White Void Room: Difference between revisions

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A featureless white room. So featureless, in fact, that you can't even tell where the walls, floor, and ceiling end--they all blend seamlessly together under the uniform light, so the chamber looks more like a white void than a room. Sometimes, the only indication that it's ''not'' a void is the fact that the characters have something solid to stand on.
 
As literal white [[Void Between the Worlds|voids]] represent some "other realm"--usually a result of a [[Dream Sequence|dream]] or crossing over to [[Another Dimension|another]] [[Alternate Universe|universe]]--physical rooms that replicate this visual effect will have the same connotations. They make excellent cells for imprisonment or interrogation--the absence of visible exits (or any sign that the outside world exists at all) implies [[Sealed Room in Thethe Middle of Nowhere|no possibility of escape]]. Or, the white can represent sterility, making these rooms suitable for otherworldly hospitalization. Or, it can represent the limitless possibilities of a blank canvas, so this room could be a currently-inactive [[Hologram|holo]][[Hard Light|simulator]], or some other place where literally anything can happen.
 
Occasionally, there are a few pieces of furniture (color is optional) in the room for the characters to sit down and have a discussion. May be an extreme form of [[Ascetic Aesthetic]]. When this effect is produced unintentionally by poor description, it is a [[Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue]].
 
Remember that nothing screams futuristic, cutting edge, classy purity (as well as "[[Fan Service|concentrate on my smoking hot bod]]" [[Am I Right?]]) like a white void in your workout video.
 
Often a sign of the [[Lazy Artist]] in [[Sequential Art]] when the background is missing.
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* How about those Progressive commercials? It's a white "store" filled with only empty boxes labeled with policies, and people in white clothing are employees there.
* The setting of most Apple Computer ads since the introduction of OSX, including the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-UuIEOcss testimonial-based "Switch" campaign], the Justin Long-John Hodgeman [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgzbhEc6VVo "Mac vs. PC" ads], and more recently the iPhone ads. The notable exception is the iPod ads, which lean more toward the [[Design Student's Orgasm|opposite extreme]].
* A set of three [[PSPlay Station 3]] commercials (one Nightmare Fuel) featured a not-seamless white room. '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkNPcUMffU This is the Nightmare Fuel one].'''
* Those late-'90s Gap ads that everybody's forgotten by now.
** Referenced by ''[[Ozy and Millie (Webcomic)|Ozy and Millie]]'' once when Avery decides to become a marketing icon. "I plan to spend a lot of time dancing weirdly in front of a white background."
* One of the more famous "Got Milk?" commercials involved a man who dies and wakes up in an empty white room in what seems to be heaven. Of course, then it turns out to be [[Hell|the other place.]]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa50J7uEb_w This] [http://www.ennuestrasmanos.org/ En Nuestras Manos] [[Public Service Announcement]], featuring various [[Celebrity Endorsement|celebrities]] in a [[White Void Room]], proudly showing their pulseras.
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== [[Anime]] and Manga ==
* In the ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' manga and ''Brotherhood'' anime, any alchemist who opens the Gate of Truth is transported to a white void.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5 Ds5D's]]'': Zone resides in one of these.
* The [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|Hyberbolic Time Chamber]], a.k.a. the Room of Space and Time, from ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' looks like a small but ornate building with two huge hourglasses flanking it, all of which is located in a white void.
* Though this probably wasn't the intent in ''[[Bleach]]'', this was its [[Bleach (Manga)/Memes|definite effect.]] See: [[Lazy Artist]] definition.
 
 
== Comic Books ==
* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' has the White Hot Room, which is sort of outside the universe and mostly seems to exist so that various wielders of the Phoenix Force can have conversations with themselves.
* ''[[Invincible (Comic Book)|Invincible]]'' has a room that isn't actually a white void, but drugs in the water supply have mind-control ingredients that make everyone see it that way. {{spoiler|It's for the super-soldiers.}}
** Er, as to the spoiler, that's only on occasion. It's really for ''whatever'' they need to keep quasi-invisible that day.
* In ''[[Doom Patrol (Comic Book)|Doom Patrol]]'', former Brotherhood of Evil member Eric Morden volunteers for an [[Evilutionary Biologist|ex-Nazi scientist's]] experiment in which he's temporarily immobilized and placed in a spherical white room where he can do nothing but sit and stare at the whiteness until he goes mad. Eventually a tiny black dot, projected on the white expanse, seems to him to grow larger and larger until it transforms him into the abstract, shadowy villain Mr. Nobody with the power to drain the sanity from others.
* In one of [[Warren Ellis]]' issues of ''Dv8'', Copycat steps on a booby trap that apparently teleports her into one of these. {{spoiler|The white void later turns out to be a simulation, a result of being teleported to another room in the facility and hooked up to a virtual reality machine.}}
* Jean Van Hamme's ''Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel'' features ''le Non-Monde'' (the Non-World), a white space between the worlds.
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== Film ==
* ''[[THX 1138 (Film)|THX 1138]]'' (pictured) is the [[Trope Maker]].
* In ''[[The Matrix (Film)|The Matrix]]'', the Construct appeared like this when its users aren't running simulations. It could also be used to procure supplies to take into the Matrix, such as guns. Lots of guns.
** The Architect's lair would be this if he didn't stick a bunch of TV's to the wall.
* ''[[Men in Black (Filmfilm)|Men in Black]]'' has some, specifically the Deneuralizing Room. Eventually, we come to realize that it's basically a large toilet bowl.
* In ''[[Bruce Almighty]]'' the [[Magical Negro|Supreme Being]] invites the protagonist into a white ''loft''.
* The Vincenzo Natali film ''Nothing'' is mostly set in a white void.
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* The shower at the beginning of ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119809/ Nowhere]'' is a white void room. The movie starts off with credits over a white screen and pans down, down, down to show the main character, named Dark, in a white void with gray steam. A shower head seemingly floating in space. The scene is shot from far away so that Dark looks dwarfed by the infinite whiteness on the screen. When his mother knocks on the bathroom door, the shower is seen for the cramped, normal utility that it is.
* The time travel chamber in ''[[Guest From the Future]]'' is a blank white room with a small control stand in the center.
* The Day Of Wonders virtual reality program in the ''[[Apocalypse (Film)|Apocalypse]]'' film series by Cloud Ten Pictures takes place in a white room with the [[Digital Avatar]] of the Antichrist offering whoever enters it the [[Mark of the Beast]], with the alternative being death, usually by decapitation.
* ''[[Mission to Mars]]'' features one inside the Face of Mars.
* In Richard Lester's ''The Knack (and how to get it)'', Tom sees a room is for rent in the protagonist's home, moves in unannounced, and promptly starts painting everything in it white, including the furniture, floor and windowpanes. Tom is a bit mad, and was evicted from his last place for painting ''it'' white.
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== Literature ==
* [[William Sleator]]'s SF novel, ''[[House of Stairs (Literature)|House of Stairs]]'' where the setting is just a big white void... criss-crossed with stairs.
** And one toilet, and a pellet dispenser. And somewhere, presumably very far off, is an elevator that gets you out.
*** That toilet is their only water supply (so they wash up in it too), and the only non-stairs element besides the machine. It constantly flushes, but still.
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* Inverted in ''The Time Ships'', by [[Stephen Baxter]]. The Time Traveler is imprisoned by Morlocks by means of a single shaft of light in a seemingly-infinite ''black'' room. He's psychologically unable to walk out of sight of the beam.
* Played straight in ''Dr. Franklin's Island'' by Ann Halam. Semi, the main character, and Miranda, her friend, are able to communicate through radio when they are animals, but in a white-void-like space where they both appear in their human forms, where Miranda has a large black clamp on her leg, the same as the one she is wearing to stop her flying away as a bird.
* Once Harry {{spoiler|figures out who killed him}} in ''Ghost Story'', he is taken out of the [[Battle in Thethe Center of Thethe Mind]] between Molly and {{spoiler|Corpsetaker}}, and ends up in one of these while he talks to Uriel.
* [[The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect]] has several characters in a post-[[Technological Singularity]] universe living in white void rooms. Most, though, find that they don't really want to live in a completely featureless white void, and and up decorating their living areas, thus completely missing the point of not owning anything when there's no longer any meaning to concepts like "home".
 
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* ''The Eyewitness'' series of science/nature documentaries feature [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSNJpoUmJcg an opening sequence ]in which the camera zooms through a kind of [[Mishmash Museum]] with animals of all sorts running about; the walls also have screens and picture frames depicing various images from the natural world.
** The museum itself is shown as being like this throughout the documentaries themselves, with video clips being introduced by the camera panning to the screens and picture frames. It also had the added strangeness effect of the pictures depicted being different every time, because they would be related to the subject matter.
* ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'':
** The show featured an early example in "The Mind Robber" serial, as the Doctor and his companions find themselves trapped in the land of Fiction. Ths being ''Doctor Who'', you actually ''could'' see the edges of the walls, but the cast never did...
** "Warrior's Gate" is set almost entirely in one of these, to eerie effect.
* Used a few times in ''[[Star Trek]]'', albeit they're not so much "rooms" as actual white voids:
** ''[[Star Trek: theThe Next Generation]]''. At the beginning of the episode "Tapestry", Picard apparently dies on Dr Crusher's operating table after being shot through the heart. He wakes up in a bright white void in which he can make out a white-clothed figure who reaches out for him {{spoiler|only for it to turn out to be Q, who informs Jean Luc that he's dead and they're going to spend eternity together. Picard is not impressed.}}
** In the ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "The Visitor", a white void is used to represent the "subspace vacuole" that Captain Sisko is trapped in.
** Also used in ''Deep Space Nine'' when Sisko speaks with the Prophets.
* [[Art Attack]]
* An episode of ''[[The X -Files]]'' had Mulder captured and interrogated in one of these rooms.
 
 
== Music ==
* The white background was [http://goldenageofmusicvideo.com/?p=226 a popular design theme] among post-punk and [[New Wave (Music)|New Wave]] musicians in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in keeping with the [[Three Chords and Thethe Truth|stripped-back sensibility]] that these genres developed from.
** 999 - ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMlpqOsc2BU&feature=player_embedded Homicide]''
** Buggles - ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs Video Killed The Radio Star]''
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* The video for ABBA's "Take a Chance on Me" as seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UvtOQnPE5c&NR=1 here]. With the exception of a slight shadow of a corner in some shots.
** The video for Erasure's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSnLGdpjWf4 cover] of the same song.
* [[Lady Gaga (Music)|Lady Gaga]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTzb3L4jXmU The Brain]
* The [[Stone Temple Pilots (Music)|Stone Temple Pilots]] did a [[Retraux]] example with ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0gAxuvo5rc Big Bang Baby]''.
* The video for Tatjana's 'Santa Maria'.
 
== Video Games ==
* Castle Oblivion from ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' may count as an entire building made of White Rooms if it weren't for the revisited levels from the previous game, and the ''tiny'' decorations in the rooms. Even the revisited levels themselves are described as White Void Rooms that have been magically reshaped by Sora's memories, and in ''Kingdom Hearts 2'', Namine gets a similarly blank white room of her own in an otherwise dark, dusty mansion. The room's in-game name is, appropriately enough, "The White Room".
* The white room behind the mirror in ''[[Super Mario Bros.|Super Mario 64 DS]]''. It has in it just one star.
* The Rakatan prison in ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic]]''.
* In ''[[Super Paper Mario (Video Game)|Super Paper Mario]]'', when {{spoiler|Sammer's Kingdom is destroyed, the door that led there now leads to a vast, empty landscape.}}
* The original ''Hitman'' game ends in one of these; a later release, ''Hitman: Contracts'' starts off in that same room.
* Several appear in the original [[.hack]] games, sparsely furnished and frequently falling apart due to corrupt or deleted data.
** [[.hack GU Games|.hack//G.U.]] has some as well, most notably The Creator's Room.
* The map [[GarrysGarry's Mod|gm_construct]] has one of these, until you change the color of its walls.
** Fun glitch-make the walls in that room transparent. Enjoy the trippy!
* When transitioning between areas in both ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' games, Altair/Ezio are placed in a room like this until the area fully loads.
** This trope also comes into play immediately after killing a major target so that Altair/Ezio can [[Talking Is a Free Action|take their time having a nice chat]] with the victim before escaping.
* The final [[Cutscene]] in ''[[Command and Conquer]] 4: Tiberian Twilight'' is in a white void room [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8No_Ea6tmYY inside the Scrin tower].
* [[Big Bad|Ganondorf's]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|ultimate fate]] at the end of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' is to [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|be sealed away]] in [[Another Dimension]] which is depicted as a white, formless void where [[And I Must Scream|he can do nothing but spew vile invectives at the heroes.]]
* The final battle in ''[[King of Fighters|King of Fighters XIII]]'' against {{spoiler|Ash under Saiki's control}} takes place in a [[White Void Room]].
* ''[[Sonic Generations (Video Game)|Sonic Generations]]'' uses one as its [[Hub Level]], with small previews of each of the nine levels being used as their entrances.
* ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'' final phase of the {{spoiler|Chakratarvin the Creator}} boss fight the boss itself turn an entire plane of existence into this just by his raw power alone. It looks a lot like The Creator's room from [[.hack GU]] above. Helps that it's made by [[Cyber Connect 2|The Same Company]], and is likely a [[Shout -Out]].
 
 
== Web Animation ==
* In the ''[[Homestar Runner (Web Animation)|Homestar Runner]]'' short [http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail110.html "for kids"], Homsar's [[Show Within a Show|educational preschool kids' show]], ''Whaddaya Know Haddi-man?'' opens with a shot of Homsar in a featureless white room.
 
 
== Webcomics ==
* [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=580 The idling holosimulator] from ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court (Webcomic)|Gunnerkrigg Court]]''.
* And, of course, [http://angryflower.com/emptyw.gif Bob the Angry Flower].
* In a guest storyline in ''[[Narbonic]]'', Helen shuts herself in one of these to magnify her madness in order to defeat a psychic.
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== Web Original ==
* ''[[Mr. Deity]]'' is set primarily in one of these.
* One of these plays a major [[Chekhov's Gun|plot point]] in ''[[DarwinsDarwin's Soldiers]]'' story ''Card of Ten''.
* In ''[[Echo Chamber (Web Video)|Echo Chamber]]'', the Administrator's headquarters is one of these.
 
 
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* Some [[Looney Tunes]] cartoons end with this void when the cartoon's film supposedly breaks, after which a character steps out into this to [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|address the audience]]: "Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstance beyond our control, we are unable to continue with this picture."
** In this case, the blank white image is used simply to show that the film is gone and the camera is just projecting white on the screen. (Remember they all started out shown exclusively in theaters) The idea is that the audience might not be sure the whole thing's a gag... until the character shows up, anyway.
* The ''[[Teen Titans (Animationanimation)|Teen Titans]]'' episode "How Long Is Forever?" has a seemingly insane [[Bad Future]] version of Raven being held in a white room, apparently for her own protection.
** [[Super-Powered Evil Side|Considering what she did]] to Dr. Light, this might have been a good thing for everyone else too.
* [[Invader Zim]]'s Room... with a MOOSE!!
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** Minus the floor. It's literally a bottomless abyss.
* According to a ''[[Family Guy]]'' cutaway, Purgatory is this.
* In the ''[[FostersFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'' movie, Frankie is held prisoner by an imaginary friend who controls a pretend world in a toy box. (Aactually, she's more of the first person he's seen in a very long time and so he gets very excited. She genuinely enjoys the experience but she's not allowed to leave his world.) When Mr. Herriman tries to take her back to Foster's, the friend in control of the world gets very angry. As he chases them he destroys the world and it becomes one of these, albeit with debris and landmarks still around.