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Trailer Park Tornado Magnet
Tornadoes always seem to hit trailer parks. In Real Life, this is due to the tendency of tornadoes to move away from over city centers due to heat currents, their tendency to form in the U.S. Midwest and parts of the Deep South, and the fact that most cities and towns in that part of the world are ringed by trailer parks providing cheap housing for people too poor to own their own farm or house. And while large buildings and farmhouses in tornado-prone areas tend to have basements or full-blown tornado shelters, or be sturdy enough to otherwise protect people from nearby tornadoes, trailer homes are flimsy things entirely above ground, light enough to be lifted completely away by a tornado and tossed aside like a child's toy, killing or maiming anyone inside, and vulnerable to debris from a tornado that doesn't hit it directly.

Thus, tornadoes that kill several people and thus make the news tend to hit trailer parks in the outer ring of exurbs. Tornadoes that don't wander harmlessly over empty fields or merely suck a farmhouse up into the sky are too common to be big news anywhere outside the immediate area. Also, in a major case of If It Bleeds, It Leads, news crews want scenes of utter devastation to report on, which the light, easy to pick-up-and-throw trailers provide, as opposed to normal houses which are anchored to the ground and can usually survive a much closer pass and thus do not provide a good image for TV.

However mundane the above explanation, the fact that newsworthy tornadoes often seem to hit trailer parks have spawned the Running Gag that "trailer parks have buried tornado magnets under them". Thus, movies and other media that feature tornadoes or trailer parks will usually have both, not just one.

Examples:

Film
  • Notably averted in Twister, of all movies. Although tornadoes devastate several farmhouses, two towns, a drive-in theater and a whole bunch of empty fields, they never once whack a trailer park.
  • In Cars, Mater remarks that he's "as happy as a tor-nado in a trailer park!"

Literature
  • The Annals of Improbable Research took on this issue quantitatively in "The Correlation Between Tornadoes and Trailer Homes" (reprinted in The Best of Annals of Improbable Research). The article presented a statistical analysis, ultimately concluding that "real statistics can be used to verify virtually any harebrained fable about tornadoes".

Stand-Up Comedy
  • Jeff Foxworthy has a memorable routine about how TV news crews interviewing survivors after a tornado hits a trailer park always seem to find the least coherent person around to interview.
    "It was pan-delirium! I thought we'd be killed, or even worse!"

Video Games
  • The trailer park level of the old PC First-Person Shooter Redneck Rampage is full of tornadoes.
  • No One Lives Forever 2 has a trailer park hit by a tornado; you have to fight off ninjas inside one of the trailers as its picked up by the twister and beginning to disintegrate.

Western Animation
  • Animaniacs had a short called "The Brave Little Trailer", in which the title character battles a tornado that always attacks the trailer park he inhabits.
  • There was one episode of The Fairly OddParents where Timmy meets Cosmo and Wanda's previous and infamous godchildren. One of them proudly takes credit for wishing that tornados always hit trailer parks.

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