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{{trope}}
[[File:GrandiaMap_9067.jpg|link=Grandia (
All around where you grew up is a barrier. No one knows what lies on the other side. Or if they do, they're not telling. It could be [[Here There Be Dragons]], or your ancient enemies, or it could be that you and everyone you know is [[Sealed Good in
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.
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Note that, despite the name, the barrier does not have to be a literal wall.
If the barrier surrounds a community, it is an isolated [[Small Secluded World]] or [[City in
{{examples}}
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* 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.)
* ''[[
* In the oneshot manga ''Island'', by Komi Naoshi, the town the main characters live in is surrounded by a huge wall, much like a well. When the islanders turn 14, they are shown the truth- outside their island is nothing but a vast sea. {{spoiler|The islanders believe that all the land in the world sunk and thus all other countries were drowned, making it useless to go outside the island. It turns out that only the island sank, probably because of land subsidence and earthquakes.}}
* Tokyo Jupiter in ''[[
* A variety occurs in ''[[
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== Film ==
* The forest containing ''[[The Village]]'' is closed off from the outside world by a wall. Turns out there's a reason for that.
* The desert that surrounds the Maitlands's house in ''[[
* The walls of Truman's enclosed world in ''[[
* The broken bridge in ''Dellamorte Dellamore'', aka ''Cemetary Man''.
* In ''[[Dark City]]'', John Murdoch tries to reach Shell Beach; instead he finds a wall at the edge of the city.
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== Literature ==
* The [[Trope Namer]] is a short story by Theodore R. Cogswell in which it separated a magic-dominated half of the world with a science-dominated one.
* The one located in the town of Wall in [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[Stardust (
* In ''[[The Sword of Truth]]'' / ''[[Legend of the Seeker]]'', there is a (almost impenetrable) great barrier around a region called "The Midlands", which is the central geography of the story.
** That barrier is also re-used in ''Naked Empire'' of the same series, to close off a group of people from the rest of the world.
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** 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
* 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 ''[[Discworld
* 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.
* The Green Wall in Yevgeni Zamyatin's ''[[
* Ted Chiang's "Tower of Babylon" is a speculative fiction short story where it's more of a ceiling {{spoiler|or floor}}. The vault of heaven is a literal stone roof to the universe, and the Babylonians have built a tower to talk to God, who they believe resides above it. {{spoiler|One of them makes it, only to emerge from a cavern deep in the Earth, back where he started--somewhat similar to the Clarke example above, the world loops back on itself.}}
* Marlen Haushofer's "The Wall" is about a woman one day waking up in a mountain valley with the whole valley suddenly surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable wall. With all life outside the wall apparently dead, the book deals with her trying to survive inside the valley. Wondering if she is the last human alive, she speculates about the origin of the wall, {{spoiler|which in the end is never revealed. She often thinks about trying to leave the valley, but never can't bring herself to risk it. What happens with her in the end is left open to the reader.}}
* ''[[Perry Rhodan]]'' uses this on a number of occasions (including a 'wall' around the entire ''Milky Way Galaxy'' that the protagonists had to deal with after losing a few hundred years in an unexpected stasis field while outside, once). There's also a more literal example in Wardall, a tide-locked planet with a wall running around its entire circumference following the terminator. The planet's former natives apparently lived ''inside'' said wall rather than on either side of it, not surprising considering the conditions there; by the time the issue set on the world opens, though, its only inhabitants are the surviving crew members of a crashed pirate vessel and their descendants.
* The wall separating Experiment House property from Narnia in ''[[The Silver Chair]].''
* A literal example is the spherical Walls of the World from [[
* 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".
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== Live Action TV ==
* The [[
** Another old series show, "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", where the world is a hollow asteroid.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story "Inferno", the Doctor pushes through a barrier in time and ends up in a [[Mirror Universe]].
** Also used in the ''[[Doctor Who Magazine
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== Tabletop Games ==
* The borders between the physical realm and the spirit worlds in the ''[[
** The Gauntlet still stands in the [[
* [[
** 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.
** ''[[
* The Weirding Wall in ''[[
* ''[[Paranoia (
== Video Games ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[Grandia (
** 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]].
** ''[[
* In ''[[
* ''[[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 ''[[
* ''[[Star Control]] 2'' has slave shields -- barriers around homeworlds of defeated races who don't want to fight on Ur-Quan side.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda|The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker]]'': The Great Sea has no physical barrier to keep you from leaving the map. However, your boat tells you that it's dangerous to leave and turns you around.
** ''[[
* Gensokyo, the setting of the ''[[Touhou]]'' games, is walled off from the Outside World by the Great Hakurei Barrier [[Fantastic Nature Reserve|to preserve]] [[Youkai]], though people and objects occasionally slip through (particularly things the outside world has stopped believing in).
* There's no actual wall on Hillys in [[Beyond Good and Evil]], but if the player strays too close to the edge of the map, a series of pillars will rise up out of the water and warn the player that they're leaving territorial waters. Trying to get past them will just lead to them shooting non-lethal lasers at the player's vehicle to turn it around.
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== Webcomics ==
* 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 ''[[
|