Category:Bad Map Projections

A series of comics of bad map projections.

Map projections, real or, in this case, invented, are a recurrent topic on xkcd. Randall especially focuses on map projections, which are various ways to show the Earth on a flat surface, most famously depicted in 977: Map Projections.

Projecting is not possible to do without distortion because the Earth is not flat. These map projections each get a number, which, if taken seriously, would mean there are at least 349 other, as the highest number so far is 358 and as of 2025 there have been released nine bad map projections.

This may give promise of several more bad projections. The first two was released using a similar six color scheme, with each country in a different color than its closest neighbors, but the following ones were just plain black, gray, and white.

So far, they have the following numbers (release order shown at the end):

#45: Exterior Kansas (No. 7)

#79: Time Zones (No. 2)

#102: The United Stralia (No. 8)

#107: The Liquid Resize (No. 1)

#152: ABS(Longitude) (No. 6)

#194: Interrupted Spheres (No. 9)

#248: Madagascator (No. 5)

#299: The Greenland Special (No. 4)

#358: South America (No. 3)