History Main / UnnaturallyLoopingLocation

Enter this place; a location that constantly loops. Going up stairs will just send you back to the bottom step. Opening a door in one room will just lead you back to that same room. Following a single-path hallway will lead you back to the beginning of that hallway. Played right, and this single place can lead to a MindScrew just by refusing to have a proper destination.

* One chapter of ''Manga/FlyingWitch'' has a shopping street being replicated endlessly. Turns out it's caused by a magical creature and Makoto's job is to capture it.

** ''Manga/DiamondIsUnbreakable'': The Ghost Alley of Morioh goes around in a loop if someone tries to go back the way they came, always ending up back at the same corner. Likewise, the direction of up is twisted into going back towards the ground. Reimi Sugimoto, who resides there, explains the way to leave is by going in a different direction and keep going straight, otherwise an otherworldly force will [[DraggedOffToHell drag them to the underworld]].

** ''Manga/DiamondIsUnbreakable'': The Ghost Alley of Morioh goes around in a loop if someone tries to go back the way they, always ending up back at the same corner. Likewise, the direction of up is twisted into going back towards the ground. Reimi Sugimoto, who resides there, explains the way to leave is by going in a different direction and keep going straight, otherwise an otherworldly force will [[DraggedOffToHell drag them to the underworld]].

** ''Manga/DiamondIsUnbreakable'': The Ghost Alley of Morioh goes around in a loop if someone tries to go back the way they, always ending up back at the same corner. Likewise, if you try to go upwards, you only end up hitting the ground again. Reimi Sugimoto, who resides there, explains the way to leave is by going in a different direction and keep going straight, otherwise an otherworldly force will [[DraggedOffToHell drag them to the underworld]].

** ''Manga/DiamondIsUnbreakable'': The Ghost Alley of Morioh goes around in a loop if someone tries to go back the way they, always ending up back at the same corner. Reimi Sugimoto, who resides there, explains the way to leave is by going in a different direction and keep going straight, otherwise an otherworldly force will [[DraggedOffToHell drag them to the underworld]].

* Black Holes work on a variant of this; It's widely known that once you pass the event horizon, you can't escape even if you go at lightspeed. The immense gravity of a black hole curves spacetime so much that ''[[MindScrew forward in time is toward center of the black hole]]''. Escaping the black hole requires at best a space-like trajectory -- going faster than the speed of light.

--> [-[[BrickJoke Visit]] Laconic version [[Laconic/UnnaturallyLoopingLocation HERE]]-]

->''None of it made any logical sense. And as Stanley pondered this he began to make other strange observations. For example, [[FirstPersonGhost why couldn't he see his feet when he looked down]]? Why did doors close automatically behind him wherever he went? And for that matter, these rooms were starting to look pretty familiar; were they simply repeating?''

* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureSteelBallRun'', Gyro, Johnny, and Hot Pants repeatedly ride through parts of the same forest. Ringo Roadagain, a DeathSeeker, refuses to let them escape unless one of them fights and kills him. Subverted in that [[spoiler:the forest itself is not actually looping. Ringo can rewind time with his Stand and he's using his power to disorient them.]]

* ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'': the forest where the witch supposedly lives is heavily implied to be this. At least the main characters travel across the woods by the compass and still eventually end up at the same place.
* In ''Film/{{Vivarium}}'' the two protagonists try to exit a neighbourhood filled with identical houses, but no matter which way they turn (or even if they go straight) they always end up at the same particular house.

* ''The Dumb Waiter'' by Creator/HaroldPinter involves two hitmen waiting in a room to kill a man. At the end of the play, one of them goes to the bathroom just as they get the call that their victim is approaching. His partner takes aim at the door...only for the other hitman who was in the bathroom to walk through it. Then the play ends.

** The episode 2 secret level "Lunatic Fringe" and the end of the first level of episode 5 "High Times" have another kind of unnatural loop where you have to circle a full 720 degrees to return to your starting point, akin to a Möbius Strip. The first example is due to AlienGeometry, while the other is implied to be because Duke got stoned.

** ''Golden Sun'' has Mogall Forest, a dungeon where one screen keeps looping unless you take the right corridor.

* One room in the green cavern of ''[[VideoGame/TheGoonies The Goonies 2]]'' just loops back on itself continuously. The way you're supposed to go is [[spoiler:through a secret door in the back wall]].

* This is popular in fan made test chambers for ''VideoGame/Portal2.'' This is because the game world is connected together by "world portals" adapted from the games signature mechanic to speed up development. It's easy to take two of these and loop them together to create the illusion of infinity repeating scenery as well as a lot of other bizarre non Euclidean locations.

* This is a staple of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'''s 2D platformer games. It usually manifests as a series of ramps that the player slides down, where the end of the last ramp connects to the first one. Only by jumping off a particular ramp in a particular spot can the player actually continue with the level. Each game adds its own oddities to the formula.

** ''VideoGame/SonicAndKnuckles'' uses this multiple times in quick succession in the same level, all while forcing the player to keep sustaining the loop by jumping back onto it to avoid ghosts killing the player. Jumping off at the right point here can be quite difficult and deadly in this.

* The Infinite Cafe in ''VisualNovel/ThePiratesFate''. It's a small room, comfortably furnished with cushions and fine foods and an ArabianNightsDays scene visible through a window, as well as several exits. However, each of those exits leads only to a room exactly identical to the original, including the perspective of the view, infinitely. Many of the inhabitants ([[spoiler:at least, those that are real]]) have gone mad from trying to find their way out, and yet they don't actually age or die, just wander. How does one escape? [[spoiler:Either learn to accept it as what it is, a place to stop and rest for a while, without trying to escape...or just [[DungeonBypass smash your way out]], because it's actually just a SecretTestOfCharacter.]]

->''None of it made any logical sense. And as Stanley pondered this he began to make other strange observations. For example, why couldn't he see his feet when he looked down? Why did doors close automatically behind him wherever he went? And for that matter, these rooms were starting to look pretty familiar; were they simply repeating?''

* One of Creator/MCEscher's most famous pieces is titled "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_(M._C._Escher) Another World]]", consisting of a room where the walls, room and ceiling all appear to show the same scene (a window opening on a lunar landscape, with a horn or a bird with a human head) from different angles simultaneously. [[https://giphy.com/gifs/world-alien-cosmos-3ohhwN555hmt1b0l3y And then someone made a looping version.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho:'' The Fifth Doctor's debut episode "Castrovalva" sees him and his companions trapped in a small alien village that works this way, courtesy of the Master.
** The previous story — the Fourth Doctor's finale, "Logopolis" — has a brief subplot where a malfunction (again, courtesy of the Master) seemingly causes the TARDIS to materialize inside itself, such that if you enter the TARDIS sitting in the Console Room, you'll just walk back in the Console Room doors where you started.

-->-- '''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'''

* In ''Franchise/{{Touhou}}'', this is one effect of the Great Hakurei Barrier that separates [[FantasyKitchenSink Gensokyo]] from the outside world. According to Marisa in ''Manga/TouhouIbarakasenWildAndHornedHermit'', she once tried flying as far as possible, but the same scenery kept repeating over and over no matter how far she went. When she looked back, she found herself in the same spot she started.

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Where Silence Has Lease" features an alien simulacrum of USS ''Yamato'' (sister ship of the ''Enterprise'' where opening a door on TheBridge leads to... the bridge.

* ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'': the forest where the witch supposedly lives is heavily implied to be this.

* Black Holes work on a variant of this; It's widely known that once you pass the event horizon, you can't escape even if you go at lightspeed - the way this works on a physical level is that massive gravity of the black hole curves spacetime so much that ''[[MindScrew even going backwards the way you came only puts you closer to the center of the black hole]]''.