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Recursive Reality: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:Freaking Vortex - 2 panel 6067.jpg|link=The Perry Bible Fellowship|
{{quote|"''To understand [[recursion]], [[Department of Redundancy Department|one must first understand recursion]].''"}}
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The basic types:
* The "Russian Doll World" - the worlds are physically inside one another. The most common way to travel between them is [[Incredible Shrinking Man|changing size]]. This dates back to the sci-fi pulps of the 1930s, even though the atomic model that likely inspired this trope (where electrons orbited the nucleus like planets around a sun) had [[Science Marches On|been superseded]] as early as 1925.
* The [[Nested Story]] - One of the [[Older Than Print|oldest examples]] is ''The [[Arabian Nights]]''. Scheherazade [[Framing Device|tells stories]] of people who tell stories about people who tell stories, and so on. This is basically a [[Story Within a Story]] or [[Framing Device]], taken [[Up to Eleven]]. (Layers deep, that is.)
* The [[Recursive Reality|Recursive Simulacrum]] - Building a ship in a bottle, on a ship in a bottle, basically. Someone creates an artificial world, be it a computer simulation, [[Cyberspace|virtual reality]], pocket universe or a miniature planet. Then someone in ''that'' world creates another simulacrum. Bonus points if an inhabitant of the last simulacrum builds another one, or the original creator's world turns out to be a model itself. [[Game Within a Game]] is a subtrope.
* The [[Dream Within a Dream]] - A character dreams of another world, is put into a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] or starts hallucinating another life, and to emphasize the drama of the situation, the character's confusion and/or the depths of their madness, the character is pushed into a layer within or [[Up the Real Rabbit Hole|thinks they have escaped into the real world]], only to find [[Schrödinger's Butterfly|they are simply in an outer layer of the dream.]]
* [[Recursive Reality|Transfictionality]] - Suppose [[Recursive Canon]] (a copy of the work itself, or a related work by the same author) shows up within the work. Then it turns out to be ''real'', because the author of the [[Story Within a Story]] (who may or may not be [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|the author of the actual work]]) is, in fact, [[A God Am I|God]] of his own [[Mythopoeia|sub-created universe]]. May result in [[Fridge Horror]] (or regular horror if it's addressed by the plot) if the in-story author has a [[Creator Breakdown]]. See also [[Rage Against the Author]].
For extra [[Mind Screw|headache-inducing]] potential, [[Mythopoeia|a creator]] might mix and match:
* [[Mutually Fictional|Stable Fictional Loop]] - Similar to a [[Stable Time Loop]] but with narration instead of time travel, this can take any of the above forms and turn it into a paradox, such as a pair of [[Alternate Universe]]s that reference each other through [[Recursive Canon|recursive fiction]], usually with paradoxical [[Event Flag|event flags]] that prevent you from determining which version of the story is the "outer" story, or which is [[All the Myriad Ways|the "real" story]]. Compare [[Trapped in TV Land]].
* [[Turtles All
▲* Turtles All The Way Down - It's an infinite regress; [[Post Modernism|there is no "reality"]] except in the mind of one character / [[God]] / the author. No matter how far [[Up the Real Rabbit Hole|up or down you go]], [[Closed Circle|you can't get out]]. Perhaps they [[Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence]] or they're in a [[Dying Dream]]. Perhaps [[Through the Eyes of Madness|they're simply insane]]. If lucky, it's a [[Interactive Fiction|Multi User Shared Hallucination]], not a [[And I Must Scream|Solipsistic Nightmare]]. (The name comes from a famous "argument" for the [[Turtle Island]] cosmology as an explanation for [[Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress|gravity]].)
* Single reality - There is only ''one'' world, that is somehow enclosed inside itself. Possibly in several instances.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The 1st Edition ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' modules ''I6: Ravenloft'' and ''I10: The House on Gryphon Hill'', could be played either as stand-alone adventures, as an adventure and its sequal, or as interlocked adventures in which PCs who retired for the night in one module would wake up in the other, and vice versa. This last option could be played as a recurring [[
* One campaign for ''[[The Dark Eye]]'' featured a pocket dimension containing an archipelago on whose islands certain legends were true. One suggested subplot depended on one character dying there; their soul would be transported to, and be able to have encounters in, another dimension while the rest of the group was supposed to find a way to bring them back. (This is ''not'' the norm in this game system; mostly, dead means dead.) It was mentioned that if the soul was swallowed by a certain kind of monster, it would be thrown into a realm even further removed, from which they could not be brought back.
* The farming board game ''[[Agricola]]'' features several different "Room" tiles, in of which a game of Agricola is being played (a few posts down [http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352362/humor-on-the-agricola-card-artwork-includes-compar here]).
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* The page pic is from a ''[[The Perry Bible Fellowship]]'' strip in which an astronaut [http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF094-Freaking_Vortex.gif somehow lands on his own helmet]; when he takes it off he can see a miniature figure of himself standing on it holding a miniature helmet with an even smaller figure of himself standing on it holding...and to make his day even worse, his bald spot is spreading.
* ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' has no film version of ''[[Star Wars]]'' in its world, with the plots of the movies used for a [[Tabletop Game]] instead. In that world, however, there is a webcomic about a world that has no ''[[Harry Potter]]'' movies, with the plots of ''those'' used for a [[Tabletop Game]]. The layering goes down and down and down, with another movie added every 50 strips.
** Getting very meta with [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/heists/0050.html this one] based on ''[[Inception]]''.
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== Real Life / Other ==
* Infinite [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJE35wX1nQ Fractal Zooms], such as [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tRdLD6vh3g&feature=related Mandelbrot Sets] "Bigger than the known universe!" Turn on the [[Mushroom Samba|Mood music]] when watching these... ''Schpongle'' perhaps.
* There are any number of magazine covers with a [[Droste Image]] - where somebody on the cover is holding a copy of the magazine with the cover that they're in, etc. [https://web.archive.org/web/20101217215045/http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/galleries/christmas-covers/22/ Here's a recent example].
** Hell, ''Games'' Magazine made a '''puzzle''' out of it.
** Numerous commercials have used a similar effect, where a photograph in one scene expands and animates, becoming the ad's next scene. Usually, this also has a photo or other image in it, which also expands and animates...
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Dream Tropes]]
[[Category:Otherworld Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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