Basic Trope: A nice-looking town hiding something nasty.
- Straight: Troper's Grotto looks like a standard small town, but a cult there makes a practice of covering up their wrongdoing.
- Exaggerated: Troper's Grotto looks like an ideal small town with a friendly and close knit community, but everyone there is hiding some kind of nasty secret, from an Animalistic Abomination hiding in the nearby woods to a trio of murders that happened a decade back to getting famous by stealing work from a Starving Artist.
- Downplayed: Troper's Grotto looks like an average small town, but is not forthcoming about an unsolved death that happened there fifty years ago.
- Justified:
- The reason the townsfolk keep these things a secret is because they don't want anyone to think Troper's Grotto is a bad place to live.
- Deep dark secrets are easier to hide the fewer people there are that know them, especially if it's a Close-Knit Community.
- Inverted: Troper's Grotto looks like a nasty town, but they're hiding the fact that a friendly unicorn lives in the nearby woods.
- Subverted: There are rumors that Troper's Grotto has horrifying secrets, but they turn out to be false.
- Double Subverted: Then a monster comes to Troper's Grotto.
- Parodied:
- Troper's Grotto looks like a pleasant town, but the "dark secret" they're hiding is that it's exactly as pleasant as it seems. No small friendly town worth its salt lacks a few skeletons in the closet, and darn it, if they're not going to have one like all the other towns, then they may as well pretend they do.
- Troper's Grotto's vile dark secret is that it holds the world's largest number of Nickelback fans. The protagonists will, of course, react to this revelation like they had entered a town full of worshippers of everything from Dagon to Zarathos.
- Zig Zagged: Whether or not strange things actually happen in Troper's Grotto depends on the episode.
- Averted:
- No small towns appear in the work.
- Troper's Grotto is a regular small town.
- Enforced:
- The author grew up in a small town, and is writing what they know about how some small towns have strange secrets.
- The author finds the idea of small towns having dark secrets rather interesting.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Yet another small town. What do you think they're hiding?
- Invoked:
- Troper's Grotto was intentionally built in an area that contained high amounts of paranormal activity.
- The mayor of Troper's Grotto is the reason behind its strangeness.
- Exploited: The citizens of Troper's Grotto find they have a monster in the woods and try to get rich off it.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: "I hope nothing scary happens in this town.
- Conversed: "I wonder why strange things tend to happen in small towns."
- Implied: A town is mentioned to have secrets and Alice shudders when the topic comes up.
- Played For Laughs: The dark secrets are either Defanged Horrors or had a hefty dose of Nightmare Retardant.
- Played For Drama: The dark secrets of Troper's Grotto are going to ruin Bob's life somehow, if not get him killed.
This little subpage isn't kind to strangers. I'd get back to Town with a Dark Secret if I were you.
