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{{trope}}
{{quote|- "No questions asked. Up we get and off at a gallop, fearful lest we come too late!"
- "Too late for what?"
- "How would I know? We haven't got there yet."|''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]''}}
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Commonly, these stories feature a failed escape sequence, and none of the outside world will be seen during the escape. The characters are inevitably led right back to the plot's world.
This is ''not'' when a story takes place in a [[Small Secluded World]] such as [[Lost|an island]] or [[The Cube (film)|a box]]: In those cases there ''is'' still a universe outside the place where the characters are [[The Wall Around the World|trapped]]. The characters are still connected to the outside world by their memories, and there are people in the outside world who could miss them.
Defying this trope is a common way to [[Deconstructed Trope]] or avert ''other'' tropes: It's easy to be [[The Omniscient]] when there is so little to know in the first place, just add more information and the character turns out to be [[Not So Omniscient After All]]. On the flipside of this coin, philosophical thought-experiments often ask us to accept a
{{examples}}
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In the ''Age of X'' storyline in the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] line, a clue that something is wrong with the alternate reality the characters find themselves in is that there ''is'' nothing outside the walls of their compound, and the soldiers that attack seem to only have a few names, repeated over and over.
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* Deconstructed in ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]''. As the cover says: "Question reality".
* ''[[
* Deliberately invoked in the ''[[Cube]]'' series. The inconsistent internal logic from movie to movie is designed to eliminate the possibility of a wider world beyond the Cube.
** Averted in ''Cube Zero'', where it's shown to basically be a last-chance experimentation chamber for death-row prisoners. {{spoiler|At least until one of the operators helps someone escape and ends up with a forged "confession" and a lobotomy before getting thrown in himself, with heavy hints throughout that that's basically how ''everyone'' ended up in there. Then we find out that what we see in the prequel is basically a first generation prototype compared to the later Cubes, which seem to have less and less of a plausible reason to exist.}}
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* ''[[In Bruges]]'' toys with this. The entire film takes place in Bruges (apart from two very short establishing character shots). Ray ''hates'' Bruges. When he finally manages to escape, only the inside of the train is shown, and he's led right back to Bruges again anyway.
* ''[[Dogville]]'' plays this for drama. It turns out that {{spoiler|Grace could have escaped all along -- she was just too stubborn}}.
* [[Ridley Scott]]'s ''[[Legend (film)|Legend]]'' takes place almost entirely within a magical forest and Darkness's palace. There's virtually no indication of what the world outside the forest is like.
== Literature ==
* In ''[[Coraline (
* A minor Finnish [[High Fantasy]] wannabe novel called ''Kuolleet kaupungit'' ("The Dead Cities") may have averted this trope in some other ways, but certainly embodied it in one sense. There was a world map included with various locations marked all around its two continents. In the course of the story, the protagonists visit pretty much every single one of these locations. Looking at the map after that, one is left with the impression there isn't anyplace else left to go in the whole world, and even if there is, it must still be a rather small world.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[The Order of the Stick
** Later, it turns out that characters who aren't relevant enough to the plot to be named actually don't even ''[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0703.html have]'' names... at least not until they [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0472.html become relevant] to the plot.
* ''[[
** On the other hand, there are cases where we do have a glimpse outside the plot, with current events like how [[Barack Obama]] is the president, and other people completely irrelevant to the plot, like the [[Twitter|Serious Business]] and [[
** At one point Jade is shown browsing a real artist's gallery on [[Furry Fandom|Fur Affinity]].
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Teen Titans (
** We also meet the Titans East, who set up shop on the other side of the country, there's a [[Wacky Racing]] cross-country episode, an episode where Robin goes off to train somewhere in what may be China, etc. Possibly most notably, a fight towards the end of Season 1 turns out to have been taking place on {{spoiler|a [[Batman|WayneCorp]] building.}}
** Even so, we meet the ''teen superheroes'' of the world while they're traveling, and little else. We also get nothing of the teams' non-spandex lives. [[The Powers That Be]] were deliberate about this.
* ''[[Total Drama Island]]''. Justified in the first two seasons, where the whole thing was a [[Show Within a Show]] trapping the teens in an island and a film lot, but even in the third season, where they're in a different country each week, they still run into no one except those that work on the show, even in the middle of New York (except for ''one'' woman sitting on a bench and her baby).
* ''[[
* ''[[Ed Edd and Eddy]]'' takes place in the Cul-de-Sac they live in with the other neighbouring kids and noone else. Later on in the 5th and last season, they all go back to school once the summer ends, but even then it's just them ...{{spoiler|except for the movie where Eddy's big brother appeared}}.
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