Welcome to the Neighborhood! Pray you live to move out.
"The sun is shining... The birds are singing... And today, like every day... Everything is fine."
— Sam
Sam and Maggie are a normal couple living in a normal neighborhood with their adorable dog. There is nothing out of the ordinary about their heads, their lives or anything, really. Everything is fine.
Everything is Fine is a horror webcomic written by Mike Birchall. It's available to read for free on Webtoon
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Everything is Fine provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not entirely clear how aware, if at all, the neighborhood's residents and Sam and Maggie in particular are. Sam and Maggie act like Winston is alive, but Sam giving his body to the starving homeless person in Mom's Spaghetti suggests they know he's dead and just pretend. The cameras seen everywhere suggest that they're under surveillance and therefore forced to act this way, but there are no cameras in the house (that we can see). The fact that Charlie was papering his basement with foil to block out surveillance signals and that this is an offense worthy of Unpersoning suggests that the insides of the houses are also bugged.
- Ambiguously Evil: While The Rebellion certainly is better than the totalitarian government, Season Three really calls into question how much better they really are. Their plan involves getting a person Redded, with Maggie pointing out that that would mean someone's innocent children will be executed, to which Horace gives a sarcastic response and points out "a couple more dead kids for the pile" is a small price to pay for saving the world. Judy is also heavily implied to have killed their previous "man on the inside" because he got "cold feet" and gives an Implied Death Threat to Maggie. All this implies they're on their way to He Who Fights Monsters.
- Alternative Calendar: It's clear that they run on a different clock than our current one, seemingly with 100 minutes to an hour and ten hours to a day. Sam's alarm clock goes off at 2:60 in the morning. After a flashback to before their current system, Maggie briefly remembers the old time format and then corrects herself in Welcome to Lakeview.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Between Season 1 and Season 2, there's a four-part "Mini Episode" following the lives of Oscar (a real cat) and his "guy" Max, an extreme case of a shut-in.
- Apathetic Citizens: The unfortunate fate for those deemed "Red Status". No one is permitted to help or acknowledge them otherwise they'll be met with the same fate.
- Arc Words: “Everything is fine”, and later on “There’s no going back.”
- Armor-Piercing Question: In The New Forever, Maggie asks Sam whether just shutting up and putting up is really the best way to go. On the surface she's talking about his job, but it's heavily implied she's actually referring to their entire situation.Maggie: Like, you can play roulette as much as you want, but in the end... who owns the casino?
- Art Shift: The color scheme switches from a soothing pastel pink to an intense red whenever gory or violent scenes are shown, starting with Winston's dead body.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The pastel colors and cute character designs clash immensely with the creepy atmosphere of the comic. Apart from some Wham Shot moments, everything is always deceptively bright and chipper.
- Bait-and-Switch: In Like Heck, after a tense conversation over Maggie's suspicious activity in the woods and her murder of Laura's husband, Laura invites Maggie down into her hidden basement... where she offers Maggie drinks and the two have a heart-to-heart.
- Blatant Lies: An ongoing theme in the comic. Heck, even the title gets in on it. The residents of the neighborhood constantly assure themselves and everyone around them that everything is normal and fine, but just one episode in it's crystal-clear they're lying to themselves and something is very obviously horribly wrong.
- Bookends: Season 1 begins and ends with someone saying, "The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and today, like every day... Everything is fine," with the last three words being displayed as a title instead of in a speech bubble. The first time, it's white text on a red background, and the second time, it's the other way around.
- Cats Are Mean: Possibly invoked by the creator, who cites cats being "always scary" as the reason behind the cat masks' design.
- Childless Dystopia: Implied. Despite there being parks with playgrounds, no children are ever seen or mentioned in the neighborhood. An Iron Voice implies the children are still around somewhere, but their parents are forbidden from seeing them. From Funny How on, it seems the children are being held somewhere and the possibility of getting them back safe is what keeps most of the adults in line.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: A constant theme within the webcomic. It's often encouraged by the government to do so by reporting neighbors for suspicious activities. The citizens are rewarded by moving to more lavish towns such as Lakeview with the end goal being Hillside where the parents can finally see their kids if they're even alive.
- Color-Coded Characters: Each of the primary characters have a color associated with their word balloons and shading on their masks. Sam is blue, Maggie is pink, Bob is orange, Linda is yellow, Charlie is green, and Judy is purple.
- Cornered Rattlesnake: In No Going Back, having been declared red eye status and thereby having nothing left to lose, Linda tries to get revenge on Maggie by attacking her with a knife. This is discussed just 2 episodes prior, when Sam reminds Maggie that "people are dangerous when they're out of options."
- Crapsaccharine World: There is something extremely off with the neighborhood and its residents. Everyone is so overly cheerful and polite all the time, to the point of coming off as Stepford Smilers and anything negative, like dead dogs, is just straight-up ignored. Add to that the plethora of cameras positioned everywhere and the fact that for some reason everyone is wearing a mask that hides their heads completely.
- Creepy Basement: It's heavily implied that Charlie has something in his basement. And contrary to what he claims, it's probably not just model trains. An Iron Voice has a policeman set Charlie's status to "red" after looking into it. Though Maggie and the audience still don't get to see what exactly is down there. In Science 101 it's revealed that Charlie kept a science book in it that contained a way to block the government's surveillance.
- Disposing of a Body: In Season 1, Maggie and Sam have to dispose of Officer Tom's body after Maggie kills him. They end up hiding it in Bob and Linda's house to pin the blame on them.
- The Faceless: Everyone in the neighborhood wears almost identical cat-helmets that engulf their entire head.
- Frame-Up: In Season 1, after Maggie kills Tom, she and Sam plant the evidence in Bob and Linda's house to shift the blame onto them.
- Forced to Watch: In No Going Back, Bob and Linda are set to red eye status and their helmets show them something terrible happening to their children. It's implied the same thing happened to Charlie when he was made red eye status.
- Grotesque Cute: The story revolves around a bunch of characters with cute big cat-heads living in a pastel-colored suburbia. But every now and again, the comic shifts to show the reader intensely creepy moments, like the cut to Winston's dead, rotting corpse in Episode 1.
- Happiness Is Mandatory: Heavily implied. Sam never allows Maggie to say or think about anything negative. They happily ignore that their dog is dead and pretend like he can still do things like eat and go for walks. Charlie trying to say no to a dinner invitation is met with an almost hostile reaction and he seems rather timid when he finally agrees.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Apparently a popular pastime at Lakeview; a red-status citizen is hunted down with harpoon guns.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Bob, in a desperate attempt to save himself and Linda, blurts out his suspicions about Sam having impersonated Officer Tom after Maggie and Sam murdered him. This turns out to be exactly the wrong thing to say, since the officer called to their house by Sam and Maggie hadn't even considered murder as the cause of the reported disturbance and Linda had previously claimed her and Bob had never met Officer Tom. Bob bringing it up in this erratic manner only makes the officer more suspicious, leading to him demanding to see Bob and Linda's basement, which Sam and Maggie had previously deposited Officer Tom's body into.
- Illegal Religion: Implied. Saying grace before eating is replaced with a clearly mandatory "spontaneous declaration of thanks" and affirmation of happiness to the government. Later revealed to be exactly this trope: Like Heck reveals that Laura was originally a pastor who was forced to denounce her faith, and it's even implied that they made her burn her own church down.
- Ironic Echo: Before Officer Tom activates red status on Charlie, Charlie tells him "Just act it out! We can go back!" Tom replies "I'm sorry, Charlie. There's no going back." Later on, a bludgeoned Tom tells Maggie, who had witnessed the prior event, tells her "I'll... I'll forget! We can go back!" Maggie replies "I'm sorry, Tom. There's no going back." before bludgeoning him to death with her claw hammer.
- Literary Allusion Title: The title of Episode 16, Animals Are Free, is a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four, specifically the slogan "Proles and animals are free," referencing the people in that setting who are (supposedly) free of government surveillance.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Winston, Sam and Maggie's dog, has been dead for some time, but neither of them seems to notice. They still call for him, give him food and only occasionally remark on how quiet he's been lately. Sam even asks Maggie to bring him to the vet. Subverted, as there is a heavy implication that they actually know Winston died, but for some reason have to pretend that he's still alive.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We don't know how or why the current world of Everything is Fine came to be or how long the system was in place. Maggie's memories of her child implies that the events resulting in the current world were fairly recent. It is somewhere over 3 years, a month, and 15 days since the new world was born according to Sam in episode 18, Funny How.
- Only Sane Man: Charlie is hinted to be this. He tends to keep to himself and isn't as obsessively polite as the people around him. He even seems to get irritated when Maggie attempts to make small talk with him, right after lying to his face about the food she was buying. When Bob and Linda invite him to dinner he attempts to decline at first and only gives in after some not so subtle pressuring from Bob.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Maggie's mask is pink, Sam's is blue.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Maggie goes dead silent whenever she sees her face reflected in something, especially if it involves a bubble popping where her reflection's eye is. In The New Forever she swipes her coffee mug off the table when she sees her face in it.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Occasionally a red light will flare up in one of the characters' eyes, usually whenever a conversation veers into uncomfortable territory. When that happens, said conversation is immediately dropped.
- Red Is Violent: As part of the Art Shift that occurs, everything becomes red with plain black line art whenever something violent happens.
- Reveal Shot: All Good Things shows a squirrel nibbling on something, then shifts to a different shot that shows something dripping with red fluid. Finally, it shifts to show the whole squirrel, revealing that the thing it's chewing on—the dripping thing—appears to be a severed body part.
- Rule of Three: The Lakeview society operates on this principle. A citizen of Lakeview can earn Merits ("Smilies") through doing especially good deeds (like outing people who break the rules) or Demerits ("Frownies") if they mess up big time, symbolized by stickers on tags attached to their clothing. Three Merits will give the ones who earned them the opportunity to be promoted to Hillside, a place where, it's implied, they'll be able to see their children again. Three Demerits will put a person in danger of getting set to Red-status and being hunted down for sport by the other Lakeview-citizens.
- Shout-Out: Given the Stepford Suburbia setting, Bob "jokingly" accusing Charlie of working on something in his basement other than his alleged hobby sounds familiar.
- Sickening Sweethearts: Sam and Maggie go all out on the cooing and the pet names whenever they're around each other. It's implied that some of it is fake.
- Sinister Surveillance: There are cameras on every lamppost, and the red eyes in the cat heads imply that the citizens are also chipped.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: In Heat Death, cheery music starts playing during the car ride, and continues playing throughout the reveal that the neighborhoods are being torched.
- Stepford Suburbia: Absolute conformity (in visible behavior, if not thought) seems to be the name of the game, within the framework of a mid-20th-century American-style suburb. The cat masks seem to be mandatory, and anything deviating from the norm (such as a can of tuna labeled in Japanese rather than English) is treated like contraband.
- Title Drop: The first and last episodes of Season 1 have someone saying "Everything is fine," with the line itself being displayed as title text instead of in a speech bubble.
- Un-person: Anyone found guilty of breaking the neighborhood's rules is forced to leave their house and crossed off the records. This means nobody else is allowed to talk to them or even acknowledge their existence and they'll eventually starve to death. In An Iron Voice this happens to Charlie after a police officer investigates his basement.
- Wham Episode:
- An Iron Voice shows Charlie being put in red status by Officer Tom with Maggie being forced to watch. It is likely her first time witnessing a new red status in action.
- Animals Are Free has Maggie kill Officer Tom after he discovers that she isolated her basement, while Sam watches. It ends with Maggie telling Sam that they need to talk.
- Pleasure to Burn reveals that not only is there an organized rebellion against the government, but that Charlie survived his unpersoning and is being recruited by Judy, who is a member of aforementioned rebellion.
- Wham Shot:
- Episode one ends with a nice look at Sam and Maggie's dog Winston as Maggie calls out to him—and it's shown that he is dead and, judging from the flies buzzing around his corpse, has been dead for quite a while.
- Heat Death ends with a look at the neighbourhood before Sam and Maggie's "on the schedule"—and it's being burned. Then the camera pulls back into a long panel of many, many neighbourhoods that have already been systemically burned.
- Zip Me Up: In Mise en Place, Maggie asks Sam to zip up the back of her dress, creating tension.
