Bigger on the Inside: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime ==

** It has a fridge, but no bathroom. If I remember correctly, they have to use that zipper ability to use a bathroom.

** Kaede has one of these inside her [[Invisibility Cloak]]. You put it over your head, it collapses onto the ground and vanishes, and you find yourself in a comfortably large house.

** The same holds true for Evangeline's Resort.

** As are the Gateports in Mundus Magicus.

* Somewhat parodied in ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'', when they went over to Haruhi's house, or at least the dream before it. Haruhi in the dream was about to open a closet, and Tamaki tried to cheer up the rest of the group, and probably himself, by saying "Inside that closet must be an infinite space"

** Washuu's laboratory. It's accessed through a doorway under the stairs at Tenchi's house, but [[Word of God]] says the laboratory covers ''five planets''.

** Jurai's treeships generate pocket dimensions as living space for their crew.

** In the TV-series, ''Tenchi Universe'', she gives the bathroom the same treatment. Apparently, they decided that the floating, bubbled, hot-springs ''island'' from the OVA was a tad too showy.

* In ''[[Film/Howls Moving Castle|Howls Moving Castle]]'', the castle's door links to buildings that are sometimes smaller than the castle's size.

 

* In ''[[Fables (Comic Book)|Fables]]'', the business office of Fabletown is bigger on the inside than out: it's indicated that nobody knows the full extent of the complex, although this is because the ''actual office'' is somewhere unknown and the building acts as a portal. {{spoiler|They recently lost the building, and those inside the office are still trapped}}.

** Fables also has the very important 'Witching Cloak' which can store much inside it's folds, one of it's many powers. (Careful; the weakness is it's still a cloak and can be yanked off like any other).

* [[Doctor Strange]] and his Sanctum Sanctorum. Of course, he's a wizard so...[[Justified Trope|you know]].

* ''[[Elf Quest]]'''s Palace of the High Ones may be bigger on the inside, though it's never stated explicitly.

== Fairy Tales ==

* In the 5th-8th century Slavic myth of the witch Baba Yaga, her tiny hut is magically, on the inside, like a great hall.

* [[Older Than Print]]: This features in Celtic myth, where anything remotely like a door can be a doorway into a much bigger place. So the door to a tiny hut can well open into a large hall.

* In Japanese folktales, Kitsune can create realms, turning a hole under a floorboard into a small estate, and turn a small field into a kingdom.

== Film ==

* In ''[[Star Wars]]'', the Millennium Falcon interior is significantly larger than the exterior, mostly in regards to headroom. Due to the "cramped" interior, this is seldom noticed by the fans, even when toy models blatantly reveal this discrepancy. Hence, it requires no actual explanation. The difference is most visible when you see the Falcon docked in the Death Star. Compare it to the nearby Stormtroopers. Then compare its size earlier when they are all gathered in the lounges, and then take into account all the other rooms in the Falcon that are seen only in ''The Empire Strikes Back''. The trope is compounded when you consider that the ship is supposed to be a freighter, with a lot of cargo capacity.

* Parodied in ''Freaked'', where Skuggs keeps his collection of "freekz" in an outhouse that is somehow positively enormous on the inside; even the moon carved into the door becomes huge.

* ''[[Spice World]]'' featured a magically huge bus with room enough for all the Spice Girls to have their own personal living areas the size of a studio apartment.

* A variation is seen in the Beatles movie ''Help''. Each of the Fab Four enter into what appear to be four consecutive row houses. Turns out the four doors lead into the same huge bachelor pad.

* In the Charlie Kaufman film ''Synecdoche New York'', a playwright creates a life-sized mockup of his home city inside a warehouse to use as the backdrop of his play. Naturally the set includes a life-sized mockup of the warehouse, which has another life-sized city inside.

* In the ''[[Aliens]]'' films:

* 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|Could they be making fun of something?]])

* 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.

* The movie ''Crossworlds'', given that it's about parallel dimensions, takes full advantage of that. Many times somebody enters what seemed to be a small room or something similar, only to be greeted by a space reminiscing of a big warehouse.

* In the (still animated) beginning of ''[[Enchanted]]'', Giselle gets out of her coach in her wedding dress, and Nathaniel is run over by all the animals that were apparently in the coach with her (even though her dress is so big, it's hard to tell how she fit herself).

* The interior sets for the ''Discovery'' in ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' are 50% too large to fit into its spherical command module. This is surprising considering [[Stanley Kubrick]]'s reputation for perfectionism.

* In ''[[Jurassic Park]]'', when Grant and Sattler enter their trailer, from the outside it's simply a camper that looks like it barely has enough headroom. Once inside, it's as big as a double-wide, and the ceiling extends a good 2-3 feet above their heads.

* In "Mary Poppins", we see one of the earliest examples, when she opens her carpet bag and pulls out a hat stand and a large mirror, followed by a plant, and an ornate lamp. When the children Jane and Michael inspect the carpet bag it appears to be empty.

** Narnia is another dimension, the wardrobe is just a way of getting there.

* In a lot of Hollywood Musicals, internal sets start off small but magically become bigger when there's an extended dance scene. One example is the cabin in [[Seven Brides for Seven Brothers]] which looks small and poky from the outside, much to Millie's dismay when she arrives with her new husband, Adam. Yet when she leads the brothers in the Goin' Courtin' dance, the main living room grows to barn-like proportions. This is subverted a little in the later external barn-raising dance scene when the barn in question only looks to be about 12ftx12ft.

 

 

== Literature ==

** And during the reveal of that spoiler, we also find that Zaphod has been carrying around {{spoiler|the starship ''Heart of Gold''}} in his pocket, without even knowing it.

** Also, the planet Magrathea. On the inside, it's the size of a solar system, and they build planets in it.

* The protagonists of ''[[Myth Adventures]]'' lived for some time in what appears to be a small tent, but inside it's a spacious house. Because it really is the entrance to a house in another dimension. The trouble comes when they open the back door and discover ''where'' it was built...

** This is a common practice for Devan architecture, as it's hard for a haggling merchant at the Bazaar to plead poormouth when there's an obvious fifty-room mansion behind the shop.

* In Bulgakov's ''The Master and Margarita'', Woland's immense ballroom appeared behind the door of an ordinary Soviet apartment (which was previously shown to be perfectly normal); one of the characters says that this is easy to achieve when you are "familiar with the fifth dimension."

* Played for horror in ''[[House of Leaves]]'', in which the Navidsons' {{color|blue|house}} starts out precisely 1/4" larger on the inside. The scale of this difference is where a lot of the horror comes from- the tiny difference means that it almost feels like a mistake. They could be wrong, or crazy. Turns out they're wrong. {{spoiler|It's 5/16"}}.

* The "stable" in ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]: The Last Battle'' is tiny on the outside, yet when the characters enter, it contains the whole of "Aslan's Country". As they travel further through the land, the arrive at a walled garden on a hill, but again, once they enter they find a whole country spread out before them; an even better version of the land they came through. It is implied that there might be an infinite number of such layers.

** The stable was unusual in this respect. Not everyone who entered found Aslan's Country - a party of dwarfs who entered it found only the very ordinary dark and grimy interior of a stable. Both alternatives coexist simultaneously, as the protagonists interact directly with the dwarfs despite perceiving a completely different world. This is perhaps more a case of [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]].

* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' books that focus on Death, his mansion is described as having rooms of a mile or more in area, despite looking like a normal cottage from outside. Normal humans who visit Death's domain usually ignore the incredible hugeness and stand on small patches of carpeted normality in the sea of immeasurable blackness.

** [[The Library of Babel|The library of Unseen University]] also is much bigger on the inside - like a Black Hole that can read.

** In ''The Last Continent'', Bugarup University has a tower that's Taller at the Top: from the bottom, and while climbing it, it only seems to be about twenty feet tall, but the view from the top appears to be half a mile up.

*** Similarly, though not played for laughs, in [[Patricia Mc Killip]]'s ''Harpist in the Wind'' (third in the ''Riddle-Master'' trilogy) there's a tower with an external spiral staircase that appears to be finite in size, but when you try to climb it you'll find that the top is always the same distance above you... ''unless'' the owner feels like letting you in.

** Hermione's tiny little beaded handbag in ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|Deathly Hallows]]''. It fits in her sock, but it contains clothes, books (many, many books), tents, and a framed portrait.

** Arthur Weasley expands the inside of his Ford Anglia so the entire Weasley family and then some can fit inside comfortably.

* [[The Lost Woods|Ryhope Wood]] in Robert Holdstock ''Mythago Wood'': the protagonist says he can run around it inside an hour, but when he tries to go through...Time also runs differently inside it.

* in Halo: ghosts of onyx we see a [[Dyson Sphere]] located in the core of an earth sized planet.

* Many buildings in the [[Nightside]] are like this, which is to be expected in a place where space is at a premium and so many people know magic.

* 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.

* Clothahump's tree in the ''[[Alan Dean Foster|Spellsinger]]'' series.

* Solembum mentions he has seen rooms that are bigger on the inside in ''Inheritance''.

 

 

** The episode "The Doctor's Wife" lets us see more of the TARDIS for the first time in New Who, but that's not why its so notable for this particular trope. {{spoiler|The TARDIS, upon taking a human body, feels that humans- and the Doctor- are bigger on the inside, and she's able to overcome the force which has taken control of her Police Box self because he's so much ''smaller'' on the inside.}} It's a wonderful twist which shows this trope might not just be about space.

* The myth of Baba Yaga is parodied in ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]'' with Babu Yagu, aka The Hitcher, whose travel chest contains an entire zoo.

* The Foundation's mobile command Semi in ''[[Knight Rider]]'' was shown to be barely wider than KITT, who was the size of a standard 1982 Trans Am, while the car was pulling into or out of it. However, once in, there was enough room for the car, quite a bit of equipment, and even a picnic in one episode. It was wide enough for both of the car's doors to be wide open with room to spare.

** Many holodeck-plots from ''Next Generation'' belie the apparent actual size of the holodeck, as the physical characters spread out so far within its simulated environment that they'd have to be walking through walls or on conveyor belts.

* The Egg (or Trans-Dimensional Navigation Module) in ''[[Galidor]]'' has several internal levels but certainly doesn't look like it from the outside.

* Averted on ''[[Firefly]]''. The ship was designed from the outset to be the same on the inside as on the outside, as well as being just two continuous sets (one for each deck), to establish a greater continuity of space. The viewer will always know where they are, and how that relates to everywhere else. It helps that ''Serenity'''s a rather small ship.

** The production team were aware of this and reduced the size of the cockpit windows on the Starbug model when they switched from physical props to CGI to compensate.

* And lets not forget the interior of 'Thunder', the name-giving [[Cool Boat|boat]] of the [[Sarcasm Mode|award-winning]] show ''[[Thunder in Paradise]]''.

* The Warehouse in ''[[Warehouse 13]]'' is huge on the outside, but once you're inside it becomes the Warehouse that never ends.

* ''[[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.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

 

 

 

== Video Games ==

** And there's the Black Room of Death inside the front wall of the castle, which is bigger than the wall is on the outside.

*** Even more so in the SNES remake, where their walls actually no longer extend offscreen.

** The Comet Observatory domes from ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]''.

** The Deku Tree seems bigger inside as well, but still resembles a tree, somewhat.

* The ''[[Cool Ship|Ebon Hawk]]'' in ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' is noticeably larger on the inside than the outside. However, considering it is based on the aforementioned ''Millennium Falcon'', this could be [[Fridge Logic|contrived]] [[Lampshade Hanging|as a something of an]] [[Affectionate Parody]].

** Likewise, the ''Normandy'' in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' is also larger on the inside.

** The Spirit Of Fire from ''Halo Wars'', considering the amount of resources and forces it sends down.

*** The Elephant too for that matter. you can train 40 soldiers out of it. despite the fact it looks like it can hold no more than 20, maybe 30. and even that's pushing it.

* Every [[Eastern RPG]] ever.

** Every single hut and shed. Sometimes inverted with castles.

* [[Donkey Kong 64]] did this a lot.

** Most notable is K. Lumsy's island. On the outside, it's small enough that one could probably jump on top of it. On the inside, the ceiling is probably at least 20 to 30 times the height of the Kongs. Same goes for the diameter.

* [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|Glint's]] lair in ''[[Guild Wars]]''. On the outside, it's a single grain of sand, hidden in a vast desert. On the inside, it's a huge labyrinth filled with traps.

* ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' is a massive offender. The player's house is always pretty darn small in all of the games (or at least the ones I've played), especially on the outside. Particularly in ''Magical Melody'' and ''A/Another Wonderful Life'', the player's house on the outside looks so tiny that you'd think they can't possibly have any room to lay down straight. The inside, though, is more than large enough to hold a bed, a television, a refrigerator, a kitchen, a bookshelf, a storage closet, and more. This don't improve much with house size upgrades you get later on, either.

* ''[[Nethack]]'', ''Slash'EM'' and similar [[Roguelike|roguelikes]]. The full games rarely go past 5mb, but without [[Guide Dang It|extensive knowledge]] of the game or cheating and, of course, luck, you can spend an entire year trying to finish it.

* In ''[[Starcraft]]'', at the end, {{spoiler|the inside of Tassadar's ship is significantly larger than it's seen on the outside}}. Of course, in most RTS games the buildings are churning out battle ships 5 times bigger than itself, so [[Units Not to Scale|some distortion is necessary]].

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4ySkR48cI Behold this in action]. Most of the level is in a closet in a room, itself in a closet in the aforementioned most of the level.

* In ''[[Animal Crossing|Animal Crossing: Wild World]]'' and ''City Folk'' the closets in the game were capable of storing 90 items, a stark contrast to the closets in the original game which stored a measly 3. In comparison most of the buildings in the game were slightly larger than on the outside.

** This also applies to all the buildings in the original ''[[[Animal Crossing]]]'', but not so much the storage items.

** The mage city of Dalaran, on the other hand, completely ''averts'' this trope: it's exactly as large as the outside suggests.

*** Except the inscription shop, it is a very large tower on the inside and only a small hut on the outside.

* In ''[[XIII]]'', the submarine is absurdly large on the inside and tiny on the outside.

* The barns in the online game ''Farmville''. If one chooses, they are capable of holding dozens of entire buildings inside them, each much, much larger then the actual barn itself.

* 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]].

* 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!

* Averted in the ''[[Gothic]]'' games. Every city and house interior is part of the overworld and exactly the same size on the inside as on the outside.

* ''Blood Omen: [[Legacy of Kain]]:'' The structure in the center of Dark Eden, explicitly.

* [[Eldritch Location|Grandmother's House]] in ''[[The Path]]''. On the outside, it's a small, perhaps one-and-a-half story cottage; inside, it's impossibly tall and narrow, going up six or seven stories and containing a pair of [[Endless Corridor|endless corridors]].

 

 

== Web Original ==

* [[Whateley Universe|Whateley Academy]] has a number of mutants who can create such spaces/items. Moebius sells bat-belts with pockets that are larger on the inside, and it's Thuban's hidden power. Some students suspect Generator of being able to do this, but she's actually faking it with a variety of effects - despite owning a genuine TARDIS-purse that Thuban gave her.

* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]''. Sister's ship was deliberately this, as it resembled a Pelican drop ship on the outside, but the inside was from a level set on a space station. Caboose says the trope title, and on the DVD commentary, [[Word of God]] says it was [[Rule of Funny]].

* According to [http://community.910cmx.com/index.php?showtopic=8494&st=80&p=347582&#entry347582 one] [[Epileptic Trees|fan theory]], [[The Lord of the Rings|hobbit]]s' stomachs. That's how they out-eat everyone else.

* The mansion of mystic hero Doctor Ka, from the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'', has much, much more floor-space than its exterior would suggest. He needs the extra space to contain the angry ghosts...

* In ''[[Blue Yonder]]'', [http://www.blueyondercomic.net/comics/1190170/blue-yonder-chapter-1-page-11/ Jared thinks the building might be this -- he has some trouble accepting that it's just an apartment building.]

** Doctor Tease actually gets blamed for it.

 

** The Planet Express ship and the building that houses it tend to have larger interiors if the plot demands.

** Bender's torso is often bigger on the inside, as the plot or [[Rule of Funny|gag]] requires

** Possibly explained in the episode Dinner is Swerved, as the house may or may not be, itself, an imaginary friend. Madame Foster is certainly... 'creative' enough to imagine one.

** It should be added that the house looks pretty huge on the ''outside'', too.

** Averted with his rival Mandark's lab, which is actually visible behind his house, complete with an entire Death Star.

* Pick any [[Hanna-Barbera]] show. The houses, be it the pre-fab caves on ''[[The Flintstones]]'' or the elevated apartments on ''[[The Jetsons]]'', will look much larger on the inside thanks to [[Wraparound Background|Wraparound Backgrounds]].

* The title band in ''[[Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi]]'' had a tour bus that was basically a large apartment.

* Jimmy's "Hypercube" in ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]''.

* The Beatles' ''Yellow Submarine'' has the band living in a place in Liverpool that's a grim little building outside, and bigger and more imposing than Versailles inside. The eponymous sub is similarly cavernous.

* In an episode of ''[[The Magic School Bus]]'', Ms. Frizzle turned the bus into a Suppose-O-Tron, but it seemed to retain its regular form. Then she led the class inside to reveal it now had a mammoth interior housing a gigantic laboratory.

* In the ''[[Popeye]]'' cartoon ''Wolf in Sheik's Clothing'' Olive Oyl is kidnapped by a desert sheik and taken to his "humble abode", a tent. The tent is very small but when Olive looks inside she's shocked to find that it's a '''huge''' palace!

* [[Pingu]]'s igloo is very much like this.

* In an episode of ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', the boys build a rocket in the backyard with a control center in a small shed. The shed comfortably seats a dozen girls acting as flight control. Phineas remarks that Ferb is just really good with the layout.

* Sharky's doghouse from ''[[Eek the Cat|Eek! The Cat]]''; on the outside it looks like a regular doghouse, but on the inside it's a mansion.

* The ''Simpsons'' house remains fairly consistent on the inside (but the rooms do seem to move around as needed). It's the outside property that is 'bigger on the inside'. Bart's treehouse (which tends move around the yard) is as big as it needs to be on the inside. The backyard expands or contracts as the plot needs (such as when anti-crime cameras couldn't see it). Even the side yard expands when it needs to, such as when Bart and Lisa get into a confrontation with package delivery people.

* Bubbie from ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]''. She's blue and bigger on the inside.

* The passenger planes from [[Cars|''Cars 2'']].

 

 

** The same goes for the Smart brand of vehicles. Clever placement of engine components allows very large people to drive these very, very small cars.

** The Renault Avantime was an inversion of this. An attempt to make a sporty car out of the base of their Espace minivan, it sacrificed room in the process despite still looking like a van. A book called ''The World's Worst Cars'' managed to describe it as "The TARDIS In Reverse."

** Some people have vans or small trucks retrofitted into tiny homes, complete with bed, kitchen, storage space, etc.

* Happens all the time in the world of computing. Data compression and procedural generation can pack vast amounts of output data into comparatively small files.