| abstract | - In fiction, especially the Trapped in Another World department, many characters have the curious habit of talking about their world (almost always Present Day Earth) as "the real world". This is justified when the world they're trapped in is a construct, such as a computer simulation or All Just a Dream. It gets far murkier when it's filled with sentient inhabitants. But even if the Magical Land is a place in and of itself, so many of the classical ones have been used as metaphors for something (for instance, Oz or Wonderland) that there is the faintest impression that this one just may be as well. As such, the "rules" on behavior are different in different worlds. Sure, you might have been fireballing the warlord's goons in that other world right and left, but using those powers on, say, a mugger in "the real world" would be wrong. Of course, this is sometimes justified due to the fact that it would break the Masquerade, but that doesn't cover a moral double standard. And even if the main characters treat everyone in the other world as people, there's still the stupefying habit of referring to their homeworld as "the real world". This seems like it would be incredibly rude, yet nobody ever calls them on it. Even more bizarre is when the natives themselves start doing it. A type of Creator Provincialism, one step above Earth Is the Center of the Universe. Compare Expendable Clone, All the Myriad Ways, Welcome to The Real World, The Time Traveller's Dilemma, This Is Reality. Contrast Down the Rabbit Hole. Examples of Up the Real Rabbit Hole include:
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