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{{trope}}
[[File:
Subtrope of [[Gimmick Level]]. A common level in video games, especially platformers. A trope in which the gravity functions in any way other than "what goes up must come down". More common in modern games than in earlier ones, but there were some in the days of the NES. Usually the change of gravity is local to the player, but sometimes not. Almost always counts as an [[Interface Screw]]. More often than not a puzzle level.
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* Toroidial Gravity: Gravity wraps around the outside of a cylinder; objects that start falling without running into something will just circle the object indefinitely. [[Super Mario Galaxy 2]] has some of this.
* The Variable Gravity Chamber: Gravity changes based on your physical location in the room. The direction of gravity's pull is usually indicated in the background, or there are specific devices that change the direction of gravity. Many of the Bowser's Castle levels in ''Super Mario Galaxy'' featured areas like this.
* Fun With Gravity: Gravity changes at fixed intervals. At best, a severe Interface Screw. At worst, timing will be essential to prevent you from flying into a [[Bottomless Pit]] (or Ceilingless Sky), in which case expect this level to be [[Nintendo Hard]] as all get out.
* Heavy Zone/Light Zone: Gravity is either much greater or much less than usual.
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' used the "spherical planet" variation; when Goku reaches the end of the Serpent Road, he looks around and sees something floating in the sky above him, so he jumps towards it. To his surprise, he starts ''falling'' towards it.
** Also the gravity machines the Saiyans use for training later in the series, except those were intentional. And instead of "what goes up must come down" being the norm, it's "what goes down stays down, and everything goes down. No exceptions." Heavy Zone doesn't even begin to describe it
== Art ==
* Artist [[M. C. Escher]]'s ''[[wikipedia:Relativity (M. C. Escher)|Relativity]]''.
** That has been the subject of many [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]], some of which are noted above.
== Film ==
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* In ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'', the Disk Wars area in which Rinzler fights has this feature. Since Rinzler is aware of this, he's able to land gracefully on his feet, unlike poor Sam, whose landings are a bit rougher.
* [[Fred Astaire]]'s famous [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8n7WQIXQDs#t=89s rotating room/"Ceiling Dance" routine] from ''Royal Wedding''.
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Glory Road (novel)|Glory Road]]''. While exploring the Tower in Karth-Hokesh, Oscar Gordon and his team encounter areas where the gravity reverses itself and the ceiling becomes the floor.
* The mist in the maze in ''[[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'':
** In the season 6 episode titled "Abyss", the System Lord Ba'al is shown to be experimenting with gravity. Ba'als fortress has prison cells which at first appear to be long hallways, however, once a prisoner is added to said cell, Ba'al turns on some artificial gravity in the cell and the far wall becomes the new floor. Any prisoner within said cell then sees their cell as a 50 foot tall pit with sheer walls and no doors. The only way to escape said cell to power down the entire fortress thus turning off the artificial gravity.
*** [[Fridge Logic|As opposed a simple 50-foot-tall pit, which would work even if the power went off]]
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
▲== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==
** In ''[[Planescape]]'' cosmology some planes (in the original Manual of the Planes (1987),
▲* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'':
** The
▲** In the original Manual of the Planes (1987), while on the Elemental Plane of Air travellers could choose the "down" direction and automatically move in that direction. (Provided that they knew that the laws of physics didn't apply in the Plane of Air... otherwise, they'd assume that "down" was whichever direction their feet were facing, and fall infinitely. [[Not the Fall That Kills You|Not that it would kill them, of course...]])
▲** The ''Dungeons and Dragons'' example above extends all the way to 3.5. In the fourth edition, they have some different Gravity Screws. On some planes gravity is subjective, so you can walk across any surface including walls and ceilings. Also, you can simply choose not to be affected and effectively fly with poor maneuverability.
** The Reverse Gravity wizard spell.
* A Polish tabletop RPG, ''Strefa Smierci'' ("Death Zone"), featured gravity anomalies as one of the dangers of the wastelands; an anomaly would appear as an aftereffect of the area getting bombed with high-level phlebotinum. Unexpectedly walking into one was one of the easiest ways to die there.
* ''[[GURPS]]'' has rules for operating in high or low gravity. Zero gravity can result in the character becoming physically ill.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Very common in the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' games.
** ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles|Sonic 3]]''{{'}}s Carnival Night, ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (video game)|Sonic 1]]''{{'}}s Scrap Brain Zone, and ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog CD|Sonic CD]]''{{'}}s Metallic Madness Zone all feature wheels that function as miniature planetoids. Death Egg Zone from ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles|Sonic And Knuckles]]'' involved spinning antigravity passages and a sideways gravity chamber in Act 1, then Act 2 involved gravity frequently switching upside down and back
** The Mad Space level is more like most of ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'', with the direction of gravity being dependent on which planetoid you're closest to. There are also drums in Final Chase that pull you onto their surface when close enough.
** And Cosmic Wall, also from ''SA2'', was a Light Zone.
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** Most of the time, the gravity switching does little else but look damn cool. Running on the ceiling above a floor full of spikes? Hell yes.
** Asteroid Coaster Zone in ''[[Sonic Colors]]''.
* One of the ''[[
** Another Yoshi game, ''Yoshi Topsy-Turvy'', had a tilt sensor inside the cartridge, allowing the player to control gravity at will. It only allowed for angling sideways, however.
** Another ''Super Mario Galaxy'' example, of the Fun with Gravity variety, is probably the second mission of the Dreadnought Galaxy, which has platforms going normal way up, upside down and sideways at various points along a route where Mario is being fired at by various cannons. Definitely falls under the [[Nintendo Hard]] bit. And similar kinds of puzzles in Bowser's Dark Matter Plant.
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** In the final area of ''[[Mega Man Legends]] 2'', there are consoles that let you set gravity to low, normal, and high, allowing you to access different areas based on the current gravity (such as jumping on a weak floor in high gravity to break it). You're also forced to high gravity immediately whenever you touch security lasers in the area, making you take detours when you need to keep low gravity.
* The PC game ''[[Rosenkreuzstilette]]'' had a level late in the game that worked just like Gravity Man's level, with flipping gravity. Given that the game was a tribute to ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' and ''[[Castlevania]]'' games, it's no surprise, really.
* ''[[Lost Vikings]]'' featured anti gravity zones which sometimes would have to be passed using Gravity Boots because of [[Spikes of Doom|ceiling spikes]].
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' had something similar, in that the characters walked on the floor, walls, and ceiling of the first room of Wonderland at different points. The difference is that they never jumped from wall to floor and so forth; they had to go around to use doors and such.
** Sure, that could fall under the "hit a switch" variety.
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** Which brings us to yet another ''[[Sonic]]'' example, as this also happened near the end of the battle with the Biolizard in ''Sonic Adventure 2''.
* Some levels in ''[[Psychonauts]]'', such as Sasha's Shooting Gallery which takes place on the outside of a cube, and The Milkman Conspiracy, a literally twisted suburb with streets curving every direction.
** Lungfishopolis from the same game is also an example of a Heavy
* ''[[Metroid]] Fusion'' has [[That One Boss|Nightmare]], who combines Fun With Gravity and Heavy Zone by making it so you can barely jump and you can't use missiles (they arc straight into the ground).
** ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' uses a similar mechanic in the rooms leading up to {{spoiler|Nightmare, as well as during the boss battle itself.}}
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* ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' had a lot of sections like this. There were anti-gravity chambers inside the ship, and external sections where if you jumped wrong you'd just float off into space.
** Don't forget the chambers where the gravity plates have gone haywire; if you see a faint pillar of translucent energy crackling up from the ground, '''do not''' walk into it! The distorted gravity will rip you apart in an instant. On the plus side, Necromorphs also get torn into pieces if they enter these spaces, either deliberately (though the AI is generally good enough that they'll go around them, they will charge right into them if you're lucky) or by being knocked into them.
* The Brinstar Depths level in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Melee'' rotated. However, gravity continued to pull in the same direction, so if you didn't jump just before it happened, you'd get pulled off of the level.
** And Battlefield of the same game features floaty gravity, but only when fighting wireframes..
* ''[[The Magic School Bus]] Explores The Solar System'' computer game features Heavy Zone/Light Zone gravity for the planet-based platforming levels in the game. Planets with less gravity, like Mercury and Pluto, would allow you to jump really high, while planets with a lot of gravity, like Jupiter (or rather, its moon Io) and Saturn('s rings) would make it so you could barely jump at all. (There were also items that would increase or decrease your jumping ability.)
* The "gravity remains down, but everything else is screwed up" version is seen in the [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon]] of [[World of Mana|Dawn of Mana]].
* "Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh Universsse", a [[Game Within a Game]] from ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]: Nuts & Bolts'' (in the downloadable content) has arrows that change your personal gravity.
* In ''[[Kid Chameleon]]'', when in the SkyCutter form, gravity was in the direction your [[Hover Board]] faced: Either up or down.
* A third of the levels in ''[[Elebits]]'' have no gravity, and any user-made level can have weakened gravity.
* The free ''Space Cadet 3-D Pinball'' game that comes with many Windows computers has an unlockable effect where a gravity well appears in the middle of the board, attracting pinballs towards it until one is sucked into the center, at which time gravity is normalized again.
* The first secret level in ''[[Quake (series)|Quake]]'' had about a fifth of the usual gravity.
** Ditto for the secret Satellite level in ''[[Quake II]]''.
* The fourth hole in ''Fuzzy's World Of Miniature Space Golf'' was called "Goofball Gravity", in which the ball rolls uphill.
* The original ''[[Thrust]]'' had reverse gravity equivalents of all the levels once you got past the normal gravity versions.
* ''[[World of Goo]]'' features a Planet-type level and a Rotating Castle-type level.
* In ''[[Serious Sam]]: The First Encounter'' the level "Sacred Yards" contains an area where some places have reverse gravity. Very trippy, especially when quickly moving from one area to the other and back.
** ''The Second Encounter'', has a level with some confusing mechanics, including a room inside a cylinder (with gravity directed towards the walls) and several areas with low gravity. How do you like a tiny room where everything constantly bounces up and down at warp-speed, including the hordes of enemies?
* ''[[Crystal Caves]]'' has a couple of levels with "low gravity" (although it manifests just as your character being shoved back when he shoots), and there are also levels with reversed gravity. The game also features a reverse-gravity powerup in some levels and a cheat code that lets you reverse the gravity whenever you want.
* Several levels in ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'' have low gravity, either everywhere in the level or just in certain areas. The game also comes with a mutator you can use to force low gravity when playing, regardless of what the map specifies.
** It is possible to design levels with rooms having reverse gravity or the ability to walk up on the walls.<ref>Or to be exact, cheating with warpzones to make it look like that. It's tricky and has a good chance of crashing the game but it's possible. Simply setting negative zone gravity would make players fall upwards and do a headstand on the ceiling.</ref>
* ''[[Cave Story]]'' had a strange variant of this in the Outer Wall area, where the player fell normally, but enemies and powerups fell
** It might be that the island was moving and you were on the outside wall on the "front" of it. Therefore, The island was moving into the powerups faster than the items could fall "downwards".
* ''[[Armed and Dangerous]]'' features a ''literal''
* Later on in ''[[System Shock]] 2'', you make it into the UNN Rickenbacker, where the artificial gravity has flipped upside down. Fighting cyborg assassins [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|in an inverted chapel]] is a rather creepy experience...
** Not to mention that by reversing the gravity, you have most likely caused the death of a certain character by dropping him unexpectedly on the ceiling.
* The upper floors of Constantine's mansion in the ''[[Thief]]'' mission "The Sword" feature
* ''[[Dynamite Headdy]]'' had Vice Versa, a level where the player could turn the level upside-down using switches. The [[Breather Boss|miniboss]] here had to be beaten by dropping balls on it. Right after that was [[That One Boss/Action Game|Twin Freaks]], where the look and attitude of the boss changed depending on whether gravity was reversed.
* In ''[[Rad Gravity]]'', the planet Turvia has reversed gravity.
* The web game ''[http://www.nitrome.com/games/swindler/ Swindler]'' by [[Nitrome]] is based around being able to rotate the rooms.
* ''[[But That Was Yesterday]]'' has some minor gravity screwing of the "rotating castle" varity when the player uses a swing.
* In ''[[Solar Jetman]]'', each planet has a different level of gravity - the higher the number, the more the jetpod will be attracted to the surface. And yes, one planet does have negative gravity.
* ''[[Super Mario Land 2:
* In ''[[Dystopia (video game)|Dystopia]]'', [[Cyberspace]] uses a combination of "variable" and "light zone" gravity. In nodes, touching certain surfaces changes the direction of gravity. In tubes, there is no gravity, but up and down change depending on where you are.
* The circus-themed levels in ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Portrait of Ruin]]'' do this with round levels where the stage's gravity points a certain direction relative to the landscape (outward first, then inward), while your characters' gravity is constantly downward. It's certainly a surprise when you defeat Medusa and realize she's been fighting upside-down the whole time.
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* In one level in ''[[Modern Warfare]] 3'', you play as one of the bodyguards of the russian president as his plane gets hijacked by terrorists. While fighting your way through the traitors, the plane enters freefall for a few seconds during which you have to fight in weightlessness until someone gets the plane back under control. {{spoiler|Until it crashes into the german countryside a few minutes later.}}
* ''[[Mc Donaldland]]'' (or ''[[Mc Kids]]'' depending on locale) has some platforms with cogs on the ends which, if run across, will flip you onto the other side of the platform, reversing gravity in the process.
* In ''[[Stunt Copter]]'', where you repeatedly send a man plummeting from your copter into a horse-drawn haywagon, gravity varies between levels. A helpful readout informs you of the Earth's current mass, eg. NORMAL, HEAVY, or OH BOY.
* The fourth stage in the original ''[[Gradius]]'' is an inverted version of the first stage, complete with reverse-gravity erupting volcanoes.
* The [[Ur Example]] of Gravity Screw in video games is located in ''[[Space War]]!'' where the ships and missiles can optionally gravitate towards the center of the level.
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* The SNES game ''Mohawk & Headphone Jack'' uses the Inverse Planet variation, but in an unusual case for the 16-bit era, makes full use of the system's rotational capabilities so that the floor is always facing down. And yes, the ''entire game'' is like this, not just one level. The result can, needless to say, be very disorienting at times. You can see it in action [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnP9pLsSMV4 here].
* In ''[[Tales of Monkey Island]] Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood'', one of the buttons on De Singe's Auto-Trepanation Helmet turns the whole room in the lab upside down along with Guybrush for a few seconds.
* A level in ''[[Kirby|Kirby's]][[Kirby's Epic Yarn|Epic Yarn]]'' has gravity switches that can turn the gravity on or off.
* In the final parts of ''[[Limbo]]'' there are switches that at first invert gravity for some select objects, later they affect everything including you; and near the end gravity starts changing periodically.
* ''[[De Blob]] 2'' involves gravity plates, allowing Blob to climb up certain walls. {{spoiler|The final level also takes place in space, which has a few small planets.}}
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* ''[[Unreal 2]]'' has a ships artificial gravity play up, first allowing to jump large distances, then pulling you against different surfaces.
* One of the levels of the classic arcade game ''[[Marble Madness]]'' is the Silly Stage, where you must guide the marble from the bottom of the course to the top, rolling it uphill with the same ease the marble would normally roll downhill.
== [[Web Animation]] ==
* The [[CCC]] series has a rewind-style episode where gravity is [http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/499466 altered for someone thanks to a drug]. On a sobering note, if you find and watch the forward version, this trope is played realistically {{spoiler|when the drug wears off and he begins his long fall back down...}}
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', gravity is a weapon, and gets used in all sorts of perspective-bending ways. One arc even involved a group of parkouring vandals who used the weird nullified gravity in the middle of an old space station to run amok throughout the station.
▲== [[Web Comic|Webcomics]] ==
▲* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', gravity is a weapon, and gets used in all sorts of perspective-bending ways. One arc even involved a group of parkouring vandals who used the weird nullified gravity in the middle of an old space station to run amok throughout the station.
== [[Web Original]] ==
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* ''[[Dead Fantasy]]'' Part II features a running/falling battle down the side of a miles-high stone tower. And it is ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|awesome.]]''
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIs00QjiJZQ Upside down ice fishing]
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* What is the quickest way to abort a baby in [[Drawn Together]]? The [[M. C. Escher]]-Room!
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' used the [[M. C. Escher]] ''Relativity'' joke twice. [http://images.wikia.com/simpsons/images/0/09/CouchGagS6E12.jpg Once] for a [[Couch Gag]] and in the movie when Homer fell down all of the stairs.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Older Than the NES]]
[[Category:Video Game Physics]]
[[Category:Video Game Settings]]
▲[[Category:Gravity Screw]]
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