Projections Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2012: 123–141 © Berghahn Journals doi: 10.3167/proj.2012.060105 ISSN 1934-9688 (Print), ISSN 1934-9696 (Online) World Gestalten: Ellipsis, Logic, and Extrapolation in Imaginary Worlds Mark J.P. Wolf Abstract: Just as perceptual gestalten complete images and narrative gestal- ten complete storylines, both encouraging audiences to fill in missing in- formation based on the information provided, the data pertaining to an imaginary world can collectively generate a world logic that helps audiences extrapolate and fill in gaps, resulting in the illusion of a complete and consis- tent imaginary world, through we what might call world gestalten. This arti- cle examines how these gestalten occur and function, how they contribute to the illusion of a complete world, and the importance of this process to trans- medial entertainment franchises that are set in imaginary worlds. Keywords: completeness, consistency, extrapolation, gestalten, imaginary worlds, secondary worlds, storyworlds, transmedial franchises The reader makes implicit connections, fills in gaps, draws inferences and tests out hunches; and to do this means drawing on a tacit knowledge of the world in general and of literary conventions in particular. The text itself is re- ally no more than a series of ‘cues’ to the reader, invitations to construct a piece of language into meaning.... Without this continuous active participa- tion on the reader’s part, there would be no literary work at all. —Terry Eagleton (2008) Imaginary worlds have always been around in literature, but their increase in number and average size during the second half of the twentieth century has positioned them as an important part of popular culture, which has become more franchise-based over the past few decades. The worlds in which many franchises are set, called “secondary worlds” by J.R.R. Tolkien to distinguish them from the actual or “Primary World” in which we live (Tolkien, [1939] 1966), merit being objects of study in their own right due to their long history,