History Main / OntologicalMystery

* This happens a lot in MarbleHornets, what with the amnesia gotten from Slenderman and ToTheArk.

* ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}''Interestingly, the first game has the 'who am I and where I am' set up but the the rest of the series does not because the player retains this knowledge from the first game. The exception is ''End of Ages''.

* ''{{Castle}}'': "Cuffed" opens with Castle and Beckett handcuffed together in a locked room with no memory of how they got there.

* ''WakingLife'' revolves around attempts by the protagonist to [[spoiler:[[AllJustADream wake up]]]] from a [[SchrodingersButterfly possibly]] [[spoiler:[[DyingDream terminal dreamstate]]]].

%%** "The Mind Robber" from the classic series.

--> '''The Doctor:''' Big day for a fan of walls!

%%* ''Film/DarkCity'':

* The first ''{{Saw}}'' movie. In later movies it is already established who is behind all of it, but the Ontological Mystery still applies to specific (groups of) characters.

%%* ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}''

* ''TheTwilightZone'':

%%* ''TheTwilightZone'': "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," "Stopover in a Quiet Town," and the pilot episode "Where is Everybody?"

* ''Series/DoctorWho'', "Bad Wolf," where the Doctor and Rose participate in a DeadlyGame [[GameShow Show]].

-->Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. [[spoiler: At the end he finds out that he is guilty of [[spoiler: life and original sin. Once he realizes the nature of his crime, he submits willingly.]]

* ''Film/{{Cube}}'', its sequel ''Hypercube'', and its prequel ''Cube Zero''. A group of people of differing backgrounds and skill sets wake up in cubical rooms which connect to other cubical rooms (all of the rooms together forming a giant, you guessed it, cube). There are deathtraps. Have fun@

* A genre of web games, the [[RoomEscapeGame "escape-the-room game,"]] is based on this. The player is trapped in a room and has to search the place for items in order to get out. It typically starts with some EasyAmnesia to explain why the player doesn't know how they got into the room. Examples include ''[[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/room Crimson Room]]'' and its sequel ''[[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/viridian Viridian Room]]'', and ''MysteryOfTimeAndSpace''.

%%* ''Film/{{Cube}}'', its sequel ''Hypercube'', and its prequel ''Cube Zero''.

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' Roger Smith is a negiotator in a domed city (implied to be [[spoiler: a futuristic New York City]] where everyone came down with a case of unexplained LaserGuidedAmnesia forty years ago. The outside world is seldom referred to, but it's implied to be largely an unexplored wasteland.

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' Roger Smith is a negiotator in a domed city (implied to be [[spoiler: a futuristic New York City]] where everyone came down with a case of unexplained HollywoodAmnesia forty years ago. The outside world is seldom referred to, but it's implied to be largely an unexplored wasteland.

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' Roger Smith is a negiotator in a doomed city where no one can remmeber anything that happened forty years ago.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': Where do Titans come from? What is their purpose? [[spoiler: Who built the triple walled city and why was it empty when the first humans came?]] The story is more about how HumansAreFlaws /[[HumansAreTheRealMonsters the real monsters]] and coping with loss and overwhelming odds then fighting the titans themselves.

May overlap with SmallSecludedWorld, WorldLimitedToThePlot, AlternateUniverse, PlanetOfHats, AdventureTowns or LotusEaterMachine. Almost always employs FailureIsTheOnlyOption and a veritable ''swarm'' of [[SchrodingersButterfly Schrodinger's Butterflies]] to obfuscate issues. There's usually a NietzscheWannabe in the cast.

* Volume 36 of ''Manga/AhMyGoddess'' After a case of mass amnesia
* ''Anime/AngelBeats''
* ''Anime/TheBigO'', where the whole ''city'' is in this situation.
* ''Manga/DriftingClassroom''

* ''Manga/{{Gantz}}''

* ''Anime/{{Kaiba}}''
* ''Anime/{{Megazone 23}}''
* ''Anime/PrincessTutu'': Hints dropped in the first half and then part of the plot in the second half.

* ''Manga/UruseiYatsura: Beautiful Dreamer''
* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''

* ''{{Fleep}}'', possibly the ultimate Ontological Mystery; one person, in a phone booth, sealed in concrete.

* ''WakingLife'': The entire movie revolves around attempts by the protagonist to [[spoiler:[[AllJustADream wake up]]]] from a [[SchrodingersButterfly possibly]] [[spoiler:[[DyingDream terminal dreamstate]]]].
* ''Film/{{Cube}}'', its sequel ''Hypercube'', and its prequel ''Cube Zero''.
** Although in ''Cube Zero'', at least one of them ''does'' know how they got in.
* JimHenson's ''Film/TheCube'', unassociated with the above film series.
* ''Film/DarkCity'': A textbook example.
* As is the ''SourceCode''.
* The first ''{{Saw}}'' movie. In later movies it is already established who is behind all of it, although the Ontological Mystery still applies to specific (groups of) characters.
* ''Film/GroundhogDay''
* ''{{Identity}}'': All the guests are trapped in the motel during a bad rainstorm that knocked out the power lines, ensuring that no one can call for help.[[spoiler: The ontological mystery part is, that everything is happening in the mind of a single person who suffers from multiple personality disorder (each of the ten guests represents one personality).]]
* ''The Exterminating Angel''
* ''TheFountain'' portrays [[RealLife existence on this earth]] as an ontological trap that can only be escaped through death. The protagonist refuses to accept this and, having eaten from the bark of the mythical tree of life at the fountain of youth, becomes [[WhoWantsToLiveForever doomed to outlive the rest of humanity, trapped in a spaceship on the edge of a dying star.]]
* ''{{Paycheck}}'', which really isn't surprising since it's based on a Creator/PhilipKDick short story (of the same name).

* ''Film/{{Pandorum}}'', which bears a few similarities to ''[[Film/EdenLog Eden Log]]''.
* ''Film/AlienCargo''
* ''Film/HouseOf9''
* ''{{Mindhunters}}'' has definite shades of this. The characters do know ''why'' they're on a secluded island: as part of an FBI profiler training exercise. It doesn't take long before they're completely cut of from the outside world and it turns out that there's a killer amongst them who starts murdering them one by one.
* ''Film/{{Memento}}'' has the protagonist (and the viewer) in a constant state of ontological mystery due to his ongoing amnesia.
* ''Film/{{Exam}}'' has the characters at a job interview in which they are presented with a 'test' that turns out to be a blank sheet of paper. They have to work out what the problem is then solve it, and they're all rivals for a highly sought after job. If any of them leave the room, they lose the chance. It gets LOTS worse...

* ''Captivity'', a 2007 thriller film starring Elisha Cuthbert.

* In the Creator/HPLovecraft short-story "The Outsider" a man has lived his whole life in a dark castle beneath an all-enclosing forest that blocks out the sky. Yet, he feels strangely that he has not always been there...
* In WilliamSleator's ''Literature/HouseOfStairs'', five teenagers wake up in the titular House of Stairs. It's a giant complex of interlocking stairs and platforms, but none of the stairs lead out, they only connect to other parts of the maze.
* ''[[{{Dragaera}} Issola]]'': A couple of people our hero considered completely indestructible have gone missing. Not even Sethra Lavode, who very much deserves her ShroudedInMyth status, can find them by herself. She, does, however, know how to get Vlad there, and he arrives to find his two incredibly BadAss friends stuck in apparently unbreakable, seamless chains in an empty room with no exits that appears to be on another planet. The plot hinges on figuring out how the hell the bad guys managed it, and why.
* ''Minotavr'' (Minotaur), a Russian novel.
* ''The Helmet of Horror'' by Victor Pelevin. Several people wake up in rooms connected only by a chat-like computer system; each room opens into some sort of labyrinth. Some labyrinths are real, some metaphorical, and one is accessible only through dreams.
* In the ''Dungeon series'', beings from all times and spaces are brought to a nine-leveled artificial prison called the Dungeon. At no point in the series is the Dungeon's origins, masters or purpose made clear, only speculated on.
* ''Literature/{{Illium}}'' by Dan Simmons comes close, even though it spans three planets rather than a room. The mystery is just what has happened between our time and this imaginary far future to make the latter so bizarre. For a start, where did all those Greek gods using advanced technology and living on Mars come from? The characters on Earth in particular take their condition as a mystery to be solved and try to escape the definite confines that are set upon them even as they are able to teleport around the world freely.

-->Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.
** And he never does find out what he's supposed to have done, either.
*** Actually, it's a subversion, because at the end he finds out that he is guilty of [[spoiler: life and original sin, which is by nature inescapable.]] Once he realizes the nature of his crime, he submits willingly.
* Also by Kafka, ''The Castle''. A surveyor is summoned to the town surrounding a tremendous castle of [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Obstructive Bureaucrats]], and nobody is sure why; the hero thinks he knows who he needs to talk to so he can find out, but first he has to get an appointment with the undersecretary and convince him to give him an appointment with the regular secretary...and so on. He is also inexplicably appointed two childish assistants that mostly just make fun of him. The book was never finished, so it's not clear if there ever was an ending.

* One of the many themes in ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves''. It's also arguably one of the less {{Mindscrew}}y themes, which should give you some idea of what the book is like.

* Both ''Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}}'' and ''Series/{{Angel}}'' did this in one episode each: "Tabula Rasa" for Buffy and "Spin The Bottle" for Angel. In both cases, a spell intended to affect memories went wrong and resulted in the entire main cast [[LaserGuidedAmnesia losing their memories]]. In "Tabula Rasa," they got complete IdentityAmnesia. In "Spin The Bottle," they got IdentityAmnesia removing all memories since their teenage years, which still complicated things because they each spent their teenage years very differently. Especially the 200-year-old vampire. In both cases, there were many logical but amusingly wrong deductions made about what was going on before they managed to undo the spell.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}''
* ''TheLangoliers''
* 1977's ''Fantastic Journey''
* ''Series/LandOfTheLost''
* ''Series/ThePrisoner''
* ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}''
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' had several episodes based on or employing this subgenre:
** The original pilot, "The Cage"
** "The Empath"
** "The Mark of Gideon"
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** "Allegiance"
** "Remember Me"
** "Cause and Effect"
** "The Next Phase"
** "Frame of Mind"
** "Conundrum"
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': "Tabula Rasa."
* ''Series/TheAvengers'': "The House That Jack Built."
* ''TheTwilightZone'': "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," "Stopover in a Quiet Town," and the pilot episode "Where is Everybody?"

** And "The Mind Robber" from the classic series.
** "The God Complex" with a [[HellHotel nightmarish hotel]] that has a room for ''everyone'', is a very straight example. The Doctor even lampshades it.

* ''Day Break''

* ''NowhereMan'' - Of the LossOfIdentity variety.
* ''PersonsUnknown''
* ''TheOuterLimits'': "The Probe," the last episode of the original series.
* ''TowerPrep''

[[folder:Theatre]]
* ''NoExit'', probably one of the most famous examples.
* ''{{Waiting for Godot}}''
** ''Endgame'' also, with a JustBeforeTheEnd flavor to it.
* ''SixCharactersInSearchOfAnAuthor'' is Luigi Pirandello's way of making the ''theater itself'' into an Ontological Mystery.
* ''RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'': Repeatedly discussed by the titular characters

* Part of the premise of ''{{Bionicle}}''. Although the characters themselves don't ask questions relating to how they, a [[SchizoTech bunch of sentient cyborgs, came to be living a primitive lifestyle on a tropical island ]], WordOfGod has stated that this was a major source of the series' appeal in the early years, as the viewer would be curious as to how this situation came about. The Matoran were unaware that they were suffering from mass amnesia, so they were just as surprised as the viewers were when their origins were slowly revealed over the next few years of storyline.

* An entire genre of web games, the [[RoomEscapeGame "escape-the-room game,"]] is based on this, with the player being trapped in a room and having to search the whole place for items in order to get out. It typically starts with some EasyAmnesia to explain why the player doesn't know how they got into the room. Examples include ''[[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/room Crimson Room]]'' and its sequel ''[[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/viridian Viridian Room]]'', and ''MysteryOfTimeAndSpace''.
* ''Countdown'' by Access Software (released in 1990) opens with the protagonist waking up in a mental asylum without memory.
* ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' is probably one of the most famous examples of this. Interestingly, the rest of the series avoids the trope except for ''End of Ages''.
** Only because you know where (if not who) you are from the first game.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'', a unique all-puzzle GaidenGame for ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life}}''.
* Neku in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'', and technically any Player who [[spoiler:bet their memories on winning the Reapers' Game]].
* ''5 days a Stranger'' from the ''ChzoMythos'' series.
** TwelveThirteen by the same author.
* ''PlanescapeTorment'' can be seen as an example of what happens when someone makes a 50+ hour epic out of this trope.

* The beginning of TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask certainly qualifies. Link is sent into a parallel world after being transformed into a Deku Shrub and finds himself in the middle of a strange town, unable to escape because there are guards in every exit blocking his path. He needs to find out exactly where he is, what is going on and how to return to normal in three in-game days' time before the world ends. Afterwards, the game starts to play like a regular Legend of Zelda game.

* The goal in ''RuleOfRose'' is to learn of Jennifer's past and come in terms with it, making it a straight example of this trope.

* Videogame/{{Submachine}}, a point-and-click adventure series has, since 2005, captivated audiences with its infinite layers of complexities and strange dimention-warping room-escape-esque games.
** Even when in a literally infinite open space, you still cannot escape.

* The main characters of ''Videogame/LevelUp!'' are a girl with no backstory, and a guy with no memories. [[CrashIntoHello Who lands on her fence.]]
* FragileDreams is a variation of this. The game is basically "[[TheLastManHeardAKnock the last man on earth]] went outside."

* ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'' starts off in a rather simple locked room version of this, but rapidly grows to encompass an imaginary universe, demonic mafia kingpins and a army of courtesan angels. In the end however, the main character goal is to escape the office building they start off mysteriously trapped in and reach the streets of the real world.
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': A young boy starts a multiplayer video game and finds himself and his house are suddenly TrappedInAnotherWorld, while back on Earth [[spoiler:meteors are destroying civilisation]]. That's only the beginning, however...
* ''{{Voices}}'' starts out as this.

* ''{{Superego}}'' has ten individuals trapped in an AbandonedHospital [[spoiler:in the middle of an abyss]], and they have to work together to somehow get out.

* TheStrangerhood uses this as its main point combined with a hint of LaserGuidedAmnesia.

* Used as a joke by Creator/StuartAshen for the board game version of ''Vinnie Vole's Existential Nightmare''. See that page under AndIMustScream for details.

* ''WesternAnimation/TwelveOunceMouse'' (Possibly... who really knows what that show is about?!?)
** As near as can be said with any certainty, the character Mouse himself almost definitely realizes he is one personally when memories of appears to be a wife and family prompt him to reflect that he really doesn't remember anything from his own past much before the series.

* The "amnesia game" is one of ''the'' most common types of theatre-style live-action roleplaying games. Only the DeadlyDecadentCourt is definitively more popular.

* The Seedlings from [[{{Webcomic/Morphe}} morphE]] wake up in crates with no idea how they got there and are made prisoners of a rich and beautiful mage who wishes to train them in the art of magic (or kill them, whichever is more convenient). The first moment the survivors get alone they begin comparing notes to find out how and why they got in this situation. Best they could manage is that all but one of them were local to Chicago.

* ''Film/{{Pandorum}}'', which bears more than a few similarities to ''Eden Log'' and ''TwelveThirteen''.

* ''NineDead''. The protagonists all wake up in a cell chained to a wall. Their captor tells them that one of them will die every ten minutes unless they can tell him why they are there.

* ''ShingekiNoKyojin''

* ''NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'': You wake up in an early 20th century 3rd class cabin, in a flooding ship, [[spoiler: actually, a recreation of a flooding ship,]] and must escape in under 9 hours when the floodgates reopen and the ship does its submarine impression.