History Main / TheSavageSouth

* According to Creator/DaveBarry, [[OnlyInFlorida Florida]] in general and Miami in particular. According to him, Florida has a constant 200% humidity rate, teems with psychotically aggressive ants[[note]]this isn't even exaggerated -- as a rule of thumb, the hotter the climate, the more aggressive the ant[[/note]], giant insects that want to jump into your mouth, and ''crabs'' that tear up your front lawn and attack you when you try to pick up the morning paper. And the "natives" are even worse -- the Miami version of a good Samaritan responds to a carjacking by ''pulling out a gun and firing madly at the jacked car''. As for politics, the only thing that makes the endemic corruption bearable is how hilarious it is. Case in point: the then-U.S. attorney for the state's south district who responded to losing a legal case by going to a strip club and biting a stripper on the arm. Fittingly, [[OnlyInFlorida there's even a trope about it.]]

* According to Creator/DaveBarry, Florida in general and Miami in particular. According to him, Florida has a constant 200% humidity rate, teems with psychotically aggressive ants[[note]]this isn't even exaggerated -- as a rule of thumb, the hotter the climate, the more aggressive the ant[[/note]], giant insects that want to jump into your mouth, and ''crabs'' that tear up your front lawn and attack you when you try to pick up the morning paper. And the "natives" are even worse -- the Miami version of a good Samaritan responds to a carjacking by ''pulling out a gun and firing madly at the jacked car''. As for politics, the only thing that makes the endemic corruption bearable is how hilarious it is. Case in point: the then-U.S. attorney for the state's south district who responded to losing a legal case by going to a strip club and biting a stripper on the arm. Fittingly, [[OnlyInFlorida there's even a trope about it.]]

* Kurast and its surrounding jungles in ''VideoGame/Diablo2'' which are filled with giant insects, poisonous river creatures, savage pigmy demons, and murderous human cultists. Subverted in that it was once a place of great good that was corrupted by Mephisto.

** ''{{ComicBook/Preacher}}'' is mostly set in Texas, and features swamps, religious lunatics, racists, alligators, good ol' boys who will happily rape and kill tourists (and AnythingThatMoves, and somethings that ''don't''), and inbreeding (note that the inbred deformed people are among the nicest in the entire series). Later, Herr Starr gets his leg eaten by cannibals in the Arizona desert.

Later, the Age of Exploration and the adventures of European sailors, conquerors, traders, explorers, and colonists, would cement this trope in the modern mind. Europeans typically found Africa, South America, and lands further afield to be hot, wet, filled with strange and possibly hostile natives and wildlife bordering on monsters -- to say nothing of the horrors of exotic diseases and in many cases, the horrors of European diseases shared with the native inhabitants, which the immune explorers would have hardly associated with themselves.

** New Zealand films based on this trope include ''Film/{{Utu}}'' and ''Film/DeadLands''.

* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'': the southern half of the Matoran Universe are said to be so dangerous that not even [[BigBad Makuta]] goes there. These areas were never explored in-story.

* As WebVideo/WhatTheFuckIsWrongWithYou's presenters, Nash and Tara, will tell you, Florida. The most insane, screwed-up, disturbing stories come from Florida. The people are psychotic, the animals are insane (read: the snakes are eating everything) and the state is crazy.

* In ancient China, the word 南蠻, usually translated as "southern barbarians", is used to refer to various southern ethnic groups. There are multiple theories on the original etymology of 蠻, but in modern times it is [[OnceAcceptableTargets rarely used to describe ethnic groups]], and used only to mean "savage" as a generic adjective.