History Main / BigDumbObject

* ''Literature/CountToTheEschaton'' features an object called "Eschaton Directional Engine" build by multiple ancient Super Clusters Intelligence. It's Wright's version of RealLife [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor "Great Attractor"]]. [[spoiler:The purpose of Eschaton Directional Engine is to determine the fate of the universe at the Heat Death. It will either bend spacetime positively, into a sphere, or negatively, into a potato-chip shape.]]

** ''Literature/LookToWindward'': Airspheres are planet-sized bubble-like artificial habitats with no internal gravity and filled with air (and bizarre airborne lifeforms) built by a long-vanished race for reasons unknown. They double as [[WorldInTheSky Worlds In The Sky]].
** ''Literature/{{Matter}}'': Muck of the story is set on a Shellworld, which is an artificial planet consisting of multiple hollow concentric spheres. Each internal sphere consists of a different discrete planetary habitat. We are told that there are thousands of Shellworlds and that they were built by a long-vanished race for possibly nefarious purposes. [[spoiler:They also have a nasty habit of killing their inhabitants, though nobody has worked out what triggers them to do this.]] We also see a Nestworld, a vast [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topopolis Topopolis]]-like structure surrounding a star built by a contemporary neighbouring race of the Culture; we are told just this one Nestworld is home to ''40 trillion'' beings, which is more than the entire Culture combined.

* ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'': The episode "Banana Planet" revolves on the trio traveling to an actual big ol' yellow banana in space after receiving an sos signal.

** ''Rainbow Mars'' features a tree large enough to conceivably be used as a space elevator. Turns out to be a very, very bad thing to have on your planet though, as it literally requires ''the entire planet's water supply'' to survive.

* ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'': The eponymous object is an alien ship fifty kilometers long which comes zipping into the Sol System. It is seemingly abandoned but eventually [[spoiler:slingshots around the Sun and disappears back into space, basically using the sun as a refueling stop]]. In the sequels it's revealed that the Rama spacecraft [[spoiler:is part of a vast intergalactic network tasked with collecting samples of intelligent life, which was made (essentially) by God]].

* ''Website/OrionsArm'' has a number of variations. Ranging from the more mundane DysonSphere and [[RingWorldPlanet Banks Orbital]], up to unique examples like the Leviathan which is 10 lightyears across, has a mass of over a billion suns, and is on a collision course with the Triangulum Galaxy. The Mutual Progress Association, one of the superpowers of the Orion Arm, likes building Big Dumb Objects; one of their more impressive projects is Kepleria, a series of RingWorldPlanet-esque structures shaped like frameworks of each of the Platonic solids as opposed to rings. The five solids are nested inside each other - with a star in the center. The MPA disassembled an entire solar system to build it.

* ''Website/OrionsArm'' has a number of variations. Ranging from the more mundane DysonSphere and [[RingWorldPlanet Banks Orbital]], up to unique examples like the Leviathan which is 10 lightyears across, has a mass of over a billion suns, and is on a collision course with the Triangulum Galaxy.
** The Mutual Progress Association, one of the superpowers of the Orion Arm, likes building Big Dumb Objects. One of their more impressive projects is Kepleria, a series of RingWorldPlanet-esque structures shaped like frameworks of each of the Platonic solids as opposed to rings. The five solids are nested inside each other - with a star in the center. The MPA disassembled an entire solar system to build it.
* Many of the objects recorded and contained by the ''Website/SCPFoundation'' are this.

May overlap with MileLongShip or even PlanetSpaceship. Compare ThatsNoMoon, StandardSciFiFleet, and DysonSphere. The makers usually qualify as NeglectfulPrecursors. Not to be confused with BigDumbBody, which refers to a character who becomes a target for [[GrandTheftMe mind control]] because of his or her brute strength.

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' has a number of variations. Ranging from the more mundane DysonSphere and [[RingWorldPlanet Banks Orbital]], up to unique examples like the Leviathan which is 10 lightyears across, has a mass of over a billion suns, and is on a collision course with the Triangulum Galaxy.

* ''Manga/OutlawStar'''s Galactic Leyline is a massive library left behind by an ancient and now dead race. Several different factions spend the entire series theorizing about it and looking for it, and the eponymous CoolSpaceship and accompanying SpaceshipGirl were created for the purpose of finding it.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monolith_sm2_91.jpg]]]]

* The giant black sphere (an egg that contains a monster), cube (a magical prison), and spike (attached to a sea monster) in ''[[Manga/FairyTail Fairy Tail]]: Ice Trail''.
* ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'': the Golgotha Object, first glimpsed in the third film and fully shown in the fourth. It resembles a cross made of crosses linked at their bases, uniformly black covered in white glyphs. It's never quite revealed what it is or what its purpose is, but it's seemingly the only permanent fixture in the "[[EldritchLocation Anti-Universe]]".

* Creator/MarvelComics:

* The Talisman from ''ComicBook/{{Revolutionaries}}'': a big, mysterious alien obelisk with vaguely-defined mystical powers.

* The Tet from ''Film/{{Oblivion|2013}}''.

* The eponymous object in {{VideoGame/Rama}}, is an alien ship fifty kilometers long which comes zipping into the Sol System.

* The [[CosmicKeystone Zohar Modifier]] drives the entire plot of both ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}''. It can be best described as one of those dice that God plays with the universe, capable of [[WindsOfDestinyChange changing probabilities to the desire of its user]] and as a side effect can also [[PerpetualMotionMachine provide an unlimited source of energy.]] It is also the [[SealedGoodInACan prison]] of the [[PhysicalGod Wave Existence]] (or U-DO, depending on the game), and its design was heavily based on the monolith from ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' mixed with Judeo-Christian and [[UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}} Gnostic]] elements like the rest of the games. In fact, it's the basis of Creator/MonolithSoft's name after they split from Creator/{{Squaresoft}}. [[spoiler: ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' reveals that the Zohar (known as the Conduit in that game) is also behind both its own plot and the plot of ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'', linking all three series together by this one artifact.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{QUBE}}'''s AmnesiacHero protagonist is supposedly on a strange cube-shaped one of these, trying to save Earth from being hit by it... but someone then then claims that this story is a lie and that they're all actually in an ElaborateUndergroundBase. Uncertainty as to which story is true persists until the end of the game.
** The second game gives more information about the structure. [[spoiler:Not only is it not dumb, it's actually an alien HiveMind being with super-advanced intelligence that is trying to understand (and even befriend) humans.]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}''

** Cybertron itself was ultimately revealed to be [[GeniusLoci no ordinary planet]]...

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor Great Attractor]]. A supermassive... ''thing'' affecting the movement of some galaxies (including the Milky Way). We can see the effect its gravity has on various galaxies, but we can't see the thing itself, so speculation abounds as to what it could be. Currently, the consensus is that it's probably a pair of large galaxy clusters that are difficult to see due to our view being blocked by the rest of the Milky Way, but for that very reason that region of space is difficult to study in detail. More details [[http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/kocevski-1-06/ here]]. See also the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow Dark flow]], ''something'' claimed by some scientists to exist far beyond the edge of the observable Universe and said to be able to pull ''entire clusters of galaxies''.

* Comicbook/{{Galactus}} of Creator/MarvelComics fame is arguably a Big Dumb Object. Or, possibly a Big Smart Object. He just sort of wades through the galaxy eating things and creating general terror. His ship, Taa II, fits the bill being the size of our solar system and so complex that Reed Richards is unable to even guess at most of its functions.
* Creator/JackKirby's ''[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey 2001]]'' series officially introduced the black monoliths from the movie into the Marvel Universe by letting them interact with Aaron Stack the Machine Man. The canonicity of this was dubious for years, but confirmed in the last issue of Machine Man's 1990's series, ''X-51,'' where it turns out that the Monolith aliens are, in fact, Marvel's Celestials.
* The first ''Comicbook/NewMutants'' annual featured an abandoned spacecraft the size of the inner solar system. It was also programmed to self-destruct. In a ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman moment, the only hope of averting the self-destruction was Cypher, a kid whose mutant power consisted entirely of [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway the ability to learn new languages quickly]].

* The Dutch comic book ComicBook/{{Storm|DonLawrence}} has a trilogy involving "the intruder", a huge cluster of Von-Neumann probes that failed to separate from each other after reproducing.

[[folder:Films--Live-Action]]

*** The Doomsday Machine can chop planets into rubble with an anti-proton beam and use the chunks as fuel. Its hull material is derived from neutron stars [[ArtisticLicensePhysics somehow]].
*** The ''Fesarius'' is a sphere ship a mile in diameter that contains a crew of only one and is used primarily as a bluff.
*** The generational ship ''Yonada'' is disguised as a giant asteroid. Its crew doesn't know they are on a ship and would not be told until they disembark on their destination planet.
*** The Kalandans built artificial planets as outposts. The crew discover one in "That Which Survives".

*** Scotty is found by the ''Enterprise'' D marooned on the surface of an abandoned DysonSphere that is still programmed to draw ships into its docking bay with a powerful tractor beam. [[spoiler:The DysonSphere is abandoned because conditions inside have become very dangerous.]] The ExpandedUniverse strongly implied that the builders of the Dyson Sphere went on to become the Borg.
*** ''Tin Man'' is a sentient biological ship that's been stranded for thousands of years without a crew. Both the Federation and Romulans want access to it, but only a powerful telepath can operate it. [[spoiler:It is attempting suicide by supernova due to loneliness, having not had a crew in forever. A rather terrifying sort of existence, if you think about it.]]

** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'':
*** The Caretaker's Array is a giant space station whose technology is all but forgotten by those that made it. It can power a planet and transport ships from tens of thousands of light-years away.
*** There are two of them, by the way.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'':
*** Delphic Expanse spheres were moon-sized devices that could create spatial anomalies when networked together.

** The [[EenieMeenieMinyMoai moai]] of Easter Island, though they're not actually ancient—the oldest of them are 12th century.

* The Yggdrasil is this in every ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'' game.

'''Kevyn:''' Tell her about the hurricanes.