Basic Trope: New York City is polluted, corrupt, sleazy, full of crime, prejudiced, poverty-ridden, or some combination thereof.
- Straight: When Alice visits New York, she finds litter and smoke everywhere, cops who are crooked and/or bigoted, prostitutes all over the show, many robberies and drug dealings happening, and many people who can't find jobs.
- Exaggerated:
- In New York, everyone is either completely penniless, a mugger, a rapist, or a murderer. These murderers tend to target women and people of color. The air is so polluted everyone needs a gas mask. Any trip by road vehicle makes a roller coaster ride feel like a sedate stroll by comparison. All the kids attend Sucky Schools. The food is bad everywhere in town.
- New York is an active war zone and everybody who remains inside the city limits is insane, either figuratively or literally (and violently, at that).
- Downplayed:
- Alice goes to New York and finds a bit of litter but not serious pollution, people who make National Stereotypes, people committing very minor crimes like loitering and jaywalking, and the odd strip club.
- Most of New York is sleazy, polluted, racist, and full of crime, but some major parts of it are perfectly clean and peaceful.
- New York is a very wholesome and nearly utopian place to live but, from the point of view of the protagonists of the series, the homicide rate's seemingly through the roof.
- Justified:
- The show is set during The Great Depression.
- The show is set during the 1970s to the 1980s, when New York genuinely did have quite a few of such problems. And as such, the place pretty much looks like Metro City in real life.
- The show is set in a dystopian near-future where the problems are consequences of previous problems: the pollution came first, which led to the housing in NYC being cheap, which led to poverty, which led to the thieving, drug dealing, and prostitution as attempts to make money.
- The show's Big Bad has impressive resources and a plan to turn New York into a hellhole that is eight steps into its ten-step program.
- Inverted: When Alice goes to New York, she finds it completely sterile, chaste, unprejudiced, and crime-free.
- Subverted:
- Alice sees pollution, racist cops, prostitutes, poverty, drug dealers, and thieves when she arrives in New York, but that is only one neighbourhood. The rest of New York is fine.
- It seems as though there are pollution and prostitutes everywhere, people are robbing stores and dealing drugs, no one can find jobs, and the cops are racist, but actually it's a serious case of Not What It Looks Like. The robbery was actually part of a movie that was being made and the "pollution" was just part of a smoke machine that was being used for the same movie, the "drug dealers" were just candy vendors, Alice just assumed those other women were prostitutes, the jobless people were just a small group who'd just been fired, and the cops were suspicious of Bob because he was a musician, not because he was black.
- It turns out that Alice got on the wrong plane, and this polluted, crime-stricken, sleazy, poor city isn't even New York.
- Alice was exaggerating how bad NYC really was, because she didn't like the city to begin with.
- Double Subverted:
- The rest of New York is only slightly better than the suburb Alice arrived at.
- The people were lying about it not being what it looked like.
- But when Alice goes to the real New York, it's just as bad.
- In the time in between Alice's visit that she exaggerates was a march into a hellhole and the current day when everybody else in the cast visits, it got as bad as Alice's lie advertised, if not worse.
- Parodied: When Alice suggests a trip to New York to Charlie, he freaks out as though he's being sentenced to death.
- Averted:
- When Alice goes to New York, she finds it a relatively normal city.
- Nobody goes to New York, nor do they even say whether it is in good or bad shape.
- Enforced:
- One of the writers hates New York for some reason and wants to put people off going there.
- The writer is adding a flashback to the '70s to contrast how much the city has cleaned up since then.
- Street Punch-Down has a level that takes place in New York and justifies the waves of criminal grunts coming to try to beat the player up in the middle of the street by saying NYC is/became a violent hellhole courtesy of the Big Bad.
- Lampshaded: "Man, I didn't know New York was so bad!"
- Invoked: A villain deliberately pollutes New York, in order for it to lead to poverty, then to crime.
- Exploited: If the whole world already thinks New York is a Soiled City on a Hill, nobody will protest Evulz's plan for Villainous Gentrification.
- Defied: The higher-ups in New York refuse to recruit racists into the police force, the police themselves crack down on crime, and the industrial workers actively try to improve the economy and reduce pollution.
- Discussed: "Is New York really a crime-ridden, sleazy, polluted slum?"
- Conversed: "I live in New York and I'm so sick of seeing it portrayed as polluted and full of crime!"
- Implied: Alice talks about not wanting to go to New York due to having had "bad experience" there, but her bad experience is not described.
- Deconstructed: New York City is so bad that you wonder why anyone would live there. So everybody moves away and within a few years it's no longer a city.
- Reconstructed: New York City is re-founded on a different site with better government, better infrastructure, with its occupants pledging to base it on a more equitable and sustainable economy. There is just no escaping pick-pockets and bodega bandits, however.
- Played for Laughs:
- The crime and pollution are played for Black Comedy.
- Emperor Evulz and his ork army attempt to Take Over the World, starting by invading New York. The entire army is slaughtered by angry New Yorkers and a pimp shanks Evulz to death.
- Played for Drama: We see the victims of the poverty and/or the racism struggling.
- Played for Horror:
- New York turns dirty and crime-ridden after the Zombie Apocalypse.
- Alice and Bob arrive to New York to see the sights and live a little. They instead run into a Serial Killer.
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