Even as a kid I never found the dimensionally transcendental Tardis from Doctor Who odd, and later realized I’d been seeing or hearing examples of things being larger on the inside my whole life. I’ve listed below some examples I can remember. I do know about the TV Tropes article, but it is filled with a lot of non-examples where TV and movie creators didn’t take scale into consideration when designing sets, and other nonsense. It also leaves off at least one item I can think of. Do you know of any others?
Doctor Who - Tardis,
Peanuts - Snoopy’s doghouse,
Sesame Street - Oscar’s garbage can,
Land of the Lost - Pylons
Assuming the Wardrobe is a Narnia reference, I’m not sure that counts as bigger on the inside instead of trans dimensional portal.
I feel like bigger on the inside is all over the place in video games, especially adventure games and RPGs with a top down view as well as the pots in US Super Mario Bros. 2, though it’s debatable how much of that is deliberate versus the overworld would be flipping huge and take forever to navigate if the exterior of buildings matched their interiors for size.
Does a bag of holding count since that’s an artifact with an explicit enchantment to explain the tendency for game characters to have unreasonably large inventories?
How would this be defined for an arbitrary shape. Most people would argue that the tea is in the cup. Yet the cup has no top, so there is no bounding polygon in that direction. Casting rays to determine the “inside” would not work here either.
Or maybe the “tea” is not inside after all. Perhaps the “inside” of the cup is the space within the material the cup is made out of.
I was thinking along the lines of a structure in a show (or other media) that beings may enter, and deliberately intended by the author(s) to actually be larger on the inside than should be physically possible given the dimensions of the outside. Accidental or symbolic occurrences don’t count, and neither do those that only happen due to technical limitations (as in a game or movie).
The wardrobe is a portal, but there was a transitional space within the wardrobe that was larger than it should have been, correct?
I feel like this is generally deliberate, but it is not diegetic. I. e. it is not an accurate representation of how the world of the game actually is, it is just a compromise on how to represent it within the technical and practical limitations.
Agreed, in most games and shows I think it’s a technical compromise (or outright lazy design) and not a deliberate statement of “Hey look, this building is bigger on the inside than it can possibly be!”
this trope descends from the world/town/indoor scaling of 2D CRPGs, and IF generally avert this trope thru more or less abstraction of large-scale movement (cfr. the many “how to move the PC AND the vehicle s/he is in between locations” question here and on r.a.i.f), a technical/narrative solution whose is still debated in 3D CRPG; Honestly I’m surprised of many people preferring a non-diegetic world map in a playing environment increasily diegetic (and, personally, I prefer that a line between realism and abstraction should be drawn…)
That’s funny; as a kid, I always assumed the interior of Oscar’s house/apartment was underneath the can and the building in front of which it was located. I imagined it as sort of his “batcave,” with the trashcan serving as a top hatch – as on a submarine. I also assumed any larger visitors would enter though an unseen rear door.
Also, if we’re counting “bag-of-holding” types, how about Captain Caveman’s fur long body hair?
I thought of Oscar’s can as having odd physics, particularly when you consider the “Bruno” Muppet costume (garbage collector carrying Oscar’s can). I remember seeing Oscar do things during those scenes that make it clear there’s a lot more space in his can.
Also, there are books that describe Oscar’s can as containing a portal to “Grouchland”.
Captain Caveman’s hair seems like a special case of “hammer space”.
Also, I thought Jeanie was bound to a bottle, not a lamp.
That said, Genie’s Itty Bitty Living space line from Disney’s Aladdin would imply he and Jafar are literally squeezed into the volume of their respective lamps and that it isn’t a comfortable fit.
And it makes sense that Oscar’s trash can is Depends on the writer. Show’s been on the air long enough kids who grew up on its earliest seasons could be socially acceptable grandparents and even great grandparents if you throw in a couple generations of teen pregnancy… Also, I just realized I’m older now than the show was back when I watched it… and cloer to twice as old than 1.5.
The Backrooms (essentially, although ostensibly there is no “outside” to view)
The bedrooms (and the entire house) in the movie Encanto - lampshaded by one of the children characters “It’s bigger on the INSIDE???”
All the closet doors from Monsters Inc. might be an example - they look like unattached doors and are stored on hanging racks, but are portals between children’s bedrooms and the entirety of Monstropolis.
The portable hole in Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
The last two might count as non-Euclidean portals, but might fail “bigger on the inside” since they don’t really attach permanently to a small volume with a bigger volume inside.
Similarly the mindscapes in Psychonauts - the player shrinks to dive into a door on someone’s head then there are vast “mental palaces”. Though the door is an inventory item, it could be rationalized the traversal space inside someone’s head is much bigger than their actual skull-volume.
This concept is central to the book Little, Big. It’s even right there in the title!
The castle in Howl’s Moving Castle sort of fits, although it might fall more under the “trans-dimensional portal” umbrella. Ditto the house in House of Leaves.