Chaos Architecture

Apparently Mario renovates as many times as he saves princesses.^{L - R top to bottom} Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario 64, official German Club Nintendo comics, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix, and Dr. Mario 64

"Well, there's a rec room off the kitchen, but sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. Our house is very odd that way."

— Marge Simpson, The Simpsons, "White Christmas Blues"

A TV show usually has a number of recurring locations: the protagonist's house, his workplace, the Local Hangout, you name it. Soon enough, the appearance of these locations becomes very familiar to the viewer... until this trope happens.

This is sort of a The Other Darrin, but for sets: a location, which is said to be the same we know is now represented by a different set. It goes beyond a simple redecoration: the interior is completely different, as if someone destroyed a building from the inside and rebuilt it with a different layout in mind. And for more cognitive dissonance, there is no explanation for the change, the outside shot remains the same and the characters act like they don't even notice it.

This often happens between an unaired pilot and the actual pilot (no examples for this case, please), between the pilot and the second episode, and between a season finale and the next season premiere.

This trope can also be seen in Video Games when a location that is available in multiple games in one series changes considerably between two games without any in-story justification. This is one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality as no-one wants to explore the same actual area game after game (unless the gameplay is focused away from level layout). A clever game designer make things look different by changing the various Insurmountable Waist Height Fences and Invisible Walls, but often it's as if someone just tore down buildings and geography and rebuilt them from scratch, in different locations. If a Justified Trope, it's because something changed (or blew up) the world on a fundamental level.

For aversions, see Remixed Level, Hard Mode Filler, and good old fashioned Backtracking.

Roguelike games usually feature Chaos Architecture as part of the genre, in the form of randomly generated dungeons.

See also Bag of Spilling, Expansion Pack World. Do not confuse with Bizarrchitecture or Alien Geometries (though the latter may be used as an in-universe justification). Not related to The Maze.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Pokémon: The Series: Cerulean City gym received a redesign between Kanto and Alola. Its brightly colored, dome-shaped exterior was replaced and its swimming pool became a retractable battlefield.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Wayne Manor is often subjected to the whims of the artist rather than maintain any sense of consistency, even outside the times there have been in-universe justifications such as the need to do major repairs or rebuilding.
  • While Gotham has been mapped out, even the maps are subject to small changes and areas, like right around Wayne Tower, that are visited frequently are depicted wildly differently under different artists and writers.
• In the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Donald Duck's house achitecture and placement in Duckburg have been depicted inconsistently throughout the comics, including those with the same authors. The same happens with his Uncle Scrooge's money bin. The one constant thing is that it's on top of a hill. Not even that remains constant, as even Carl Barks himself sometimes put Uncle Scrooge's money bin on the street level. That was probably deliberate, as Barks told later that he made changes to Duckburg's geography on purpose so that there wouldn't be any standard definition about where it was and what it was like. Of course Don Rosa took a very different approach and wanted to standardize everything.

Comic Strips

• Massively averted by British newspaper comic The Perishers, at least when drawn by its original artist Dennis Collins in the 60s and 70s. The layout of the characters' home town was so consistent it might have been based on a real town. Having said that, the interior of Wellington's disused train station often looked bigger than the exterior.

Fan Works

• Always Visible: "Makoto Computerization Institute" is located - wherever you think - underground. Moreover, it is a network of winding corridors.
• Invoked with C'hou of With Strings Attached and C'hou of The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. They're so radically different that only the shapes of the continents and the four moons are the same. For a while the four are convinced they're on an alternate C'hou, until they find out that the Pyar gods changed everything to make the place more homelike for the G'heddi'onians. It's because they're unknowingly in a giant telepathic MMORPG based on C'hou. When they leave the gameworld and enter the real C'hou, everything is back to normal, except for changes that time has wrought over the last six years.

Films — Live-Action

• Our Miss Brooks: In the theatrical series finale, most of the Warner Brother's sets are similar to those previously used on the Desilu produced television episodes. The sets are, however, more elaborate as befitting the concluding film's theatrical release. The one major difference is Mr. Boynton's biology lab. Shown previously as essentially a small office with some cages and posters, it is seen as an enormous darkened classroom with many cages and aquariums.
• When a new director took over on The Film of the Book of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he disregarded everything shown in the first two movies, and Hogwarts' architecture and layout was suddenly wildly changed. While Hogwarts has a mild bit of Chaos Architecture going for it in-universe, one would think someone might remark on things like the fact that Hagrid's hut is in a ridiculously different location than previously shown. Though the majority of the fandom agreed with the changes and considered the new, more visually-interesting architecture an indicator of the series Growing the Beard. Also, since the rest of the films kept that layout, the architecture of the first two films ended up looking like early installment blandness. A full list of changes:
  • Second film: The sand pit around the Quidditch pitch is replaced with a trench. The hospital wing is changed. Lockhart uses a different classroom than Quirrell used in the first movie, and Lockhart's version is maintained as the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom for the rest of the series.
  • Third film: The location of the Fat Lady's portrait is changed (as is the Fat Lady). Hagrid's hut is moved next to a newly-added giant sundial, which is accessed across a newly added bridge attached to a newly added courtyard at the foot of a newly added Clock Tower. The hospital wing is moved to the top of this tower. The Whomping Willow's position has changed: it's still very close to the woods, but now it's farther away from the main building and in a more mountainous area.
  • Fourth film: The entrance hall is replaced with an entrance courtyard.
  • Fifth film: The Potions classroom (unseen since the first film) uses the set built in the second film as Snape's office. The giant sundial introduced in the third film disappears, although the bridge, courtyard, and clock tower remain.
  • Sixth film: The Astronomy Tower is a new set after being represented in the third film as a redress of the Dumbledore's Office set.
  • Final film: The viaduct connecting the entrance courtyard to the other side of the castle is re-angled so that it instead connects the entrance courtyard to a cliff in front of the school. The entrance courtyard is made larger. The moving staircases are replaced with wider, stationary staircases.
• The look of Gotham City in Batman (1989) is drastically different than in Batman Returns, despite having the same director. Gotham in Batman Forever has a noticeably different design aesthetic, where Art Deco is taken to surreal and impractical extremes. Then that's turned up to 11 for Batman & Robin. Also, the buildings surrounding previously seen buildings change.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • This also happens between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. In Begins, Gotham is much more Gothic/fantasy-looking. In TDK, it looks like...Chicago. Justified, since the most surreal vistas belong to the Narrows, an area based on the slums of Hong Kong, which is effectively destroyed at the end of Begins. Other than that there is no great change between the films.
  • The skyline in The Dark Knight Rises plays this straight. It was filmed in Pittsburgh and New York City and makes no attempt to disguise the fact. We see the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Freedom Tower in the backgrounds. Hell, in one scene, Gotham suddenly turns into downtown Los Angeles with its steep street hills!
• There are at least three irreconcilably different versions of Metropolis in the five Superman films, despite the fact that in all five Metropolis is New York City in everything but name.
• Star Trek:
  • The bridge of the Enterprise seems to change for every one of the movies featuring the classic crew. It wasn't that noticeable in the first three movies, which only featured different color schemes and different placements of the various workstations, but the bridges in the second three movies (featuring the NCC-1701-A) were each so different that it's hard to believe they were supposed to be the same ship. There have been fan suggestions that the bridge is a plug-in module that could be easily changed between each movie, but that doesn't really explain how the turbolifts moved.
  • The Klingon Bird of Prey which first appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock also has a completely different bridge in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• In 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the Discovery is completely different from that in 2001: A Space Odyssey, since the original set pieces were destroyed to prevent them from being used in other movies.
• The Sunny Side Up Show: Given that Sprout was still a small channel at the time, the original Sunshine Barn set was cramped, cheap, and looked like a decorated office. This was changed when a bigger, more barn-like set was introduced in early 2009.

Literature

• The geography of Arda (particularly Middle Earth) changes significantly several times between (and within) The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. The world is said to have suffered severe alterations during the struggle between Melkor and the Valar (including the catastrophic destruction of two mountains at both ends of the world, which in turn led to widespread destruction by fire, and the desolation of the original homeland of the Valar; the destruction of Melkor's first fortress also had severe consequences). The War of Wrath at the end of the First Age led to the continent of Beleriand being almost completely ruined and sunken (only a small portion of its eastern edge remained). The maps in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings may seem to depict a similar western edge of a continent, but the latter actually shows the part to the right of the area shown in the first, with the edge having moved back a huge amount to the east. And the most severe modification was towards the end of the Second Age, where not only was the island of Númenor sunk (which in turn caused severe seismic effects across Middle Earth), but the actual shape of the world was changed; the continent of Aman was removed from Arda, and the formerly Flat World was made into a sphere.
• In Piers Anthony's Xanth series, the Good Magician Humfrey's castle presents new challenges to each person who arrives with a question for him, frequently changing structure drastically (for instance, in Centaur Aisle it appears as a glass mountain). In the book Question Quest, which focuses on Humfrey's life, he reveals that the castle was built with all these different structures and then magically compiled into one. Humfrey takes designing his challenges seriously because he's a bit of a grouchy, lazy wizard; making it hard for people to come to his door to ask for help filters out all but the most desperate.
• In the first Harry Potter book, it's stated that the architecture of Hogwarts magically changes around from time to time - staircases move, steps vanish, doors don't always open and sometimes pretend to be solid walls. J. K. Rowling has explained that she established this early on as a ready-to-fire justification in case this problem ever manifested itself, which, of course, it did. See the Film entry above.
• The Chronicles of Amber: Lords of Chaos use the spatial properties of their realm to build transient habitats for themselves in accordance with their current architectural tastes.

Live-Action TV

• The interior of the local high school changes completely between seasons 2 and 3 of 8 Simple Rules. Changes in layout are particularly noticeable during the scenes in the principal's office.
• The architecture of CTU in 24 changes several times over the course of the series.
  • During the jump from the pilot episode (which was filmed months before any other episodes were commissioned) to the entirety of season one, the office added several more cubicles and additional rooms that weren't previously seen.
  • During the jump to season 3 to season 4, the entire layout of the office changes into a much more open-space setting, with a situation room located right next to the office cubicles (instead of in its own wing, as before), and different layouts of video monitors, decor and architecture.
  • It’s potentially justified in regards to the interior of CTU LA. The building takes heavy damage from a bomb during Day 2. There was a three year Time Skip going into the third season with the building mostly the same. It's not until Day 4 that the building has been fully changed. One fan theory is that it was renovated over time and that due to the nature of it being the regional headquarters of a major government building that it wasn't as simple as shutting the place down and relocating during the work. From the fourth season until the final season in Los Angeles the main CTU set was unchanged and remained consistent. Special note should be given to the situation room and the office of the agent in charge. The locations of both places on the main floor of CTU have been consistent since Day 1. A straighter example of this trope comes into play when you look at the exterior of the building. At some times CTU has had a typical multistory garage. At others it's had a fairly wide open parking lot.
• Both the model house and Lucille's apartment in Arrested Development have different layouts in the pilot.
  • In seasons 1-3, the corridor outside Lucille's apartment is an L-shape, with Lucille's door at the corner and Lucille 2's slightly down one corridor. In season 4, the corner has disappeared and the two Lucilles are now at the end of the hall.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • In Season 7, the Sunnydale High School basement keeps shifting, rendering maps useless.
  • Damn Hellmouth kept altering things, seeing as it was right there. Must have made it heck for any janitors to find the broom closet.
  • As a purer example of the trope the whole town changed radically from season to season, and no-one ever remarked on it. For example, it had a seaport in earlier seasons and is completely landlocked by the finale.
  • An entire castle appears out of nowhere when Dracula comes to town (the characters do comment on this one).
  • The Bronze, the town's one bar/nightclub/hangout, has a different floorplan in almost every episode. Even the beverage menu changes frequently, occasionally becoming a coffee bar.
  • The Wolfram & Hart building in Angel has no less than three completely different versions of its interior. While the first transformation (between the Season 4 episodes "Habeas Corpses" and "Home") is somewhat justified and certainly noticed, the second one (between the Season 4 finale "Home" and the Season 5 premiere "Conviction") is not.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Piper got a job in an Italian restaurant in the pilot, but from the second episode onwards she works in a different restaurant named "Quake". While both the set and the outside shots are different, it is stated to be the same place.
  • The bathroom under the manor's staircase changes into a closet come Season 5.
  • In Season 6, after Phoebe and Paige temporarily move out, Paige's old bedroom becomes Wyatt and Chris' room. They keep their room when Paige moves back in, with another never-before-seen fourth bedroom appearing out of nowhere.
• The pilot of The Cosby Show used a very generic living room set, although the adjacent kitchen and other rooms are the same as used in the rest of the series, with a bit of redecorating.
• Next time you have a marathon of the once popular Diff'rent Strokes pay attention to the door, or blank wall, or staircase in the back left of the apartment, which sometimes goes nowhere, sometimes goes to Ms.Garret's room, sometimes connects to the bedrooms upstairs, or...hell, whatever the writer needed that part of the apartment did.
• Doctor Who:
  • The huge and mostly unseen TARDIS interior changes shape, as can be most clearly seen by comparing the various different appearances of the control room. The exterior, despite being stuck as a police box, also undergoes minor changes like altering the window size. The changing interior is eventually explained as the Doctor occasionally altering the TARDIS' desktop theme, as well as the destruction and repair of old rooms; in fact if you know the layout you can walk between them.
    Sarah Jane Smith: Just how big is the Tardis?
    The Doctor: Well, how big's big? Relative dimensions, you see. No constant.
    Sarah: That's not an answer.
    The Doctor: How big are you at the moment?
    Sarah: Five four, just...and that's still not an answer.
    The Doctor: Listen, listen. There are no measurements in infinity.
  • Coal Hill School first appeared as a studio set in 1963. When the show revisited it in 1988, a school in Hammersmith was used for the exteriors. When it appeared in the 2014 and 2015 series, a different school in Wales was used. Obviously many schools have changed site or been rebuilt since 1963, so this is perhaps more justified than some of the other examples. When it's used as the setting for Class, it's a much more modern building, and this is noted in-universe as a rebuild.
  • "The Day of the Doctor" introduces as an important location a certain barn on Gallifrey. When it reappears in "Listen" and "Hell Bent" it has suddenly acquired a loft — keeping in mind that In-Universe, the chronological order of the barn's appearances is "Listen", "The Day of the Doctor", "Hell Bent" — so it has a loft, then it doesn't, then it does.
• Eureka had the inside of Global Dynamics change MASSIVELY between the pilot and the actual series.
• The living room and the kitchen of the Banks' house in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air completely changed after the first season - most notably they were no longer separated by a door, the living room was much larger, and both rooms now had an exit to the garden.
• In Monica's apartment on Friends there is sometimes an arch between the main room and the kitchen. Sometimes its presence is demanded by the plot, but sometimes it's just there because the director liked it there.
• The Full House house is inconsistent with the way its two stories are portrayed. Look carefully at the scenes in the upstairs hallway and you'll notice that the stairway is at a right angle, which would make the second floor wider than the first (which is impossible considering how the house looks from the outside). Also consider the kitchen stairway, which is on line with the living room stairway and should be on the other end of the upstairs hallway, also impossible if you consider the above.
• Ben's house on Lost changes layout multiple times between its first appearance in season 3 and its last appearance in season 6.
• The LAPD precinct in the first season of Lucifer looks so different compared to the one seen in later seasons. Initially, you can chalk it up to the location moving between the seasons and nobody bothering to mention it, but the Whole Episode Flashback in "Off the Record", which uses the newer set, makes it clear that this is a Retcon.
• Mama's Family:
  • The number of bedrooms in the Thelma's house shrinks between the second and third seasons:
    • In the first two seasons, Thelma's house has three bedrooms, an attic that functioned as a fourth bedroom, and a basement that was a combination den/fifth bedroom. Thelma had the Master Bedroom, her sister Fran had the second bedroom. Thelma gave the smallest bedroom to granddaughter (Vinton's daughter) Sonya. Grandson Buzz (Vinton's son) was given the attic. Vinton got the basement, and was later joined there by his second wife Naomi.
    • When the show went to domestic syndication, Thelma's gave grandson Bubba (Eunice's son) her now deceased sister Fran's room. Vinton and Naomi complain about remaining in the basement and not getting an upstairs bedroom. Considering Sonya and Buzz left for college, their bedroom and attic room should have be open for Vinton and Naomi (or Bubba).
  • The basement room also changes between the second and third seasons. In the first two seasons it's an entirely finished room, with wood paneled walls. As of the third season, it's only partially finished with only framing separating the bedroom from the furnace and hot water heater.
• Zordon's Command Center looks very different in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers than it does in The Movie. The Power Chamber also looks completely different in Zeo than it does in Turbo.
• Maxwell Sheffield's house in The Nanny is different in the pilot, the biggest difference being that the front door and the staircase were on the left in the pilot and on the right in the rest of the series.
• A few sets have been changed radically on Neighbours, most obviously Number 30 Ramsey St, which was rarely seen in 1985 and seemingly unoccupied until 1988. Another was Daphne's restaurant which was completely changed at the start of 1986. Both examples are the result of the sets being destroyed after Channel 7 cancelled the series, although the main three houses at the time were recreated more closely by Channel 10.
• The break room in NewsRadio was a control room in the pilot.
• The sets for The Odd Couple (1970) and Happy Days were completely changed when they went from a single camera setup to Filmed Before A Studio Audience, without the characters moving to a different apartment/house (also Arnold's Drive-In on Happy Days - the other permanent set). Oh, and one time Justified when Arnold's burned to the ground and they built a new Arnold's.
• Two examples in The Office (US):
  • Between the first (shot on location) and second (shot on a soundstage) seasons, everything just outside of the Dunder Mifflin's office changed, as if the office was ripped and transplanted into a different building. In the first season, the appearance of the building is completely different and the parking lot is much bigger. Deleted scenes from season 1 also show a completely different staircase and a balcony, which doesn't exist from season 2 onwards.
  • Minor example: right after Jim got promoted to co-regional manager in season 6, Creed and Devon's desk clump was replaced with a small office, and Creed changed desks, now facing Meredith. While such a change is realistic and justified, this can fall under this trope since nobody comments on it.
• Our Miss Brooks: In the theatrical series finale, most of the Warner Brother's sets are similar to those previously used on the Desilu produced television episodes. The sets are, however, more elaborate as befitting the concluding film's theatrical release. The one major difference is Mr. Boynton's biology lab. Shown previously as essentially a small office with some cages and posters, it is seen as an enormous darkened classroom with many cages and aquariums.
• Nearly every series of Red Dwarf alters the architecture of the ship.
  • Starbug, while still rather claustrophobic, is far bigger in series 6 and 7 than earlier series, apparently growing a few new rooms; in 7, this is justified by the battle with the Future Dwarfers warping the structure of the Bug to TARDIS proportions. And let's not even get into the Blue Midget and its legs (though the latter was apparently justified by Nanomachines rebuilding Red Dwarf).
• The hospital in Scrubs looked completely different between the pilot and second episode. Interestingly, the same building is used in a number of other shows, notably Childrens Hospital ^note Yes, the punctuation is deliberately wrong. at the moment. They've remodeled the inside and avoid shooting rooms in the same way Scrubs did to avoid it feeling too similar.
• The interior of the Millers' house in Still Standing is completely different in the pilot.
• The Hub in That '70s Show looked completely different in the pilot, complete with a western theme.
  • In the Sequel Series That '90s Show, the Runks' (formerly Pinciottis') house has a completely different kitchen and Gwen's (formerly Donna's) room somehow migrated from the second floor to the first.
• Dr Mary Albright and Dr Dick Solomon's office in 3rd Rock from the Sun is completely remodeled (with no comment from the characters whatsoever) between the pilot and the second episode; even the door is on the opposite side of the set.
• In season 5 of Teen Wolf the set of the high school's library was altered significantly, and the set was a reused version of Derek's loft from seasons 3 and 4. There may, however, be an unstated explanation for this set change: the library of Beacon Hills High School was the location of a massive attack by the kanima in season 2, and after filming transferred from Atlanta to Los Angeles starting in season 3, the shots of the library were noticeably different, though it could have been argued that the set was the same as the season 1/season 2 library OR the season 5/season 6 library. In other words, the season 3/season 4 shots of the library feature quite ambiguous shots, giving quite a bit of room for imagining the rest of the library by not showing very much of the library itself while still managing to imply that the scenes were taking place within the school library. It's like the producers KNEW that Derek would leave the show and they'd give the set for his loft to become the library... Suspicious...
• WKRP in Cincinnati's bullpen set, introduced partway through season 1, clearly occupies some sort of M.C. Escher-inspired eighth-dimensional tesseract space when you try to reconcile where the windows look out onto, and where the windows in the broadcast studio hallway and Mr. Carlson's office face. Things get even weirder in the 90s revival series, when Buddy is seen putting a window between the program director's office and the broadcast booth, which previously didn't appear to be anywhere near each other.

Puppet Shows

• The eponymous street in Sesame Street has been remodelled several times, with various degrees of plausiblity, but the most notable example is the "Around the Corner" era (1993-1997), where it suddenly turns out that the street continues further than we've previously seen. And later, when the new locations test poorly with the core audience, it doesn't.

Toys

• BIONICLE suffered from this a lot.
  • Kini-Nui, the Great Temple: in the Mata Nui Online Game, it's a solitary structure in the middle of a forest, sitting atop a slightly raised platform, approachable from all sides. In most other depictions (including the MNOG II), it's surrounded by rocky cliffs and is made up several structures: the temple itself which is situated on top of a mountain and has a single staircase, a bridge connecting it to the Amaja-Nui sandpit, and on the opposite side of the scene is a giant stone carving of a face. The Mask of Light movie replaces the lower ground with a river and waterfall. Also, the temple itself (essentially, four monoliths and a shrine in the middle) can be towering and enormous, or just big enough to fit a group of characters.
  • Some online content, such as the pretty lame Mata Nui Explorer, make every village, no matter how elaborately and creatively designed, into a simple collection of random, blob-shaped huts scattered in some empty area.
  • Onu-Koro is an underground village inside a closed, pitch black cavern with a river flowing across it. In the canceled The Legend of Mata Nui game, it looks the same except with brown instead of black huts, but the game's ending animations would have showed it as an open cavern. In the Mask of Light movie, the huts look totally different, and some are built into the walls. The cavern is way bigger, gigantic stalagmites appear in the town center, and sunlight is coming in from the ceiling.
  • The scrapped PC game redesigned the villages significantly during development. MNOG and other online content used the preliminary village designs, inadvertently making them official after the PC game got canned, and most of the finalized designs were not used in any media. Some odd features of the PC game that got carried over into MNOG include dance arenas in some villagea. As dances got phased out of the franchise after the game's cancellation, these places were also ignored in other media.
  • Most of the villages are greatly redesigned in MNOG II. These changes mostly make sense, but some are very radical.
  • Mangaia, the Makuta's lair:
    • In the MNOG, a giant, bluish outer chamber with many mechanical control towers, and a circular slide-up door leading to an empty, red central chamber where Makuta lives. On the other side of this chamber, another door leads to the Bohrok nests.
    • In The Legend of Mata Nui game, the outer chamber leads to the Bohrok nests immediately, the control-tower chamber is replaced with an elevated platform with a drop-down at the end, and the central chamber is a separate place entirely, accessible by teleportation.
    • In the first book, there are no control towers, and the central chamber leads to the surface.
    • In the Rahkshi promos, Makuta's chamber has lots of carved blue stone pillars reaching up to the ceiling. The center of the floor has a symbol of the island on it.
    • In the Mask of Light movie, the chamber is filled with green gas, the pillars are hollow and made of a green crystal-like material, and in the middle of the floor is a pool of Energized Protodermis in the shape of the "three virtues" logo. The outer chamber is a simple cave, no control pillars, the door is a stone gate, and on the other side of the chamber is a giant carving of a mask, hiding a doorway which leads to a subterranean sea.
    • In one of the comics, Mangaia is a simple room with windows, despite it being underground.
  • The environments in BIONICLE: The Game don't follow any of this, and make up everything (save for Kini-Nui) from scratch. Along with the environments of the BIONICLE: Heroes game, these are non-canon.
  • The Coliseum in Metru Nui is a giant, tubular tower flanked by several equally huge triangular structures in some media. In others, these side-structures are gone.
  • The Ko-Metru towers are giant crystals in most early media. In the Legends of Metru Nui movie, they sport elaborate, geometric patterns and spherical structures on the sides.
  • Roxtus is built inside a Humongous Mecha's head, but the head looks different in every media.
  • The Great Beings' fortress looks like a giant, erect LEGO Technic pin made of stone, but in one of the comics, it's drawn like a shiny, semi-spherical metal observatory built atop a mountain peak.
  • The Bohrok Nests have a common design template across media, but in MNOG, the stacked-together Bohrok canisters are hexagon-shaped and see-through at the top, whereas other depictions are more like the actual toy containers in looking like rounded-off parallelograms from the top. In the CGI ads, they look like green organic cocoons, whereas in the comics they're gray and metallic.

Video Games

• Castlevania: It's explained that Dracula's Castle itself is a "Creature of Chaos", constantly changing for different people. This also explains how NPCs get to areas that it takes the player special abilities to get to. Heck, that's how the castle changes every game. One odd result of this pops up in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow duology. As a result of the events of Aria of Sorrow, the Castle is permanently sealed away. In Dawn of Sorrow, the place you explore is stated to be an "exact replica" of Dracula's Castle. How can you build an "exact replica" of something that has no constant, definitive shape? Other than building an exact replica of how the castle appeared at one point in time, making this Metaphorically True, that is.

• Devil May Cry: Despite being supposedly the same building, Dante's Devil May Cry shop has multiple and drastic redesigns through the games and the animated series. Notably in the first and second games, it is contained in a single small room while in later works, it is more spacious and has stairs leading to a second floor.
• EXTRAPOWER: Much like Castlevania, Blackberry's pyramid shifts layout and appearances between EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce and EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist, explained in the latter as the spirits of the pyramid rearranging the pyramid to make it more difficult for outsiders to challenge. In-universe, Zophy has challenged the pyramid several times in the past, and it's different each time.
• Mega Man Battle Network is a curious example of this trope, as Lan's hometown stayed the same between the first three games. Then, starting with the fourth, all the buildings and the school's location were changed around (including in flashbacks taking place before the first game). It then stayed like this until the end of the series. The Internet in said games, however, changed every time. Just like in real life, the Net is ever changing.
• Ultima:
  • The series had three continents disappear after the first game, with the geography more or less stabilizing by the fourth game. Nevertheless, the mere passage of centuries does not explain how the individual towns do not resemble each other in the slightest. Castle Britannia, for example, is constantly adding and removing floors throughout the games.
  • The disappearance of at least one of the continents, the Lands of Danger and Despair, is explained when you visit it in Ultima VII Part II — Serpent's Isle.
• Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel:
  • Averted in the sequel when revisiting Dantooine, a key planet in the original game. The area was left almost identical to the way it was in the original game, though the Jedi Academy is now in ruins, and the colony's other buildings were repurposed by new colonists (and were much closer to each other than originally). The player's ship, the Ebon Hawk, was also identical to its original appearance.
  • Korriban was also the same, with the Sith Academy in ruins. The grounds outside Korriban, however, were very much smaller then they were in the first game.
  • The Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban changed between game series, too. In Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, chronologically about four thousand years later, it was in ruins, but that could not explain the changes of layout, especially inside the tomb of Marka Ragnos or that the other tombs around it are not visible. Of course, these games were otherwise unrelated, set thousands of years apart, of different genres (Academy is a First-Person Shooter), and not made by the same people (BioWare for KOTOR vs. Raven Software for Academy). A good comparison is on this page of a Knights of the Old Republic II Let's Play. In Star Wars: The Old Republic it has a third completely different layout.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Many environments in World of Warcraft look nothing like the way they appeared in the RTS games, and the geography of the world itself was fundamentally altered over the course of the series (ironically, the geography of Lordaeron and Draenor/Outland ended up closer to Warcraft II than Warcraft III, which can be explained by assuming that the loading screens in the latter are massively stylized). The geography of Azeroth has also changed within the game itself over time:
  • The release of the 1.8 patch replaced the Silithus region with an entirely new zone of the same name.
  • The Burning Crusade drastically reshaped Quel'Thalas and added a bunch of islands to the southwest of Teldrassil seemingly out of nowhere — to serve as starting zones for the blood elves and draenei respectively.
  • Wrath of the Lich King changed the geography of the Eastern Plaguelands, adding a coastline and the ruins of previously-unseen towns — a non-instanced version of the death knight starting zone.
  • Cataclysm explicitly justified a major reshaping of Azeroth's geography, as Deathwing's emergence caused devastation on a vast scale. The developers also used it as an opportunity to revamp quest flow, resolve/introduce storylines, and enable flying mounts in the original zones.
• Final Fantasy X-2:
  • Mostly averted, which used largely the same areas as Final Fantasy X, but removed the Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence from certain places. Most new areas are the result of further exploration of areas left largely unmapped in FFX.
  • Further, the one area from the first game that was completely made over had a perfectly logical reason: In the first game, you get there right as the place is wiped off the map, and by X-2, they've rebuilt it.
  • Water Areas are removed however. You can't swim though the path Wakka takes Tidus to get to Besaid the first time or out at the beach. Justified as you only have one character with that sort of lung capacity from the first game in your party, and she can't go where her allies can't follow.
• Baten Kaitos Origins has the same towns and world map as the first game, but most of the dungeons from the first game are inaccessible and new ones can be found in areas that were empty or inaccessible in the first game.
• Averted in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Shadow Moses Island is largely the same as it was the first time, save for cosmetic makeovers to fit the new generation of consoles, some blocked paths, some expansions, and a couple new areas that Snake simply didn't have any reason to visit the first time through.
  • Outer Haven is explained to be the same class of ship as Arsenal Gear from the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but the overall layout is not nearly as trippy and confusing as it was back then - then again, when we see profile shots of the ship, it also looks nothing like what we've been shown a normal Arsenal Gear looks like, so it could be differences between the prototype and production models.
• In Creatures 2, there has apparently been a massive volcanic eruption, accounting for the planetary facelift.
• The .hack// installments that occur after //tasogare no udewa densetsu make use of a second The World after the first crashed permanently — with all new versions of old areas.
• Mostly averted in Fallout 2, in which the entire game map is set above the map for the original Fallout with only a little overlap; only a handful of locations on the top of the original map reappear here and for the most part they have been justifiably altered since decades have passed between the two games. Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 avoid the issue entirely by being set in entirely different areas (further east into Nevada for New Vegas, and the entire opposite side of the continent for 3 and 4).
  • One particularly egregious example where this trope fits is Vault 15. In the eighty years since The Vault Dweller came here, a mountain has inexplicably come into existence. The entrance cavern has also completely changed, and the elevator shaft that linked levels 2 and 3 is now gone (the level 3 elevator entrance now connects to the shaft that once linked only the top two levels, even though the door hasn't moved to compensate).
• In the first three Police Quest games, the layout of the Lytton police headquarters (and the city itself) changed considerably between each game. The VGA remake of the first game is based on the third game's layout.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II re-uses many of the same "worlds" as the original, but with radically different layouts. Even specific locations within the worlds, such as the Bazaar in Agrabah, are redesigned. It's also justified for Hollow Bastion, because it was a Doomed Hometown and the past residents had spent the year in between games moving back in and renovating.
  • 358/2 Days is entirely made of recurring worlds, often with somewhat different layouts (read: smaller, but with more platforming), though Twilight Town is near identical to the original, and Neverland is entirely different (because it actually takes place in Neverland this time, instead of Hook's Ship and London).
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, a prequel to the first game, Neverland, Disney Castle (though it's more of the town), Radiant Garden, and Castle Oblivion are very different from their prev... uh, future incarnations.
  • One of the gates (the one opposite the Coliseum itself) in Olympus Coliseum leads somewhere different in each game.
  • The Cave of Wonders never looks the same way twice. Kinda justified seeing as how, y'know, a Genie used to live there. Who KNOWS what kind of crazy magic that place has?
  • Averted in Kingdom Hearts III for "The Caribbean", the successor world to II's Port Royal. Each area from the Port Royal section of the world matches the way it was in II, albeit with some extra embellishments due to the game's upgraded processing ability.
• The eponymous city in Neverwinter Nights 2 looks nothing like it did in the first game; this is largely justified by the near-total destruction of the city at the end of the first game, though even buildings that were left intact have changed noticeably. One friendly character complains about it, since his nice private home is now in the middle of the richest district and nobles keep pestering him to sell. Also, the main castle is now in a completely different district.
• Averted in Golden Sun, which takes place on one and a half continents, while Golden Sun: The Lost Age takes place all over the world except those one and a half continents. There is one small strip of coast on the original continent accessible in the second game, but the dungeon involved wasn't accessible in the original.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: The geography of Angara and presumably all of Weyard is radically altered by the events at the end of The Lost Age. This conveniently solves the problem of the entire world being more or less explored out by the end of the GBA games. How come we didn't see all these ancient kingdoms in the previous games? The Golden Sun did it. The Golden Sun effectively overdosed the world on magic. When that happened, everything changed. Mountain ranges shot up, an active volcano was bulldozed by its power, waterfalls between different levels of the same ocean sprung up... and a good portion of the eroded world was restored. It's implied that all of the old technology was excavated from the restored lands following the Golden Sun's rise.
• Seen in any The Legend of Zelda game that happens in the Kingdom of Hyrule: the overworld retains some details yet is always different. This is justified because, with the exception of direct sequels, all Zelda games are centuries apart, allowing the kingdom's borders to shift, settlements to change, and rivers to change course.
  • This was actually done fairly well between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, with the kingdom simply being a bit larger and the places more evenly distributed. The game also justifies why Midna wouldn't recognize the Palace of Twilight, her own home, by her commenting that Zant's dark magic warped it.
  • One exception: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has the "original" Hyrule of the first game recreated at the far southern end of the map, though it looks a lot smaller than in the first game; each tile represents a bigger area in II compared to The Legend of Zelda.
  • It's also averted in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, where the world matches up quite well with the world from A Link to the Past.
  • It happens when you visit dungeons from earlier games. Twilight Princess has the the Forest Temple, the Water Temple and the Temple of Time from Ocarina Of Time while A Link Between Worlds has the Eastern Palace, the Desert Palace and the Tower of Hera from A Link To The Past and they all have drastically different architecture (although the Eastern Palace's layout is loosely based on the original's).
  • The Temple of Time in Twilight Princess is actually somewhat of an aversion, as the revisited part is clearly the same place, and the added section is inaccessible under normal circumstances (and may not even exist in the same physical plane as Hyrule). The areas of the Sacred Grove that are adjacent to the ruins do contain structures that weren't visible in Ocarina though, although these could be explained by the games being set centuries apart.
• Justified in season two of the Sam and Max adventure game from Telltale Games. The neighborhood was rearranged violently by a giant robot in the opening scene of episode 1.
• Mostly justified in the Exile/Avernum series.
  • The general layout of the caverns remains the same, with key places being revisited in each adventure; seismic activity explains many of the changes that are present. That being said, the game doesn't really explain why the buildings keep shuffling around every twenty years... Furthermore, the Tower of The Magi is notable for appearing pretty much the same in each game - despite the fact it routinely gets wrecked by demons.
  • And then the Avernum series got its fourth installment. The new engine must have come with a trash compactor, because suddenly everything became much closer together.
• In Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, the sequel to The Longest Journey, Zoe goes to the starting area of the first game and it is very similar in layout to the old game except with a bit more details that would supposedly have been between the area transitions of the first game. Most other changes were justified by the fact that the neighborhood since the first game also went from being a bohemian artsy neighborhood to a run down slum in the 15 years between Dreamfall and The Longest Journey and what made that area interesting was seeing how it changed. We also go to see the upper floors of the border house, April Ryan's home in the first game.
• Phantasy Star 1, 2 and 4 fall under this trope with regards to Motavia and Dezolis. Motavia, though, has a logical explanation: the introduction and destruction of Mother Brain. Subtly averted in PS IV, where the inner Air Castle is identical in layout to the one in PS I, although it's hard to tell because the dungeon exploration in the first game took place in first person view.
• Pokémon:
  • Cerulean Cave from Pokémon Red and Blue has had its layout changed in every single game it's appeared in (excluding the Gen I remakes, which reuse the layout from the original Red & Green — which still counts for non-Japanese players, since they never got those). The only consistent bits between them is that the cave has two floors and a basement, the second floor is a maze, and the basement has Mewtwo at the end of it.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver:
    • The player can go to Kanto from the first-generation games after becoming the Champion. Most of the changes are at least somewhat feasible: lots and lots of Insurmountable Waist Height Fences are destroyed, for example, as well as a family relocated due to the construction of the Magnet Train. Others, such as Mt. Moon changing from a labyrinth to a path with a single fork, the entire Indigo Plateau moving southwards, and Viridian Forest becoming a hedge maze, are just a little impossible. The most memorable change is perfectly possible, but hilariously crass: Pokémon Tower gets changed from a solemn, haunted graveyard for Pokémon to a radio tower. Apparently the three floors or so of graves were relocated to Mr. Fuji's tiny basement.
    • There's also Cinnabar Island. Everything was destroyed in a volcanic eruption; all that's left is a rebuilt Pokémon Center, with the gym relocated to the otherwise-now-inaccessible Seafoam Islands. Cerulean Cave is also entirely inaccessible, though it's likely the work of Mewtwo; if you look around where the entrance should be, you can find a special item, the Berserk Gene.
    • Viridian Forest was expanded back to a larger location in HeartGold and SoulSilver, as were the Seafoam Islands and Cerulean Cave (both of which got different layouts from FireRed/LeafGreen and the Gen I originals), thanks to the greater amount of data storage the Nintendo DS provided over the Game Boy Color.
• Silent Hill:
  • The events that happen in Silent Hill occur in the newer part of town, north of the lake. In Silent Hill 2, and in Silent Hill 3 when you do visit the town proper, your character is in the older part of town south of the lake. Of course this just accounts for the time when the town is being remotely normal. When your character slips into the Other side of the town, just be glad if you're still standing on something solid...ish.
  • The hospital in the first game grows an extra fourth floor as you shift to the nightmare dimension.
  • At the end of the first game, an... event... causes the architecture of both the "real" and "unreal" sides of the town to topple into an unnerving mishmash, where familiar environments connect to each other in new and bizarre ways. Your save file, which always keeps you apprised of where you are, will helpfully tell you that your current location is "Nowhere".
  • The Order's church at the end of the third game is a similar mishmash.
  • Another example occurs in the hotel of the second game, the "normal" version is how James saw it three years ago, then its alternate form is a mishmash of its present day appearance (burnt and flooded) and a Dark World version (doors that warp between each other, a hallway that doesn't exist in the real world, otherworld decor, etc.)
  • The historical society abyss, where the space-time and real-otherworld continuums are also out of whack, i.e. descending a thousand feet via the many holes, only to find oneself back at ground level outside.
  • In Homecoming, Alchemilla Hospital looks vastly different and is a mental hospital as opposed to a normal hospital, probably because the game was made by a completely different developer.
  • One of the crazier examples would be Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, where whenever you enter the nightmare world, everything freezes over and the architecture goes completely insane. It's most obvious during the mall and pawn shop levels, the former of which features the buildings on the street doubling on top of each other, and the framework for further building on top of that, such as the hardware store and cafe becoming veritable towers of ice. In the latter, what was once a small pawn shop, about the size of a two-story, two bedroom house is now the most ridiculous Escher-esque Magical Mystery Doors Mind Screw you're likely to see.
  • Silent Hill: Homecoming revisits the same area as the first game, but there is now a graveyard that wasn't there before, and a giant prison called Overlook Penitentiary has appeared in the middle of the town. The same prison returns in Silent Hill: Downpour, except with a completely different layout and location (it's now on an island in the middle of Toluca Lake). According to Tomm Hulett, the Overlook Penitentiary in Homecoming was just a manifestation of the town, with the one in Downpour being the real prison.
• In the 4X game Civilization, buildings in the cities would change their places during time. In some cases this might be justified - but with Wonders of the World?!?
• Pikmin:
  • The main setting of the games, the "Distant Planet," changes rapidly and radically between the two games... which is rather conspicuous, considering that Olimar apparently departed for the planet again immediately upon returning back to his home planet of Hocotate. He makes mention of this a handful of times in his journal entries about the treasures and creatures he encounters.
  • Same goes for the Forest of Hope, now Awakening Wood; and Distant Spring, now Perplexing Pool. While the basic layout is the same, the actual features are different. May be justified as Olimar and his Pikmin are only the size of a penny, so minor changes to us would be huge changes to them. The many caves of Pikmin 2 are much more noticeable, though, as they change every time you leave and reenter.
  • Also of note is that in Pikmin 2, it's made far more blatant that the "Distant Planet" is Earth than it was in the first game. Accordingly, many of the changes seem to be clear signs of human development encroaching on the former wilds. As for the time scale, it's somewhat implied that the Distant Planet is distant enough for the trip to take quite a while.'
• The labyrinthine catacombs to Hell with their dead ends and lava caves under the cathedral in Tristram in Diablo (1997) weren't built that way. They were perfectly normal catacombs that just happened to imprison a Prime Evil, who took over.
• When you go back to Tristram in Diablo II, it's mostly the same, though the bridge is ruined so you can't get across the river. Even Wirt's body and Cain's cage are in roughly the same place the characters were in the original game. In Diablo III, however, the locations of a number of structures change places from where they were in D1.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • The series series has three Liberty Cities: the one from the original game, the one from Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and the one from Grand Theft Auto IV. All are supposed to be New York City stand-ins.
  • Vice City was also a level in the original GTA, it's nothing like in the eponymous game. San Andreas appeared in the first GTA, too, but that one is obviously not referring to the same place as in GTA: San Andreas, as the former is a city and the latter is a state. Such naming conflicts are Truth in Television. Grand Theft Auto V takes place in a new Los Santos that, while retaining a few locations from the GTA: SA version as Mythology Gags, is otherwise completely different.
  • It's completely justified because they all take place in different canons; the next four games after III having explicit ties to that one and to each other was the exception for the series at that point.
• Played realistically straight in GoldenEye (1997). You visit the same place twice. It's seven years between visits, so naturally they've added extensions to the place, but the old parts of the building remain the same, so much so that when you are navigating your way around with relative ease, your companion asks if you have been there before.
• Mostly justified in City of Heroes, where zone overhauls are either works in progress (Faultline) security countermeasures (Rikti Warzone), or were there all along (universities). The exception is door missions, which are assigned a random map each visit. You can exit part one of a two-door mission, turn around, and enter the same door to access a completely different map. Praetoria mostly averts this, as specific missions with specific maps are tied to specific doors (I.E. A mission directing you to the Ministry of Technology will always send you to the same building). Of course, Praetoria also lacks random missions, which means that random door assignment isn't necessarily needed.
• The various sequels to the game Skate justify it being set in the same city of San Vanelona, yet with radically different architecture and layout, by claiming that the city had to be rebuilt after a series of earthquakes.
• The 'underground Church', a notorious location in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is far, far different in the video game. Of course, video games don't have a special effects budget but... it's canon that earthquakes screw with the place all the time (it is in California).
• Resident Evil. Many of the games criss-cross the same territory covered in previous missions and or games. Different branching paths are explained by the after-effects of previous zombie battles or the puzzle-mad craziness of the city's founders.
• Tales of Symphonia:
  • While it's perfectly understandable that the world map itself would've changed between and its sequel, Dawn of the New World, individual cities have also changed.
  • The Chaos Landscape between Dawn of the New World and Tales of Phantasia may seem extreme, as Olive, the desert oasis town in the latter game, is nowhere near Triet's location in the former, instead ending up somewhat closer to Asgard's location, but 4,000 years is a pretty long time for things to happen, especially given the climatic and ecological changes that accompany a society of iron age or higher. It would be stranger if nothing had changed at all- just look at the past four millennia IRL. There is also the case of the meteor strike and mana cannon powered destruction between games.
  • Also averted at the same time. Most of the dungeons you visit in both games have near-identical layouts, right down to the puzzles used. The only differences occurring for the most part are those required due to changes in the gameplay mechanics.
• Tales of Zestiria is set in a sizable fantasy-medieval-European continent. Prequel Tales of Berseria features a large, sprawling archipelago. Discussion of overseas exploration and far-flung lands in both games suggests they're set in different parts of the same world, until you start finding places in Berseria that are very similar to places in Zestiria, and not because of reused assets. Late in Berseria you reawaken the Four Elemental Empyreans, godlike beings who reshape the world as a side-effect of being awake and acting in the world. Not a lot will noticeably change in a single human lifetime but over the millennium between games, maps will have to be redrawn. A lot.
• The second Jak and Daxter game established the layout of Haven City and the location and layout of Haven Forest. The third game left the dock the same, radically redesigned the rest of the city in ways you can't justify with the massive destruction going on (come on, a relatively pleasant area with canals suddenly materialising?), and moved Haven Forest right up next to the city with significant redesign. Although it may simply be a different area of the forest, this doesn't explain how the center of the city was given a massive urban beautification program in the middle of a three-way war, while chunks of the palace were still falling.
  • The city's Absurdly Spacious Sewers get it even worse, apparently sprouting massive branching paths and entirely new entrances in the span of a few months. What was once a relatively small area is now nothing short of a massive underground labyrinth.
  • Daxter gets some dose of this too. While differences in Port area can be explained (the central bridge is raised and the tanker here gets accidentally destroyed by Daxter, the path to industrial area is railroaded by massive barricades and conveyor belts that aren't there in Jak II, industrial area itself has different layout, and Construction site basically looks nothing like in second game (while keeping identical entrance). Made especially jarring since the events of this game come right before the main portion of Jak II.
• Mostly averted in Banjo-Tooie. Spiral Mountain and Gruntilda's Lair from the first game are accessible and remain mostly the same. The only difference is that an earthquake caused by Gruntilda's sisters plowing through a wall in the Hag 1 and also their troops ravaging the area have added a lot of debris and caused a cave-in in the lair, making sure the game-designers didn't have to recreate the entire overworld from the first game.
• Super Mario Bros.: Nearly every single game in Super Mario Bros., Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Mario Kart, Mario Party and all spinoffs takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom. You wouldn't know it without being told, however, since whole towns apparently appear, disappear and get moved around, places like Mario's house, Luigi's mansion and Bowser's castle get completely rebuilt once per game, and various landmarks can appear one game and be gone the next. Luigi's mansion is the only one to have a stated reason for this, as it can rebuild itself.
  • There are a few things that carry over between games, notably unlike the rest of the kingdom. Peach's Castle always has a square layout, four short corner towers, a two-level tower in its middle and white walls with red roofs; it also typically has a town of some sort around it where all the Toads seem to live, though its layout and what it's actually called vary. Bowser typically resides in a place with a ton of lava.
  • Note that these games don't actually have any continuity. This is official.
  • One thing that seems to be becoming consistent in the Mushroom Kingdom is the front garden of Peach's Castle. Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, and Super Mario Galaxy all feature nearly identical versions of the front garden, except that in Galaxy, some of the further back parts are closed off and the cannon is gone.
  • The house of the Mario Bros. changes through all the RPGs, starting with the first and up to Super Paper Mario.
  • Whether Luigi lives alone or with Mario is also inconsistent, most conspicuously in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga where he lives with Mario despite there being several references to Luigi's Mansion, at the end of which Luigi could purchase one of several houses depending on his accumulated funds. On that subject, in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! the A-rank new mansion is visible on Luigi's home course, but in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon the house shown in the opening cutscene is the D-rank new mansion.
• A rather weird example appears in the game Hitman: Contracts: several of the missions are re-hashed versions of missions which originally appeared in an earlier game in the series, Hitman: Codename 47. The layout of individual buildings and overall levels is of varying difference to the original missions. However, it's not the case that the protagonist is re-visiting these locales: they merely appear to him in flashback as he sleeps. It also helps that he's remembering them incorrectly.
• On a wide scale: The layout of Black Mesa in the original Half-Life game seems to be a huge, sprawling complex, but if you actually lay the maps end to end, they twist back over themselves several times.
• Halo:
  • The series makes you go through the control tower on Installation 04 three times. The first time in Halo: Combat Evolved you're ascending it to place Cortana there, and two levels later you're back to rescue Cortana (and your own ass). Then the installation is gone, never to be seen again...or is it? The very last level of Halo 3 has you returning to the control room where you intentionally activate the ring to stop the Flood. In Combat Evolved, the tower and the surrounding area is pretty much the same both times, albeit in a state of decay after the Flood hits it, while in the third game, the tower and control room are identical to how they were in the first game, but the surrounding area has changed quite a bit (for example, that walkway on the mountains wasn't there the first time). Justified though, since this technically isn't the same place, but a rebuild of the old place, since Master Chief obliterated the original structure in the first game.
  • Somewhat justified in the case of High Charity, as it's been mostly converted by the Flood when you return to it in Halo 3, but the remaining original structures still look rather different than they did in Halo 2.
  • New Mombasa got changed the most between Halo 2 and Halo 3: ODST, with the city being far more realistic and detailed in the latter. This is because of the updated game engine of ODST, as well as the fact that ODST's entire setting is in the city, whereas New Mombasa took up all of two levels in Halo 2.
  • In Halo 4, the Forward Unto Dawn received a major design change in order to create a more interesting playspace. That said, Word of God is that its original Halo 3 design is still the canon one.
• In Chunsoft's Mystery Dungeon games, the eponymous mystery dungeons are known to reconfigure themselves each time they are explored. This is why their layouts in-game are randomly generated.
  • Same deal with the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spinoffs, only Handwaved by them being "magical dungeons". By Gates to Infinity, this become a plot point, where the randomness of dungeons has become Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, at least to to some. (A few major NPCs are "dungeon researchers")
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Arena, every province is visited. When later games show those provinces, they often look quite a bit different. Some tiny villages are now huge cities, some huge cities are now gone without a trace, some huge cities have popped up where there weren't any previously, and the ones that remain often have very different layouts and appearances than they did in Arena. In-universe, if the discrepancy is mentioned at all, one of the series' reality warping Time Crash events is usually blamed in the Cosmic Retcon fashion.
  • Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion takes place on the frigid northern island of Solstheim. In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, Solstheim is visited once again (200 years later in-universe). There are significant differences in the architecture of the Nordic barrows (which were largely simple stone caves with exteriors composed of megaliths in Bloodmoon), the terrain has become much different (in ways that can't simply be explained by the eruption of Red Mountain and glaciers), and the Thirsk mead hall has completely lost its second floor. The Skaal village has also moved in between Dragonborn and Bloodmoon, and there are now Dwemer ruins on Solstheim when there weren't any before. (Which is especially strange in the case of Nchardak, which is at sea and could not have reasonably been hidden underground.)
• Starcraft:
  • When you recapture Korhal in the Zerg campaign of the expansion, Mengsk specifically says he's putting his capital in the same place as before, but the missions there are on very different maps.
    • Korhal is harder to justify; but if you squint really hard, the final terran stronghold at the bottom left edge of the map in mission 4 of the Zerg campaign sorta looks like the top right edge of Mengsk's base in terran mission 5 (where his command center is at).
  • The Brood War Overmind's location in Brood War changes completely from map to map. In Protoss 5, it is below a large cliff, on a large flat area, with a lava river northwest. In Terran 8, the Overmind is on top of a large plateau, with no terrain changes or lava for some distance. In Zerg 8, it is on a small, north/south oriented plateau.
    • Somewhat justified after the Protoss mission; you can temporarily kill the Overmind, and it might have respawned in a different spot without Khalis as a beacon.
  • The Area where the overmind sets itself up at the end of the original game zerg campaign is very different from where the protoss fight it in their campaign.
    • Well, it did come down as a meteor, perhaps the strike was powerful enough to reshape local geography.
  • One exception: There is a bit of continuity with the Xel'Naga temple. Looking carefully at the mission 8 map, the Protoss staging area from mission 3 has now become a zerg base and the top edge of the temple island is what you originally invaded in the former mission. Why the Zerg have retaken the temple from you in the intervening time or why you're attacking from the other side is never addressed though.
    • Both the Zerg taking over and the absence of a Protoss base in the old position can be justified by the coup which took place in the meantime.
• Ancient Domains of Mystery has considerably more depth than your standard Roguelike game, and provides a plot explanation for the in-game Chaos Architecture. One particularly Chaos-ridden dungeon actually has no bottom, and it continues to evolve for as long as you care to explore it.
• Very, very, very much so in The Godfather: The Game and its sequel. The first game had a distinctive Wide-Open Sandbox layout that covers all five boroughs, with the Corleone compound set in a very secluded section of Little Italy, surrounded by trees on prime real estate. The sequel, on the other hand, completely does away with the first game's layout, totally redesigning the New York area, limiting you to only a small section of the inner city and adding an airport connecting you to the similarly limited Miami and Havana areas. The compound itself, previously set apart, is also heavily redesigned and positioned a stone's throw away from the downtown/Manhattan/Brooklyn(?) buildings.
• So many places in Final Fantasy VII between the original game and the Compilation. Kalm town. The Shinra Mansion, especially the basement... there are probably more.
• Justified in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, with Tartarus, as it, like the shadows, breaks down at the end of every midnight hour, and thus comes back at the start of the next midnight hour, meaning that there is a likely chance of the tower, besides important points such as the entrance, will completely change in their layout. They also state/imply (could be wrong on this) that the tower is a shadow as well, and that would add a more reasonable justification for the change, as all shadows are based on human emotion and events day to day change there would be reason for the tower, one of the largest shadows, to change.
  • Similarly justified with Persona 5. The sprawling underground dungeon of Mementos has completely randomized floors outside of the entrance, rest stops and end platforms between paths. Morgana, on your first visit, outright states that with Mementos being the shared palace of the general public, it has the fused cognition of a countless number of people, and as such is always shifting around.
• Donkey Kong Island went through some minor changes between Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64, being a bit scaled down and empty due to technical limitations but still clearly the same island. Then Donkey Kong Country Returns made a huge change to the place, removing the likeness of DK's face from the mountain, melting the icy summits and adding a huge volcano and prehistoric world.
• Can be seen in a variety of areas between the original Tomb Raider I game and Tomb Raider: Anniversary. One of the most striking is a fire puzzle in Palace Midas: what was little more than a sewer with a few flaming pillars that were laughably easy to hop across in the original, became a gigantic room filled with ornate rotating platforms spewing jets of flame in all directions. A more jarring example: Lara's mansion looks quite different in every game, ending up looking something like The Movie version in Tomb Raider: Legend.
• Maniac Mansion and its sequel, Day of the Tentacle, both take place in the same mansion. However, the mansion (which has been owned by the Edisons for at least 200 years) has less floors in the sequel than it does in the original. Even stranger, Day of the Tentacle has you going back 200 years and forward 200 in time, and the mansion is laid out roughly the same in both of those time periods, too!
• Portal 2 shows a much different and more complex version of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center than in the first game. Of course, it's been a very long time between games and much of it has fallen into ruins, but the game also shows that the entire Enrichment Center is composed of mobile, infinitely reconfigurable test chambers, so the trope is explicitly justified. Towards the end of the first game you also see large areas of the center from a distance, and it's clear you only ever explored a tiny part.
• The sandbox style Hogwarts of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are very different, as the technology gets better and the games change to follow the respective storylines of their source material. This doesn't apply so much to Philosopher's Stone and Goblet of Fire, as they were more level based games.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II more-or-less avert this; the sequel takes place in an entirely separate part of the world, pretty much a kingdom and a half away. Dragon Age II features not one but two timeskips, and most of Kirkwall stays the same with just minor changes (for instance, a manor that had the north wing blocked off now has the south wing blocked off, etc.) This includes certain things you'd EXPECT to change... Fenris, for instance, never bothers to so much as pick up the scattered debris — or even corpses — from "his" house's previous owner's hasty exit.
  • Played straight in Dragon Age: Inquisition, however. The two returning locations from Origins, Haven and Redcliffe village, look entirely different from their depictions in Origins. Not only have buildings changed places and moved around, the geography is completely different as well. Haven at least might be justified as the Chantry moving in after the dragon cultists from Origins cleared out and rebuilt the place as a sanctuary for pilgrims traveling to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Redcliffe, however, has no explanation
• Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 take place in the same world, with lots of locations shared between the two. Landscapes have changed and some small villages (notably Beetletun) have prospered between games. Changes are largely justified though - 250 years have passed between games, and the rise of the Elder Dragons have caused shifts to the layout of different regions. Lots of newly-named areas exist, but when comparing the maps from the two games, many are found in areas that weren't accessible in the first game.
• Fort Schmerzen in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is very different from its incarnation in the original game, mainly due to the much more advanced engine.
• Borderlands 2 averts this at the very end: one of the final areas of the game (Arid Nexus: Badlands) is actually the first area of the original Borderlands, with any changes justified by the fact that the local MegaCorp took over the area.
• This is mostly averted in the Mass Effect series, where successive games almost never revisit areas from previous games. One glaring exception is the Citadel space station, present in all three games, but in-universe, the station is huge and you visit different areas of it in different games. One exception to that, however, is the human councilor's office. In Mass Effect 2, it is the same room as the human embassy in Mass Effect, and the surrounding scenery matches as well. But in Mass Effect 3, it is a different room in a previously unseen part of the Citadel.
  • This is somewhat justified in-universe with the explanation that the keepers on the Citadel will periodically reorganize rooms or alter architecture. Apparently it can sometimes be annoying for the people living on the Citadel, since the keepers do this without notice or explanation.
• Metroid
  • When Samus revisits Zebes in Super Metroid, all that's left of the original architecture is a little bit of the initial chamber and the remains of Mother Brain's original jar. Except for Ridley still being in lower Norfair, there are no other analogues to the original game.
  • Metroid: Zero Mission, being a retelling of the original, is surprisingly faithful to it (down to the same ledges that you jump on, sometimes), but once you kill Mother Brain and finish the game, the plot goes firmly off the rails and Samus goes to places that never existed in the original, including a couple rooms between the Space Pirates' mothership and the rest of the game which look like the Wrecked Ship from Super Metroid.
• Wonderland Adventures features the same locations as the trilogy that preceded it, but those locations are now completely different.
• Postal 2 has a bit of this going for it. The expansion, Apocalypse Weekend, starts with the protagonist in the hospital for a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but the hospital he's in is completely different from the one that was in the original game, being much larger; the closest you get to an explanation is that upon exiting the hospital, the map name briefly shown upon loading the next one is given as "Lower Paradise", indicating you're in a different area of the city (although that doesn't answer why said part of the city wasn't at least visible on the map you had your daily errands written on). The next DLC, Paradise Lost, causes some more issues by going back to the original game's maps and gameplay style - for the most part things make sense, with buildings only damaged by the nuclear explosion from the end of AW rather than somehow completely relocated (and the difference between repurposed buildings and newly-constructed ones is incredibly apparent), but the area the player ends up going to at the end, the "Hell Hole", is explained as the "heart" of the town and supposedly the source of the nuclear explosion - it's actually the exact same spot the player character's trailer had been at in the original game.
• The layout of the caverns where Sundered takes place changes every time the protagonist Eshe dies, though important rooms that contain bosses, abilities, vistas and so on have fixed locations on the map. This is Justified due to the fact that the caverns are an Eldritch Location.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure, it's mentioned that Amy lives in Station Square. Come Sonic Battle and she lives in Central City. No in-series reason is given, however Station Square did flood in Adventure.
  • Tails' lab in Sonic Adventure is near the Mystic Ruins. Sonic Battle gives him a separate house in Central City. In Sonic Rush, it's now near the Water Palace, but Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood returns it to Central City. Tails' workshop in the 3DS version of Sonic Lost World is near Windy Hill.
  • The Master Emerald switched locations between Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure. It was originally in an underground shrine but is now out in the open near Mystic Ruins.
  • The map in Sonic Forces contradicts previous games. For example, Green Hill Zone is landlocked when it was originally on an island.
• The layout of Wonder Castle completely changes from Succubus to Wonderland to Carroll in Wonderland. Basically, the exterior of the castle, the entrance hall and a couple of rooms stay the same, while everything else changes. The new layout does make it much easier for the player to get around, which is helpful because Carroll in Wonderland is a timed game and time passes whenever the player moves to a new area. In-universe, the different layout is lampshaded by several NPCs and it's mentioned that there have been renovations.
• Marcuria in The Longest Journey Saga. Justified between The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, as there is a 10 year Time Skip between the storylines of the two games, in which time the fanatical Azadi invaded the city, replaced the temple with their own Evil Tower of Ominousness, and installed several Steampunk contraptions throughout the city. However, between Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters, the changes are more artistic. The two games set right after one another, so In-Universe not much should have changed. But to utilize the more modern game engine, the city is expanded to give room for more exploration, and the layout of certain parts are also changed.
• In Ys Origin, one member of the search party describes Darm Tower as having constantly shifting floors.
• Shantae series:
  • The layout of Scuttle Town changes with every game. For example, Sky's Hatchery and the Item Shop are separate buildings in Risky's Revenge, different rooms in one large multi-storey building in Pirate's Curse, and separate buildings again in Half-Genie Hero. A possible justification is that it keeps being rebuilt every time it's being invaded (which is almost always at the start of each game).
  • Shantae and the Pirate's Curse brings back some areas from Shantae: Risky's Revenge, but since the main action now takes place in new islands, the returning areas are massively simplified. The Pumpkin Field and Lilac Field are combined into the Scarecrow Field. The Tangle Forest is only one screen instead of the large, multi-layered area in the previous game. The Mayor's Seaside Retreat was at the end of a lengthy obstacle course, but now it's just a short walk away from Shantae's lighthouse.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner:
  • The cartoons rely heavily on Geographic Flexibility, to the point where even interior layouts vary; the house of the Brothers Strong, in particular. For example, the TV room is sometimes implied to be part of a finished basement; other times it is treated as if it were on the main floor.
  • Additionally, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People uses a consistent layout... that contradicts most if not all of the toons. The most egregious example is putting the entrance to Strong Bad's computer room on the opposite side from where it has always been (first runner-up is probably making Strong Mad's room only accessible via the bathroom, which defies all known laws of building design in addition to continuity).
    • The game lampshades this almost immediately in the first episode: As you learn about new locations, you're allowed to place them anywhere you like on the map. Strong Bad's house can be next door to or far from any other location without affecting gameplay.
    • In the second episode, the map is taken away, and Strong Bad switches to using the discarded game board from a Risk-esque strategy game. This time, though, the placement of locations matter. But since when was the King of Town's castle visible from Marzipan's back yard?
• Madness Combat:
  • Where do we even start? There are random BUILDINGS falling out of the sky (by the command of an insane zombified clown, no less), fortresses that can be summoned out of the ground, and absurd amounts of perfectly square buildings, rave rooms, department stores and hot dog stands. The entirety of Madness Combat can be summed up as this trope.

Web Comics

• In 8-Bit Theater, this is mentioned by name, as quite a dramatic change has ensued: "Garland's Clubhouse", as it appears in the beginning, has restructured itself into a true "Temple of Fiends" with Drizzl leading the Dark Warriors. Black Mage analyzes and controls the magic that dictates the architecture when he becomes leader of the Dark Warriors, as well, giving himself his own comfortable bedrooms while the other members get virtual torture chambers.
• Ctrl+Alt+Del started with this in the flat that Ethan and Lucas lived in; the relationship between the various rooms was left very vague, and it was often easy to forget that it was meant to be a flat that's part of a larger complex and not a house. This was explicitly averted after the fire in 2005 and the characters moved into their own home; the author drew up a floorplan of the house and staged the scenes accordingly.
• The interior of the Upton house in Misfile. It seems to change every 3rd or 4th time we see it.

Web Original

• In the Metamor Keep story-verse, the universe's namesake is this. The keep itself was hard to map, because it's always changing. It's often played for laughs, too, since some of the more humorous sections of the verse joke that giving directions to one's room in the keep is worthless since they'd always be invalid by the end of the week.
• Happens in-universe in the Gearworld, where space does not mean quite the same thing as elsewhere. In the journal, the first hint the characters have of this is that they keep finding new rooms in already-explored areas. At first they aren't sure if the rooms are appearing, or if they somehow missed them previously.

Western Animation

• Castlevania subtly references and justifies the shifting architecture of Dracula's Castle from the games by portraying it as a massive Clock Punk edifice that frequently changes its layout.
• Daria's house constantly changes throughout the series due to animation errors.
• Dexter's Laboratory may be a deliberate version; his lab is a wildly inconsistent forest of giant blue computers.
• In The Fairly Oddparents, the size of Timmy's bedroom enlarges in almost every episode. One episode leaned on the fourth wall and addressed this, when Timmy apparently made some kind of wish, resulting in the entire country of Japan appearing in his room. In the middle of the madness, Timmy stopped in skepticism and questioned how his room was big enough to fit an entire country inside.
• Family Guy:
  • Once in a while the Griffins' house experiences an architecture shift for no reason. For example, when Peter catches a bullfrog to make Chris feel better, but then has to throw it out because he accidently killed it, the door which he came from disappears and reappears as a window where he throws out the frog.
  • Averted in one episode with Peter's "Thinking Grenades". Seth MacFarlane's commentary on the scene says that he originally planned to have the scene in the bar, but there was no window by their table.
• The Flintstones' cave home is highly inconsistent from episode to episode, with no clear layout and new rooms as the plot demands. The use of wraparound backgrounds muddles things further, giving the illusion that the house is Bigger on the Inside.
• Futurama:
  • The interior of the protagonists' rocket ship seems to change from episode to episode.
  • The Planet Express building also has doors and rooms appearing, disappearing, changing shape, size or functionality from one episode to the next. Nonetheless, the majority of the building's layout is stable throughout the series.
• South Park has had somewhat variable geography, leading to headaches when the creators were consulted on how to build the town "for real" in its Video Game Adaptation.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob's pineapple, Squidward's Easter Island home, and Patrick's rock are constantly subject to change depending on the episode. Patrick's rock is justified on account of Patrick making most of the furniture out of sand.
  • The interior of the Krusty Krab is rather consistent, though.
• Thomas & Friends suffered from this due to its use of live model animation. As each set was dismantled at the end of a season's filming, it would be reconstructed for the next one with whatever changes were required. Certain geographical locations that couldn't be dismantled, like Gordon's Hill, vary wildly from season to season.
• The Simpsons household is somewhat notorious for this, particularly one door below the stairs which can be a closet or the basement depending on the episode. The upstairs floor plan is also difficult to work out.
  • Notable in the "Your Baby Is Dead!" scene, where a central upstairs window appears incongruously above the front door just so that Maggie can fall out of it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has the changeling hive, which is constantly changing its layout. As a result, navigation is impossible for non-changelings. Even master of chaos Discord grudgingly admits that it is "decent chaos".

Real Life

• The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA was the home of Sarah Winchester, heir to the gunmaker's fortune; she kept the home under constant construction for decades until her death, and the lack of any formal construction plan led to a number of oddities in the residence. According to family friends, there was a logical if eccentric reason for this: she was rich enough to build an entire house solely to test out architecture she planned to use in her other houses.

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