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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".
* ''[[The Truman Show]]'' has two plotlines that eventually merge. The "inner" plotline suffers heavily from World Limited to the Plot, but the "outer" plotline reveals that this is caused by [[The Masquerade|manipulation]] rather than bad storytelling.
* 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.
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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 ==
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** 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.
* ''[[Homestuck]]'': the world outside of the main characters' lives appears almost desolate. None of them seem to have any other friends apart from themselves and characters on the periphery of their interpersonal interactions (their guardians) appear almost vacant and robotic. And they're not really [[Angst? What Angst?|very affected]] by {{spoiler|Earth's imminent and unavoidable destruction}} either.
** 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]].
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