Wackyland

“Everything there will be just as strange as this world's name suggests—see massive cheese wedges, giant trashcans and a fabled pot of gold at the rainbow's end. Outside, there will be stranded ice cubes and a weighty anteater that needs competitors for his Cuckoo Olympics. Inside, you'll encounter a talking safe and some hotdog-wielding weirdos.”

— Description of Cloud Cuckooland, Banjo-Tooie instruction booklet.

An especially whimsical, surreal, or nonsensical area in a video game. May be made up of dream logic, music, toys, living food, etc. Generally, the theme is something "fun" and "cute", except enormous and come to life (and, that's right, out for your blood). The general theme is something approaching the setting of the original Alice in Wonderland, where everything is large, colorful and alive, and little makes sense.

Common variations include:

• Art Course: A level that looks and acts more like a painting or some other work of art instead of a genuine world.
• Band Land: A level that is made out of musical instruments or otherwise music-themed.
• Casino Park: A level with a casino theme.
• Level Ate: A level that is made out of food or food-themed.
• Pinball Zone: A level that takes place inside a pinball machine, or at least features elements of one like flippers and bumpers. Sometimes combined with Minigame Zone.
• Toy Time: A level made of toys, taking place in a toy shop or toy factory, or (if you're small enough) on a shelf or in a closet full of toys.

See also Cloudcuckooland. If wackiness can be turned on or off, that's a Silliness Switch.

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Examples not fitting the previous five subtropes:

Anime & Manga

• In Digimon's various incarnations the Digital World often veers into this; having had everything from towns made of toys to meat that grows like plants, to hundreds of non-sequitur spouting phone booths sitting on a beach for no clear reason, and even stranger things. Justified by the fact that the Digital World runs on video game logic and the Digimon themselves are sentient computer programs.
• Haré+Guu has one inside Guu's stomach.

Comic Books

• Star Wars is used to single biome planets. The Marvel comics have Zeltros, a disco planet!
• The Defenders once accidentally ended up in another dimension called "The Land of Here and There" which was populated by creatures who appeared to have to stepped out of a Dr. Seuss book, and operated on Seussian logic.

Live-Action TV

• The Living Island of H.R. Pufnstuf.
• In the Farscape episode "Revenging Angel", a lot of the story takes place in an imaginary Looney Tunes-style cartoon world.

Pinballs

• Joker Poker takes place in a land filled with flying playing cards, with a checkerboard landscape beneath a red and yellow sky.

Video Games

• Tiny Toon Adventures games:
  • Wackyland became a level in the first Licensed Game for the NES.
  • In Buster's Hidden Treasure for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the bonus levels take place in Wackyland, accessible by finding the show's iconic rainbow logo. Here, Buster can collect as many bonuses as he can. If he touches one of the many Gogo Dodo clones that populate Wackyland, he will promptly be sent back to whatever level he's currently on.
• Magicant (the former trope namer), from EarthBound, is a surreal world made up of Ness's subconscious. There's also a Magicant in its prequel, EarthBound Beginnings. This one is, in fact, a world created by the protagonist's supposedly long-dead great-grandmother because her soul was at unrest until the protagonist sought out and sung her own forgotten lullaby, and thus all of Magicant vanishes as she finally finishes passing away.
  • Moonside from EarthBound qualifies as well. It's also a hallucination brought on by the Mani Mani Statue.
• What better exemplifies this trope than the Famicom game Cocoron?
• Wonderland in Kingdom Hearts.
• The special stages throughout the Sonic The Hedgehog games fit this trope, usually using completely different mechanics from the rest of the game, and set in places like checkboard microplanets and half-pipes in space. Regular stages in the games also have this theme and its sister themes described above, including (but not limited to) Spring Yard Zone, Casino Night Zone, Carnival Night Zone, Twinkle Park, Music Plant, and Toy Kingdom.
• Many of the mental worlds in Psychonauts, but the ones that fit best are probably Waterloo World and Black Velvetopia.
• The more peaceful areas in American McGee's Alice have some aspect of this.
• All of Chibi-Robo!.
• Much of the Mushroom Kingdom from the Super Mario Bros. series. Everything has a face and is made up of random blocks and talking mushrooms!
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit: Ribbon Road is a long, winding road made of ribbon with wrapped-up presents and ribbons galore in the background.
• Miitopia has Peculia, a very... peculiar land where trees and skies are all bright pink, literal running noses, bread slices, and hamburgers are common enemies, and wormholes send your Miis in various other landscapes like a desert or a lush forest.

• Each even-numbered world in the original Rayman has a surrealistic theme, in contrast to the more natural locations of the odd-numbered worlds. The second world is the music-themed Band Land (which is also the Trope Namer for music-themed worlds), the fourth world is the artsy world of Picture City, which is mainly constructed from erasers, and the final world that houses Mr Dark's lair is the Candy Chateau, which is entirely comprised of cakes and pastries.

• Given the Canon Welding from these games, Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends also feature a few bizarre worlds:
• Origins has its desert-y music worlds in Desert of Dijiridoos and Grumbling Grottos, which houses ginormous woodwind structures that blow wind and are made of wood; as well as the food-themed worlds of Gourmand Land and Luscious Lakes, both of which comprising the relaxed Miami Ice and the wild Infernal Kitchens. The game was initially going to feature more Band Land-like structures from the first Rayman in the Desert of Dijiridoos, as well as an homage to Picture City that would feature various artstyles such as pixel art and pop art.
• The worlds in Legends are based on the five biomes in Origins, and as such, the third world is also food-themed: Fiesta de los Muertos. This one not only features cake just like Candy Chateau, but is also partially themed after Dia de los Muertos, featuring not only Calacas, but also Luchadores, giant discarded foods, and getting turned into a duck in some levels.

• Aladdin (Virgin Games) and Aladdin (Capcom) each included a level where Aladdin goes inside the Genie's lamp. Both were bright, whimsical, and filled with Bottomless Pits. (Imagine how embarrassed Genie would be if he had actually killed his new master!)
• The Lost Vikings sets each world in a different time period through a time vortex, but the second to last one is a land of pastry-like terrain, helium air pumps, silly music, and enemies such as a one-armed rubber ball which dribbles itself.
• Earthworm Jim 2: Some of the levels fall straight into this trope, presenting some of the most surreal and bizarre levels ever conceived by a video game designer on an acid trip. These levels include an intestine level, a level entirely composed of paperwork, and a meat level appropriately named "Level Ate".

• Graffiti Kingdom: Palette's castle level. Elevators are giant pancakes and on the stage there are giant bottles of milk, salt shakers, ice cubes, snowmen, and the main areas are completely made up of shades of pink. And then in the boss fight itself, you're essentially in/on a giant cake, with Palette herself in a cutesy chef's uniform.
• NiGHTS into Dreams… is set in Nightopia, pretty much a textbook Wackyland.

• Zool: Ninja From The Nth Dimension and its sequel were both set in numerous Wackylands. Stage 1 and Stage 3 of the first game are Sweet and Fruit-themed, Stage 2 is music-themed, and Stage 5 is toy-themed.
• Star Fox: The Easter Egg level "Out of This Dimension" is full of paper airplanes and other bizarrities, and the final boss was a Slot Machine. And then you are stuck flying and shooting at the credits and thus, you must reset the game.
• Tonic Trouble: The whole Earth is like this. Let's just say that a snowy mountain covered with palmtrees is the least bizarre environment in the game.

• Rollercoaster Tycoon: One of the scenery themes is called Wonderland, and is mostly candy and game pieces.
• Lyle in Cube Sector: You must help rescue Lyle's cat in the wonked out lands of the Cube Sector.
• Battletoads in Battlemaniacs: The bonus stages have bowling pins or dominoes with playing cards and chess pieces in the background.
• Action 52: Time Warp Tickers has a checkerboard pattern, upside-down doors and other craziness plus very different kinds of enemies after you.
• Bug Too!: The final world is one entire Amazing Technicolor World Mushroom Samba, where every single enemy in the area is weird and wacky.
• Parodius has wacky levels of many kinds, some of them spoofing other Konami games.
• Keith Courage in Alpha Zones: The Reverse Zone has upside-down pieces of ground in the air.
• Diablo III has Whimsyshire, which also doubles as a Take That! at the Fan Dumb that loathed the less dark artstyle Diablo III took.
• Theme Park World contains the Wonderland amusement park, described as the place where "logic takes a holiday" by your Exposition Fairy.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus is a rather silly game overall, with settings loosely inspired by the Terry Gilliam animations of the show. The most ridiculous is the "How to Recognise Different Parts of the Body" level, which is made out of various bones and appendages.
• Many of the rival kingdoms in Little King's Story. Particularly notable is the Ripe Kingdom, which is a romp through Level Ate ending in a pinball game with the boss (as in, the roundly obese boss is the pinball). New Island fits in as Toy Time.
  • Justified, once the player learns that the entire game is basically a story made up by a little kid and played out on a toy stage.
• The Secret Level in Type:Rider, which is based on Comic Sans.
• Alfred Chicken's land is populated by giant flowers, one powerup is literally a can of worms, and portals to other levels are alive, among many other oddities.
• The Gambling District level in Red Steel. In a game with otherwise mundane urban settings and (mostly) yakuza enemies with no frills, this level pits you against gunmen dressed as dinosaurs (the "Barney" kind, not the "deadly raptor" kind), and anime girls.

Web Animation

• In Qem-95, one of Qem's paintings in an upcoming web animation include a captain getting catapulted through one of these before hitting the sun without dying

Western Animation

• Looney Tunes
  • Wackyland from the classic Looney Tunes cartoon "Porky in Wackyland" is the Trope Namer and Trope Maker. To call it weird would be a gross understatement.
  • Wackyland was a major part of Tiny Toon Adventures, as well. Gogo Dodo was from there, and it seemed to be comprised largely of surreal, Dali-like imagery and free-floating objects that obeyed no laws of standard physics. It's even illegal to say the words "self-control".
  • Keeweeland in the Taz-Mania episode "Taz in Keeweeland". This place is very much in the mould of the original Wackyland, with the Keewee taking the place of the Dodo.
• Nowhere Land in Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is a silly, silly place not unlike something out of a child's make-believe games.
  • The same could also apply on Gofrette.
• Endless Island from Twelve Forever is a place in another dimension embodying childhood imagination. It's full of inhabitants like a living miniature galaxy and various buried objects come to life, with geography like ranch dressing springs, which is in constant flux. When Esther tries to analyze the place scientifically, it actively thwarts her attempts until she accepts she'll never really understand it.

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