Patchwork World

The Beyonder puts the battleworld together like it was a LEGO toy.

A Patchwork World is a setting that is a composite of several different worlds, from cities to whole lands, usually brought together by some incredible power, like a Physical God or Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. May feature a Patchwork Map if the "sections" are placed together haphazardly. If some of the segments are inhabited, this usually leads to chaotic situations, especially if the cultures in the pieces are very different. Can be played for comedy or straight.

Compare World of Weirdness, which could also be the justification for such a setting. May also justify the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, Anachronism Stew and so on.

Not to be confused with Patchwork Map, although such a map is a likely outcome of a Patchwork World. It also doesn't necessarily involve actual patchwork. See Time Crash for when places from different eras are merged together. Also not to be mistaken for Constructed World, which is a fictional setting completely separate from our own, though said setting may have examples of a Patchwork World in-universe.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure: Machinedramon's city is made up of parts of many major cities on Earth. In general, the Dark Masters arc turns the entire Digital World into a patchwork world of itself, with the world literally twisted and separated into four zones twining up the sides of the aptly-named Spiral Mountain. Places that were once continents apart are now within walking distance of each other — and their strong environmental themes mean that the transition from ocean to deep forest to urban sprawl to barren wasteland is practically instantaneous.
• Super Dimension Century Orguss takes place on a Patchwork World created from various alternate Earths after the explosion of a time-warping bomb.
• Versus (2022): The merged world was created by the various summoning spells, dimensional gates and other multiverse traveling methods colliding and dragging the worlds, the humans asking for aid, and the various monsters killing them, into one big chaotic warzone.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The Alara block follows five separate worlds ("shards" of one that was sundered in the distant past) as they reintegrate, causing considerable chaos.
  • Dominaria gains shades of this after the Rathi overlay, during which large tracts of Rath are simply dropped in the middle of Dominaria's landscapes.

Comic Books

• Astro City has the Gordian Knot, a reality nexus where millions of different planes of existence are caught in mid-collapse.
• DC Comics:
  • An early motivation for Superman's nemesis, Brainiac shrinking cities and putting them in bottles was the intention to enlarge them on his home planet.
  • Green Lantern: Mosaic, where a realm composed of pieces from various planets (again including an Earth town) was created by an insane Guardian of the Universe. Strangely, the other Guardians decided to keep it as it was (against the wishes of most of its inhabitants) as an experiment in interspecies coexistence.
• Grimjack is set in Cynosure, the city at the center of The Multiverse. It's made of pieces of different dimensions, so one can pass from one reality to another by crossing the street. The laws of physics are known to be different in different parts of the city. Magic works in some parts of the city. Technology dominates in others.
• Marvel Comics:
  • The Battleworld from the first Crisis Crossover, Secret Wars (1984), created by the omnipotent Beyonder from pieces of different worlds (including a town from Earth) to serve as the Arena for his superheroes vs villains battle.
  • The Battleworld of Secret Wars (2015) is a patchwork world created from the surviving Earths of Marvel's multiverse.

Film — Animated

• Transformers: The Movie: In the original art and storyboards, the Junkions' homeworld was intended to be something like this. A spherical planet with several rounded slabs seeming to rise off of its surface. In the end, only the "northernmost" rounded section of the planetoid was retained on film.

Literature

• K. A. Applegate seems to like this trope.
  • Animorphs: In the prequel The Andalite Chronicles, Elfangor, Loren and the future Visser Three all try to use the Time Matrix at once, instructing it to transport them back to their respective home worlds. This results in it creating a small universe that's a patchwork of Earth, the Andalite home world (basically Earthlike) and the Yeerk home world (which is less pleasant).
  • In Everworld, the various mythological gods keep their domains in a seemingly random pattern, so that it's about a two-day sail from Viking country to an Aztec city, from which it's a short hike to Arthurian Britain. At one point the characters actually notice the environment transition between the Greek gods' Mediterranean climate and that of sub-Saharan Africa within a few feet. (While traveling to the Egyptian area, which should logically be between them.) This annoys Jalil.
  • In Remnants, most of the action takes place in a spaceship that can generate any kind of environment within itself, so this tends to happen. For a few books, the characters make their way through a patchwork of worlds straight out of famous human artworks (for example, they wake up in a terrain that looks like an impressionist painting on one side and a black-and-white photograph on the other).
• Gor is populated by people who were taken from Earth at different times in history — Romans, Norse, Native Americans, Africans, Roma, etc.
• The Old Kingdom's setting was assembled from several worlds by the Nine Bright Shiners. This is implied in the main trilogy, with the season and time of day changing as characters cross the Wall from Ancelstierre to the Old Kingdom, but made explicit in Goldenhand, when the heroes travel north to a world long-since destroyed by Orannis: the air and the Background Magic Field vanish in the space of a step.
• Riverworld takes place on a planet with a bewildering array of cultures from Earth's history resurrected on the banks of a world-spanning river.
• In A Time Odyssey, by Stephen Baxter, planets in pocket universe have mismatch of terrains brought from different times in the history as a museum.
• Well World is set on a planet constructed by the Precursors as a testbed for the species they designed and spread through the universe. It's divided into thousands of sections that mimic the conditions of each target planet.

Live-Action TV

• The Fantastic Journey: An island in the Bermuda Triangle has a series of timezones, each with trapped groups of people from the past, present and future.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft is set in a demiplane made from pieces of different continuities of the Prime Material plane; when someone does something particularly heinous on a mortal world, the Dark Powers of the Demiplane of Dread abduct them alongside whatever land they rule or are associated with and add it as a new domain in their realm.
• GURPS Fantasy is set in the world of Yrth, which had a variety of cultures from other worlds brought to it by magical Banestorms, including several European and Arabic nations from Earth.
• RIFTS takes place on a future Earth where dimensional warps (the rifts of the title) have not only brought creatures and civilizations from other dimensions to Earth, but also chunks of land and pieces of other dimensions as well.
• The Splinter: The Realm, to an insane degree. Adjacent areas can have wildly different environments and technology levels. They may not even appear to be from the same time period.

Toys

• The Slizer line from LEGO features a planet◊ that is evenly divided into seven identically sized zones of vastly different environments right next to each other.

Video Games

• Destiny has Fundament, a gas giant with floating continents made from the many, many different planets that were destroyed by its tidal forces. It's also the original homeworld of the Hive.
• In Durango: Wild Lands, the landscape is constantly shifting due to unstable time warps. Resources and extinct animals appear and disappear at random, and many of the islands themselves are unstable and can disappear at any time.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, one of the more popular Creation Myths states that this is the case for Nirn, the planet on which the series is set. Anu and Padomay are the anthropomorphized primordial forces of "stasis/order/light" and "change/chaos/darkness", respectively. Their interplay in the great "Void" led to Nir, "creation". Nir loved Anu, which Padomay hated. Padomay killed Nir and the 12 worlds she gave birth to. Anu wounded Padomay, driving him off and presuming him dead. Anu salvaged the pieces of the 12 worlds to create one world: Nirn. Padomay returned and wounded Anu, seeking to destroy Nirn. Anu then pulled Padomay and himself outside of time, ending Padomay's threat to creation "forever." One of these 12 worlds was believed to have been Lyg, ruled by the Dreugh in the name of Molag Bal. Another was the original world of the Hist, sentient and possibly omniscient trees now worshiped by the Argonians in Black Marsh.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy V, the two worlds are eventually melded into one.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy has this as a byproduct of the war of the gods Chaos and Cosmos (and later their successors Spiritus and Materia), with the majority of the arenas being areas from the mainline games (and a few spin-offs) — including locales that would logically be difficult to access under normal circumstances like Lunar Subterrane, The Rift, Planet's Core, Ultimecia's Castle, Dream's End, Orphan's Cradle, and so on. The implication is that, save for possibly the Chaos Shrine (which already existed in World A), these are simulacrums of the originals based on the memories of the warriors summoned to World B (which is nigh-identical to World A as revealed in Dissidia 012).
  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin reveals, via expository notes that appear on loading screens, that the world of the original Final Fantasy is this due to the tinkering of the Lufenians, who have been studying locales from other dimensions (i.e. the worlds of the 14 other numbered installments up to that point) to serve as templates for their creations. Only a few areas visited aren't their doing, most notably Cornelia and the Chaos Shrine, with the latter being an anomaly that seems to have come into existence only recently.
• Fortnite: Several examples found throughout the game.
  • During Chapter 1, the map stayed pretty much the same in terms of terrain and aesthetic for the first four seasons, until things began to change.
    • In Season 5, the work of the Visitor during the "Blast Off" event brought different areas from across reality, including a Cube, a viking village and an entire desert oasis.
    • In Season 7, a massive iceberg smashed into the southwest side of the Island, staying there until the end of Chapter 1.
    • In Season X, the Scientist used Rift Zone technology to experiment with time travel and multiversal science, transforming areas like Neo Tilted into an old, Western town and Paradise Palms into a moisty swamp.
  • After the "Fracture" live event, the Paradigm and the Loopers were able to use the Zero Point to create a new reforged Island from different parts of various dimensions and realities, kicking off Chapter 2.
  • Epic experimented with map evolution in a different way in Chapter 2. While new biomes were added every season, they were reverted by the next, with only a few POIs or landmarks remaining.
    • In Season 4, Tony Stark/Iron Man brought over locations from Marvel's Earth-616, including an Ant-Farm, a piece of Wakanda, a highway, and a large chunk of Upstate New York, which included the Stark Industries factories and his cabin inspired by Avengers: Endgame.
    • In Season 5, after the fight the Avengers had against Galactus, the Zero Point began to destabilize, turning the middle of the map into a cosmic wasteland.
    • In Season 6, after the Foundation sealed himself inside the Spire, a Reality Wave reverted a good chunk of the Island back to a primal era, changing the terrain to autumnal grass.
    • In Season 7, after the Last Reality annihilated the Spire, the middle of the Island began to have alien foliage and environments, including strange trees and purple terrain.
    • In Season 8, after Doctor Slone and the Imagined Order infiltrated the Mothership, the Cubes crash-landed on the Island, corrupting the land and turning the terrain rocky and orange.
  • In Chapter 3, Epic returned to the old formula of having a patchwork map, but instead had this sort of aesthetic right from the get-go instead of establishing it halfway through the Chapter.
    • In Season 1, the new and flipped Island included a frozen wasteland, a desert canyon, a volcano with the Daily Bugle and a forest.
    • In Season 3, the introduction of the Reality Tree turned the southwest part of the map into a glowing and blue region with unique botany.
    • In Season 4, the map slowly changed to represent the Chrome's corruption.
  • Chapter 4 quite literally began with the Loopers and the Paradigm stitching together pieces from other dimensions to forge a new Island.
    • In Season 1, while the majority of the map was grassy, the northwest was full of yellow terrain and a medieval aesthetic, while the northeast was a frosty tundra.
    • In Season 2, the Rift Gate brought over buildings from different dimensions, creating a new oriental biome in the southeast part of the map and an entire futuristic, anime-inspired city.
    • In Season 3, the middle of the map became a jungle.
• Gundam Vs Series: Gundam vs. Gundam, in order to emphasize the Crisis Crossover nature of the game, used a lesser version of this. Each series' respective stage consists of a primary location from the show with elements of other locations thrown in, and "ghost images" from the opening and ending themes visible in the sky. The best example is Mobile Fighter G Gundam's stage, which consists of several world landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, and the Diet Building all on a Floating Island surrounded by ringposts.
• The Labyrinth of Time is set in a giant maze that spans across time and space, often resulting in one location randomly connected to another, and its center being isolated to a tiny floating island in a void of clouds. Daedalus, its creator, wants you to destroy this Labyrinth before he unwillingly finishes it, otherwise King Minos will use it to invade and conquer Earth in every time and location.
• Legend of Mana: Invoked, as the player is the one putting down the assorted locations. Every area has its own biome (and affects the mana levels of the surrounding areas), which means that yes, you can put that desert right next to that tundra.
• The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule is turned into one of these in Hyrule Warriors, with locations from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword all being haphazardly placed on top of it by Cia. Legends takes it even further when another force starts replacing parts of the ground with the Great Sea.
• Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 has Chronopolis, a world created by Kang the Conqueror made from all the different places he's conquered. Doubles as a Time Crash.
• In Ratchet & Clank (2002), Chairman Drek's villainout plot involves taking chunks of other planets to built a new home for the Blarg... and then run it into the ground, forcing them to move to the next planet to build, and so on.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In The Subspace Emissary, the Great Maze is made up of areas from the "normal" world that have been absorbed by Subspace Bombs.
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World takes place in one of these, as a result of the events of the first game.

Webcomics

• Homestuck: The Dream Bubbles, which serve as both a Dream Land and an afterlife, don't have natural landscapes per se and are instead shaped by the memories of the dreaming and deceased individuals staying in them. This results in surreal, patchwork environments as things and locations from many different worlds are placed side by side or interwoven — Earth suburbs, Alternian forests of blue-barked and pink-leaved trees, the cities of gothic gold or purple spires of Prospit and Derse, the chess-patterned land of the Battlefield, landscapes of crystal or flesh or blue stone, rivers of water or fire or tar, all dotted with assorted items and miscellany, are all often encountered a few steps from one another. These patchwork lands shift and change often, as different places and things are recalled or dismissed, dreamers wake or arrive, and different bubbles merge or part.

Western Animation

• Star Trek: The Animated Series: In "The Eye of the Beholder", the planet Lactra VII has a series of different environments right next to each other, such as a desert next to a forest, each with appropriate animal and plant life. The Enterprise crew eventually discovers that it was deliberately created as part of an open-air zoo.

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