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Bizarro Universe
aka: Bizarro World

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It am awful place to visit, but me love to live here.

"Inverted world, where the spazzes make fun of the cool guys!"

An Alternate Universe where everything is the same... but different. The Superman comics originated this, and it has been parodied by a number of shows.

A bizarro world is distinct from a normal Alternate Universe in that a bizarro world has everything "reversed" in some way. Heroes are villains and vice versa; beauty is hated and ugliness embraced. A good/evil flip is the usual trope, common enough to be its own subtrope: Mirror Universe.

Recent examples of bizarro universes have reduced the use of good and evil in favor of other reversals, such as who is the 'smart one' in a group of friends or who are the 'cool kids' at school.

A bizarro universe need not be a literal "other universe"; sometimes it is simply another city/country/planet or a counterpart organisation that has strangely familiar elements, but with some sort of reversals present.

Occasionally, a bizarro world will have inverted language (eg: "badbye" instead of "goodbye"). This is usually not done, however, since the rules are very hard to follow and are often changed.

Compare Opposite Day, a similar idea on a much smaller scale.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Western Animation 
  • The Sealab 2021 episode "Bizarro" had the Sealab being taken over by bizarro versions of the crew who wanted diamonds.
  • An episode of Recess had the main characters go to another school for a kickball game. Gus takes notice of the similarities to their school before they face their opponents. Which are near clear cut copies of themselves — except a majority of the counterparts are a different race and TJ's a girl.
  • Megas XLR has an episode where, in an alternate dimension, Coop is an evil warlord, Jamie is a disillusioned freedom fighter and the world is post-apocalyptic.
  • Kaeloo: The episode "Let's Play Astronauts" had the main four go to an alternate universe through a black hole in space. There, Kaeloo's transformation works in reverse, Quack Quack and Mr. Cat (known as Meow Meow and Mr. Duck) had each other's personalities and traits, and Stumpy was a genius who loved physics and hated comic books. It turns out Stumpy dreamed this all up.
  • A segment from House of Mouse featured Mickey and Minnie Mouse ending up in Topsy-Turvy Town, where everything was backwards. People wear pants and shirts on the opposite side of their bodies, mice chase cats, and people that buy things keep the money. Mickey is arrested for cleaning someone's clothes while Minnie was for insisting on giving her money to a clothes merchant. It ends with them going to jail where everything is pleasant.
  • Hey Arnold!, "Arnold Visits Arnie", Arnold notices that the country kids look alot like his friends but with opposite personalities. For example, Stumpy is the smart kid and Fifi is the idiot, as opposed to Stinky being the idiot and Phoebe being the smart kid. The cherry on top is that he comes across Hilda, who's pretty much a friendly, non-Tsundere version of Helga!. The episode itself is the opposite of an earlier episode, "Weird Cousin".
  • Orko's home world in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) was like this. Because everything, including the laws of magic were screwed up, Prince Adam had to say "Grayskull of power the by!" in order to transform into He Man.
    • Which is why Orko's magic is messed up on Eternia. It's the magical equivalent of Engrish.
  • In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episode "Billy Gets an 'A'", Grim accidentally creates one of these when he magically alters Billy's test mark. However, Mandy remains the exact same in the new universe.
  • A Futurama episode, "The Farnsworth Parabox", features a Bizarro univere where the cast's counterparts have identical personalities but most have a different color scheme.
    • There is a difference, the results of coin flips are opposite of the other universe which create new scenarios if the coin flip leads to an important event. Bizarro Fry and Leela got married, while the Professor has a scar from removing his own brain.
      • In fact, it was implied that coin-tosses were the only differences between the universes. Which doesn't explain how the sky was a different color...
    • The characters (of both worlds!) originally assume that the other world is a Mirror Universe and begin fighting (hilariously).
  • In Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Bye Bye Nerdy" Bloo THINKS he's entered an alternate reality believing it to be the only explanation for Mac becoming cooler than him.
    Bloo: Wait a minute, I know what's happened! Somehow I've accidentally entered a bizarro backward world. Quick! Which way is up!?
    Eduardo: I don't know.
    Bloo: And yet Eduardo remains completely unchanged... Interesting.
  • Parodied in an episode of Family Guy, a hole in the wall of Stewie's room leads to "Bizarro Family Guy". The only apparent differences are that Bizarro Peter reads and that Bizarro Stewie, his room and all his possessions are constantly on fire without being harmed.
  • The Anti-Fairies from The Fairly OddParents! are dark, bat-winged fairies whose purpose is to cause bad luck. They tend to be the opposite of the normal fairies: Anti-Cosmo is a very smart and classy villain while Anti-Wanda is dumb and eats with her feet. Later on, they have a son, Foop, who is cube-shaped as opposed to the round Poof.
  • In one episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, the KND discovered a world where kids were slaves to adults, and the villainous organization DNK helped to keep them in place. Not only were all the inhabitants the opposite of their regular world counterparts, but all names and acronyms were backwards (Lizzie became Eizzil, etc.).
  • One episode of Captain N: The Game Master had the heroes travel through a mirror to a place where all the heroes were villains. We never see the mirror universe counterparts of the villains, though other things are backwards. For example: a woman doing laundry takes her clean clothes and throws them into a mud puddle to make them dirty.
  • Betty Boop and Bimbo once visited the titular "Crazy Town" where everyone does everything backwards; fish fly while birds swim, banana peels are eaten, cutting your hair with scissors causes it to grow back, etc.
  • An episode of Archie's Weird Mysteries had the villain of a story arc go back in time and tamper with the past, with only Archie being unaffected. As the changes build up, they start to reshape Riverdale into one of these. Big Ethel is now Dilton's Abhorrent Admirer instead of Jughead's, Jughead himself is a health food nut instead of a junk food enthusiast, Betty and Veronica's roles are reversed, portly balding Principal Wetherby is now a trim, full-maned coach, no-nonsense teacher Miss Grundy is now the glamorous owner of a successful disco, and to top it all off, a local library is now a Starbucks while reading in public is an arrest-able offence.

    Web Videos 
  • Stop Skeletons From Fighting: He originally presented himself as the exact inverse of The Angry Video Game Nerd; not only does he review retro games positively, but he drinks red wine instead of beer (at one point getting confused when someone replaced his wineglass with a beer bottle).
    • In his reenactment of the Bugs Bunny AVGN episode with Nightshade, at the point in the dialogue where AVGN punched Bugs, instead Nightshade punches HVGN.
    • They are also mirror images of each other in Real Life professional choices, with James Rolfe being a filmmaker and Derek being a musician.
  • In Episode 658 of Stampy's Lovely World, "Mirror World", Stampy is sent to an alternate version of his Lovely World which, geographically, is a Level in Reverse to his home world. It also replaces the Love Garden with the 'Potato Garden', exchanges the lava in the mob trap/grinder with water, gives the wolf pack different names, and is complete with Helpers of different names — Gillian Capybara, Peggy Reindeer and Dizzy Narwhal.

    Web Original 
  • YTMND has a bizarro universe called "Punch The Keys For God's Sake", where every meme is slightly changed note . Things get even more bizarre in other universes such as "YES YES", "Heh", "You Have the Manners of a Goat" and "Typing noises".
  • Apparently Soviet Russia is like this.
  • Orion's Arm has Bizarro World, which is explicitly based on the originator for this trope. It's an artificial planetoid made entirely out of antimatter that serves as a tourist destination for people to act like superheroes or evil versions of superheroes. The local animals and plants are also artificial, and have been designed with complementary colours and unusual shapes to add to the theme. Because of the antimatter composition, tourists need to switch to antimatter bodies for the duration of their visit (they used to be able to visit in their original bodies by wearing special suits, but this was mostly forbidden after a serious matter-antimatter explosion).
  • In Midnight Mares the worlds of Terra Steed and Nod are this to each other.
  • Creepypasta has the Happypasta parody universe, home to characters such as Splendorman. Jeff the Hugger, the Happypasta version of Jeff the Killer, has occasionally been depicted as the "real" Jeff's adversary.

    Web Comics 
  • VG Cats features a strip in which Aeris and Leo envision a world in which Brawl has all you "favorite character and no...ice climbers". Cue cut to VG Dogs, the bizarro equivalent of VG Cats in which the Leo analog is the smart one and the Aeris analog is the stupid one. In this world, Sega appears to have won out in the console wars over Nintendo, and the Brawl equivalent, Sonic Heroes, has included Mario as a fanservice. Bizzaro Aeris mentions liking a game called "Yoshi the Dinosaur", an apparent analog to Shadow the Hedgehog. Then the crew from Sliders randomly shows up. The strip is appropriately titled "Bizzaro!".
  • Terror Island theorem 040: panel 1 shows the logical problems with DC's Bizarro universe.
  • In Shortpacked!, McAwesome's Parasailing and Chocolate Bakery (the place Ethan nearly went to work) is the Bizarro version of Shortpacked. As well as Ethan's counterpart Evan (who's dating That Guy) there's a Benevolent Boss (Bizarro Galasso), a fairly sensible ex-SEMME agent (Bizarro Robin), an employee who's obsessed with pirates (Bizarro Ninja Rick) and Franklin Roosevelt (Bizarro Reagan). There are also versions of Amber (Rose) and Faz (Zaph).
    • And now that things finally seem to be going right for Ethan, Evan's in a coma.
    • Note that there isn't a Mike counterpart...because Mike himself moonlights there, albeit in his nice, drunk persona.
  • Sluggy Freelance appeared to have one of these when the Dimension of Lame first appeared, where Riff, Zoe, and Bun-Bun were all incredibly nice and polite to Torg, while the normally sweet Kiki was rude and vicious. It was later revealed that the Dimension of Lame was actually populated entirely by absurdly kind and innocent versions of people from the main universe. The only reason the Kiki there was so evil was because she originally came from a dimension populated only by extremely Jerkass versions of main universe characters.
  • Mountain Time turned its logo upside-down, and suddenly everything changed. It was River Valley Time.
  • In El Goonish Shive, the "AF04" universe has personality-reversed versions of all the main characters — except Elliot, where the only difference is that he's wearing a white T-shirt.
  • Teh Gladiators, in its third chapter, takes the protagonists into World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, albeit a completely different one from the third expansion pack to that notable game. Instead, a magical catastrophe has created an alternate universe in which everything is a complete role reversal of its standard characterization. Gnomes are nature lovers, Taurens are militaristic, Humans are cannibalistic savages, and Orcs are pacifists, to say nothing of the changes to the world and its NPCs.
  • It's more of an Easter Egg, but the commentary for Darths & Droids Episode 50 not only gives some details of the universe the comic is set in (itself somewhat of a Bizarro World), but also begins a long chain of links to additional Bizarro World webcomics, each one a little different than the last, and each through the lens of whichever screencap webcomic the Comic Irregulars are creating in that world (the first few links include pages of Harry Potter, The Sound of Music, and X-Men webcomics).

    Web Animation 
  • The Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse episode "Bizarro Barbie" sends Raquelle to an alternate version of Malibu. While there, she effortlessly steals the spotlight of their Barbie (gloomy Blarbie), and makes friends with their Nikki and Teresa (agreeable Vicki and Clarrisa, respectively).

    Video Games 
  • Beating The World Ends with You unlocks Another Day, a side-story set in an alternate universe Shibuya where the Tin Pin minigame is Serious Business and everybody's personalities are changed. Most notable is Emo Teen Neku suddenly becoming chipper and positive while trying to fight off his "emo urges," and Joshua becoming (even more) Ambiguously Gay and transparently flirting with Neku.
  • Super Paper Mario has the twin cities of Flipside and Flopside which are opposite counterparts to each other. The two cities look mostly the same, except all of the buildings are reversed and look more run down, and the background music is more depressing. The residents of the two cities each look similar to their counterparts but have opposite personalities and differently colored skin, and residents of Flipside have square noses while residents of Flopside have triangular noses. Flipside has a white tower with seven doors leading to colorful worlds, while Flopside has an ominous black tower with a single large door that leads to the villain's fortress in the void. And there are a few other differences. Most of the people of the two cities are unaware that the other city exists although one pair of counterparts decide to switch places with each other when they are unhappy with their lives.
  • RuneScape used to have random events where the player would get kidnapped to an alternate reality called ScapeRune, which have now been retired from the game. Only two locations in it have been seen. One is a prison, which is the counterpart of Falador's party room, where the player has to pop living balloon animals in order to find the key to escape. The other is Evil Bob's Island, where humans are enslaved to an evil cat and have to catch cooked fish and uncook them for the cat to eat. Evil Bob's Island can still be visited through the Fairy Ring system.
  • Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark has a quest where you deal with a town the queen of which tried to spy on an archmage. As a result of a Poke in the Third Eye, the town was transformed into that. Results include (aside from the town — inhabited by winged elves — transferred underground and liking it) a librarian's beautiful wife transformed into a gorgon and burning books, a merchant only selling at a loss to himself, and a wizard giving the tower to his apprentice. Oh, and the queen became evil.
  • Termina is this to Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. While Hyrule is the home of the Triforce and watched over by 3 goddesses, Termina is watched over by 4 male giants. And more fittingly, many of the inhabitants are the counterparts of characters from Ocarina of Time, but with radically different names, occupations and/or personalities. The stuck-up zora princess is the singer in a rock band, the same farm girl at two different ages is now a pair of sisters, etc.
  • Gaia Online released the Dark Reflection item, which is a minigame where the player searches for a lost NPC who went through the looking glass into a bizarro-Gaia. Among other things, the oily con man is now a priest who's good with kids, and the neighborhood playa is now a trampy woman.
  • Moonside in EarthBound (1994), where everything is black with neon outlines and people say things like "Hey! Parking meters! And you're walking around! Ha ha ha... that's so funny!" and "Mani Mani is always Mani Mani at Mani Mani with all Mani Mani Mani". Furthermore, "Yes" and "No" choices are switched (for, to name a few examples, when shopkeepers ask if you want to buy anything, or the innkeeper asks if you want to spend the night).
  • Praetorian Earth in City of Heroes started out as a Mirror Universe, but in the Going Rogue expansion, the story characters were Retconned slightly: rather than "all the good guys are evil," it's more along the lines of "All the nice guys are ruthless". Where Statesman is the selfless hero of the world (but mostly America), Emperor Cole is the man who "grudgingly ascended to the throne" and quickly turned Praetoria — the last standing metropolis in the world — into a very pretty but VERY sternly run dictatorship. He also killed his best friend before they drank from the Well of the Furies, so Lord Recluse just doesn't have an alternate any more. The rest of the world is pretty damn inhospitable, what with a series of minor nuclear wars making the Devouring Earth rise up to destroy humanity, only getting pushed back by MORE nukes which, of course, made them angrier... It's not as nice a place as the shiny capital city seems.

    Tabletop Games 
  • GURPS Alternate Earths has Bizarro Earth, where doing things backwards started as a harmless fashion in the early 19th century that quickly grew out of control. On this Earth, Kennedy was deposed for shooting at a book depository worker named Lee Harvey Oswald from his presidential car.
  • Naturally, Mutants & Masterminds has these for its Freedom City setting which features countless homages and amalgamations of Marvel and DCU concepts. This includes a Mirror Universe, and Earth-Ape, which is like our Earth but with intelligent apes instead of humans.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • CM Punk called the October 10, 2011 episode of Monday Night RAW something to this effect while commentating a match between Sheamus and John Cena guest-reffed by Triple H since everyone elsenote  had walked out on Hunter the week before.
    "Don't adjust your TV sets; you have entered bizarro world."

    Live-Action TV 
  • The old Canadian kid's show You Can't Do That on Television had every so often their "Opposite Sketches", featuring this.
  • Superman & Lois features Bizarro Earth in season 2. It starts with the arrival of Bizarro to our Earth. He speaks backwards, is weakened by the yellow sun and X-kryptonite and is enhanced by green kryptonite (it's later revealed he's been abusing it to get stronger). When Superman finally travels to his world, he finds out that the Sun is red and cube-shaped. Earth is also cube-shaped. Bizarro is a celebrity, he has a very close relationship with Tal-Rho, who is married to a super-powered Lana. Jonathan has powers instead of Jordan. Subverted with Bizarro's pale and jerky appearance, which is heavily implied to be due to kryptonite abuse coupled with stress and anger.
  • Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry" (1996) posits Elaine as the focal point between two universes: Jerry, George, and Kramer being their juvenile, petty, and doofy (respectively) selves are contrasted with Kevin, Gene, and Feldman who are mature, considerate, and clever. The episode goes to great lengths to provide all the show's constants with bizarro versions. Some stuff The Other Wiki misses:
    • Kevin's apartment is a mirror image of Jerry's, built from the same set. The paint scheme is reversed as well, as are the camera angles. It also has a statue of Bizarro, similar to Jerry's of Superman.
    • At the Bizarro Coffee Shop (i.e. Reggie's), the Bizarro Gang sits in a booth by the window, which the normal gang does but rarely (and often to their consternation). The booth is also filmed from the opposite side (i.e. facing the wall/window, whereas the Monk's booth is filmed facing the restaurant interior).
    • Gene, in addition to his polite Bizarro George personality, is always over-dressed. A sharp contrast to his rival, who would "drape [himself] in velvet [jumpsuits] if it were socially acceptable" (and in fact, eventually does). He's also scrupulously moral to the point where his reaction to finding a payphone that has free long-distance is to call the phone company to report the problem.
    • Feldman apparently has several ideas for inventions that are both new and useful, but dismisses them as "not practical", whereas Kramer's ideas fall into two categories: bad ideas, and good ideas he claims were stolen from him.
    • Feldman always knocks on the door to Kevin's apartment and does not enter until Kevin opens the door and invites him in, contrasting Kramer randomly barging into Jerry's aprtment whenever he feels like. He also buys Kevin groceries, while Kramer constantly mooches Jerry's food.
    • They also play the Seinfeld theme backwards near the end.
    • Let us not forget Vargas, the Bizarro Newman. He's a FedEx delivery man who is good friends with Kevin, unlike Newman who is a mailman and utterly loathes Jerry (who loathes him right back).
    • The last scene has the three hugging each other and Kevin saying, "Me so happy. Me want to cry," Just as Bizarro in the comics would say.
  • Sketches set in "The Bizarro World" — done with a jerky low-frame-rate camera effect and funky audio filtering — were a frequent feature on Saturday Night Live during the early 1980s.
    • "NBC am in third place! This am great!"
  • Red Dwarf:
    • In an episode, the boys visit an alternate universe with an alternate Red Dwarf, and meet female counterparts of Lister and Rimmer and even the computer Holly (it's a world with a female-dominated history). When the Cat runs off eagerly and lustfully to find his female counterpart:
      Debbie Lister: I think he's in for a bit of a shock.
      Dave Lister: Why?
      Debbie Lister: His opposite isn't female.
      Dave Lister: What is it?
      Debbie Lister: It's a dog.
    • Red Dwarf also features the episode "Backwards", where the crew visits a version of Earth where everything is backwards, including time itself. The digestive process was, let's just say, rather interesting there.
    • Perhaps the best example is in "Only the Good..." when Rimmer enters a mirror universe to find out the opposite of a chemical compound destroying the ship. Corridors and rooms are flipped horizontally, Kochanski is The Ditz, the Cat is The Professor (which is also his name) and Rimmer is the Captain with Captain Hollister as second technician. Deleted scenes extend this further, with Lister acting as Rimmer's loyal, posh-speaking second in command.
  • In the Power Rangers Ninja Storm episode "The Wild Wipeout", after failing to surf a wave, Tori winds up in an alternate Blue Bay Harbor, where Lothor is the good-natured mayor, his underlings are model citizens, Marah and Kapri are hippies, and the Rangers are super-powered juvenile delinquents. Even their hobbies are reversed: when they are arrested near the end of the episode, Bizarro Dustin expresses his desire to go skating, which Bizarro Shane dismisses as lame, preferring to ride motorbikes instead.
  • In one episode of Pixelface, Riley exits the game from the wrong port and finds himself in a different console where Alexia is an Extreme Doormat, Aethelwynne is a Jerk Jock, Rex is an Insufferable Genius, Claireparker is The Pigpen and Kiki is... a large, hairy man.
  • In My Name Is Earl, Mexico is apparently this. It's home to Mexican versions of Earl and Randy, who have a list of bad things that they're going to do to people, versus the American Earl and Randy and their list of good things. One of the things on Mexican Earl's list is kidnapping and tying up a woman and forcing her to smoke cigarettes, a direct reversal of something the American Earl did: kidnapping and tying up a woman to help her quit smoking.
  • The Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode "Stranger in a Strange World" introduces Other World when Iolaus accidentally trades places with his double. Here, Hercules is a brutal tyrant known as the Sovereign, Iolaus is his cowardly jester, Xena is a conniving schemer, Gabrielle is an infamous executioner, Ares is the god of love, Aphrodite is the prim and proper queen of the gods, and Joxer is a quick-witted rebel leader. And mentioned but not seen is god of war Cupid.
  • Nick and Eve visit a parallel universe in an episode of Grimm that is the exact opposite of Earth; humans live scared and in constant danger inside primitive tribal camps always under siege by very aggressive Wesen who cannot Woge. And everyone speaks German.
  • A third season episode of Glee saw Tina fall into a fountain, hitting her head, and seeing her Glee teammates' personalities switched.
  • Father Ted, where Rugged Island has another set of three priests with the same dynamic as the regulars on Craggy Island. Although Father Dick Byrne is more manipulative and evil than his counterpart, the "comparatively" good Father Ted Crilly. As for Cyril McDuff, he's such an eejit even Dougal knows it.
  • In the Downton Abbey Season 3 Christmas Special, the family and some servants travel to Duneagle Castle, which is basically Bizarro Downton in Scotland. Duneagle's family is somehow even more dysfunctional than the Crawleys, and Bizarro O'Brien is even more conniving than regular O'Brien.
  • The old Doctor Who episode Inferno saw the Doctor accidentally transported to an alternate universe where Britain had become a fascist, militant country. While he's able to redeem a few of the alternate characters, he's unable to save them and winds up traumatized as he's forced to watch them being killed by the volcanic eruption that was set off by their experiment before he escapes. Expendable Alternate Universe is very much not at play: his failure to stop its destruction haunts him for some time after this.
  • The Daily Show:
    • John Oliver once referred to "Bizarro Hitler", who spent his time hugging Jews and got his ass handed to him by France. Also, his face was all moustache except above his lip. When Jon Stewart said he imagined Bizarro Hitler would be a black man with blond hair and a pencil beard, Oliver told him he was thinking of Dennis Rodman.
    • In another episode, Stewart's Bizarro version is mentioned: the "ruggedly handsome, non-neurotic" Jon Leibowitz, who pretends to be independent, but actually is a "right-wing nutcase."
    • And with the February, 2011 strike in Wisconsin, the Union strikers are apparently the Bizarro Tea Party.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The Wishverse is not a Bizarro world, despite Cordelia's remark "I wish[ed] us into Bizarro Land" and a musical track being named "Bizarro Sunnydale", but a variation of It's a Wonderful Plot (Cordy wished somebody else had never come to Sunnydale).
    • In Angel, in Cordelia's final episode after a long absence, she returns, and upon finding that Angel is working with their main enemies and an old villain has switched sides, asks "What Bizarro world did I wake up in?", referencing both the Wishverse and the trope itself.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Framework in Season 4 is a mix of this with Lotus-Eater Machine.

    Literature 
  • We Can't Rewind has one of these on the other side of The Bermuda Triangle. It's a lot like our universe, except that time flows backward there, such that Earth there turns on its axis and orbits the sun in the opposite directions from here. (So do all the other planets, presumably, though the book doesn't actually say so.) Its inhabitants, all refugees from our world, have accordingly taken to counting time down rather than up to synchronize their timeline with ours.
  • The Other World in Coraline initially appears to be this, except in this case it's the regular world that sucks and the Other World that's a perfect paradise. It's all an elaborate trap laid by the Other Mother — ultimately, the Other World turns out to be infinitely worse than the real world.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Fan Works 
  • This is the basic premise of the The Legend of Zelda fanfic Zelda and the Manacle of Cahla. Zelda is the hero of humble origins saving the world, Link is the prince and heir to the throne, Ganondorf is the royal family's advisor, and Hyrule is a Steampunk-y Magitek empire instead of a medieval kingdom. However, it is revealed everything is a lot more complicated: This universe was created by Ganondorf mucking with time travel, and Zelda is Link's long lost big sister and therefore still a princess.
  • Bizarro World is the setting of The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1. Htrae is a square world, the law prohibits adults from watching porno movies, husbands are trialed and condemned for to not killing their wives, men complain about the women's liberation movement demanding males join the army, children receive gifts of their fathers on Father's Day, Bizarros want their partners to cheat on them, conservatives wear Mohawks and nose rings…
  • Tales from the Other Railway takes place on the "Other Railway" from Thomas & Friends, and all installments in and stories inspired by the fanfic series are adaptations of old Thomas and The Railway Series stories, but starring the evil diesel characters instead of the "good" steamies.
  • Son of the Sannin has Naruto and Fu having to enter the Road to Ninja (see below) universe as the first stage to control their Tailed Beasts in the Waterfall of Truth.
  • The Rainsverse is set in a world where the Mane Six fell into darkness, and where Chrysalis and Sombra are the BigGoods. Moreover, the six Rainsverse Bearers are all ponies who, in the Celestiaverse, were villains (Lightning Dust as the Bearer of Laughter, Aria Blaze as the Bearer of Honesty, Suri Polomare as the Bearer of Loyalty, Starlight Glimmer as the Bearer of Generosity, Sonata Dusk as the Bearer of Kindness, and Adagio Dazzle as the Bearer of Magic).
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse is something of a Deconstruction of this trope. Essentially, it starts by reversing two fundamental elements of MLP canon. In the first place, it is Celestia who fell into madness, not Luna. In the second, six canonical background ponies become friends and find the Elements of Harmony (Trixe Lulamoon as Element of Magic, Lyra Heartstrings as Element of Loyalty, Ditzy Doo as Element of Kindness, Raindrops as Element of Honesty, Carrot Top as Element of Generosity, and Cherilee as Element of Laughter). The Deconstruction lies in the next step, which is the extensive analysis of all the other things that are changed (not just reversed, but changed in all sorts of ways) either as a result of or in order to cause the two primary changes, as well as the consideration of what things don't change.
  • A Glee story, Opposites Attract, follows Kurt hitting his head and being launched into an alternate reality where all of his teammates have not only had their personalities twisted but even the gay characters have become straight.
  • Mirror is about an accident with a portal sending Zim, GIR, Dib, and Gaz being sent to a universe where everyone's personalities are the opposite of the main universe. Here, Irkens are a peaceful race, Dib is a Mad Scientist who wants to rule the world, Gaz is a Sickeningly Sweet girl, and Professor Membrane is an idiot.
  • The Invader Zim fanfic Karma Circle: Alternate features one such world — Gaz is the paranormal enthusiast and self-appointed protector of Earth, while Dib is the apathetic video game addict and bullying sibling. It's also mentioned that Tak is the idiot constantly trying and failing to Take Over the World, while Zim was her more competent rival. And there's an offhand mention of the Professor Membrane of this world being Dib and Gaz's mother instead of their father.
  • A Complete Turnabout, a Ace Attorney fanfiction in where Phoenix Wright wakes up in a strange and twisted alternate universe, offers a minor and actually well thought out example: Edgeworth fulfilled his childhood dream of being a defense attorney. There is no reason yet given for Prosecutor!Phoenix's career change.
  • Beyond the Outer Gate Lies...: Harry refers to the Highschool DXD universe as this, and it fits the profile. In The Dresden Files, devils and angels (both regular and Fallen) are pillars of creation, have nigh-infinite power, can only be created by god, and are almost as hard to kill. Magic functions on willpower and emotion. And the wizard never gets the girls. In Highschool Dx D, most devils aren't much stronger than humans, they can reproduce normally or turn humans into devils, and can be killed almost as easily. And magic is performed with complex math.
  • The Boys: Real Justice: The characters from The Boys universe see the DC universe as this, calling it "Narnia."

    Comic Books 
  • The Mirror Universe of Moebius in the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) series also has some Bizarro elements, besides the morality flip. A pacifist, Irish-accented Knuckles guards the Sunken Island, and instead of the rare and powerful Chaos Emeralds there is a bountiful supply of Anarchy Beryl, which gives Power at a Price (Sonic figures this out in an impressive moment of smartness).
  • The Simpsons has an issue where a malfunctioning invention of Professor Frink's turns the Simpson-verse bizarro — Sideshow Bob is principal of Springfield Elementary, with Milhouse as the top prankster, Bart as the nervous side character, and Lisa, bored with school and unhappy with her good grades. Krusty is an ex-clown sidekick in jail for framing his boss, Mr. Burns is not a rich businessman (With Smithers as his dog), Homer is a single dad raising Bart and Maggie who works for Comic Book Guy's mafia, Marge is a single mom who acts as Springfield's mayor, and most shocking over all, Homer and Marge never met! In fact, the only unchanged person is Moe the Bartender, still running his tavern — though he now has a glass eye. In trying to get back home, Frink ends up causing a series of events that makes the bizarroverse more like the real one.
  • In The Sandman (1989) volume A Game of You, the character Wanda was supposed to be a (DC Comics) Bizarro fan (significant since she is a trans woman and had to deal with feeling very out of place growing up in the Bible Belt). However, Gaiman wasn't allowed to use the Bizarro namenote , and instead had to invent an ersatz "Weirdzo" comic series for Wanda to like. This sadly interferes somewhat with her characterization as readers would have been more able to connect and sympathize with a Bizarro-reading Wanda.
  • Requiem Vampire Knight takes it to its most hellish extreme: Where the sea was on Earth there is now land, and likewise for the oceans. Instead of growing older people regress in age, until they turn into foetuses and are then entirely forgotten, and most integrally to the plot, the more cruel a person was in life, the better they are rewarded in death...
  • The Trope Namer is from DC Comics: Bizarro World.
    • Bizarro World is a planet (or sometimes a universe) that works on Bizarro logic, where everything is opposite of Earthly ways (the planet itself is actually a cube and named "Htrae"). Bizarro World in the Silver Age had a law stating it was a crime to do anything good or make anything pretty or to do things correctly. This was instituted by Bizarro #1 after Lois Lane called him a hideous and backwards "Bizarro" Superman. The inhabitants actually rejected the first Bizarro baby because it was perfect by human standards, then tried to get it back when they found out it would turn Bizarro three days after it was born. All-Star Superman introduced "Zibarro," who was like a Bizarro on Bizarro World. That is, he was a normal person.
    • Following the New 52 relaunch, Earth-29 is a Bizarro universe where everything's the opposite of the main DCU and Bizarro is the main (sort of) hero.
    • An issue of Cartoon Network Presents featured a tribute to Bizarro World in the form of a story where Peter Potamus visits a pyramid-shaped version of it, inhabited by Bizarro versions of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters (among them: Yogi Bear would rather clean up Jellystone Park than steal picnic baskets, Mr. Peebles does not want to sell Magilla Gorilla, and Wally Gator wants to stay at the zoo).
    • Bizarro has been around long enough (and had enough different people writing him) that in any given story it's possible for him to embrace nearly any variation on this trope. Occasionally he's treated as a villain (actually evil) but usually he's portrayed as more of a hindrance (he tries to be helpful but is really bad at it, or perhaps he just has a decidedly twisted notion of what "helpful" means). He is, however, nearly always dumber than the box of rocks he appears to be made of.
    • In Supergirl storyline Bizarrogirl, Supergirl meets her own Bizarro version, Bizarro-Girl (who insists on being the original deal and calling Supergirl "Bizarro-Me"). Bizarro-Girl keeps a very weird moral code for human standards and her powers are opposite to Supergirl's: she has fire breath, freezing vision and petrifying vision (which is unique to her). Both girls fight to save Bizarro World, which in this story is a cubic planet. Bizarro's "Fortress of Togertheness'' is located in the "Anti-Antartic" — a volcanic area. Bizarro Jimmy wants to "draw" pictures of destroyed cities, and their greatest champion is a coward and a liar.
  • In Adventure Time: The Flip Side, this is the effect of the Reverse Curse, which starts off by just interchanging things and then turns all things sense into nonsense.

    Comedy 
  • The History Of The World Backwards takes place in a parallel world where history flows backwards. So Nelson Mandela started life as a popular politician, then went to prison and became a terrorist, the United States fought to join Great Britain and Christopher Columbus loses the Americas and proves the world is flat.

    Card Games 
  • In Magic: The Gathering, Shadowmoor is effectively a Bizarro Universe of the previous block's setting, Lorwyn. A magical incident known as "the Aurora" causes the bright and light-hearted world of Lorwyn to become the dark and sinister Shadowmoor. The personalities of its inhabitants are likewise warped: the clannish kithkin are now xenophobic and paranoid, the mischievous and energetic boggarts are now warlike berserkers, the noble giants are now barbaric simpletons, the mercantile merfolk are now hoarders and thieves, the treefolk still defend the woodlands but now do so with greater savagery, and the proud and domineering elves are now beleaguered preservers of beauty in a dark and ugly world (they're only slightly less smug, though). Except for faeries, they're pricks in both worlds thanks to the power of Oona, their queen, protecting them from the Aurora.

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Episode 132 of Tamagotchi, Lovelitchi and several of her friends find a secret village in the forest called Tamagotchi Village, where all of the inhabitants are the same as Tamagotchi Village but with their personalities reversed (for example, the normal version of the main character Mametchi is a smart Gadgeteer Genius, whereas his Tamagotchi Village counterpart, Mamesaku, is a nerd who doesn't invent anything).
  • Zoku Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei had a segment on dreams where everyone but Nozomu had a reversed version of the traits that defined them. Cute Mute Meru was talkative, Hikikomori Komori was outside, and so on.
    • And then there's the episode in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei where everyone goes to a spa and detoxifies, reversing all of their negative personality quirks.
  • In Pokémon Journeys: The Series, similar to the Kalos Mirror Universe episode, a two-parter concerns a reality where Ash is a meek Shrinking Violet while his friends are the Hot-Blooded ones, and the Team Rocket Trio is competent. The key difference here is while in the Mirror Universe the Team Rocket Trio were competent good guys, here they're even more competent bad guys to the point that they threaten the entire multiverse and force both sets of kids to Save Both Worlds.
  • Naruto the Movie: Road to Ninja movie is set in some sort of reality where Naruto's parents are alive and Sakura's parents are dead. What makes this a full-on Bizarro Universe is that several other characters have backward personalities, such as a flirtatious Sasuke and an aggressive Hinata.
  • Steel Ball Run, the 7th installment of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is entirely based on an alternate universe than the original setting. Some sections of the plot, as well as the characters, are basically the same, such as Diego Brando, Gyro Zeppeli and Johnny Joestar. These three were the main characters of the original setting.
  • Chapter 16 of the Girls Bravo manga has Kirie walking through a magic mirror. On the other side, Yukinari and Fukuyama have each other's personalities, and Koyomi is in love with Fukuyama. She eventually returns to the normal world, but some of them follow her back.
  • Fairy Tail has the Edolas arc, and it's apparent the mangaka likes this trope. Among other things, Natsu is an Extreme Doormat, Lucy is a Delinquent Tsundere, Gray wears multiple layers of clothing and fawns over Juvia, and Erza is a villain. It's also revealed that Mystogan is actually that universe's counterpart to Jellal, who came over to the regular universe to stop his world from harvesting magic power that doesn't belong to it.
    • It's interesting to note that Mira is basically the same kind and sweet person in both universes, except that regular Mira used to be kind of a jerk, and went through a serious personality shift after the death of her younger sister which didn't happen to Edolas Mira except it did, and the regular universe version of her sister appeared in Edolas in her place.
    • Later in a filler, we see the regular universe versions of some of thus far-Edolas-only characters. Notably, Coco is alot meaner in Earth-land (but still shown to care deep down), Byro is a good 30ish years younger, and Hughes is female.
  • In one episode of Doraemon, Doraemon and Nobita land on a planet where the sun rises from the west, the continents, buildings and writings are mirror images of those on Earth, and the social roles and stereotypes of males and females get switched. Nobita is quite unhappy to learn that this planet's version of himself is a genius, who he will perform a Twin Switch with later.

Waldorf: I wonder what this page would be like in Bizarro World?
Statler: Hm... Entertaining!?!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-ho!

Alternative Title(s): Bizarro World

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