Inn Between the Worlds: Difference between revisions

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("commercial"->"advertising", "fan fiction"->"fan works", added example, "tabletop RPGs"->"tabletop games", markup, moved web original example to fan works)
 
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{{trope}}
 
It may be an inn on a road in a [[Heroic Fantasy]] world, a [[The Wild West|Wild West]] saloon, a bar in a [[The Future|high-tech space station]], or just a [[My Local|local pub]]—or it could be all of these ''at the same time''. The '''Inn Between the Worlds''' exists simultaneously in different worlds, universes and/or times, or perhaps just jumps around in the fashion of [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]. Whether you can reliably return to where you came in varies.
 
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Sometimes Inns are used as a [[Framing Device]] for the patrons to tell strange and fantastic stories of their worlds. Sometimes it enables a [[Time Travel]] or [[Trapped in Another World]] plot, where the character leaves the inn through the wrong entrance (or the ''right'' entrance depending on your point of view). Perhaps it enables a [[Crossover]] for characters from different worlds or times [[Good Guy Bar|to meet in a friendly environment]]. On rare occasions, if no one ever leaves, it may turn out to be a kind of [[Dead to Begin With|afterlife]].
 
== '''Compare with =='''
* [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]: Also an island of the fantastic in the ordinary world, but Inns don't move around as much, are much more social than Little Shops (where your interactions are almost always limited to a single shopkeeper), and are less focused on the acquisition of magical items.
* [[Bazaar of the Bizarre]]: More social than Little Shops but less than the Inn. The Inn is also not particularly focused on commerce (except food, drink, and sometimes rooms).
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* [[Good Guy Bar]]
 
== '''Contrast with =='''
* [[Void Between the Worlds]]: When there's nothing outside reality.
* [[Eldritch Location]]: A place outside reality that ''isn't'' hospitable.
 
{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* Sony made [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdWkKKSckNk one] that has various game characters hang out in a bar, who all end up cheering the player for being a great person who helped them in their time of need.
 
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The [[Nasuverse]] has the Cafe Ahnenerbe, a rustic little restaurant noted for its excellent curry, is noted as a "place of impossible meetings" since it connects to all dimensions of the [[Nasuverse]]. The end results of the meetings can be, [[Carnival Phantasm|well...eccentric]]. The one to blame is (as always when it comes to [[The Multiverse|dimensional travel]]) probably [[Tsukihime|Zelretch]].
** The Ahnenerbe is an accessible restaurant in ''[[Kara no Kyoukai:|Kara no Kyoukai]]'', but in Episode 5 it gets used this way when {{spoiler|Tomoe and Shiki}} say their farewells to each other at the end of the movie.
 
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Book 8 of ''[[The Sandman]]'' (''Worlds' End'') is set in such an inn. Book 9 mentions that there are four.
** The latest ''[[House of Mystery]]'' comic from Vertigo is set in one of these.
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* The ''[[Transformers]]'' comics had Old Maccadam's Oil House, one of the best bars on Cybertron. It's run by the titular Maccadam, who is rumored to be one of the original thirteen Transformers (and thus a multiversal nexus in and of himself), and in one comic one of the backrooms served as a hangout for dead Optimuses from across the multiverse while they were waiting for resurrection. As soon as the Optimuses (Optimi?) got revived, a gaggle of dead Megatrons showed up. Notably, except for the dead Optimi and Megatrons, its patrons are unaware that they're dining in a cross-multiversal establishment.
 
== [[Fan FictionWorks]] ==
 
== Commercial ==
* Sony made [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdWkKKSckNk one] that has various game characters hang out in a bar, who all end up cheering the player for being a great person who helped them in their time of need.
 
 
== Fan Fiction ==
* ''[[This Time Round]]'', the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' pub outside continuity, [[Good Guy Bar|a meeting place for everything]] in the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] - and every canon they've crossed over with. Inspired by the Subreality Cafe, which is this for comics characters.
* ''[[Mega Crossover/Fanfic Recs|Arisugawa's Locket]]'' also exists simultaneously across many dimensions.
* In the late 1990s there was the shared setting "Club Pluto", a ''Resort'' Between the Worlds where the [[Sailor Moon|Sailors Pluto]] from uncounted timelines could come to take a break from their taxing duty of protecting the timestream. It intersected with the meta-continuity of ''[[The Bet (fan work)|The Bet]]'', among other fics.
 
* Stan's Place in ''[[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC]]'' is this between the [[Marvel Comics]] and [[DC Comics]] universes.
** As well as the real world, indie comic distributers like [[Dark Horse Comics]] (where [[Hellboy]] hails from), and probably many more.
 
== [[Literature]] ==
* The Leaky Cauldron from ''[[Harry Potter]]'' qualifies. It's not in the Muggle world (Muggles can't see it) nor really in the wizarding world (it's in Muggle London), and leads to a portal between the two.
* ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon|Callahans Crosstime Saloon]]'' and its sequels are all about such a place. (Actually, Callahan's Bar is a perfectly normal location in spacetime, it's the ''patrons'' {{spoiler|and the barkeep}} that come from everywhere and everywhen.)
** ''Lady Callahan's'' is similar, but it is a brothel with a bar downstairs. Oddly, the innocent and regulated downstairs is so awesome some never take advantage of the other services available.
** Ditto with Arthur C. Clarke's ''Tales from the White Hart,'' [[L. Sprague de Camp|L Sprague De Camp]]'s ''Tales from Gavagan's Bar,'' and [[Larry Niven]]'s ''Tales from the Draco Tavern.''
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* A. Bertram Chandler once had Space Navy officer John Grimes inadvertently cross universes to a club for fictional naval personnel—though the original rules were bent a bit to allow non-naval ship captains such as [[Moby Dick|Ahab]] to hang out there (it's hinted that [[James Bond|Commander Bond]] had to strong-arm [[The Caine Mutiny|Captain Queeg]] somewhat to make him stop objecting to Ahab's inclusion). [[The Jeeves|Jeeves]] is the chief servant at the club, is fully aware of the fictional nature of all involved, and asks Grimes (approximate quote): "The question is, sir, are you an ''enduring'' creation?"
 
== [[Live -Action TV]] ==
 
== Live Action TV ==
* The Void from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' which is stated by the Doctor as sometimes being referred to as Hell.
** And in the episode "The Doctor's Wife", they visit the bubble universe which the Doctor describes as a "sinkhole in reality". He strongly tries to emphasize that it is not a universe per se, but just outside the universe.
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* On ''[[Fringe]]'', {{spoiler|the building on Liberty Island where the machine is kept}}.
 
== Tabletop [[RPGsTabletop Games]] ==
 
== Tabletop [[RPGs]] ==
* Sigil from the ''[[Planescape]]'' [[Dungeons & Dragons|D&D]] setting is the city equivalent of this trope—located on the inside of a torus on top of an infinitely tall spire located in the exact center of the planes (who are infinite in size—no, don't think too hard about that one), it is simultaneously connected to almost everywhere in D&D cosmology through its virtually infinite amounts of portals, all of whom differ in size, place they lead to and what opens them. Because of this, Sigil is a place where one can expect to find almost anything. It's still a somewhat normal town with everyday life and time that flows normally, however. Well, as much "normal" as can be a city built on the inside of a torus so that you can see it curving above you, where belief can shape reality, visited every day by strange creatures from all over the multiverse, ruled by an enigmatic being who kills those who worship her by pulling her sharp shadow over them...
** The World Serpent Inn mentioned in several [[Forgotten Realms]] [[sourcebook]]s was built in its own demiplane by an archmage from [[Forgotten Realms|Toril]], [[Spelljammer|Arcane]] and [[Cthulhumanoid|Illithid]] as a [[Truce Zone|neutral ground]] when Sigil turned out to be too violent and inconvenient for quiet business and rest. Not only is it connected to many worlds, but (unlike Sigil) is accessible to powers, and some gods visit it to relax and chat with creatures they deem interesting. It's a form of [[Good Guy Bar]], since no one wants to annoy peacefully grazing deities, and some clients in a common room ''can'' turn out to be gods on a tea-break. And even if there aren't any, [[The Bartender]] is an avatar himself—if some god just likes to meet new people and thinks it's funny, why not?
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* There is a ''[[GURPS]]'' worldbook where every adventure starts in a bar where going to the bathroom can land you literally anywhere in the multiverse.
** GURPS also has a semi-sentient Victorian Era-esque Gentleman's Club which has hundreds of doors which all lead to various alternate universes, listed in the original Time Travel supplement.
** And the newer Infinite Worlds books givesgive a brief mention of the Infinity Patrol bars. The patrons might all be from the same world, but they've been just about everywhen.
* The eponymous Floating Vagabond from the RPG ''[[Tales From The Floating Vagabond]]'' is a variation of this—it only ''exists'' in one place and time, but has a device that will randomly cause people who enter other bars in any time, reality, or location in the universe to end up there... and once it's happened once, they can ''intentionally'' cause it to happen whenever they enter another bar from then on.
* "Chez Régis" in ''[[In Nomine]] Satanis''/''Magna Veritas'', where angels and demons can [[Good Guy Bar|drink without fighting each other]].
* Though not precisely between worlds, the Hollows that characters in ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' can build do share characteristics with this trope: Built in a parallel dimension called the Hedge, a Hollow can, and usually will, open into both worlds, and its doors can be separated by vast distances in Earth-side terms (a Hollow could have entrances in Boston, London, Tokyo, and Moscow fairly easily).
 
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The Quester's Rest in ''[[Dragon Quest IX]]''. It is visited by several [[Cameo]] characters from previous [[Dragon Quest]] games; and you can meet with and travel with [[Alternate Universe]] versions of yourself. (IE, other players who have the game.)
* "Pocket D" is a [[Good Guy Bar|nightclub]] in a small [[Pocket Dimension]], in the [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ''[[City of Heroes]]'' and ''City of Villains'' (and ''City of Heroes Going Rogue''). It's accessible from multiple points in either games, and allows characters from all three to interact in a neutral environment ([[Co H]] and [[Co V]] have multiple [[PvP]] zones otherwise).
** It's also the designated location for special events, including the [[Holiday Mode|Winter and Spring]] Events.
*** Does this really count though? Both the rogue isles and Paragon city, last I checked were in the same universe.'
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* The Cafe of Broken Dreams in ''[[Fallout 2]]'' is the fourth-wall breaking version of this. It's a random encounter, but if you get it, you meet up with the NPCs of the first game, engage in jokes about character models, and get Dogmeat back.
* ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'' has the towns of Flipside and Flopside, which are said to exist between dimensions.
* ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' has a stranger than usual example in a town that disappeared out of existence for centuries, {{spoiler|only to reappear when two worlds were rejoined into the one on which the town was built. It gets even stranger during a sequence that takes you through nearly every location in the game via... [[Applied Phlebotinum|dimensional compression]]... with the town and its inhabitants being frozen in place, and a previously sealed door now serving as another interdimensional portal.}}
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[The Cross Time Cafe]]'' webcomic exists to let webcomic characters meet up outside their own continuity.
* The Pub Stub from ''[[Goats]]''.
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* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' shows Purgatory as being a Restaurant Between the Worlds, in which one eats one's venial sins to purge them from the soul. However, since the restaurant is infinite and there's only one waiter, the process can take millennia.
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
 
== Web Original ==
* The Sands of Time in ''[[Star Harbor Nights]]'' is an extradimensional tavern. Its existence has been used to justify at least one "incredibly pointless cameo" from a minor ''[[Tales of MU]]'' character.
* Ouroboros a.k.a. The Pub in the Hub of the Multiverse, from ''[[AHAlternate DotHistory: Com theThe Series]]''.
* [[GameFAQs]] has an invite only board called "Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
* "The Inn Between Realms" was a thread in the now defunct Amazon.com Science Fiction & Fantasy discussion board and [http://forums.delphiforums.com/sfboard/start its user-created continuation at Delphi] that grew spontaneously from casual chatting through roleplaying to collaborative storytelling. It was mostly set in the titular Inn which, of course, was an example of this trope. How exactly it existed "between realms" wasn't entirely clear, but one explanation was that it carried with it a small area of geography whose edges linked to random places on various worlds at different times, without visible transition lines. In any case, everyone bringing in their various original characters reflected the world-connecting nature of the location. The story [[There Is No Such Thing as Notability|remained mostly an insider thing]], but as a handful of the collaborators are published authors (no big names... yet) and many others are prospective, the setting may crop up somewhere yet.
* This is the general idea behind "dressing room" RPGs on Livejournal - the only difference being that your stay there is usually a lot longer than in other examples of this trope. The benefit of this setting is that players can come and go as they please; when a player wants to stop playing, they can simply stop posting and other characters will simply treat the disappearance as the dressing room sending your character home.
* Stan's Place in [[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC]] is this between the [[Marvel Comics]] and [[DC Comics]] universes.
** As well as the real world, indie comic distributers like [[Dark Horse Comics]] (where [[Hellboy]] hails from), and probably many more.
 
{{reflist}}