Category:Bad Map Projections

A series of comics of bad map projections.

Maps, 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 Earth like this is not possible to do without distortion because the Earth is not flat and then every projection is a compromise. But normally the projections try to be useful in some way while less precise on other situations. In this series, however, Randall do not try to make anything useful but just makes fun of the idea of many different projections, even calling them all Bad Map Projections.

The map projections he has releasede all get a number, which, if taken seriously, would mean there are at least 349 more to be released, as the highest number so far is 358 and as of 2025 there have only been released nine of these bad map projections.

This may give promise of several more bad projections. The first two, The Liquid Resize and Time Zones 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)