes have to escape before they are crushed.
* Reed Richards of the [[Fantastic Four]] has often set up rooms like this. When the team was living in Pier 4, this was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] with a comment about borrowing technology from his [[Doctor Who
* In Mighty Avengers, Hank Pym has been revealed to have one as well, using size-altering Pym Particles to hide an entire giant laboratory with multiple floors and huge rooms... all inside a single closet. Amadeus Cho immediately compares it to the TARDIS.
* In ''Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire'', the nearly omnipotent Prime Mover "lives in his own little world.... He keeps it in his quarters." Actually, it doesn't look all that little.
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** In ''Alien'', the Derelict might qualify, since the egg chamber looks larger than the ship as seen from the outside. It's either this or what we know as the Derelict is just a small section of a much larger vessal that's buried underground.
** In ''Alien'', marines stand comfortably upright inside a transport vehicle, but are taller inside than when standing next to the thing.
* Subverted in ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]''. The time machine they are given is a phone booth that they comment is "smaller on the inside". ([[Doctor Who
* Parodied in ''[[The Man With Two Brains]]'': Dr. Necessiter's place appears like a tiny apartment from outside and like a spacious medieval castle from inside.
* [[Hammerspace|Flatspace]] technology in ''[[Ultraviolet (Film)|Ultraviolet]]'' can not only be used for [[Bag of Holding|disproportionate storage of materials]], but can also make the inside of a trailer large enough to house a laboratory.
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* John Crowley's ''Little, Big'' : this trope (and the title of the book) refer to both the Edgewood house and Faerie being 'bigger in the inside' (a kind of topographry one of the characters of the novel refer to as an ''infundibulum'').
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': the Halls of the Undying are a lot bigger on the inside. The most obvious difference is a staircase leading upwards whereas the building doesn't have a tower.
* In the ''[[
* [[The Berenstain Bears]]' treehouse.
* Clothahump's tree in the ''[[Alan Dean Foster|Spellsinger]]'' series.
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== Live Action TV ==
* The TARDIS, "[[Buffy-Speak|up-and-downy]] stuff in a big blue box" from ''[[
** It is such a recognisable example of this trope that the word 'Tardis' can actually be found in the dictionary, defined as 'something which appears to be much larger on the inside than on the outside'.
** Also used to dramatic effect in the episode "Doomsday": The Daleks mention that the [[Black Box|Genesis Ark]] will establish their dominance because of "Time Lord science". The Doctor wonders what that means, and near the climax, {{spoiler|it's revealed that the Daleks meant this aspect of Time Lord science - the ark, though tiny, contains millions of Daleks.}}
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* ''[[Full House]]'' lampshades the dynamics of the family's house in the last episode.
* The spaceship ''Jupiter 2'' from [[Lost in Space]] fits this trope through a case of [[They Just Didn't Care]]. In the original unaired pilot, it had only a single deck, and the external scale clues (view ports & airlock door) were proportioned to match. By the first aired episode, however, the script had added a second living deck, which obviously could not fit inside the exterior. It got worse when you considered that they had to fit the Chariot (a van sized land vehicle) inside somehow – and became ridiculous when the Space Pod and its launch bay were retconned in during the second season. The heights of the ludicrous, however, waited for a third-season episode, in which a never-before-seen ''third'' deck was added (and then instantly forgotten). To make matters worse, the “Full Scale” crash-landing-mode mock-up was not only too small, it was obviously proportioned differently from the flight model.
* Galen's ship in ''[[
* An early 2000s [[Playhouse Disney]] show called [[Out Of The Box]] took place in a house built out of several large cardboard boxes piled together, but inside it's a large room that could never be made out of a few boxes.
* While it's genuinely played for camp value, the Battletram in ''[[The Aquabats|The Aquabats! Super Show!]]'' looks like a simple converted motorhome on the outside, but any scenes filmed inside give it a LOT more space than what should fit in it. It has enough space to comfortably fit a room full of partying kids, Jimmy's research lab, an expanded cockpit, a bedroom enough for the entire group, and a restroom much larger than what would normally be in a motorhome, and it STILL has enough hallway space to allow for chase scenes.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[GURPS]]: Spaceships'' has a ship designed like this as a [[Shout
* This is the stated explanation for the Bag of Holding and the Portable Hole in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]''. In an attempt to prevent game exploits, sticking one inside the other tears open the portal that leads to the Hammerspace and sucks everything in. Though some more [[Rule of Cool|enterprising]] players have used this as weapons, to the chagrin of many [[D Ms]].
** One ''Dragon'' write-up of Baba Yaga's hut depicted the interior this way. Justified by it being home to one of mythology's most formidable witches.
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** The Comet Observatory domes from ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]''.
* Some parts of ''[[Unreal (Video Game)|Unreal]]'' suffer this, more or less.
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', the whale-like Jabu Jabu has a ''sprawling'' dungeon [[Womb Level|inside his bizarre digestive system]].
** And again in ''[[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]]''.
** The Deku Tree seems bigger inside as well, but still resembles a tree, somewhat.
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* The ''Wake of the Ravager'' series had magic tents that were explicitly bigger on the inside.
* The trucks in the [[NES]] version of ''[[Metal Gear]]''. Go inside, and instantly you notice [[Mythology Gag|the scale have started to move]].
* Inverted for laughs in the tie-in adventure game for ''[[
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' games, it applies to a degree. While the cities are to scale (and in case of ''[[Morrowind]]'' on the overworld in their entirety) the houses inside the cities are usually bigger on the inside.
** The Dwemer Lockbox in Septimus' Outpost is totally this. The inside of the cube is at least twice as big as the outside. Even the tunnel leading into the cube is longer than the cube itself!
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* ''The Law of Purple'' has Red's 'magic wardrobe', which has six floors; they include such things as a weight room, large, fun devices from various planets, a teleporter, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Red's renting the fifth floor out to a friend of his.
* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' used a spell for this [http://dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2003-04-29 early on].
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' Viceroy's Spire on the dragon planet Butane is bigger inside than out. Molly describes it as "All [[A Wrinkle in Time|tesseracty]] and [[Doctor Who
** This becomes a [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20101012.html plot point] when the Spire is {{spoiler|destroyed. Rather than collapsing in on itself, its pieces expand away from each other--giving Voluptua a chance to survive rather than be crushed.}}
* In ''[[Finders Keepers]]'', we have [http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/6143/20090331.jpg Morlock's store]. Among other things, it has a sign that reads: "Morlock "[[Lampshade Hanging|It's bigger on the inside."]]"
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* Many Disneyland rides, especially the Haunted Mansion. The parks get around this issue by use of back lots hidden from public view, or making the rides partially underground.
** It's actually a [[Open Secret|little-known fact]] that Walt Disney World's parks, at least, are built well ''above'' ground level, with quite a bit of theatrics going into disguising this. This elevation provides space for the dark rides like the Haunted Mansion, as well as the Utilidors that allow cast members to travel around the park without being seen by the guests. (In practice, though, it really is underground; they just made it that way by raising the ground level rather than digging down.)
* 10 Downing Street (the official residence of the UK Prime Minister). From the front it looks like an expensive but otherwise ordinary town house with maybe a dozen rooms total. It is actually three houses joined together (one of which was a substantial mansion in its own right) and has about 60 rooms. Andrew Marr on his Sunday morning show called it "the brick [[Doctor Who
* Hondas are as close to this trope as real life gets. One person said he got in and out of his new 1984 Honda Accord several times after buying it, each time walking around the car to check its size, then getting inside and disbelieving its rather large interior room.
*** The current reigning champion of space utilization is the Honda Fit. Here they 1) Made a conscious decision that there would ''never'' be an all-wheel-drive version of any vehicle on the platform, and did without a rear axle, and 2) Put the gas tank under the ''front'' seats rather than the rear seat as is typical of front-drive cars. The result is a flat load floor with the back seat down, almost a foot lower than that of a Toyota Yaris with the same roof height and about 40% more cubic volume.
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[[Category:Home Base]]
[[Category:Bigger On The Inside]]
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