[4] Baum characterized Oz as a real place, unlike MGM's 1939 musical movie adaptation, which presents it as a dream of lead character Dorothy Gale.

In Robert A. Heinlein's 1980 book The Number of the Beast, he posits that Oz is on a retrograde planet, meaning that it spins in the opposite direction of Earth so that the sun seems to rise on one's left as one faces north.

Oz, like all of Baum's fantasy countries, was presented as existing as part of the real world, albeit protected from civilization by natural barriers.

Palm trees grow outside the Royal Palace in the Emerald City, and horses are not native to Oz, both points of consistency with a South-Pacific location; illustrations and descriptions of round-shaped and domed Ozite houses suggest a non-Western architecture.

Conversely, Oz has technological, architectural, and urban elements typical of Europe and North America around the turn of the twentieth century; but this may involve cultural input from unusual external sources (see History below).

[31] Schematically, Oz is much like the United States, with the Emerald City taking the place of Chicago: to the East, mixed forest and farmland; to the West, treeless plains and fields of wheat; to the South, warmth and lush growth, and red earth.

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the title character recounts that he was a ventriloquist and a circus balloonist from Omaha, and during one flight the rope for his parachute vent became tangled, preventing him from descending until the next morning, and he awoke to find that he was floating over a strange land.

[40] Afraid of the Wicked Witches of the West and the East, who, unlike him, could do real magic, the Wizard hid away in a room of his palace and refused to see visitors.

Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, reveals that the Wizard usurped the previous king of Oz Pastoria and hid away his daughter Ozma.

In yet another inconsistency, it is implied that Ozma was the fairy left behind by Queen Lurline to rule the country, contradicting the story where she was Pastoria's daughter.

[43] Maguire, author of Wicked addresses this inconsistency by saying that the people of Oz believe that Ozma is reincarnated—that her spirit was left behind by Lurline, but her body is reborn to different mortal queens.

The land was created 6,000–7,000  years ago by a wizard named Hurricap, who was tired of people coming to him with requests, so he decided to find a place without them annoying him.

He found a remote land and separated it from the rest of the world, along with putting the enchantments of eternal spring and talking animals (Volkov's version doesn't include any forms of immortality).

After that, the notable events included a conquest attempt by a sorceress named Arachna (Gurrikap was still alive, and put her in an enchanted sleep for 5,000  years.

Once there, they become the first people to gain an audience with the Wizard since he went into seclusion, although he disguises himself because Dorothy now has the Wicked Witch of the East's magic silver shoes, and he is afraid of her.

The Wizard sends Dorothy and her party to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West and in exchange promises to grant her request to be sent home.

A nominal army once existed, but it had an extremely large officers/privates ratio; other than its commander the Tin Woodman and one private, the portion of it seen in Ozma of Oz was composed entirely of cowardly officers.

In the book, a giant green wall studded in glittering emeralds surrounds the entire city, whereas in the movie there is only a gate opening.

The Vinkus (Maguire's name for Winkie Country) is largely open grassland, populated by semi-nomadic tribes with brown skin.

Farmer portrays the land of Oz as a science fiction author, attempting to explain scientifically many of the "magical" elements of Baum's story.

The main characters of Robert A. Heinlein's books The Number of the Beast and The Pursuit of the Pankera pass through many famous fictional worlds including those of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Gulliver's Travels, specifically Lilliput; E.E.

He explains that Oz is on a retrograde planet, where the direction of rotation relative to the poles is reversed, resulting in the sun seeming to rise in what would normally be the west.

He follows Thompson's Oz books, thus using her spelling of "Gnome" and her final fate of the character, but he postulates an incident that has removed the Ozites' immortality, with the result that both Ozma and Dorothy have aged and married by the time his story takes place.

The humans, computer-generated characters based on the lost minds of children drawn into the Otherland program, look forward to a messianic prophecy foretelling the coming of "The Dorothy", where a child would be born among them.

[55] The 2009 point-and-click adventure video game Emerald City Confidential reinvents Oz in a film noir style, with Dorothy Gale as a femme fatale, the Lion as a corrupt lawyer, and some other changes.

[56] The Land of Oz appears in the TV series Once Upon a Time and is the focus of the episodes "It's Not Easy Being Green", "Kansas", "Heart of Gold", "Our Decay", "Ruby Slippers", and "Where Bluebirds Fly".

The city of Oz is broken up into a variety of districts, many of which can be found in the original novel, but adds certain modernizations including a monorail, a complex judiciary system, and a number of political factions.

Created by the Red Jinn, it summons a slave named Ginger, who appears bearing a tray full of delicious food when the bell is rung.

[59] A legend of uncertain validity is that when relating bedtime stories (the earliest form of the Oz books) Baum was asked by his niece, Ramona Baxter Bowden, the name of the magical land.

[61] Several of Baum's fairy stories that take place in the United States were situated on the Ozark Plateau, and the similarity of the name may not be a coincidence.