Floating Continent: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:Laputa.jpg|link=Laputa: Castle in the Sky|frame|
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This is an ''extremely'' common trope in fantasy and video games. Nothing says "exotic" like a city floating in the sky. Outside of scifi settings, there's also no real way to [[Justified Trope|justify]] or [[Hand Wave]] it, so you basically have to say [[A Wizard Did It]] and hope that the [[Rule of Cool]] will carry the day. Or never mention it at all.
One thing's for sure, though: If you've got a
Waterfalls are often expected to fall from the continent. Even if there's an explanation for how the place stays in the air in the first place, how they can possibly not run out of water is pretty much never explored.
Strangely enough, many such places go unnoticed by the common man, even though they should be perfectly obvious floating there in the sky. Sometimes they're cloaked by clouds, mist, or [[Applied Phlebotinum]], but other times... well, you have to wonder how people can be so sure that the
The [[Ur Example]] is the original [[Cloudcuckooland]], from [[Aristophanes]]' ''The Birds'', but the [[Trope Codifier]] is the City of Laputa, from Jonathan Swift's [[Gulliver's Travels]]. Swift also originated the [[Colony Drop]]: Laputa maintained control of its groundbound colonies by ''landing'' on any rebellious population centers, ''crushing them beneath its armored underbelly''. The trope was popularized in modern popular culture by [[Hayao Miyazaki]]'s ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky]]''.
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== Anime & Manga ==
* In [[Cowboy Bebop]], there are
* The eponymous ''Laputa: Castle in the Sky'', released as ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky]]'' in some markets (Especially because in Spanish, "la puta" means "the whore". In Spain, e.g., "Laputa" was changed to "Lapuntu", in the US and Mexico "Laputa" was simply ommitted).
* Edolas from the Anima arc of [[Fairy Tail]] had an assortment of floating islands, including the one carrying the Eksheeds' homeland of Exteria, and another that the King used to store the Magnolia [[Power Crystal|La'cryma]].
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* Neo Verona in the anime ''[[Romeo X Juliet]]''.
* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie]]'', seemingly all of society lives on floating islands (as opposed to the games, where there's just one). Heavy cloud cover makes the otherwise perfectly habitable regular ground more or less abandoned (and earns it the name "The Land of Darkness" to boot). The only ones who dwell there are Robotnik, who implictly doesn't care that it's so gloomy so long as he has the place to himself, and his robots, who obviously don't care that it's so dark.
** Also, there's no threat of these continents falling to the
* The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[Star Blazers]] / [[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]],'' in which one of these exists in the atmosphere of Jupiter, {{spoiler|until the crew (unintentionally) obliterates it the first time they use the [[Wave Motion Gun]]. They had no idea how powerful the thing would be, and were expecting to only hit the enemy base on the continent.}} This may also count as [[World in the Sky]], Jupiter being a gas giant.
* Floating castles and jewel-like planetoids feature in a fantasy sequence in ''[[Whisper of the Heart]]''.
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* ''[[Zero no Tsukaima]]'': Albion. Called "the White Country" because of the clouds that gather around its underside.
* In the "After Days" chapter of the ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] StrikerS'' supplementary manga, a cluster of floating islands served as the battlefield for the mock air battle between Nanoha and Signum.
* In the ''[[Dragon Half]]'' manga one of the [[Plot Coupon
* Vash in ''[[Trigun]]'' got his coat, artificial arm and third gun from a massive colony of SEEDS that never hit the ground, and so remain peacefully isolated from the [[Crapsack World]], comfortable with their future tech. When Vash goes back for repairs and upgrades, naturally trouble follows him.
* [[Magic Knight Rayearth]]
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* ''[[Magnus]]'' has Dragylon the Imperial Fortress: a massive, invisible, sun-sphere and headquarters of [[Satan|Lucifer]].
* In [[Wen Spencer]]'s ''Endless Blue'', all sorts of islands float. When someone tells Mikhail that his warp drive won't work, this is what convinces him: a place with floating islands is not obeying normal physics.
* In James Blish's ''Cities in Flight'', the "spindizzy"
* In ''Perelandra'' by [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]], all the continents of Venus/Perelandra float on water except one. There is one divine rule on Perelandra: never sleep on the fixed continent.
* The protagonist of the bizarre story ''Tower of Babylon'' by Ted Chiang is working on the archetypal Tower of
* In [[Alexander Bushkov]]'s ''Svarog'' series of novels, the swashbuckling-and-sorcery world of Talar has these flying islands, populated by the local uber race of wizard-nobles.
* Animorphs had [[Death World|Ket]], part of their [[Expanded Universe]], which had the planet's sentient species living on and maintaining their floating continents. The entire species worked to fly their continents through the sky, mainly because the planet surface is highly toxic.
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** The ancient empire Netheril from the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' had a host of magical floating cities. Most were destroyed 4,000 years "ago" when a power-hungry mage accidentally caused magic to stop functioning. A few survivors landed safely but never flew again. One escaped into the Plane of Shadow, to return thousands of years later and start refounding the Netherese Empire.
*** In 4th Edition, the magical structure of Faerun went completely bitchcakes when the god of magic got killed. As a result, there are zones of wild magic where large chunks of the landscape sits ''above'' the landscape.
** In the Known World (or ''[[Mystara]]'') setting, one of the sub-kingdoms of the magical Alphatian Empire consists entirely of floating islands. There's also a large number of floating landmasses in the worlds' [[Lost World|hollow interior]]. Amusingly enough, during the [[Metaplot]] the mainland of Alphatia is one of these, recreated after [[Atlantis|it sinks]] by the setting's gods as a literal
*** Mystara also features the gnome-built (and mobile) Flying City of Serraine and its magic-powered ''biplanes''.
** The ''[[Dragonlance]]'' setting had a floating fortress, a relic of more powerful magics in antique times.
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* The floating city of Bhujerba in ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]''.
** Its spinoff, ''[[Revenant Wings]]'', takes place largely on a floating archipelago.
** Mt. Bur-Omisace, the Kiltias' sacred mountain, is surrounded by countless floating islands. Some are large enough to support man-made structures and shrines. They say that these islands are remnants of a
* The moon-sized Cocoon in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' is unique in that, rather than being a flat strip of land with a definite surface and bottom, it is actually a miniature Dyson sphere, complete with its own "sun", the [[Magitek|fal'Cie]] (robot god) Phoenix.
* The Nazca Sky Gardens in ''[[Illusion of Gaia]]'', which float above the huge drawings on the Nazca Plains.
* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' is set on a series of islands floating in midair, as befitting a game about [[Pirate
** {{spoiler|Soltis, the lost Silver continent that rose from the planet's actual surface, is closer to the classic version of this trope, but it sinks again.}}
** ''Skies of Arcadia'' also contains the following amusing statement (by one of the characters): "The world is a sphere. This means that the east is connected to the west, and the north is connected to the south."
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** ''[[Super Mario 64]]'' had a lot of levels that floated in the middle of nowhere, with [[Bottomless Pit|bottomless pits]], but the standout example is Whomp's Fortress. ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'' seems to take after it with levels like Beach Bowl Galaxy, although [[Justified Trope|justifying]] it in that it's in, well, space.
*** The Bob-omb Battlefield stage even had a small "Island in the Sky" floating above it.
** In [[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]] we get the flying castle and [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|Very Definitely Final Dungeon]] version; Bowser kidnaps Peach by using his castle to lift hers into space. This was done using a very specific form of [[A Wizard Did It]]: Bowser stole the all-powerful Star Rod from Star Haven, which is itself a
** ''[[Mario Kart]] Super Circuit'' has Sky Garden, a garden track floating high in the sky.
** Glitzville in ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]'' seems to be kept aloft by rockets, and is pretty much a tourist trap with a fighting arena. One character wants to build a sauna there, but apparently it's against the fire code for a floating island.
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* The ''[[Tales (series)]]'' seems to really like these.
** Exire in ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', the last place of solace for the oppressed half-elves. Oddly enough, it has no direct impact on the plot, serving only as a place where {{spoiler|Raine confronts her mother, who has unfortunately gone insane after [[Parental Abandonment|abandoning her and Genis]], as well as the location of the bonus Summon Spirit Maxwell.}}
** Preceded in ''[[Tales of Destiny]]''
** ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' gives us Eldrant, which is also a [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]].
*** {{spoiler|The entire planet (save Yulia City and the island the Tower of Rem are on) can be considered just a large group of these too.}}
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** It should be noted that the Academy cities seen before the [[Expansion Pack|Tribes of the East]] does not actually fly, even though the town screen quite heavily suggests this - the first truly flying city seen in the series is encountered in [[Big Damn Heroes|Zehir]]'s Tribes of the East-campaign, and serves the role as a campaign-specific game mechanic wherein Zehir can land the city in tactical locations large enough to hold the city for the price of a sum of his experience, thus allowing him some manner of logistical flexibility.
** Not to mention Celeste, the City of Light from ''[[Might and Magic]] VII''.
** This goes back to ''[[Might and Magic]] IV'' with the [[Title Drop|Clouds of Xeen]], which are stationary cloud banks connected to the world by the towers. They're not solid enough to support people, but levitation magic can support you over the clouds. In the game's [[One Game for the Price of Two|counterpart]], ''Darkside of Xeen'', the area above the towers is primarily connected by skyroads, but there's also the city of Olympus, which is situated on a true
* ''[[Golden Sun]]'' had frequent mentions of a floating continent, and you could even visit the location it was in before it took to the sky, yet you never got to go there. Hopefully it will be touched upon when they finally get around to making ''Golden Sun 3''.
** Of course, the fact that there's an edge to the world that you could fall off of ([[Invisible Wall|if the game didn't prevent you from doing so, anyway]]), {{spoiler|which will eat away at the world if power isn't restored to the four lighthouses}}, suggests that the world itself is a floating continent.
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* ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3'' has Skytown, a hemisphere-spanning system of flying buildings in the skies over Elyssia. As Elyssia is a gas giant, it [[Justified Trope|makes perfect sense]].
* The ''Granstream Saga'' has not one, but four floating continents as the sum total of its world. The quest to save the rapidly failing technology that keeps them floating is what motivates the initial quest by the hero. And which gives us [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sCbby2lldI a pretty kick-ass opening cinematic...]
* ''Luna Online'' takes place in Blueland, a Floating Continent unto itself. There is a lower world, but it's inhabited by demons and sealed apart from Blueland to keep them from causing
* Setting of ''[[Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al Revis]]''.
* Certain Ages in the ''[[Myst]]'' series of games contain these, including Saavedro's home world in ''[[Exile]]'' {{spoiler|and Sirrus's prison Age in ''Myst IV''}}.
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* There are multiple floating continents in the ''[[Mega Man X]]'' series, including Sigma's fortress, Sky Lagoon, and Giga City (although technically a collection of islands). The first two inevitably fell, especially Sky Lagoon which was deliberately [[Colony Drop|dropped onto a city]].
* An unusual twist on the concept was a central theme of bizarre Namco arcade game ''[[Prop Cycle]]''. The town of [[Meaningful Name|Solitaire]] becomes one of these after someone accidentally turns on some [[Lost Technology]], and the player must leap astride the titular pedal-driven aircraft, fly back up there and somehow bring it safely back down to the ground before they run out of loo roll and incur ruinous cellphone roaming charges... or something like that, anyway.
* In ''[[Heart of Darkness (video game)|Heart of Darkness]]'', there is what looks like an upside-down mountain floating above the world, where live the "Amigos." Weirdly, it has inverted gravity compared to the main
* The flying city of Caldoria is the home of temporal agent Gage Blackwood in the ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'' series.
* The entire setting of ''[[Allods Online]]'' is made of these.
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