History Main / BigLabyrinthineBuilding

** Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. From the surface it appears to be a series of disconnected buildings, but underneath the ground a network of tunnels connects many of the major buildings on campus. The tunnels are a hangover from the Cold War when most of the school was built, but have become extremely useful for enthusiastic students during the semi-Annual game of ''LARP/HumansVsZombies''.

* Seemingly endless, maze-like mansions and other buildings are a common trope in videogames, including the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'', ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'', some levels of the original ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and its sequels, and even text adventure games from the early era of home computing such as ''VideoGame/VoodooCastle''.

This building is so big and labyrinthine that few people know its deeper recesses. It might or might not contain big rooms or pieces of equipment, but a lot of the bulk is taken up by ordinary-sized rooms and corridors. Many are very old buildings, with successive generations building new attachments, cellars, and floors as needed. Overlaps a lot with BuildingOfAdventure. Compare ClownCarBase.

* Most of ''{{VideoGame/Inside}}'' is spent traveling further and further [[MeaningfulName inside]] some kind of colossal underground facility, much of which has been abandoned and/or flooded. Other parts, however, remain busy and fully functional.

** The Imperial Palace on Coruscant is a mammoth building, with its grand corridor easily able to accommodate an Imperial Star Destroyer. It is full of secret passages, hangers, and other assorted facilities.

** These disorienting effects, combined with iconic but rather unassuming front entrance (it looks like just another London townhouse, if an expensive one), has led some to joke it's actually BiggerOnTheInside; BBC political journalist Andrew Marr once dubbed it "the brick [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]]."

* Shopping districts in colder cities are often interlinked by skyways and underground corridors so customers can move freely while avoiding the weather, essentially merging them into this trope.

** The Ministry of Magic is a sprawling underground complex (with "windows" that provide sunlight and fresh air, but don't actually open to the outside) accessed through a fake phone booth. The Department of Mysteries takes this UpToEleven, and is probably deliberately designed to be as confusing as possible.

* Every dungeon in in every ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' game. Its worth mentioning that a decent number of them are ''temples'' which really brings up the issue of where the prayer goes on, and why the faithful have to get by lava, bottomless pits, and several false paths to get to it.

* ''VideoGame/ {{Control}} The oldest house is already difficult to navigate, it also periodically rearranges itself.

* Donnafugata Palazzo in Lampedusa's 'Film/TheLeopard' has many abandoned rooms, and exploring them provides a way for the characters Angelica and Tancredi to keep their hands off each other during their extended betrothal.
* The Labyrinth in Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''Literature/MajipoorSeries''. Home of the Pontifex, who is always the last Coronal to serve on Castle Mount. This strange city is in a desert region and is built almost entirely below ground. Many layers beneath the ground, the bureaucracy that actually runs Majipoor is busy with their statistical analyses and other "official" paperwork. The Pontifex himself, technically the top executive of the planet, is more or less stuck here. The Pontifex's Castle on Majipoor's tallest mountain also counts.

* The Underthing in ''Literature/TheKingKillerChronicles'' and ''Literature/TheSlowRegardOfSilentThings'' seems to be the result of centuries of building and expansion. Only Auri seems to know her way around down there.

%% * Hogwarts, from the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' books.

* The Labyrinth in Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''Literature/MajipoorSeries''. Home of the Pontifex, who is always the last Coronal to serve on Castle Mount. This strange city is in a desert region and is built almost entirely below ground. Many layers beneath the ground, the bureaucracy that actually runs Majipoor is busy with their statistical analyses and other "official" paperwork. The Pontifex himself, technically the top executive of the planet, is more or less stuck here. The Pontifex's Castle on Majipoor's tallest mountain also counts.* ''Literature/TheMirrorOfHerDreams'' gives us Orison, a castle full of {{Bizarrchitecture}}.

* The Infinity Avengers Mansion from ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'', created by Hank Pym during Dan Slott's ongoing run. The Mansion exists in a quantum state in between dimensions, and it is, well... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Infinite]].

* From ''Manga/SoulEater'', the DWMA is intentionally designed to be confusing. It's for [[TrainingFromHell training the young meisters to be able to navigate even in confusing situations.]] Kids and even teachers get lost all the time. It's PlayedForLaughs.
* In ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross''[=/=]''Anime/{{Robotech}}'', Hikaru/[[DubNameChange Rick]] and Minmay actually get lost inside the SDF-1 (a GiantRobot big enough to fit a small city inside) for an episode or so. Later a party of humans find themselves hiding in an immense forgotten corridor on a Zentraedi ship that's even larger than the SDF-1. In the [[Anime/SuperDimensionCavalrySouthernCross second season]] of ''Robotech'', the alien invaders' colony ships are similarly vast.

* Las Noches from ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has some high ceilings and a county-sized opening in the center, but even without these, it's still roughly the size of a small country. Corridors can and do go anywhere. Oh, and they can be [[MobileMaze changed]] by someone sitting at the control centre.... letting Gin [[{{Troll}} play with the buttons]] is a very bad idea.

* ''The Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' has the House Absolute - the home of the Autarch. Not only is the House so vast and complex that its extents are unknown, but there is a secret "Second House" coextensive with the first. The Citadel of Nessus is also vast and labyrinthine, but arguably more a complex than a single building.

* ''Literature/ImpracticalMagic'': Istima is a floating city where the MagicSchool built upwards and downwards until the entire island is riddled with buried city blocks, strange rooms, natural canals, and other microcosms. Most buildings are in an of themselves hidden labyrinths, for instance the Understacks.

* The castle/city in Mervyn Peake’s ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'' easily meets all of the criteria, and provides the page illustration. Given that the protagonist of books 2 and 3 of the trilogy is the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, it is perhaps on the order of 2000 years old.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' gives us [[BigFancyCastle Harrenhal]]. It's big. It's got five massive main towers connected by a veritable rabbit warren of courtyards, corridors, halls of varying sizes, rooms (also of varying sizes) and jury-rigged, tacked-on walkways... all of which are in various states of repair, some even open to the sky. And... that's not the worst of it. Those jury-rigged walkways? Have mostly been built to bypass the outright uninhabitable ([[MalevolentArchitecture and very, very unsafe]]) sections of the castle. Which includes at least three of the aforementioned towers that could rain either loose masonry, bats or both down on you. New hires are explicitly warned ''not'' to enter sections of the place they aren't familiar with alone, since nobody will bother trying to find them should they get themselves lost and, e.g. plummet through a rickety floor to their deaths or die of hunger before finding a known zone. To walk through Harrenhal in full confidence of knowing where you are and how to reach one of the active kitchens from any given point? Live there for, say, two decades. [[NoOSHACompliance Only then will you have had a chance to learn all the quirks.]]

* Every dungeon in in every ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' game. Its worth mentioning that a decent number of them are ''temples'' which really brings up the issue of where the prayer goes on, and why the faithful have to get by lava, bottomless pits, and several false paths to get to it.
* Offices in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' go all over the place, with random elevators that service only two floors, small rooms suspended in larger ones that can only be reached by a walkway that in turn can only be reached via a different room, etc.
* The Temple of Ix from ''VideoGame/{{Nox}}'' is built like a maze filled with traps, monsters and various confusing hallways. This is because it's designed to keep intruders from taking the Weirdling. Dun Mir and Castle Galava also count.

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' with regard to the second [[LaResistance Renegade]] base, which Lloyd refers to in a skit as 'big for no reason'.
* ''VideoGame/{{Receiver}}'' takes place in a randomly-generated building.
* ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}'' can qualify as this; a planet covered in massive spikes that warp ships to different parts of the universe when approached correctly, filled with buildings and roads that randomly rearrange themselves to make travel even more difficult.

* ''VideoGame/{{Albion}}'': Khamulon is built inside a mountain and is the size of a large city. It's also periodically rebuilt to make sure intruders get lost in the infinite number of empty halls and corridors, even if they had the whole place mapped out. The final level in particular is huge and doesn't even yield any rewards for people willing to explore it.

* [[HauntedCastle Hang Castle]] in ''VideoGame/SonicHeroes'' seems to extend endlessly in every direction, with the goal being to find a way inside. Once inside, the next stage, Mystic Mansion, consists of a series of rooms with puzzles in them and vast underground caverns with dumbwaiter systems, the goal being to escape. Mystic Mansion is a MarathonLevel in a Sonic game. That's how huge it is. That being said, the castle/mansion returns to a much more normal size upon daybreak, suggesting it's actually an EldritchLocation.

* ''VideoGame/MinecraftStoryMode'': Soren resides in a large temple with dozens of underground chambers connected by a series of staircases. No one is happy about this.
--> '''Axel:''' I hope that someday I'll love something as much as Soren seems to love stairs.
* Most of ''{{VideoGame/Inside}}'' is spent traveling further and further [[MeaningfulName inside]] some kind of colossal underground facility, much of which has been abandoned and/or flooded. Other parts, however, remain busy and fully functional.
* Seemingly endless, maze-like mansions and other buildings are a common trope in videogames, including the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'', ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'', some levels of the original ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and its sequels, and even text adventure games from the early era of home computing such as ''VideoGame/VoodooCastle''.
* ''VideoGame/SunlessSkies'' has several:
** [[TheAlcatraz Piranesi]] is this to its prisoners due to having lanterns chained to their wrists that cause them to either hallucinate or truly experience AlienGeometries within Piranesi, preventing them from escaping until their gaol-time is up.
** Langley Hall is, as far as anyone knows, plain mundane {{Bizarrchitecture}}, being ''huge'' and maddeningly complicated, so much that it takes using crew and supplies to go on actual, lengthy expeditions to find specific rooms.
* The entirety of ''VideoGame/SpookysJumpScareMansion'' may as well be this, since asides from the occasional set of rooms (such as when you're about to meet a specimen), the entire layout of the mansion's interior is randomized per play-through in the main game. The game even lampshades this to an extent as a rare room you can occasionally get into shows a map of the mansion saying "You are here" and all the rooms are constantly shuffling themselves.
* ''VideoGame/ApeOut'': Disc 2 starts you at the 30th floor of a skyscraper and you have to fight your way down.

* ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends''; Madame Foster apparently once got lost in its halls for weeks.
* The ''Place that sends you Mad'' from ''The 12 Tasks of ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' is set in a Labyrinthine office building. The [[ObstructiveBureaucrat unhelpful clerks]] only make it worse.
* In ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', the protagonists' massive TreehouseOfFun towers over the surrounding neighborhood and is full of odd rooms like an aircraft hangar and a "cheese repository." While its absurd size isn't usually a plot point, one episode has the kids trekking through the most of the treehouse to stop a lice infestation, while another establishes that there's a long-abandoned lawless section of it with tribal ginnea pigs. In fact, each sector of the KND has their own massive treehouse that's likely ''just'' as labyrinthine!

** The US Department of Defense loves this trope. Another example would be the US Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska - a three-story building sitting atop at least the same number of basement levels, with corridors running underground for nearly a quarter of a mile connecting to entirely separate buildings.

* The Gunkanjima Island in Japan. It tops on a coal mine; the area of the island is 15 acres, and its built-up area is 16 acres - meaning that ''the whole island is one continuous humongous maze of buildings'' - extending at some places over the sea.
* The [[http://www.cracked.com/article/181_the-6-creepiest-places-earth/ Winchester Mystery House]] (scroll down to #4). A house in San Jose, with 160 rooms, built like a maze to confuse ghosts - with stairways disappearing into the ceiling, doors opening into walls, and lots of 13s strewn about the place.

** Several buildings of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, most notably the central "K" building - it's so confusing for new students that there is a map with a route planner on the website. Since the rooms were renumbered recently, it will be confusing for older students too.

* ''Anime/MahouSenseiNegima'':

-->'''Professor Farnsworth:''' You can't just waltz into the Central Bureaucracy. It's a tangled web of red tape and regulations. I've never been, but a friend of mine went completely mad trying to find the washroom there.