Going in Circles: Difference between revisions

Occasionally it won't be a landmark, but a set of footprints. Either the presence of footprints where you wouldn't expect anyone else, or the revelation that a character is following his own trail.

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== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Naruto]]'' has a variation where recognizing a tree makes the group realize that they are in a genjutsu (illusion).

* ''[[One Piece]]'': During the Skypiea arc, [[No Sense of Direction|"it was on the right side of the map"]] Zoro ends up right back where he started at the sacrificial altar. After a bit of back and forth regarding whether he's been there before, he finally decides that this "new place" just looks the same as the old one and shrugs it off.

== Film ==

* ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'' pulls this off nicely. The three kids start to worry that ''something'' has them going in complete circles despite the fact that they've been heading south all day.

* In ''[[The Avengers (1998 film)|The Avengers 1998]]'', a drugged Emma Peel was running through the [[Big Bad]]'s mansion and noticed that she had run through the same room twice. She threw down a vase, breaking it, and continued running. When she ran into the room again and saw the broken vase on the floor, she knew she was trapped inside a tesseract. A variation on the original ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]'' episode "The House that Jack Built".

== Literature ==

* ''[[—And He Built a Crooked House—]]'': The tesseract case was born in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s story. In this case, one of the main characters winds up chasing ''himself'' around the entire tesseract several times before retrieving his own dropped hat and realizing what's happened.

* ''[[Winnie the Pooh]]''

** Pooh and Piglet follow their own tracks around a tree and decide that the footprints were made by woozles.

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[The Monkees]]'' episode "Monkees Marooned":

{{quote|'''Micky''': Wait! Our footprints. Great Scott, that means we're lost, we've been going around in circles!}}

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'': An entity called Nagilum has Worf and Riker going in circles from one bridge on a phantom Enterprise into the same bridge.

* In the Lunar Diplomacy quest in ''[[RuneScape]]'', the ship is jinxed so that it will sail in circles. Cleaning off the symbol removes the curse.

* Worlds 4-4 and 7-4 in ''Super Mario Bros.'' will keep repeating unless Mario finds the correct route.

== Web Comics ==

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Nyx Crossing]]'' has the characters notice it in episode 2.

== Western Animation ==

* Happens in the camping episode of ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]''.

* Lampshaded in a Cartoon Network music video featuring [[The Flintstones|Fred and Barney]] going past the same scenery multiple times (and commenting on it in subtitles). The song? "Circles" by Soul Coughing.

== Real Life ==

* Wilderness survival experts know this is a very real risk when traveling without a compass.

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[[Category:Narrative Devices]]