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The wall can surround a single village, a town, a continent, a world, or even [[Corralled Cosmos|an entire galaxy]]. Or it could seemingly surround nothing, and simply mark a barrier between one world and the next. Surprisingly common in Soviet era SF. Think about it.
Note that, despite the name, the barrier does not have to be a literal wall. But if it is, it is almost always a [[Great Wall]].
Compare [[Dyson Sphere]], which is a wall built by the inhabitants of the world. If the barrier surrounds a community, it is an isolated [[Small Secluded World]] or [[City in a Bottle]] or possibly a [[Domed Hometown]].
{{examples}}
== Anime
* The wall around the town in ''[[Haibane Renmei]]''. (We never do find out what lies beyond, though, considering that the walls are {{spoiler|death}}...)
* In the first and second seasons of ''[[Slayers]]'', the world Lina could explore (and put craters into) was restricted by a magical barrier that went down after the [[Big Bad]] powering it was killed.
* The wall in ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' is both literal and metaphorical, keeping reality from intervening in the [[Theory of Narrative Causality|narrative-controlled]] Gold Crown Town. Most people don't even realize it exists, since the story prevents them from wanting to leave. (This doesn't stop people from suddenly appearing inside the town gates, but it's ambiguous whether they're capable of leaving.)
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' has the human villages deep underground. The planet's surface is overrun with monsters, and humanity has hidden away for so long that most of the people in Kamina's village question whether the surface actually exists.
* In the
* Tokyo Jupiter in ''[[RahXephon]]'', encasing Tokyo ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|and looking like Jupiter]]).
* A variety occurs in ''[[Angel Beats!]]''. There's no literal wall, but the world around the high school complex just disappears into a thick fog once you travel beyond the hills.
* ''[[One Piece]]'':
** Okay, you are a pirate, and your dream is to find the legendary treasure of Gold Roger, which he hid somewhere on the Grand Line (an ocean route that circles the whole world at the equator); find it, and you will (you assume) be rich beyond your wildest dreams! Well your second problem (the first being that you are a greedy fool who has no idea the danger you are getting yourself into) is getting to the Grand Line, and that ain't easy:
*** First of all, the Grand Line is bordered by the Calm Belts, a barrier that makes approach from the North or South almost impossible.<ref>These regions are based on the Real Life horse latitudes (or "the doldrums"), at the 30° North and South Latitudes surrounding the equator, a region notorious for weak winds that led to ships becoming stranded.</ref> The Calm Belts have no wind or currents, so a sailed vessel trying to cross one would be paralyzed. Try to reach it this way and you and your crew will likely perish from starvation or thirst before even getting a few nautical miles in. Ships that are propelled with oars, steam engines or some other self propulsion system can theoretically cross, but the Calm Belts are also home to marauding tribes of Sea Kings, monsters who are territorial, xenophobic, and very unfriendly.
*** Or, you could try to reach the Grand Line via the Reverse Mountain which is on one side of the world on the Red Line - this will also lead to your doom, it's just much quicker here. There are four routs to get here, one from each of the Blues; taking this route from any of them requires maneuvering your craft up violent rapids that [[Eldritch Location| flow upward to the mountain's peak]], and assuming you manage ''that'', down even worse rapids and then down a fifth route that lead to the Grand Line proper. Only a master navigator with near supernatural insight (like Nami) and the same amount of luck (like the rest of the Straw Hats) could manage this feat, most every other ship is dashed to pieces with their crew experiencing screaming freezing watery deaths.
*** Of course, if you're truly serious about getting to the Grand Line, you could try joining the Marines. Their ships are not only self propelled, their hulls are coated with sea stone, which make them invisible to the Sea Kings. They have in fact built many strongholds and cities in the Grand Line, and even a few in the Calm Belt, such as Impel Down (the reason that place has a reputation of an escape proof prison). Of course, working for [[The Empire|World Government]] has many other problems.
** Another barrier in this world's admittedly strange geography is the aforementioned Red Line. A polar opposite of the Grand Line, this ring-like continent also circles the world, but in this case north to south along the meridians, separating the East and West Blues. The center of this ring is dominated by impossibly tall mountains, making travel from one hemisphere of the world to the other nearly impossible. And don't try digging under them or blasting through, because the odd red stone (where its name comes from naturally) is indestructible (not even someone with the Nikyu Nikyu no Mi devil fruit power, which can repel any object at the speed of light, can not crack it) and this rock extends 1,000 meters deep from the surface to Fish Man Island at the ocean floor. There are a few well-known ways to pass, but none are easy. Again, the Reverse Mountain can be used (using one of the four routes up from one of the Blues and then down another) but doing so is no easier than using it to get to the Grand line. Also, if you have permission from the World Government, you could cross at Mary Geoise, their capital city which is on the opposite side of the world from Reverse Mountain; unfortunately, this is not a sea route, so if you crossed the Red Line in this manner, you would need to procure a second ship on the other side. Finally if your ship is coated with resin from the Yarukimian Mangroves, it can submerge and descend to Fish Man Island, where there's a huge tunnel that allows passage. Of course, actually doing this requires befriending or hiring someone who can coat your ship, and only two shipwrights - Den (himself a fish man) and Silvers Rayleigh himself - know the difficult and expensive process.
** But nobody, not even the Marines, would be able to cross both barriers at once, which is why One Piece is so difficult to find. While Laugh Tale (where One Piece presumably is) is located only a few dozen miles west ("as the crow flies", so to speak) of the Reverse Mountain, getting ''from'' Reverse Mountain would require crossing over the Red Line, which again, is impossible. Thus, gaining Gol D. Roger's treasure requires circumnavigating the entire globe via the Grand Line, which is much, ''much'' more dangerous than getting there in the first place. In fact, given how difficult travel is due to these great barriers, a common fan theory states that One Piece itself is some weapon or technique that can not only defeat the World Government but physically destroy the Red Line, bringing freedom to the people while unshackling the entire world.
== Comic Books ==
* The [[Incredible Hulk]] occasionally visited the Keystone Quadrant in his old comic-book series... basically a solar-system (possibly more than one) which was somehow 'walled off' from the rest of the universe, it could only be entered and exited through various types of teleportation. It was basically a [[Sugar Bowl]] without the sugar - populated by funny talking animals and hilariously incompetent Keystone Kops... and caught up in a long war between a [[Mad Scientist]] tortoise and his cybernetically-enhanced Black Bunny Brigade (not to mention a small army of robotic [[Monster Clown]]s), and the heroic Animal Resistance, led by a fast-talking Raccoon space-captain.
* The Source Wall is a wall around the entire [[DCU]], which...well, who fucking knows. It makes no sense. Either 2D Space is in full effect or it lines the entire interior of the universe, in which case the universe it both finite and shaped in a way where that makes sense. Also, there are powerful cosmic beings embedded in the wall, and The Source (which may or may not be God) is on the other side.
** Early stories that mention the Source Wall (mainly by [[Jack Kirby]] himself) suggest that it is not a physical structure, but a metaphysical barrier without a physical form. It wasn't until the first issue of the joint company product ''Marvel and DC Present'' that it was shown as a physical wall with the [[Our Titans Are Different| Promethian Giants]] entombed within; this issue was not canon, but seemed to set the image for the Wall for all future appearances.
== Film ==
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* [[Ian McDonald]]'s ''Out on Blue Six''—the city is surrounded by a giant Wall, and the protagonists explore to see what's on the other side. {{spoiler|Turns out--nothing but toxic waste.}}
* In Damon Knight's ''Hell's Pavement,'' people in Connecticut (200 years in the future) know nothing of the people in New York, who know nothing of the people in Ohio, and so on. They believe people in the other places are literally monstrous and inhuman. (There are walls between zones.) This happened because supermarket chains used brilliant new brainwashing techniques to make people totally loyal to their brands, and the adherents of different brands formed different zones.
* The planet Krikkit in ''[[
** In ''So Long and Thanks for All the Fish'', Wonko the Sane builds an inside-out house he calls "the Asylum" to fence in the rest of the world (he, naturally, lives "outside the Asylum", which is inside the house). He'd decided [[World Gone Mad|the entire world had gone insane]] when he came upon a pack of toothpicks with ''[[Viewers are Morons|instructions]]''.
* In the novel ''[[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]'', the End of the World sections take place in a town which has a wall around it, and once you come to the town you can't go outside the wall.
* If you only follow the first book, [[Land of Oz|Oz]] would seem rather like this. The endless deadly desert surrounds Oz on all sides, isolating it rather nicely. Too bad later books place other magical kingdoms on the other side of a desert that seems rather more like a moat. Eventually, all the magic-users in Oz gather their power to put a wall of invisibility, thus more permanently sealing off Oz.
* There's a short story by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] called "The Wall of Darkness" about a planet with a wall that divides it in half. The protagonist attempts to climb the wall too what's on the other side. {{spoiler|turns out there is no other side, and the planet is essentially a 3D moebius strip, and so only has one side}}
* The Void in [[Peter F. Hamilton]]'s ''[[Void Trilogy]]'', arguably.
* A global glacier surrounds the only habitable continent on all of [[Darkover]], literally called The Wall Around the World by the inhabitants.
* In ''[[Chanters of Tremaris|The Singer of All Songs]]'', the order of priestesses known as the Daughters of Taris live surrounded by a giant wall of ice. They are the only people who can use ice magic, so they control who can come in and out.
* The great Agatean Wall in ''[[
* In the ''[[Con Sentiency|Dosadi Experiment]]'' the whole eponymous planet is encased inside "God Wall" [[Deflector Shields|barrier]] as a part of said experiment. Not that it's ''completely'' impassable, but for [[The Masquerade|most people]] inside it is.
* The Land of Elyon, a children's series by Patrick Carman, has walls surrounding the inhabited cities and the roads that link them. The main character finds a way out of the walls, despite the fear of many of the other characters about what is beyond the walls.
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* A large portion of the plot in Orson Scott Card's ''Pathfinder'' revolves around one of these. It's revealed decently early on that there are actually 19 "worlds" with Walls.
* The world of [[Ethshar]] is a [[Flat World]], being the end-cap of a cylinder. The edge of the end-cap is marked by a "noxious yellow gas".
* [[David Eddings]]'s ''[[Belgariad]]''-verse has the Eastern Escarpment, a mile high sheer basalt cliff that acts as a natural barrier between some of the Kingdoms of the West and the Angarak kingdoms to the east.
* In the ''[[Land of Oz]]'' books, the eponymous fantasy land is separated from the rest of the world by a desert that surrounds it completely. In the first two books it is described as a typical desert, but in the third onward, it is supposedly incredibly hostile to life, with a poisonous atmosphere and cursed sands that will cause a living being to be reduced to dust if they so much as touch it. Not that it is a reliable barrier, though, as several books involve someone reaching Oz by flying over it, tunneling under it, or using some sort of magic item to protect themselves.
== Live Action TV ==
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* The borders between the physical realm and the spirit worlds in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' RPG line (the Gauntlet and the Shroud) qualify. Most humans have no idea that the spirit realms are real.
** The Gauntlet still stands in the [[New World of Darkness]], cutting off the Shadow from the material. There's also the Abyss, which severs the Supernal from the Fallen.
* [[Dungeons
** The Misty Border in the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting cuts it off from the rest of the multiverse. You can check in, but you never check out. Darklords can do this at will (with few thematically-appropriate exceptions) to isolate their own domains.
*** The town of Barovia has its own permanent version of its domain's closed border; only the Vistani know how to make a secret antidote that allows safe passage.
** ''[[Spelljammer]]'' has a borderline case: crystal shells. Oh, it can have many thousands of portals... spread over the whole surface of a ''star system'', that is. It's not easy to find one without knowing where it is, and they don't always stand still forever. Thus the proper magic is the best way to locate a portal or even open temporary one—for those who have it.
** However, Athas, the world of the ''[[Dark Sun]]'' setting, seems cut off from the rest of the Dungeons & Dragons universe. The most the ''Spelljammer'' setting would say about it was that "Athasspace" was "not on the spacelanes", but hints that there might be some way to get there. ''[[Planescape]]'' mentions it a few times, hinting it's possible to go there via portals in Sigil. It's likely TSR wanted to discourage players from traveling from, say, Oerth to a low-magic world where slavery is ''not'' considered evil and both iron and water (two materials considered priceless on Athas) are common; such could be a disaster waiting to happen.
** The same can be said of Eberron (from [[Eberron|the setting of the same name]]), and Cerilia (or the ''[[Birthright]]'' setting). It is hinted that it ''might'' be possible to go there from other settings, but various game mechanics make such a transfer unfeasible.
** In ''[[Planescape]]'' proper, each Outer Plane is infinite in size. This supposedly includes the Outlands, even though there is a finite distance from the Spire to each Gate Town; a Gate Town is a community that metaphysically closest to one of the Outer Planes on the Great Wheel. But what exists beyond the Gate Towns? Anyone who tries to find out enters an area referred to as the Hinterlands. This wildreness is much like the terrain surrounding the gate Town that a traveler passed by to get there - for example, a traveler going past Ribcage would find broken wastelands and hills - but no inhabited towns or settlements. There is also a strange spatial effect in the Hinterlands; you could travel past Ribcage and then for years in the same direction, but if you decided to turn around and go back, you would reach Ribcage again within an hour, and even if you made a specific attempt to remember something you encountered in the Hinterlands, you would never find it again if you attempted a return trip. There are rumors of expeditions into the Hinterlands finding strange landscapes, ruined cities (always with no clue whatsoever to the identities of whoever built them) and other interesting things, but this odd effect prevents these claims from ever being confirmed.
* The Weirding Wall in ''[[Nobilis]]'' which encloses the whole universe.
* ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' is set in Alpha Complex, a domed city. The existence of "Outdoors Sector" is acknowledged, but information about it is limited, especially at low security clearances.
== Video Games ==
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** Could have something to do with [[Eldritch Abomination|Gaia]] [[Taken for Granite|killing]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|almost]] [[Reality Warper|everything]] in it's path, as it's only encountered on that side of the wall until [[It Got Worse|it got on an airship]].
** ''[[Grandia II]]'' had something similar, a huge nigh-uncrossable canyon, though its existence was explained: it was basically caused by God crashing into the earth.
* In ''[[Wild
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has the War Walls, [[Justified Trope|justified]] as barrier against alien invasion, but really there as a level separation.
* Palm Brinks in ''[[Dark Cloud]] 2'' was [[City in a Bottle|sealed off from the rest of the world]] via a titanic wall, far too tall to scale. This was done by the Mayor, to protect the citizens from the incredible devastation taking place in the outside world—but now that the land is healing (and with the heroes having escaped via an underground sewer/aqueduct,) many of Palm Brink's inhabitants dream of exploring and building new cities.
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==
* The area known as The States in ''[[White Noise]]'' is surrounded by a gigantic wall and poison gas filled moat. No one is allowed in or out except for bounty hunters, and residents hate and fear those who live beyond it.
* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' the "Punyverse" turned out to be surrounded by a giant solid sphere, the inhabitants mostly didn't know that and thought it was an endless void inhabited by "void ghosts" that occasionally attacked (it was really wild shots reflecting off the sphere). Also {{spoiler|their entire universe was artificial}}
== Web Original ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backrooms The Backrooms], a [[Creepypasta]] blog that originated on [[4chan]], are reached by “no-clipping” out of the real world. (No-clipping being a video game term for when the players’ sprites somehow go outside the bounds of the game’s area, the Backrooms being a [[RPG Mechanics Verse]]), usually by accident, but many try to do it intentionally. In effect, people end up in the Backrooms by finding their way through the Wall Around Reality itself. Oh, and should someone wind up doing so by accident, they’d best learn how to do it on purpose ''fast''. Each level of the Backrooms is separated by a similar wall, and while many levels have doorways and portals leading to others, leaving Level 0 (which newcomers always end up in) and finding a safer level requires no-clipping.
== Western Animation ==
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** Also, the glass dome enclosing Springfield in [[The Movie]].
** And the wall made of garbage separating Springfield from New Springfield.
* In ''[[Futurama]]'', the Planet Express crew visits the Edge of the Universe, which has a convenient viewing platform. They are able to look through binoculars at the Universe Next Door, (which is apparently cowboy-themed).
{{quote|''Fry:'' Wow. So there's an infinite number of parallel universes?
''Professor Farnsworth:'' No, just the two. }}
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{{reflist}}
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[[Category:This Index Is in The Way]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wall Around the World, The}}
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