History Main / Cloudcuckooland

* Cloudcuckooland itself appears briefly in one of the prose sections of ''Comicbook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'', as part of the "Europe" section of ''The Traveller's Almanack'', a fictional world travel guide to the setting. The guide mentions that the floating ruins of Cloudcuckooland can still be spotted in a certain area of Greece if you have a strong enough telescope.

* Cloudcuckooland itself appears briefly in one of the prose sections of ''Comicbook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen''.

All cultures are to be treated with equal respect. This is a modern educational tendency brought about by anthropology and cultural relativity, and in modern TV land, by and large, even when dealing with completely fictional culture, this is a rule that's pretty well adhered to.

* If your only knowledge of Canada came from watching ''Series/DueSouth'', you'd think it was a cross between Stoneybrook from ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'' and Bear Country from ''TheBerenstainBears''.

* Website/WrongPlanet could be considered this, mostly because it was made for and by people with UsefulNotes/HighFunctioningAutism and UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome.

* On ''WesternAnimation/ToddWorld'', in the world of [=ToddWorld=], the main character Todd eats macaroni and cheese in the bathtub and likes to wear underwear on his head, but this no more bizarre than some of the things some of the other characters do on the show.

* [=PurpleEyesWTF=] is fond of creating settings like this. Between his WebVideo/CodeMENT, NonePiece, and Soul Whatever videos, almost nobody has their head screwed on right. It's to the point where one of his OnlySaneMan characters from Code MENT, Death the Kid, became a CloudcuckooLander once he returned to his home series.

The one big exception to this is Cloudcuckooland. This is a place with some really strange customs and traditions. While a FishOutOfWater or an unforgiving viewer might just instantly assume that mental illness must be involved when they land in an unfamiliar location and everyone just acts strange for no reason, all doubts are laid aside once the reality of this location sets in. In Cloudcuckooland, ''everyone'' acts like a culturally out-of-it nutjob, even when they're talking to each other about completely mundane things. When in Cloudcuckooland, survival in the cultural environment relies on one strict observance--as far as everybody here is concerned, [[TomatoInTheMirror you're the one]] who's ''really'' crazy!

Or, to be simple, this is the place where the {{Cloudcuckoolander}} lives. It's the only place in fiction where being a [=Cloudcuckoolander=] is happenstance--in these environments, the characters you remember are going to be the normal ones.

The unusual trope name is a translation of "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_cuckoo_land Nephelokokkygia]]" from Creator/{{Aristophanes}}' play ''Theatre/TheBirds''. However, Aristophanes' Cloudcuckooland was not actually an "odd place", but a fictional [[{{Utopia}} paradise state where everything is perfect]] -- and which, therefore, doesn't exist. Accordingly, a "[=Cloudcuckoolander=]" was someone demented or naive enough to believe in such an impossible place.

* Several commercials in the 80s for Cap'n Crunch cereal featured Crunch Island, discovered by Cap'n Crunch himself. The wildlife included singing trees and baseball bats, which were baseballs with eyes and bat wings. One known town was Practical Joking Ghost Town (full of ghosts that played really dated jokes on visitors) and the central mountain - Mt. Crunchmore - carved in the shape of its discoverer's face.

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]
%%* [[ArakawaUnderTheBridge The Arakawa riverbank]].
* You would think that the world of 300x in ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'' was this, until you saw Bobobo World, which takes place ''inside the main character's head'' and is ''even more ridiculous''.

* ''Manga/FujimuraKunMates'', a tsukkomi in a world of boke.

[[folder:ComicBooks]]

* ''ComicBook/EmperorJoker'' turns the ''entire universe'' into Cloud Cuckooland. Including {{ComicBook/Darkseid}}.

* [[FrancoBelgianComics Franco Belgian Comic]] {{ComicBooks/Philemon}} largely takes place in "Le Monde des Lettres", literally "The World of Letters", a chain of mystical islands that form the letters for “Atlantique Ocean” on maps and globes, with rules and physics highly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.

[[folder:FanFic]]
* In [[Fanfic/Swing123AndGarfieldodiesCalvinverse the Calvinverse]], Calvin's town has seen a MadScientist and [[SnarkyNonhumanSidekick his robot]] exit their Yellowstone Park lair, had its citizens replaced by CreepyMonotone clones, been attacked by a monster...
** Even stranger is Socratesland, from the ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries'' episode of the same name. Strange scenery, strange residents (including [[LiteralSplitPersonality figments of Socrates' personality]], frogs that laugh like Socrates, tiny Socrates clones...), and a general sense of weirdness pervades the area, much to the other characters' misfortune.
* ''Shipping and Handling'' has Inanima, a fairytale land populated by living objects, and is entirely the figment of Pinkie Pie's imagination. This does not prevent her from bringing other ponies in there (she hired Ditzy and Watt to help rescue a distressed damsel once, and trapped Screwball there since it is a separate reality) and she routinely brings her coltfriend Watt over for amazing imaginary adventures, to the point that his imagination has started to affect the place. To an uninformed outsider, though, it looks like them playing make-believe with a bunch of objects.
* Invoked in the FanFic/PonyPOVSeries by the author AND in story. In story to contradict the Makarov Arc's overwhelming seriousness and military tones. In story by Princess Celestia who purposely redirected Princess Cadence and entourage there so the silly and childish locals could treat the Alicorn of music and her friends to childish and silly fun and remind them that not all craziness is bad.
* MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic fanfiction in general has a minor trend of painting Ponyville as this; the regular monster attacks, location on the edge of an EldritchLocation, and habit of the main characters suffering emotional breakdowns means a reputation tend to develop.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'', Cloud Cuckooland is an actual [[FloatingContinent cloud]] & home to Uni-Kitty [[spoiler: and the hideout for the Master Builders]]. See the entry on the quotes page.
-->'''Franchise/{{Batman}}''': I hate this place.
* Pepperland, from WesternAnimation/YellowSubmarine. Must be seen to be believed.

* The nameless town from ''Film/EdwardScissorhands''.
* Wherever the hell ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}'' takes place.
* The sixth dimension on ''Film/ForbiddenZone'', though reality isn't normal either...

--> Bobby: [[LampshadeHanging "Is everyone in this town on drugs?!?"]]
* Toon Town from ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit''.
* Ballymoran in ''Film/{{Zonad}}''. The Irish name of the town is Baile Amadáin which [[BilingualBonus translates]] as 'Idiot Town'.

* The planet Mars, where Michael Valentine Smith is raised by Martians in [[Creator/RobertAHeinlein Robert A. Heinlein's]] ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand.'' Early in the book, Smith acts like a [=Cloudcuckoolander=] because Martian customs and philosophy are very different from Earth's.
* OlderThanRadio: This is the premise behind ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''.

* ''[[Literature/GulliversTravels Gulliver's Travels]]'' consists of the narrator travelling to a series of these, mostly intended as satire on stupid real-world customs, political issues and wars. At least until he gets to the land of the talking horses, which is basically perfect.
** Especially Laputa, the third Cloudcuckooland, which is a '''literal''' flying city.

* The ''Literature/{{Xanth}}'' series is basically ''set'' in Cloudcuckooland, but even they have regions crazier than normal - the Region of Madness, comic strips and to a certain extent Ida's moons.

* The land beyond the booth from {{The Phantom Tollbooth}}.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]
* In ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'', Rose's hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota, fits the bill nicely. All of a sudden, Rose's strange habits are a result of her upbringing.
** A small example of this place's insanity: Once, the small Minnesota town's most active volcano (!) threatened to erupt. Rose, as the town's dumbest virgin, volunteered to be the sacrifice, on the directions of a bunch of Druid priests in town for the opening of Stonehenge Land. As it turns out, they were just Shriners looking for a good time.

* Stars Hollow from ''Series/GilmoreGirls''.
** And now Paradise in ''Series/{{Bunheads}}''. Amy Sherman Palladino is quite fond of this trope.

* The town "Eureka" from ''{{Series/Eureka}}''. Every person in town is a genius, usually a BunnyEarsLawyer, and the top of their profession. For example, the town Sheriff is a US Marshal, the local dog-catcher is one of the world's top animal trackers, the chef at the local cafe is one of the world's top chefs, and so on. It doesn't help that most of the residents have little or no contact or interest in the outside world.
* Wanker County from ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''.

* The title location from ''Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse''.
* Possum Lodge from ''Series/TheRedGreenShow''.

[[folder:NewspaperComics]]
* Flyspeck Island, as mentioned in the newspaper comic strip ''ComicStrip/{{Curtis}}'' as the home of [=Cloudcuckoolander=] Gunk.
* Kokonino Kounty in ''ComicStrip/KrazyKat''.
* The Republic of Elbonia in ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}''.
* Dingburg in ''ComicStrip/ZippyThePinhead''. And that's the strip's main setting.
* The concept of ''Bo Nanas'' is that the title character, a monkey, is the [[OnlySaneMan Only Sane Person]] in a world where every human being he runs into is genuinely weird (if harmless).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:{{Radio}}]]

[[folder:TabletopGames]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]
* In ''Videogame/EarthBound'':

* ''[[VideoGame/BanjoKazooie Banjo-Tooie]]'' has a stage called Cloudcuckooland. Despite this, while the stage design is rather weird and random (some believe that it's a dumping ground for all the leftover ideas the devs had after making all the other levels) the [=NPCs=] found there aren't noticeably much stranger than the rest of the insane cast.

* ''KatamariDamacy'' and the rest of the series have crazy scenarios. Wrestling Ring stairs! Fish watching TV! Race Karts that jump over arches! Arguably, the [[WidgetSeries entire game]] is one long Cloudcuckooland.
* In some ''SonicTheHedgehog'' continuities, the Special Zone (aka the Warps of Confusion) is a mixture of this and HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace. Notably it's based on the ''very'' trippy special stages in the first Sonic game (the background consists of birds morphing into fish in an Escher-like manner as discordant twinkly music plays, etc.)

* Pyroland from ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', as best exemplified in the ''Meet The Pyro'' trailer, where the Pyro mistakes his committing wanton acts of violence and destruction against rival mercs as fun and joy in a pastel-colored world of lollipops and bubbles with cherubs. Players can also enter Pyroland with certain items such as the Pyrovision Goggles, which make the game world garish and colorful, other players talk in high-pitched voices, replaces screams of pain with laughter, and replaces gore with balloons and confetti.
** It's not just Pyroland, either. Taking some time to look at the comics, you realize rather quickly that the whole [=TF2=] universe is nuttier than a can of peanuts. For starters, the entire world is owned by one of two opposing corporations, founded by a pair of brothers who have spent over a hundred years fighting over worthless pits of gravel. These two companies are currently owned by a single woman who keeps the fighting going. All their weapons are supplied by Mann Co., a company that makes highly dangerous products that, amongst other things, occasionally burst into flame. This company is owned by an [[TestosteronePoisoning overly masculine]] Australian who roams the world [[BloodKnight searching for fights]]. Australia itself is a hyper-masculine country, where ''everyone'' (yes, even women) has a mustache, and whose leadership is decided by having a boxing match with a kangaroo. Additionally, the second floor was invented 200 years before the stairs were, and in the intervening time people [[ViolationOfCommonSense rocket jumped]] up to the second story. And that only scratches the surface...
* The world of ''VideoGame/DikembeMutombosFourAndAHalfWeeksToSaveTheWorld'', where the state of Ohio (as in, the actual landmass) is too busy dancing to a [[LawyerFriendlyCameo certain South Korean dance song]] to vote in the upcoming election, bears and turkeys can talk and wear sweaters, there are "laser stores" and bear porn, and a literal Hollywood Fat Cat is trying to shrink everyone's brains with [[{{Twilight}} teen vampire romance movies.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' has its share of odd moments, but the Temmie Village still manages to stand out. It's inhabited entirely by Temmies ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and]] [[OddNameOut Bob]]), which are basically a ''CloudCuckoolander species''. They speak in [[PaintingTheMedium misspelled/grammatically-incorrect sentences]] (except for the shopkeeper when she [[ObfuscatingStupidity gets serious]]), you can find one trying to incubate a hard-boiled egg, and another is apparently allergic to her own species. Even the message at the village's save point is rather odd.

[[folder:WebOriginal]]
* TruthInTelevision, at least according to Website/{{FARK}}: Florida. It has [[OnlyInFlorida its own tag]] ''for a reason.''

* ''WebAnimation/CharlieTheUnicorn''
* Manchester, where Karl Pilkington of ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'' grew up.
* The Elrich setting in TheWanderersLibrary revels in its Cloudcuckoo-ness.
* Website/WrongPlanet could be considered this, mostly because it was made for and by people with UsefulNotes/HighFunctioningAutism and UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome.
* The titular city of Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale shows what happens when a town has [[TownWithADarkSecret not just one dark secret]], but a couple thousand, and people are so used to this that it all gets reported on during the evening radio.
* The folks associated with Podcast/KakosIndustries and them some are rarely ever sane, seeing as how they're all bent on being Evil as possible alongside a number of other odd quirks. Even the titular OnlySaneMan who owns the company has multiple instances of paranoia and becomes briefly obsessed with a box.
* [=PurpleEyesWTF=] is fond of creating settings like this. Between his CodeMENT, NonePiece, and Soul Whatever videos, almost nobody has their head screwed on right. It's to the point where one of his OnlySaneMan characters from Code MENT, Death the Kid, became a CloudcuckooLander once he returned to his home series.
* With its SurrealHumor, occasionally dashed with SurrealHorror, ''Website/{{ClickHole}}'' has been described as as "what if [=BuzzFeed=] had its headquarters in Cloudcuckooland?"

[[folder:WebComics]]
* The name of the webcomic/anime "CloudCuckooLand"

[[folder: WesternAnimation]]

* ''{{Catscratch}}'' has the world inside the secret door. Naturally, it's ruled by local [=Cloudcuckoolander=] Waffle.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' has "Rock Bottom", which, for lack of a better description, was Bikini Bottom done wrong. Full of weird and oddly-speaking people.

* The land of Ooo from ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime''.

** [=Cloudcuckoolander=] Discord [[spoiler: turns Ponyville into this]] in "The Return of Harmony".

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' has the titular town of Gravity Falls, which is wrought with the strangest beings west of weird and north of normal. Some of the residents of this town include [[OurGnomesAreWeirder rainbow puking gnomes]], [[TestosteronePoisoning Manly Minotaurs]], [[PrehistoricMonster Pterodactyls]], [[VoluntaryShapeshifter a Homocidal Shapeshifter]], and a [[EldritchAbomination yellow]] [[OurDemonsAreDifferent triangular]] [[BigBad dream demon]], among only a few of the strange abnormalities that the twins face.
** [[spoiler: This later becomes downplayed when it turns out the town is a cloudcuckooland due to stuff leaking into it from a nightmarish [[AlternateUniverse alternate]] [[EldritchLocation dimension]], which was not seen but drove one of the characters who was sucked inside [[BrownNote completely insane]]]].

[[folder:RealLife]]
* Japan, or at least it's [[{{Animeland}} stereotyped as such]]. At least some of it may have to do with it being one of the first non-Western countries to develop a modern industrial society, thus giving them the means to export their cultural products that many other non-Western nations lack -- and with Western cultures still being the default in the industrialized world, Japan stands out that much more. Furthermore, from the 1630s to 1868, Japan heavily restricted contact and trade with the outside world and other cultures, producing a cultural ecosystem that existed in isolation from many outside trends and which evolved in its own directions.
** At the same time, it's a subversion for the Japanese people themselves, with the Japanese mainstream being very conservative and shunning anything that dares to stray from the norm. They take their strange-to-outsiders traditions (like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadaka_Matsuri Hadaka Matsuri]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dnen_Matsuri Honen Matsuri]]) very seriously, and {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s ''within'' Japanese society are ostracized. For example, being into {{cosplay}} during your high school years can cost you any chance of ever going to college, and acting or looking strangely in public will likely cost you your job. And don't you ever show too much emotion in public! Of course, this applies only if MoralGuardians find out it's you. Anonymous Cloudcuckoolanders can't be bashed. And unusual trends that manage to stay around against all odds will eventually "earn" acceptance, and from then on be treated as if they were perfectly normal and things have been this way all the time. Karaoke is a good example. And keep in mind that all of this is unwritten law, but everyone is expected to follow it.
* For a long time, UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates was known for having a culture that was slightly "off" compared to European standards of civility. Chalk that up to the nation's dominant ideological trends having been rooted in various offshoots of [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies classical liberalism]], which places a heavy premium on personal freedom; one of the many side effects of this is that people who would've been considered eccentric elsewhere are comparatively normal in many parts of the country, their weirdness even being embraced as part of [[CulturalPosturing what made America great and unique from stuffy old Britain]]. Plus, the UsefulNotes/MeltingPot meant that, as immigrant cultures came into contact with one another, they often borrowed from each other and hybridized into uniquely American variants that most Europeans would find unrecognizable. Lastly, there was the frontier. If even the Americans found you too weird, you could just head out west and find a spot where there simply weren't enough people around to stop you from letting your freak flag fly. There's a reason why TheWildWest has such a sizable pool of larger-than-life figures.
** The tropes WackyAmericansHaveWackyNames, AmericansAreCowboys, and OnlyInAmerica are all related to this.

* ''CharlieTheUnicorn''

* The island of Zenkali in Gerald Durrell's ''Literature/TheMockeryBird''. In his memoirs, Corfu as well.

** The series doesn't have [[MinimalistCast a lot of characters]], but almost everyone we meet is a [=Cloudcuckoolander=]. We've got [=GLaDOS=], the facility's omnipotent AI who's got a few screws loose, and cares only about science and bratty mocking. There's Wheatley, the dense but sweet British robot who [[spoiler: was designed to make [=GLaDOS=] stupid, and goes evil when hooked into her body]]. Doug Rattmann was a scientist whose paranoid schizophrenia saved him, since it turned out that he ''was'' at the mercy of an evil robot, and with his love for the CompanionCube writes helpful and creepy messages on the walls. There are the testing robots, Atlas and P-body, who are both overly playful, eccentric and oddly ''human''. The founder of the facility, Cave Johnson, was egotistical and stubborn, and a little bit hazy on the morals. Caroline his secretary seemed sensible, except [[spoiler: she got turned into GLaDOS]]. Really, the only one at all "normal" is Chell, and she doesn't speak because of pathological stubbornness!

* Manchester, where Karl Pilkington of ''TheRickyGervaisShow'' grew up.

* ''Film/CoolWorld''
* ''Film/{{Gymkata}}''. Parmistan is ''one goofy country''.

* Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' is treated this way. It didn't work so well, despite trying to take RefugeInAudacity. Of course the real joke wasn't picking on Kazakhstan, it was that no matter how ridiculously backwards and offensive he got, lots of supposedly normal people would go along with it...
* Wherever the hell ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}'' takes place.
* Superior, Arizona, the town where the protagonist Bobby gets stranded in ''Film/UTurn'', is depicted in this way.
--> Bobby: [[LampshadeHanging "Is everyone in this town on drugs?!?"]]
* The nameless town from ''Film/EdwardScissorhands''.

[[folder:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

%%* [[ArakawaUnderTheBridge The Arakawa riverbank]].
%%* ''Manga/CromartieHighSchool''.

* ''Manga/FujimuraKunMates'', a tsukkomi in a world of boke.
* Definitely the titular guild in ''Manga/FairyTail''. Many of the legal guilds (and several dark ones) qualify as well, though Fairy Tail is by far the most outlandish.

[[quoteright:350:WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cloud_cuckoo_land.png]]]]

* Website/FourChan, though not in a [[TropesAreNotGood good way]] considering a lot of people on there are {{Troll}}s just looking to entertain themselves by any means [[ItAmusedMe necessary.]] [[note]] Though, some can be [[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/anonymous-vs-steubenville-20131127 pretty good]][[/note]]

* TruthInTelevision, at least according to {{FARK}}: Florida. It has [[OnlyInFlorida its own tag]] ''for a reason.''

* [[ImageBoard 4chan,]] though not in a [[TropesAreNotGood good way]] considering most people on their are {{Troll}}s just looking to entertain themselves by any means [[ItAmusedMe necessary.]] [[note]] Though, some can be [[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/anonymous-vs-steubenville-20131127 pretty good]][[/note]]