World feel tropes?

Something has been bothering me for a good while, and it's hard for me to talk about, because I don't really have the linguistic tools to talk about it with. So I've always given up on trying to post a topic before, and been unable to tell if it's already a topic.

The problem is that there's something to how the setting in a work is, and I don't have any language to describe it with. I'm hoping that tropes can be added to create that lexicon, but I can't get enough of a grasp on it to even tell if they are tropes, and I'm hoping a conversation may pull the idea out.

The closest thing we have is the punk tropes, so I'll start there; the majority of the examples on the pages say things like "x has a lot of clockwork tech" or "x has an 18th century feel." Compare that to say Dragon In Chief, where the examples briefly state what the effect in the story is.

All of the punk tropes read like they are entirely incidental to the story being told. And we seem to entirely ignore the interplay between the setting and the story generally, as if the only thing relevant is the available Phlebotinum and what it does.

What's missing is a lexicon for the talking about how the setting affects the story separately from the Phlebotinum in it.

for example: MLP has a fandom specific plot of humans in equestria, or alternately unicorns on earth; these are never cross referenced with the First Contact trope. Why? isn't it an instance of the first time two species contact each other? presumably because it isn't set in space, so it isn't written like a first contact story. Given the trope pages it looks like they should belong, but they don't: there's a difference in feel.

Similarly, the world of MLP 4th gen isn't going to have Louie!WITH PONIES in it, something about having dragons, chimeras, and hydras in the setting means there's going to be a three act structure.

The story of a travelling merchant wouldn't be set in the world of Attack on Titan, or modern Japan; it just wouldn't. Travelling merchants are in both of those settings, but something about the setting telegraphs that this story isn't about that.

Or how season 1 of Korra couldn't tell the same sorts stories that season 1 of Avatar did just by being set in a city rather than the whole world. And if I wanted to find similar things to Avatar by comparing the list of tropes, that wouldn't really work. (It would be interesting to have a sidebar that presents 3 works and asks which 2 are most similar, or something like that, to see if it correlates to how many tropes they have in common.)

Are the sorts of things I'm talking about tropes, and if so are they tropable?

I think there's something there, but I'm not quite able to respond well to your inquiry. I'm too busy coming up with counterexamples to negate your talking points, instead of finding similar points of discussion.

What you describe (before bringing up MLP and Attack on Titan) sounds like settings and Worldbuilding tropes.