History Main / CompanyTown

* Raccoon City was this in the ''Film/ResidentEvil'' movies, built and owned by the Umbrella Corporation.

* In Communist China, each ''danwei'' (work unit--the socialist equivalent of a company) forms a quasi-autonomous compound that would not only contain offices and factories, but also contain worker's housing, clinics, schools, restaurants, stores, gyms, entertainment facilities. Cities like Beijing would contain hundreds of these cities-within-cities, each dedicated to a different danwei. This allows each danwei (and by extension, the Communist Government) better control of its workers as they would spend 90% of their adult lives within the compound; activities such as travel, marriage, and even ''getting pregnant'' would require prior-approval by your danwei. As an added bonus, it also saved on transportation fees.

When a town is controlled by a single company. In RealLife these were popular in the days before automobiles allowed workers to freely commute. A company would build a town to provide local services such as libraries and general stores. The downside was that many companies [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging price gouged]] and used [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage debt bondage]] to keep their employees from leaving for a better job in a form of IndenturedServitude. Their prevalence was one of the factors that led to the formation of labor unions in the USA in the '20s and '30s, often with violent resistance from these companies, who employed {{Pinkerton Detective}}s or similar to suppress labor organizing and strikes. Not all company towns were bad; some were created to provide a better standard of living and create jobs. Others exist simply because the town in question is so remote, no one else wants to move in.

* [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-001-o5 One of the interpretations]] for the Wiki/SCPFoundation's Factory was a CompanyTown run by a MadScientist dabbling in the occult. Featuring everything from on-site accommodations for workers to breeding pits.

* In the ''Literature//ElementalMasters'' book ''Jolene'', main character Anna May Jones lives in Soddy, which is one for a coal mining company. She later goes to stay with her aunt, who lives in a holler outside Ducktown, which is one for a copper mining company (Burra Burra Mine). Both places are described as being terrible places to live in, with Ducktown being so poisoned by the mining to the point that almost nothing grows there and what rainfall is implied to be mostly acid rain.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjudYTj5nlQ Namechecked and defied]] in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' by Sanctum Adroit, a firmly LawfulGood [[LawEnforcementInc law enforcement company]], who have a strict "No Company Towns" policy. Requiring Massey, the lawyer for [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Tagon's Toughs]], to explain he's representing a newly established nation-state that's contracted his employer for defense, not the Toughs themselves.

-->''You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go - I owe my soul to the company store!

* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons Sixteen Tons]]'' first recorded by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pfVvqLM_e4 Merle Travis]] and made famous by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0 Tennessee Ernie Ford]] was about life in a coal-company town and not being able to get out (see page quote).

* ComicBook/JudgeDredd: The "Cursed Earth" arc reveals that outside the Mega-Cities, most of the North American continent (''i.e.'' FlyoverCountry) was blown to all hell during nuclear wars, and the government basically abandoned any survivors to fend for themselves. [[DeepSouth Arkansas]] in particular has been carved into fiefdoms between UsefulNotes/{{McDonalds}} and UsefulNotes/BurgerKing[[note]]No Lawyer-Friendly {{Expy}} names here, folks - ''ComicBook/2000AD'''s publishers [[HilaritySues actually got sued]] over this![[/note]], which routinely fight bloody wars over the "customers" of other towns and communities looking to stay neutral. Said "customers" are, of course, mostly used as slave labor, "paid" in burgers and fries, and immediately [[DeadlyEuphemism discharged]] by RayGun if they're caught slacking.

* ComicBook/JudgeDredd: The "Cursed Earth" arc reveals that outside the Mega-Cities, most of the North American continent (''i.e.'' FlyoverCountry) was blown to all hell during nuclear wars, and the government basically abandoned any survivors to fend for themselves. [[DeepSouth Arkansas]] in particular has been carved into fiefdoms between UsefulNotes/{{McDonalds}} and UsefulNotes/BurgerKing[[note]]No Lawyer-Friendly {{Expy}} names here, folks.[[/note]], which routinely fight bloody wars over the "customers" of other towns and communities looking to stay neutral. Said "customers" are, of course, mostly used as slave labor, "paid" in burgers and fries, and immediately [[DeadlyEuphemism discharged]] by RayGun if they're caught slacking.

* ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'' takes place in a solar system that had been ''[[OneNationUnderCopyright bought]]'' by a conglomeration of a dozen companies, which establish these on any planet they can. The [[EstablishingSeriesMoment first town you come to]], Edgewater, takes this to such a ludicrous degree that even suicide is considered awful because ''[[SkewedPriorities it harms company resources]]''.

->''"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?\\
Another day older and deeper in debt\\
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go\\
I owe my soul to the company store."''
-->-- '''Merle Travis''', "16 Tons"

* One early chapter of ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' has the Elric Brothers pass through a mining town where the mine owner is also the local government representative, with all the corruption that having one's employer, landlord and tax collector being the same person implies. Ed tricks the man into giving up ownership of the mine, and then sells the deed to the miners for a night at the inn and food for the next leg of his travels. The mine owner would return dozens of chapters later as a minor character after leaving the town in disgrace.

* HonestCorporateExecutive Scrooge [=McDuck=] from the ''Comicbook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'' owns just about every business in Duckburg, and if he doesn't own every business in the world, it's not from lack of trying. Unlike most versions of this trope, Duckburg existed before Scrooge showed up, but was just a tiny farming community surrounding the decaying ruins of the colonial Fort Duckburg. Also unusual, he shut down his business empire and retired for about a decade, with Duckburg not being particularly worse for wear.
* Everyone in ''ComicBook/{{Copperhead}}'' either works for Benjamin Hickory's copper mine or provides goods and services for those employees.
* In ''ComicBook/AlbedoErmaFelnaEDF'' Endly is a planetary company town run by the Enchawah group. When the planet first appears the narration notes that the economy in company towns are effectively socialist and because Enchawah is employee-owned it's practically indistinguishable from a democratic republic.

* This was Creator/WaltDisney's intention for creating EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow)at Ride/WaltDisneyWorld. Every future citizen of age to work would be required to be employed at either the Magic Kingdom theme park, the industrial park, the airport, the Welcome Center, the hotel/convention center, or the city central shopping areas, all labor which the Ride/DisneyThemeParks would profit from. Walt died before he could truly start on his dream city, and the post-Walt Creator/{{Disney}} decided it would be less of a hassle to just make EPCOT another theme park.

* ''Film/TheRundown'' involves a mining town in a remote part of Brazil that's run this way, at around the present time. The boss of the town, Hatcher, is brutal with his workers and pays them a paltry wage, which necessitates borrowing money from him and getting so deep into debt with him that there's no hope of getting out of it. Mariana leads a group of rebels that oppose this arrangement, calling it nothing less than ''escravidão'' -- slavery.

* Raccoon City was this in the ''Film/ResidentEvil'' movies, built and owned by the Umbrella Corporation.

* Biopic ''Film/CoalMinersDaughter'' starts with Music/LorettaLynn growing up in the company coal mining town of Butcher's Hollow, KY. After her father collects his paycheck from the mine, he goes straight to the company store to spend it.
* ''Film/NoGodNoMaster'': {{Discussed}} by Flynn when he's speaking with John D. Rockefeller, as a possible motive to send a bomb for Rockefeller's house. In particular, the Ludlow Massacre at one of the company towns which Rockefeller's business runs appears to be the impetus behind the bomb.
* ''Film/BigBusiness1988'': Jupiter Hollow is run lock, stock and barrel by the Hollowmade Furniture Company, with the local hospital only being accessible to Hollowmade employees. During the DistantPrologue, when a wealthy woman is in labor, and is refused admittance to the hospital, her husband races to the house of the owner and buys the company from him on the spot. Decades later, his children (one of whom was SwitchedAtBirth with a girl from Jupiter Hollow) are contemplating shutting down the company, and bankrupting the town. HilarityEnsues when some of the townspeople come out to protest, including the sister of the SwitchedAtBirth girl.
* ''Film/DarkWaters:'' Parkersburg West Virginia is a town where [=DuPont=] employs most people and are mentioned as having showered favors on people who played ball with them

* ''Literature/RedHarvest'' is set in one of these officially known as Personville, but popularly called "Poisonville". The town is essentially the fiefdom of industrialist Elihu Willsson, "Czar of Poisonville", and Willsson established his control by hiring various gangs of thugs to help him "settle" a labor dispute and enforce that settlement. At the time the story starts, this has started to backfire on Willsson, as the gangs proceeded to fight for power among themselves and bring anarchy to the town.
* ''Film/OctoberSky'' is set in Coalwood, West Virginia, a [[TruthInTelevision real town]] founded, owned, and operated by the Carter Coal Company and then sold to the Consolidation Coal Company (which became the Olga Coal Company...) to house workers at the Coalwood mine. Attempts to unionize the mine are part of the story.
* Proudhon City in the ''Literature/HostileTakeoverSwann'' series is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation, which keeps order on its own terms.

* Many business owners in ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' had towns named after them pop up around their businesses (ex. Marshville for Roger Marsh, Wyatt Junction for Ellis Wyatt). When the government sets out to rid the world of these greedy, selfish villains and their evil moneymaking ways, they reply, [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor "Okay,"]] and obligingly close up shop. The loss of each business triggers a set of DisasterDominoes as the businesses that grew up around it close as well, putting more and more people out of work, thus causing more businesses to go bankrupt upon losing their customers...

* ''Literature/WetDesertTrackingDownATerroristOnTheColoradoRiver'': Boulder City, Nevada was formerly a company town erected by the builders of Hoover Dam, a history referenced in the story.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' originally relied on a creamed corn plant to keep the populace in business. The owners sold out to the pesticide company Luthorcorp under the promise that no one would be kicked out of work. So it should come as no surprise that the factory was bulldozed and replaced with a noxious fertilizer plant.
* In the episode "A Private War" of the TV show ''Guns of Paradise'', a mining company uses strongarm tactics to try to buy or ruin all independent businesses in town.

* In season 3 of ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'', Francis moves to UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}} to get a logging job on the recommendation of Eric. Turns out that the job is horrible and Eric tricked Francis into coming in a desperate attempt to help him get out of crushing debt to his boss, Lavernia. Lavernia rules over the isolated workers with an iron fist and price gouges them so they have to work for her to pay off their endless debts.
* The planned municipality of Zawame City from ''Series/KamenRiderGaim''
* In ''Series/{{Incorporated}}'' the Green Zones are luxury versions. Gated cities and suburbs where the owning corporation's management can live without being disturbed by the Red Zone slums surrounding them. If someone gets fired though... they're out of luck.
* Sweetville in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Crimson Horror" is based on real-world Victorian "model settlements" by paternalistic employers like Port Sunlight and Bourneville. It's actually a front for a murderous eugenicist cult.
** The much earlier story ''The Sun Makers'' features a company ''planet''.

* ''[[TabletopGame/{{Traveller}} Classic Traveller]]'' Double Adventure 3 "Death Station". The adventure starts with the {{PC}}s on the planet Gadden, working at a small mining camp. The wages are cheap and the expenses are exorbitant, and the {{PC}}s are in debt over their heads to the company store.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' the {{Mega Corp}}s take this a step further with extraterritoriality. On their property they issue their own scrip (only usable at their stores) and write their own laws, like it was their own country.
* Most nations in TabletopGame/BattleTech's Inner Sphere have pulled Company Store tactics from time to time, and freelance Mechwarriors find regular employment helping to either suppress or aid and abet the ensuing worker revolts. Occasionally you'll even find a few individuals who get the bright idea of using the same debt-slavery tactics to keep their HiredGuns in line, which rarely ends well for thewm; shockingly, battle-hardened mercenaries who own their own HumongousMecha are in a much better position to push back than your average working man. Some of the most famous examples of such were the Draconis Combine's attempt to assimilate the Wolf's Dragoons and the Federated Suns' hamhanded treatment of the Northwind Highlanders. Both ended tragically as the Dragoons ended up 'winning' a bitterly-fought PyrrhicVictory against Warlord Samsonov's forces on [[MeaningfulName Misery]], and the Highlanders, covertly backed by an agent of the Capellan Confederation who was a descendant of one of their heroes, decided to go independent when [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Katherine Steiner-Davion]]'s actions triggered the breakup of the Federated Commonwealth, leaving [=FedSuns=] forces unable to keep hold of their homeworld of Northwind.

* ''VideoGame/{{Killer7}}'' contains a subversion. The stage Cloudman takes place within a company town, but the end of the stage reveals that the company itself isn't even real, and the monolithic building the city is built around is just a flat prop.
* In ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'', the protagonist pays a visit to Hope, South Dakota, the home base of Dexter Industries. The company owns and employs everyone in some shape or form, including the crooked police force. Civil protestors meet an untimely end in Sheriff Sturkey's jail (though officially, they "fell"), and everyone works in harmony to keep the money flowing. 47 essentially has to reduce the town to a smoking crater to mop up the corruption.
* In ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'', the player is sent to investigate a planet with a Romulan mining town, completely controlled by a Ferengi and a mining company. The people are living in squalor. They're allowed just enough currency to buy upgrades for their machinery, or food, but not both. The Ferengi in charge mentions how prices for food rations have doubled due to recent events. Further investigation reveals a hidden Romulan communications base, with the Romulans in charge paying off the Ferengi to keep quiet.
* Midgar (and Junon, and really the whole world) from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', a colossal metropolis constructed and ruled explicitly by the Shinra corporation.
* Finkton from ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' hits pretty much all the marks. Long, strictly-enforced working hours, pitiful wages that are paid in scrip only usable at the company store, and propaganda all over the place trying to convince employees they don't ''need'' things like sick leave or lunch breaks. Jeremiah Fink even has employees ''bid'' on who can perform a job for the lowest wage. His overthrow by the Vox Populi is very well deserved. As some of the recordings the player can find throughout the game reveals, Finkton only really exists to provide the rest of Columbia with cheap labor and produce, because Comstock's "flock" of believers balked at having to actually do any real work themselves in their utopian society. Originally, the laborers weren't even workers, they were ''prison slaves'' Fink brought up from the surface.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'', [[YouMeanXmas Crimbo 2010]] saw Crimbo Town replaced with CRIMBCO, a "Blandly Pleasant, Inoffensively Festive" corporation that paid its employees (i.e. Crimbo elves and adventurers) in scrip they could only use to buy food and drink from the cafeteria and tacky presents from the gift store.
* ''VideoGame/TheWolfAmongUs'' has a strip club, "The Puddin' and Pie", which is similar to a "Company Store" because the owner refuses to release any of his workers, charging them "fees" to stay there. [[spoiler:Also, they're fitted with decapitation collars with disguise and vocal trigger mods]].

* Kaidan district Tokyo in ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'' - prior to the Tokyo bombing, anyway. The stamping grounds of the [[MegaCorp Orochi Group]], just about everything in Kaidan kowtowed to the company in one way or another: with a few notable exceptions, most of the local businesses, services, and products were all owned, managed or influenced by Orochi in some way; even local sports teams were branded with Orochi colours. An entire stretch of the local waterfront was remade into housing projects for Orochi employees, complete with schools and daycare facilities provided by the Group's daughter corporations - all for the purposes of [[MutantDraftBoard isolating potentially valuable test subjects for the Rising Star Project]], of course. Last but not least, Kaidan's skyline is dominated by the colossal [[EvilTowerOfOminousness Orochi Tower]], the company's official headquarters and the hub of economic, political, and scientific power in the region.
* Bradberton from the Nuka-World DLC of ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' is a company town owned by the Nuka-Cola Corporation for the workers of the Nuka-World Theme Park.
* ''VideoGame/KentuckyRouteZero'' features an entire Company Region: the Consolidated Power Company has a hand in almost every aspect of life in a sad crumbling stretch of Kentucky.
* ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'' takes place in a solar system that had been ''[[OneNationUnderCopyright bought]]'' by a conglomeration of a dozen companies, which establish these on any planet they can. The [[EstablishingSeriesMoment first town you come to]], Edgewater, takes this to such a ludicrous degree that even suicide is considered awful because ''[[SkewedPriorities it harms company resources]]''.

* ''Webcomic/DearChildren'': [[TownWithADarkSecret Hearthbrook]], [[LovecraftCountry MA]] is more or less owned by the Langworthies and the Saddlers. They co-own the port which is the town's main business: Mr. Saddler built the port and Mr. Langworthy runs it. Both families seem to be connected to the shadowy conspiracy, which treats with the [[spoiler:[[EldritchAbomination mysterious monsters]] who dwell beneath the town]], and is strongly implied to be [[spoiler:providing them a steady supply of human victims]].
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjudYTj5nlQ Namechecked and defied]] in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' by Sanctum Adroit, a firmly LawfulGood [[LawEnforcementInc law enforcement company]], who have a strict "No Company Towns" policy. Requiring Massey, the lawyer for [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Tagon's Toughs]], to explain he's representing a newly established nation-state that's contracted his employer for defense, not the Toughs themselves.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'': A child-level example; in one episode, T.J comes back to school after being out with the flu for a week, only to discover that the entire playground has formed an economic system around the latest fad - Monstickers bubble gum cards! Starting from the bottom, T.J ends up virtually taking over the playground and turning it into this trope since he controls nearly all the cards, and kids spend all recess either working for him or doing nothing (the latter of which he institutes a fine on). His empire crumbles when the fad runs it's course and is replaced by something new.
* ''WesternAnimation/CostumeQuest'''s Auburn Hollow is a parody of mining towns, where the main export of their mines was nougat.

* All of the employed characters in ''Theatre/{{Urinetown}}'' seem to work for [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Mr. Cladwell]], the CEO of Urine Good Company. The unemployed are at the mercy of UGC as the company controls the water supply in a drought-ridden, dying world.

-->Follow that dollar for a long way down
-->Far away from the poorhouse door
-->You either get to hell or to Hadestown
-->Ain’t no difference anymore!

* ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'' takes place in a solar system that had been ''bought'' by a conglomeration of a dozen companies, which establish these on any planet they can. The [[EstablishingSeriesMoment first town you come to]], Edgewater, takes this to such a ludicrous degree that even suicide is considered awful because ''[[SkewedPriorities it harms company resources]]''.

* ''Film/NoGodNoMaster'': {{Discussed}} by Flynn when he's speaking with John D. Rockefeller, as a possible motive to sent a bomb for Rockefeller's house. In particular, the Ludlow Massacre at one of the company towns which Rockefeller's business runs appears to be the impetus behind the bomb.