Out of all the tyrants in fiction, who inspires the most hatred in the heroes who fight them? Is i the Evil Overlord? Of course not. His evil may be systemic, but it lacks that personal touch. How about the Small-Town Tyrant then? Getting closer, but heroes mostly only encounter him when they're Walking the Earth, making him less annoying than a villain back home. No, the real most hated tyrant is... the local home owner's association?
Of course. After all, who else takes a ruler to every single blade of grass in your lawn to make sure than none of them are taller than the 2.25 inches allowed by neighborhood ordinance 14b? Who else hits you with a noise complaint for sneezing after 10pm? Who else sends ninjas to your house because you had the sheer audacity to paint it some color other than one of the 16 approved shades of beige?
And it gets worse if they don't like you. Few other authority figures lean harder into Selective Enforcement. If the members of the HOA like someone, then the rules might as well not exist. If they don't though, they'll throw the book at you and write a sequel. And they won't just look in the visible places to find something to charge you with. They'll dig into everything, especially if it's none of their business.
Often an Obnoxious Entitled Housewife and/or a Nosy Neighbor. These are the people that keep the Cut-and-Paste Suburb cut-and-paste, and run Stepford Suburbia.
- Over the Hedge shows that it isn't only the humans who have to deal with the horrors of the HOA. Gladys Sharp, the president of the Camelot Estates Home Owners Association, usually contents herself with harassing residents because their grass is half an inch too long and otherwise insisting that everyone in the neighborhood meets her standard of perfection. However, when she discovers scavenging animals in the area, she hires an exterminator and explicitly demands he deal with the animals in the cruelest, most inhumane method possible, using an exterminator system that's illegal in every state but Texas.
- The Sanford Neighborhood Watch Alliance of Hot Fuzz play a similar role to a home owners association, acting to protect the character of the village in hopes of winning a coveted "Village of the Year" award. They're Obsessively Normal with no tolerance for oddity, and they're completely willing to murder anyone who deviates from that desired norm in any way, whether by living in a McMansion, being a hammy actor in community theatre, or having an annoying laugh.
- Casey and Andy: Sometimes uneven enforcement isn't a product of favoritism. Mabel
of the home owners association goes after Jenn for having a lawn gnome because it "reduces the property value of the whole neighborhood." However, she completely ignores the nuclear missile behind Casey and Andy's house next door, openly admitting that she's scared to go to that house. She then moves on to policing Jenn's dating habits.
- Brian David Gilbert: The video "Welcome to the Neighborhood features an HOA that imposes strict rules about door color, garage condition and garbage. They also police what shows you watch, cancel the main character's news subscriptions (giving them the "HOA News" in its place) and even seem to know the thread count on the main character's sheets (having rules about that as well). It's heavily implied that they're a cult.
- Hermitcraft Season 10: "The Neighborhood" is run by the "Ministry of Ministers" which is a home owners association in all but name and illustrates all kinds of petty tyranny.
- Ren's role as "Minister of Administrating" is essentially that of an HOA president, and declaring himself such prompts more immediate backlash than even the time he declared himself king in Season 9. While he's mostly more incompetent than evil, he abuses his authority to force the others to make improvements to The Neighborhood without doing anything himself, and assigns jobs to the others that are either unwanted (Beef as the "Minister of Maps" didn't want to see another map after Season 9), sound insulting (Xisuma as the "Minister of Idiots"), or both (Cleo as the "Minister of Trash"). Efforts to overthrow him spring up only weeks after he claimed the job.
- Cleo in her role of "Minister of Trash" illustrates how members of neighborhood organizations use small amounts of power to abuse those who they have grudges against. First, when tasked with building a garbage dump, she places it right in front of Ren's tower as an act of petty revenge. Later she declares Iskal's ugly house to be garbage, and fines him for not removing it.
