'''Basic Trope''': Extraordinary/supernatural things happen in a real but non-major city.
* '''Straight''':
** The world is endangered by a malicious coven of witches in Cusco, Peru.
** The front lines of a shadow war to stop an AlienInvasion are being set in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
* '''Exaggerated''': The fate of the universe is in the hands of the witches of a tiny town in Djibouti that we only know exists because Google Earth says so.
* '''Downplayed''':
** The coven only threatens Cusco, they're not that powerful or ambitious.
** The danger comes from a medium-sized city, like Vienna, Austria.
** The danger is not on New York City but on the outer reaches of Queens, which is still ''technically'' New York but far enough away that the coven doesn't needs to worry with attracting the immediate attention of any witch-hunters (who focus only on Manhattan, in any case).
** The witch coven schemes to attack Chicago, Houston, Miami, Seattle, Columbus or Vancouver, Canada, which are some of the largest cities around and very important but statistically less seen in media (well, Vancouver is seen a lot, actually, [[CaliforniaDoubling just not as]] Vancouver).
** The oddities occur in a not big, but also well-known location, such as Orlando, Florida.
* '''Justified''':
** Cusco isn't important enough to attract the attention they're trying to avoid.
** Cusco itself is a TownWithADarkSecret.
** The danger is from an EldritchAbomination that outdates the existence of the human race. There just happens to be a town on top of it now.
** There's something very important for the invaders buried underneath Cusco. No one else noticed it prior to their arrival, but there it is!
** The aliens don't have any interest in a particular town or city, they just happened to land in Allentown.
** Because of BlueAndOrangeMorality, there is something in or very near to Cusco that is important to the MonsterOfTheWeek but that it wouldn't get if it went to Washington D.C. (like Native American reservations or lots of sheep).
** A historical event which is relevant to the plot had occurred in this town.
** The aliens have unusual physiologies that demand them to land in a place that accommodates them, not mankind (water-breathers in the ocean or a location with big lakes/rivers, diamond-eaters in a location with lots of natural or artificially-made diamonds, radiation-eaters near nuclear reactors or nuclear waste disposal dumps, etc.)
** [[ParkingProblems Cusco provides a better parking spot for their space ship than their actual destination]].
* '''Inverted''':
** Witches are causing trouble everywhere ''except'' Cusco, Peru. Why not there? Who knows?
** The only safe spots on Earth are the "metro" cities (because of high pollution, too many witnesses, disrupted leylines because of road construction, who knows really?).
* '''Subverted''': It soon becomes clear that the weird stuff going on is happening everywhere, and there's nothing special about where it was noticed first...
* '''Double Subverted''': ...except it turns out Cusco was WhereItAllBegan.
* '''Parodied''':
** The heroes' investigation reveals that ''every'' weird event of the past thirty years - alien invasions, monster attacks, Bigfoot sightings, you name it - had some connection to Cusco.
** The "Cardiff" of the story is a tourist trap like the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (not the one in the World - that one's in Kansas), with the consequent RunningGag of characters being divided between hating it and [[IncrediblyLameFun liking it]], [[StepfordSmiler overly-driven]] and [[TheBarnum potentially swindling]] tour guides and the temptation of souvenir purchasing.
** [[EveryoneHasStandards Even the aliens wonder]] [[TakeThat what the hell they're doing here]].
* '''Zig Zagged''': There are mysterious goings on all over the world; some in major cities, some in small towns, some in the middle of the ocean.
** A LongRunner starts in a city that was of little significance before it rises to be a major city.
* '''Averted''':
** Nothing out of the ordinary happens outside of [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]], Shanghai or HollywoodCalifornia
** BigApplesauce and TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse
* '''Enforced''':
** "Hey guys, the guys at HQ say they want the show to happen in the CEO's hometown." "But where the f**k is 'Cusco'?"
** Cusco itself commissioned the work in order to entice tourism to the town.
** Cusco had been treated as the HufflepuffHouse for much of the show's runtime, and enough demand has prompted the creators to give it ADayInTheLimelight.
** The writers have [[MonumentalDamage literally blown up]] all the other interesting places on the map.
** CreatorProvincialism
** The writers think that by focusing their alien invasion saga in a literal MiddleOfNowhereStreet, they can dodge some of [[{{invoked}} the]] [[ExecutiveMeddling ordered]] Hollywood pitfalls (too much focus on StuffBlowingUp over characters, LowestCommonDenominator humor, diva actors, etc).
** The production just doesn't have the budget to film in a major metropolis.
* '''Lampshaded''':
** "But... why here? NothingExcitingEverHappensHere!"
** "Half a dozen aliens just landed in Ypsilanti. Do you know what that means?" "That the town's population just doubled?"
* '''Invoked''': The BigBad is staging a ThanatosGambit, so he makes his plans around the corner from TheChosenOne in his tiny backwater village.
* '''Exploited''': One word - Tourism!
* '''Defied''': The aliens land in Cusco, but realise no one is there and head to Washington D.C. instead.
* '''Discussed''': "Why not, though? If witches can operate in a more famous city, there's nothing stopping them here."
* '''Conversed''': "I know this show's made by BBC Wales, but really. Cardiff?"
* '''Deconstructed''':
** The witches' plans are allowed to go much farther than they should have, since nobody thinks of witches when they think of Cusco not even the nearest witchhunters (who just focus on Much More well known palces).
** The event that takes place in Cusco brings it to national or worldwide prominence, thereby leaving this trope as the town loses its obscurity.
* '''Reconstructed''':
** Neighborhood watch notices the disappearances and call FBI to investigate. The FBI finds and quickly dispatches the problem.
** The secrecy surrounding the event in Cusco is so carefully guarded that the town remains obscure after the course of events.
* '''Implied''': A MeaningfulBackgroundEvent (or FunnyBackgroundEvent) in the house of the cast's ConspiracyTheorist is a map of the greater State of Pennsylvania with the typical "has so many unusual events recorded on it with pins and strings that it looks like modern art" apperance... and as a GeniusBonus for keen-eyed viewers, the greater bunch of pins is located near Allentown.
* '''Plotted A Good Waste''':
** The series spends so much time using the "monsters on the backroads of America" gimmick that when the cast mentions with incredible seriousness that they need to get to Allentown ASAP, we expect it to be some kind of WhamEpisode... only that it turns out to be a comedy episode where no monsters appear and the reason they were so determined to get to the town was because they wanted to [[ProductPlacement get a Super-Duper Big Mackkk Breakfast before the restaurant stopped serving for the day]] or something similar.
** The story is ultimately an epic GenerationalSaga about how Cusco would rise to global prominence, with the Witch Coven as the inciting event that led to such.
* '''Played For Laughs''':
** The main theme of the series is that Cardiff/Cusco/wherever is a QuirkyTown, with all of the "HilarityEnsues" that comes with it.
** The aliens invaded [[DeepSouth Scumbum]], [[OnlyInFlorida Florida]] and the result is that they are forced to run away by the {{Lower Class Lout}}s that embody "HumansAreTheRealMonsters" in all the ways that normally reach the news in that "wait a second, we are going to air this? It has to be a slow day" kind of way.
** The aliens invade some DyingTown deep in FlyoverCountry or otherwise so out of the way that the cast, after they save the world, successfully turn the fact aliens actually landed here to turn it into a very successful tourist trap and revive it.
* '''Played For Drama''':
** After the fifth or sixth MonsterOfTheWeek rampage by the EldritchAbomination InscrutableAliens, there is nothing nice about living in Allentown anymore: people evacuate (or are forcefully evacuated), property values plummmet at a meteoric rate (and it's also explained that if it was a mayor metropolitan area like New York it would have a chance to recover, but being the boondocks...), martial law is declared, TheMenInBlack implement their own version of the DayOfTheJackboot (and will continue to do so until they finally understand why the aliens chose '''''Allentown''''' of all the places in the world), and overall it's made very clear that Cusco is well on its way to become a DyingTown... or even a full-blown GhostTown.
** If the aliens were invading Washington, D.C., it would be an ''Film/IndependenceDay''-style extravaganza with the best and brightest and most courageous leading the charge. [[WellThisIsNotThatTrope But they are invading Cusco]], and you can just feel [[ClosestThingWeGot the desperation]].
** The aliens invade a DyingTown somewhere forsaken by man and God and by the time the credits finally roll the town is most definitely dead, both because of everybody who was not killed leaving and because [[TrashTheSet the struggle burned the whole place to the ground]].
* '''Played For Horror''': Cusco is the hero's DoomedHometown. We get a nice thirty minutes of aliens [[DayOfTheJackboot goose-stepping through the streets]] and massacring innocent people with the impunity that comes from knowing the people who can provide an appropriate response won't arrive until it's too late because they didn't expected an assault on Cusco.
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Back to AliensInCardiff, once we figure out where that even ''is''.
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%% Optional items, added after Conversed, at your discretion:
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%%* '''Implied''': ???
%%* '''Untwisted''': ???