History Main / WorldInTheSky

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}''

{{Cool Airship}}s and ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines will be common sights in the skies of these worlds, alongside {{Flying Seafood Special}}s and {{Living Gasbag}}s.

* In ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'', Planet Freedom consists of a series of {{floating continent}}s above an other-wise normal planet. This "inner world", called the Land of Darkness, is completely uninhabited except for Robotnik and his MechaMooks, so from the perspective of the inhabiants of the Land of the Sky, they live in this. Unlike most examples of this trope, the anti-gravity actually does play a crucial plot-point: [[spoiler:Robotnik's end-goal is to destroy the northern pole, which anchors the Land of the Sky to the Land of Darkness, whereupon the continents' anti-gravity properties will see them be hurled into space, killing everyone.]]

** Sufficient numbers of floating continents turn up in the ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'' setting to suggest this trope, both in outer-world Floating Ar (AWizardDidIt) and orbiting the inner sun of the Hollow World (The Immortals Did It). Subverted in the former case, as the people of Ar still depend on resources from the land or sea beneath them.

** The ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' setting consists of chunks of landscape -- the Core, Clusters, and Islands -- adrift in a directionless zone of supernatural Mists. Each piece of landscape has its own gravity and own climate, and ''appears'' to have its own sky and horizons, but travel too far, dig too deep, or fly too high and you'll still wind up at the Misty Border. One of the domains, Aerie, is actually a FloatingContinent of the conventional sort as well.

* ''The Lady's Rock'' D10 setting combines floating sky-islands with the principles of UsefulNotes/{{Discordianism}}.%%Meaning?

** The spinoff game, ''Tabletopgame/{{Starfinder}}'' features a number of floating platforms and colonies (a little along the lines of Cloud City from ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'') on the gas giant planets, and even a few - known as the Burning Archipelago - floating over the surface of the sun.

* In ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'', inhabited gas giants (e.g. Jupiter, Saturn), ice giants (e.g. Uranus, Neptune) and Cytherean Type planets (e.g. Venus) are like this. Because this setting aims to be as realistic as possible, the landmasses are artificial instead of natural, using balloons to remain in the air: for this reason they are known as "[[https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4f181b2caeccf bubblehabs]]".

Compare ShatteredWorld, for broken worlds [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-], and FloatingContinent, which usually exists in a more normal world with people also living on the surface below. See also TheSkyIsAnOcean, which is almost always used in worlds like these. {{Cool Airship}}s and ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines will be common sights in the skies of these worlds, alongside {{Flying Seafood Special}}s. See also OceanPunk, for an actual ocean. This can sometimes be a [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic Earth]].

* ''LightNovel/SukaSuka'': The Floating Islands were created for the specific purpose of keeping the surviving races safe from the seventeen Beasts that inhabit the surface world below, long after all humans (called here as the Emnetwyte) have gone extinct bar one.

Impossible[[note]]or nearly impossible -- see ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees''[[/note]] under physics resembling ours, worlds of this type are ''usually'' found exclusively in fantasy. What keeps them hovering? Where does the gravity come from? What's keeping the atmosphere in place? [[LostTechnology Nobody knows]], but maybe AWizardDidIt. Do not expect the outcome of falling off the side of one of these pieces to be properly explored. Sci-fi versions will generally be landmass floating inside gas giant's atmosphere.

Compare ShatteredWorld, for broken worlds [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-] and FloatingContinent, which usually exists in a more normal world with people also living on the surface below. See also TheSkyIsAnOcean, which is almost always used in worlds like these. Also, OceanPunk, for an actual ocean, can sometimes be a [[AfterTheEnd Post-Apocalyptic Earth]].

* Edolas from the Anima arc of ''Manga/FairyTail'' was an Earthlike land with an assortment of floating islands, including the one carrying the Exceeds' homeland of Exteria, and another that the King used to store the Magnolia [[PowerCrystal La'cryma]].
* The Mu world of ''Anime/RahXephon'' is not quite a World In The Sky: there's one landmass. However, that piece of land quickly got overcrowded, so the Mu built gigantic flying cities that allowed the vast majority of them to live anywhere over the vast ocean.
* The Floating Islands of ''LightNovel/SukaSuka'' were created for the specific purpose of keeping the surviving races safe from the 17 Beasts that inhabit the surface world below, long after the humans (called here as the Emnetwyte) have all been extinct bar one.
* In ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'', Planet Freedom consists of a series of {{floating continent}}s above an other-wise normal planet. This "inner world", called the Land of Darkness, is completely uninhabited except for Robotnik and his MechaMooks, so from the perspective of the inhabiants of the Land of the Sky, they live in this. Unlike most examples of this trope, the anti-gravity actually does play a crucial plot-point: [[spoiler:Robotnik's end-goal is to destroy the northern pole, which anchors the Land of the Sky to the Land of Darkness, whereupon the continents' anti-gravity properties will see them be hurled into space, killing everyone.]]
* In ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'', the Heaven Zone consists entirely of a city of [[OurAngelsAreDifferent angel Digimon]] floating in the sky.

* This appears in the ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf'' season ''Flying Island: The Sky Adventure'', as its name implies. Weslie's friends are sent to different floating worlds and Weslie has to travel through the sky to find his friends.

* Eva Procorpio in ''ComicBook/{{Shakara}}'' lives in a floating villa on (?) the planet Terraqueouis, a world which seems to consist entirely of floating villas.

* The beautiful Australian animated short film ''WesternAnimation/TheMysteriousGeographicExplorationsOfJasperMorello'' (2005) is set in a gothic-SteamPunk world of floating islands and floating Victorian-style cities wreathed in smoke and criss-crossed by bridges. Airmen in steam-driven iron [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld dirigibles]] trawl the aerial trading routes between city-states. Universities send explorers and cloud biologists on expeditions into "uncharted air". There is downward gravity: people can fall off airships into unknown depths.

%% The Hallelujah mountains in Avatar are not an example - they are a Floating Continent. Please stop adding it.
* It's implied in the 1980 film version of ''Film/{{Flash Gordon|1980}}'' that Ming's kingdom is actually a collection of floating continents in atmosphere. Near the end of the movie, Flash suggests escaping the Hawkmen's world by making parachutes and jumping ''down'' to Arborea, and Dr. Zarkov doesn't rule it out.

* The novel ''Literature/TheShatteredWorld'' (1984) by J. Michael Reaves is set entirely in a "world" consisting of floating islands (actually pieces of a former shattered planet) surrounded by a sphere of breathable air, each with its own ecosphere and some degree of (magically enhanced and directional) [[ArtificialGravity gravity]]. The islands are stabilized and kept from crashing into each other by magical rune stones created by the mages who originally saved mankind from being wiped out when the planet crumbled. The only way of crossing the void from one fragments to another is flying airships, since the void has no gravity, which means that fragments may float "upside down" over each other and vegetation can overgrow an island completely.
* An unusual, [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness real-physics]] variation occurs in Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'', set in the "smoke ring": The smoke ring is a toroidal cloud of gas and matter which orbits a very low-output neutron star, which in turn orbits a sun-like star in a binary configuration. It includes a ring of breathable atmosphere, in which reside a number of flying plants and animals, including some humans who've "[[LostColony gone native]]".
* ''TP'',[[labelnote:*]]short for "teleportation"[[/labelnote]] novel by Vitaliy Babenko, has another relatively hard example. Possibly inspired by the same discovery of Io's gas "doughnut". One of the antagonists keeps teleporting a kidnapped boy to different planets ForTheEvulz and one of the planets is a similar air torus, where everybody keeps falling indefinitely. It's inhabited by seemingly hostile archaeopteryx-like creatures. Later another antagonist gets stuck there forever.[[note]]To be more precise, the rescued boy hit him with the device that was used to track him through multiple planets and bring him back to Earth. The device teleported the villain and itself. By the time the protagonists or police could build another such device all traces dissipated.[[/note]] Archaeopteryxes turn out to be sentient and possess teleporter technology, but don't see humans as worth contacting -- they treat their guest as a pet and keep him in a pen. Oh, and it was overuse of teleporters that destroyed their rocky planet and twisted gravity to hold its atmosphere in a torus.
* ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'': Arianus, the world of air, is a series of islands and small continents floating at different heights in a world-sized volume of air. Some thought was put into how this kind of world would work -- the islands are made of "coralite", a substance excreted by worm-like animals that contains many small bubbles of lighter-than-air gas (actual stone is noted to be very rare and precious). Drought is also an issue, as rain soaks right into the porous coralite and out of reach, and as such water is a very valuable resource, while most native plants have specialized adaptations for storing or producing water. Transportation is mainly by flying ship or [[DragonRider dragonback]]. Unusually for this trope, it’s an explicitly vertically oriented World in the Sky, taller than it is broad, and changes in air pressure are noted to be an issue as one moves between its Low, Mid and High Realms
* ''Literature/TheEdgeChronicles'' features a small city built on a floating rock, which in turn was anchored to a city built upon a far larger floating rock. Which had "gardens" of stones similar to it, that occasionally grew large enough to become less dense than air and float away into the sky. The floating city was kept from floating away via a combination of many huge anchors and a lump of impossibly dense material that was deposited by special lightning bolts and exploded extremely violently if broken in anything other than twilight and as such grains of it were incredibly valuable.
* The Ellimist's world is stated to be this, in the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' book ''The Ellimist Chronicles.'' Or rather, it's caused and maintained by the Ellimist's people -- the surface is too inhospitable to live on, so they live on chunks of crystal held aloft by their flying residents. Their names are more like addresses, they have strictly scheduled free-fly and rest time, and not much else about their culture (such as where they actually get food) is given much detail.

* ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror'' takes place in a world of endless sky called Everfall. Vertically, the world is [[WrapAround looped]] like a game of ''Videogame/{{Asteroids}}'', such that if you jump off the edge of Telos (the setting's primary continent), you land back where you started 24 hours later. IF you look up, you can actually see the underside of Telos itself, which is held in place by a giant tectonic deposit of a magical mineral called darkstone, which only moves when exposed to light.
* Creator/KarlSchroeder's ''Virga'' series takes place inside a HollowWorld filled with air, where people, ships, entire cities, and man-made miniature "suns" [[TheSkyIsAnOcean float around]]. To the inhabitants, their world is the sky, filled with islands of matter. ''Virga'' also inverts this trope, since technically, [[IncrediblyLamePun their sky is the world]].
* In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' series ''The Empyrean Odyssey'', a succubus attempts to escape Mount Celestia by falling off the side. She keeps falling through clouds until finally giving up, and it is implied you can fall forever and never reach ground. As soon as she starts flying up, she emerges from the clouds at the same place she entered them.
* In ''Minla's Flowers'' by Creator/AlastairReynolds, the protagonist is forced to land on a world with dozens of floating continents: the shattered remnants of a shield designed to camouflage the actual surface from the AbsoluteXenophobe Huskers. The camouflage fragments have some form of anti-gravity, allowing them to hover several thousand meters in the air, where they have flipped over and subsequently gathered water and vegetation. The fragments hold a human society that uses zeppelins and primitive airplanes for travel.
* ''Vertical'' by Rafał Kosik. Due to some unspecified phenomenon ([[spoiler:[[NiceJobBreakingItHero possibly caused by the protagonists]]]]) the world is turned into infinite sky [[spoiler:and infinite ocean]] full of vertical "strings" of infinite length. There are at least two large landmasses, which ended up suspended on strings that penetrated them, as well as a number of mechanical "cities" slowly climbing up.
* ''Literature/SkiesUnbroken'': Discovering new floating islands is the main characters' ambition.
* In ''Faller'' by Will McIntosh, Earth gets ''turned into'' this by some physicists trying to use a zero-point energy phenomenon they don't fully understand.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' explains that several planes have this trait. The [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds Astral Plane]] exhibits this where solid matter is present, with the note that the "land" is actually [[GiantCorpseWorld the petrified corpses of deities]] who succumbed to GodsNeedPrayerBadly. The Elemental Plane of Air is mostly, well, air, but it has a few islands of earth or ice that are easy to get to due to its subjective gravity. The Heroic Domain of Ysgard consists of continents floating atop immense rivers of earth flowing forever through an endless skyscape. The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus combines this trope with EternalEngine, with an infinite array of gears locked together, some the size of islands, others the size of continents, all boasting habitable land on their flat surfaces. The Infernal Battlefield of Acheron is made up of enormous iron cubes floating in a void, which occasionally smash into each other, crushing the armies fighting on their surfaces. And the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna consists of vast volcanoes without bases or peaks rising endlessly into a smoky void, surrounded by free-floating volcanic "earthbergs."

** The ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'' campaign also introduces "air-based worlds" as possible setting (along with the classical earth planets, fire suns and water worlds), which have no solid ground but can include some floating islands.
* Venus in ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'' has a dozen or so "aerostat" habitats in the upper atmosphere. Basically balloons filled with an Earth-like atmosphere and inhabited, the planet's atmosphere is so dense that they float.
* ''The Lady's Rock'' D10 setting combined floating sky-islands with the principles of UsefulNotes/{{Discordianism}}.
* In Urza's Saga from ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' we find Serra's realm where angels rule over peasants who can't travel from one farmland to another, as seen [[https://scryfall.com/card/usg/320/drifting-meadow here]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/usg/325/serras-sanctum here]].
* ''[[TabletopGame/ProseDescriptiveQualities Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies]]'' takes place within a dome thousands of miles across, filled with floating islands ranging from near-continents with their own seas to tiny islets. There's also a region called the Sky of Stones filled with floating boulders.
* Jupiter in ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' has sky islands that form in the atmosphere from collected debris. The islands become a haven for various fast breeding creatures for the short time before they sink under their own weight deeper into the atmosphere.
* Multiple floating islands provide the name of the {{Tabletop Game|s}} ''TabletopGame/SkyrealmsOfJorune''.
%%* ''TabletopGame/SunderedSkies'' is also set in such a world.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''

* ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'' has the Phatagrande Skydom, where the citizens are known as skyfarers, and the main method of transportation between the floating islands are airships.
* ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' would be the most obvious example, although there are hints that it may not always have been that way. Though there is solid ground below, it's not habitable and no-one even knows it's there until events late in the game.

* ''[[VideoGame/ExaPico Ar tonelico]]'':

* The land of Etheria in ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVIIThePrincelessBride'' is made of floating, beautifully vegetated rocks in the sky.
%%* ''VideoGame/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' UsefulNotes/PlayStation game.
* The SNES game ''VideoGame/BahamutLagoon'' takes place almost entirely on floating continents, called "lagoons".
* Outland in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' consists of the blasted shards of Draenor, home of the orcs and ogres, which now hang suspended in an interdimensional void. The Skywall and Firelands sections of the Elemental Plane, as seen in some dungeons, raids, and daily zones, give this idea as well.
* The "border world" of Xen in ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' consists of strange islands floating through a nebulous void.
* ''VideoGame/{{Samorost}}'' and ''Samorost 2'' take place in a world like this except IN SPACE with very unusual islands/planets including ones that seem to made of giant driftwood. ''VideoGame/{{Machinarium}}'' takes place in the same world though seemingly on a much larger landmass (which also has a sky, unlike the ones from Samorost).
* The ''Ray's Maze'' series of VideoGame/WorldBuilder graphical adventure games includes a setting known as "The Void", which is made up of hunks of dirt and rock varying in size between a pebble and a large island floating in a breathable atmosphere. Presumably infinite in size, it appears as though it even rains there, and falling off whatever you're standing on is a common way to die. While flying between islands is pretty much unknown (the "jump doors" of the series are the primary means of transport), two prominent features of the setting are the LostTechnology left behind by the {{Precursors}} and the giant [[FantasticVoyagePlot voidbeast]].
* The Shadow Shard of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', a world shattered by a mad godlike being (it's implied that this world is an alternate version of Earth). It's also implied that the entire Shadow Shard is really inside the ''mind'' of said "god" and that the non-human inhabitants are all fractions of his shattered psyche.
* The setting of ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'' features several floating islands in a vast void. This is only vaguely explained as "In the early days when the world was [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt torn asunder]] terrible magical energies were released and blah blah blah blah blah..." [[LemonyNarrator and yes, it actually says the blahs]].
* The freeware game ''VideoGame/{{Skyrates}}'', set in the land of Skytopia, is entirely made of these.
* ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'':
** Narayan from ''VideoGame/MystIIIExile'' uses this concept, with lighter-than-air inflatable pods keeping chunks of vegetation afloat.
** The ''Age of Spire'' in ''VideoGame/MystIVRevelation'' consists of giant floating mountains in orbit around what looks like a neutron star. The physics are sufficiently well-described to trigger ''massive'' fan speculation on exactly how it works. [[AllThereInTheManual Supplemental materials]] explain that when the core of the world became too magnetically active, the planet tore itself into pieces as the core pushed away the rest of the planet. Now the fragments' aggregate gravity pulling inward is in equilibrium with the magnetic push outward. Fortunately for Sirrus, the fragments also had enough gravitational mass to keep an atmosphere.
* Septerra from ''VideoGame/SepterraCore''. Its shape (and purpose) plays a part in the storyline.
* The game ''VideoGame/{{Netstorm}}: Islands at War'' is set on Nimbus, a world of flying islands that the inhabitants maneuver to fight the occupants of other islands. Note that the islands themselves never move relative to each other during the actual game, they are just land on which you can build. They also can't be destroyed (but the things you build on them certainly can). Making scientific sense was not high on the agenda.
* A twist in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'': the Distortion World consists of floating islands, not all of which share the same gravitational orientation. At one point you get to Surf ''vertically'' between two islands.
* Both the ''VideoGame/RageOfMages'' and ''VideoGame/{{Spellforce}}'' series use the "long ago there was a cataclysm that shattered the world into floating islands, but some great mage or other managed to prevent it from falling apart completely." Oddly enough, in both series this property of the world is more backstory than anything, as the locations look pretty much like you'd expect a typical fantasy world to look (forests, deserts, snow wastes, ''active volcanoes'') and the characters are almost never confronted with "world's edge". In ''Spellforce'', at least, it's little more than a HandWave for why the game world is composed of a number of completely disparate maps that can only be reached via portals -- the technical reason being that it uses RealTimeStrategy style maps coupled with RolePlayingGame style backtracking, and this is what it ends up looking like.
* The MMORTS ''Time of Defiance'' is built around this trope.
* ''VideoGame/TailConcerto'' takes place on an archipelago of floating islands, surrounded by an impenetrable air reef (or "Airleaf", as the game misromanizes it, but then again, Creator/{{Atlus}} translations weren't ''always'' well-researched back then).
* ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'' takes place in the same universe as Tail Concerto, and also reveals that the floating islands [[spoiler: are actually the remenants of a [[AfterTheEnd Post-Apocalyptic Earth]]]]

* ''VideoGame/TheNeverhood'' and other locations in the same universe float in a vast, mostly-empty blackness. The Hall of Records actually explains why this is, but it's hard to get through because it's just ''so freaking long''.
%%* World 4 in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestMonsters 2'' is this trope.
* Apparently ''[[VideoGame/TetrisWorlds Hotline Tetris]]'' leads to such a world.
* ''VideoGame/TheGranstreamSaga'' takes place on 4 floating islands (and a huge flying battleship), one for each element: Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth in that order.
* Some of the planets in both ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy2'' appear to be floating in a blue sky with nothing below them. In fact, the Mushroom World (the Mario Bros.' home planet) is actually floating in a blue sky background in the second game's map of World 1! That is, there are blue skies and clouds, and sometimes faint multitudes of stars, in all directions. In these regions of the universe, space itself resembles a surreal version of Earth's daytime sky, with planets, moons, asteroids, and sometimes even stars floating around in it. It is possibly the most literal image of this trope.
* ''VideoGame/{{Bug}}!'' has each level look like a series of huge FloatingPlatforms, and if you fell off any of them, you went splat.. in mid-air, as there was actually no ground below. [[spoiler:Subverted as the entire level took place on a stage set, as Bug was a movie star]].
* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' takes place on several islands floating above the Earth, which was tainted during the [[GreatOffscreenWar War of the Gods]] to the point where it became uninhabitable.
* The prequel ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'' expands on this premise. [[spoiler:Not only do you learn the Earth beneath the Taintclouds is very much inhabited and [[DarkIsNotEvil actually quite pleasant if a little gloomy]], but you also get to travel back in time and not only witness but take part in the War of the Gods.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Wizard 101}}'' is a mixture of this and ShatteredWorld. It use to be a single world but fighting between the Titans broke it apart and the islands are currently held in orbit by magic.

** ''VideoGame/TheAether'' mod adds a new dimension made up entirely of floating continents.

* ''VideoGame/{{Skylanders}}'' The entire series takes place in the floating realm of Skylands. There have apparently been attempts to find the bottom but they've either ended in failure or the explorer never came back.

* Gamindustri in ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptunia'' and [[VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptuniaReBirth1 its remake]] is this trope, with each nation floating in the sky in separate landmass, connected to each other by cables. There's no know landmass below. Other games set Gamindustri on continents surrounded by oceans, however.
* The bonus-play segment of ''Surface: The Soaring City'' reveals that its FloatingContinent used to be one of many, until a mysterious force began disintegrating them one by one.
* As a result of the mysterious force keeping Ekkunar, homeworld of the Eldrid, from ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}'' somehow stable despite being [[ShatteredWorld shattered]], there are various chunks of land of varying sizes that float in mid-air.
* The Sky on top of the Administrator's Tower in ''{{VideoGame/Fairune}}'' 1, [[spoiler:and Sky Land in 2.]]
* The setting of the ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' series is a flat world over an unknown void. In ''The Lost Age'', part of the major plot twist is that the flat world is ''eroding'', and the antagonists of the first game were [[WellIntentionedExtremist trying to stop this process by any means possible]] because ''their'' [[DoomedHometown hometown is already on the brink]].
* This is the premise behind at least two planets, possibly three or four, in ''VideoGame/{{Meteos}}'':
** Megadom is a gas giant that contains at least one FloatingContinent, with all of its inhabitants living on that continent. Unlike the usual examples of that trope, there is no ground underneath.
** Brabbit is simply a mass of ionized gas with seemingly no central core. It has somehow developed a population of sentient, intelligent gas clouds that float freely within it.
** Yooj and Bavoom have descriptions that imply there is solid ground on these planets, but they are never actually visible in-game. Neither planet's civilizations actually use any solid ground anyway, as they have been adapted to drift about in their planets' extremely strong winds for their entire lives, never needing to land.
* In ''VideoGame/EverQuest'', there exists the Plane of Sky, the planar realm of Veeshan -- the Goddess of the Sky. It consists of multiple floating islands that the players must advance through one by one. In ''VideoGame/EverquestII'', the cataclysmic events that befell the world of Norrath results in many parts of the Plane of Sky to leak into the realm of Norrath. The ''Kingdom of Sky'' expansion pack is filled with numerous floating islands, Owl and Vulture versions of the Aviak race, numerous dragons, and other wonders.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The universe of Tryslmaistan in ''Webcomic/UnicornJelly''. The author's notes provide extensive explanation of how the local physics allow this.
* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'' has Throne, the hub of Creation, which [[http://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/844/ floats]] in an infinite black emptiness. Oddly, there is also the {{Void|BetweenTheWorlds}} outside all of the setting's universes, but [[http://killsixbilliondemons.tumblr.com/post/152038960200/whats-outside-throne-it-kind-looks-like-theyre nobody knows]] whether it's the same thing or not.
* The [[FunnyAnimal people]] of ''Webcomic/{{Cloudscratcher}}'' all live on tall plateaus. The land in between is completely covered in [[spoiler:at least two layers of]] clouds, and is extremely dangerous (although it's possible to turn a big profit by going down there to scavenge wrecked aircraft).

* Castle Nashido and its surrounding "sky kingdoms" in ''WebOriginal/TheClockworkRaven''.

* The land of Atmos in ''WesternAnimation/{{Stormhawks}}'' is one of these, with the different teras ranging in size from large enough for a big city to small enough for a farm or two. The extremely dangerous and uninhabitable solid ground below is known as the Wasteland.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Skyland}}'' takes place a couple centuries in the future when the world has been torn apart into floating "blocks" rotating around the Earth's previous core.

* Such a setup, with floating islands in a limitless sky after a great catastrophe shattered the planet, and people traveling around with airships, exists in the French cartoon ''WesternAnimation/DragonHunters'' ("''Chasseurs de dragons''" 2004, German "''Die Drachenjäger''"). In this series, there's a definite "downward" direction, meaning you can fall off or jump off an island, and there are waterfalls. Populated fragments range in size from those sufficient for a house and small farm to those the size of a good-sized island, and even pebbles may float in the air over the surface of bigger landmasses. (It is never explained why some stones float and others don't, but hey, [[RuleOfCool it looks cool]].) Some populated fragments are tethered together with rope bridges. Uncommon in such settings, magic in ''Dragon Hunters'' is almost nonexistent, and where it exists it is part of the scenery, such as an enchanted fairy-tale spring or monsters breathing fire. The characters have clockwork and [[BambooTechnology bamboo]] technology but no steam tech or magic items. One episode has the heroes dealing with [[GeniusLoci an island]]-[[TurtleIsland shaped dragon]] so rare it is considered a myth. After it is killed, it floats away as Lian-Chu says (paraphrased) "A dragon dies, an island is born", implying that some, if not all, of the {{Floating Continent}}s are dead dragons of that species.

%%* The Tiny Planet of Self in ''WesternAnimation/TinyPlanets''.

* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' features Cloud City, high in the skies of the gas giant Bespin.

* ''TP''[[labelnote:*]]short for "teleportation"[[/labelnote]] novel by Vitaliy Babenko has another relatively hard example. Possibly inspired by the same discovery of Io's gas "doughnut". One of antagonists keeps teleporting a kidnapped boy to different planets ForTheEvulz and one of planets is a similar air torus, where everybody keeps falling indefinitely. It's inhabited by seemingly hostile archaeopteryx-like creatures. Later another antagonist gets stuck there forever.[[note]]To be more precise, the rescued boy hit him with the device that was used to track him through multiple planets and bring back to Earth. The device teleported the villain and itself. By the time the protagonists or police could build another such device all traces dissipated.[[/note]] Archaeopteryxes turn out to be sentient and possess teleporter technology, but don't see humans as worth contacting -- they treat their guest as a pet and keep him in a pennage. Oh, and it was overuse of teleporters that destroyed their rocky planet and twisted gravity to hold its atmosphere in a torus.

* ''Vertical'' by Rafał Kosik: Due to some unspecified phenomenon ([[spoiler:[[NiceJobBreakingItHero possibly caused by the protagonists]]]]) the world is turned into infinite sky [[spoiler:and infinite ocean]] full of vertical "strings" of infinite length. There are at least two large landmasses, which ended up suspended on strings that penetrated them, as well as a number of mechanical "cities" slowly climbing up.

%%* ''Disney/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' UsefulNotes/PlayStation game.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

** Also the Vespid homeworld, which is described as an immense gas giant with islands of rock floating at levels in the atmosphere where [[DidDoTheResearch displacement would dictate that they float]] in the super-dense gasses.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''
** The setting features an entire planet of floating islands, some about the size of a pebble, others entire cities. Of course, these Islands are floating in orbit around a black hole, so yeah...
** Also the Vespid homeworld, which is described as an immense gas giant with islands of rock floating at levels in the atmosphere where [[DidDoTheResearch displacement would dictate that they float]] in the super-dense gasses.
* Multiple floating islands provide the name of the {{Tabletop Game|s}} ''TabletopGame/SkyrealmsOfJorune''.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'': The outer plane of Ysgard consists of continents floating atop immense rivers of earth flowing forever through an endless skyscape.
** This trope also applies to the Elemental Plane of Air, where the rare floating bits of land are highly valuable. Falling isn't so much an issue due the plane's "selective gravity" trait, which allows visitors to choose which way is "down" for them at any time.
** The Astral Plane can have shades of this trope also, in areas where matter is present.

** Sufficient numbers of floating continents turn up in the ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'' setting to suggest this trope, both in outer-world Floating Ar (AWizardDidIt) and orbiting the inner sun of the Hollow World (The Immortals Did It). Subverted in the former case, as the people of Ar still depend on resources from the land or sea beneath them.

* In Urza's Saga from ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' we find Serra's realm where angels rule over peasants who can't travel from one farmland to another, as seen [[https://scryfall.com/card/usg/320/drifting-meadow here]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/usg/325/serras-sanctum here]].

* The Lady's Rock setting for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' Third Edition combined floating sky-islands with the principles of UsefulNotes/{{Discordianism}}.
* Venus in ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'' has a dozen or so "aerostat" habitats in the upper atmosphere. Basically balloons filled with an Earth-like atmosphere and inhabited, the planet's atmosphere is so dense that they float.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warbirds}}'' is set in Azure, which consists of a handful of regions from Earth whisked away in the early 19th century and suspended forever in the sky thanks to a mysterious gravity-negating substance called floatstone. The "sky" it floats in is only breathable to a certain depth: the deeper you go, the more it's dominated by heavy inert gases and gaseous hydrocarbons, which provides [[DieselPunk a useful supply of diesel]] for all those {{Cool Plane}}s the AcePilot player characters fly around in.

** The End seems to qualify. It's a floating continent made of a type of white stone, with obsidian towers and is the home dimension of the Endermen.

* ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror'' takes place in a world of endless sky called Everfall. Vertically, the world is [[WrapAround looped]] like a game of ''Videogame/{{Asteroids}}'', such that if you jump off the edge of Telos (the setting's primary continent), you land back where you started 24 hours later. Telos itself is held in place by a giant tectonic deposit of a magical mineral called darkstone, which only moves when exposed to light.

* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'': Thor's "homeworld" Asgard is little more than a medium-sized city, surrounded by a compact landscape of oceans and craggy mountains, all of it floating freely in space. Said oceans cascade over the edges into the void, and the whole arrangement appears to have a diameter in the tens of kilometers, give or take, with many of the world's edges being easily visible from the shore. Question like "where does the seawater come from?" or "where do they grow all that food?" are never addressed, but can probably be handwaved with the Asgardians' advanced MagiTech.

* The [[PettingZooPeople people]] of ''Webcomic/{{Cloudscratcher}}'' all live on tall plateaus. The land in between is completely covered in [[spoiler:at least two layers of]] clouds, and is extremely dangerous (although it's possible to turn a big profit by going down there to scavenge wrecked aircraft).

* In Urza's Saga from ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' we find Serra's realm where angels rule over peasants who can't travel from one farmland to another. Seen in [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=8322 this card]].

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