History Main / UncannyVillage

Not quite the same as TownWithADarkSecret as these are usually not particularly idyllic nor do they have The Village's uncanny quality. May overlap with StepfordSuburbia. Contrast QuirkyTown. A WrongGenreSavvy character may take it for a CloseKnitCommunity -- or vice versa.

* ''Film/TheVillage2004'' -- the [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes former]] {{Trope Namer|s}} -- looks like an idyllic 19th-century village but its surrounded dense forest is inhabited by nameless, unseen beings that seem to be holding the inhabitants captive.

* ''Film/TheVillage'' -- the [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes former]] {{Trope Namer|s}} -- looks like an idyllic 19th-century village but its surrounded dense forest is inhabited by nameless, unseen beings that seem to be holding the inhabitants captive.

* In ''Literature/WatershipDown'', the rabbits come upon a warren where food is abundant and everything seems perfect, because the entire place is being tended to by the local farmer as a sort of free range rabbit farm with traps laid everywhere. The inhabitants respond to the regular disappearances by pretending it isn't happening.

* In ''Literature/WatershipDown'', the rabbits come upon a warren where food is abundant and everything seems perfect, except that the entire place has been set with traps by the local farmer. The inhabitants know this but don't care, even as their population is dying off.

* Several are encountered in ''LightNovel/KinosJourney''. Probably the most notable one is Kino's own home country, which seems as happy as a place can be, [[spoiler:but it's because every child on the cusp of adulthood is given a lobotomy, which prevents them from feeling unhappiness, no matter what. And children who question the procedure get summarily killed by their parents, who can't help but feel happy about the whole thing.]]

A beautiful, seemingly utopian community which is [[BrokenMasquerade not what it seems.]] Often either under control of a morally questionable conspiracy or demented supercomputer or protected by a DealWithTheDevil. May even be an entire ''town'' of {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s.

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* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'': Can you say Hinamizawa? A gorgeous little Japanese town in the country where everyone knows everyone's name [[BlatantLies can't possibly be bad]].
* Manga/{{Soil}} New Town: It's so picture-perfect you just know something bad's happening. Compared with the [[spoiler: possible alternate dimension shenanigans ripping apart the whole world]], the mundane stuff like [[spoiler:a pedophile dentist raping all the boys for about a decade while keeping the whole town under surveillance with hidden cameras]] are much worse. [[spoiler:Fortunately he gets his; unfortunately his favorite victim's the one who wants to destroy the world]].
* Several are encountered in ''LightNovel/KinosJourney''. Probably the most notable one is Kino's own home country, which seems as happy as a place can be, [[spoiler:but it's because every child on the cusp of adulthood is given a lobotomy, which prevents them from feeling unhappiness, no matter what. And children who question the procedure get summarily killed by their parents, who can't help but feel happy about the whole thing.]]
* Pick a Creator/JunjiIto manga. Any Junji Ito manga. 99% of the time, if the setting isn't a TownWithADarkSecret, it's one of these.

* ComicBook/AvengersStandoff features an archetypal example in Pleasant Hill, an excruciatingly perfect small American town. It's actually SHIELD's ultimate supervillain prison, where offenders are mind-wiped with Cosmic Cube powers and brainwashed into [[StepfordSmiler idyllic bliss]]. Pleasant Hill even scores literal points for PoweredByAForsakenChild, as the Cosmic Cube making it all possible manifests as an 8-year-old girl named Kobik. Besides being immediately awful for all the obvious reasons, the Pleasant Hill fiasco also lays the groundwork for [[ComicBook/SecretEmpire much greater infamy to come]].

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

* Sandford from ''Film/HotFuzz'' is a textbook example of this setting. A mostly [[IdyllicEnglishVillage peaceful and bucolic village]] in the English countryside where [[TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch people have a tendency to die in suspicious "accidents"]]. Nick Angel thinks there's some kind of real estate scheme going on, but the truth is weirder and somehow worse: [[spoiler: the Neighborhood Watch Alliance is desperate to make sure Sandford becomes Village of the Year again, and everyone who died was killed ''for making the town look bad''.]]
* The Harga commune in ''Film/{{Midsommar}}'' seems at first like a peaceful, welcoming community built around a traditional form of paganism. [[spoiler: It's just that some of those traditions include incest and human sacrifice.]]

* Creator/MNightShyamalan's ''Film/TheVillage'' -- the [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes former]] TropeNamer -- looks like an idyllic 19th-century village but its surrounded dense forest is inhabited by nameless, unseen beings that seem to be holding the inhabitants captive.

%%* Idyllic Stepford from ''Literature/TheStepfordWives''.
%% * The setting of ''Literature/TheGiver''.
* In ''Literature/WatershipDown'', the rabbits come upon a warren where food is abundant and everything seems perfect, except that the entire place has been set with traps by the local farmer. The inhabitants know this but don't care, even as their population is dying off.
* In ''Literature/RunningOutOfTime'', the protagonist finds out that her whole village that she thought was in the eighteenth century was actually a tourist attraction. It turns out their true use is [[EvilutionaryBiologist to make a master race of people stronger than the disease there.]]

* Harfang from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. Seems like a beautiful, luxurious city, until you find out that [[spoiler: the [[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom so-called]] [[GentleGiant Gentle Giants]] will [[ToServeMan eat any creature that isn't a giant]], including their guests.]]
%%* This is pretty much the basis of the story "Literature/TheLottery" by Shirley Jackson. Also contains all the [[RuleOfSymbolism creepy tropes associated with such.]]
* Omelas from ''Literature/TheOnesWhoWalkAwayFromOmelas''. It's a Utopia, but its happiness depends upon [[PoweredByAForsakenChild the eternal suffering of a child.]] [[UnreliableNarrator Supposedly.]]
* In the final ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' novel, we have "Blue Heaven." This is an idyllic 1950s-style college town, with some (justified) anachronisms (such as holographic sex partners and [=DVDs=], though they aren't called so by name) with lovely houses, up-to-date entertainment, the best food. Oh, and it's surrounded by layers of electrified barbed wire (the outermost kills), the borders are patrolled by armed guards, all the sunlight is artificial, the town is set in an AfterTheEnd wasteland and the [[spoiler:telepathic, Beam-breaking]] inhabitants are happily working on bringing about the end of all of creation.
* The book series ''Literature/ThePhoenixFiles'' subverts this - the town of Phoenix is way too good to be true, but it's not the community who are behind it all, it's the Shackleton Corporation, the creators and maintainers of the town who are plotting the end of the world.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E7AmysChoice "Amy's Choice"]], Upper Leadworth, where Amy and Rory live in one reality, is a beautiful, quiet village... that's spookily empty, with people who live unnaturally long lives...

* ''Series/TheInvisibleMan'' TV series had an episode set in "The Community", a village for secret agents who blew their cover.

* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': Storybrooke, Maine. Quaint little town, only needs one or two cops to keep the peace... ruled with an iron fist between [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Snow White's stepmother]] and [[MagnificentBastard Rumpelstiltskin]].
* ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'' has The Village, the former trope namer, a sunny seaside resort with quaint and charming architecture inhabited by people with numbers instead of names who are under the strict control of 'Number Two' enforced by eerie white orbs. And nobody leaves without its masters willing it, ever.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': "Revisions" features a town under a dome on an otherwise uninhabitable planet so bucolically pretty and perfect that viewers know at once the Team is in deep trouble. [=SG1=] soon notices that villagers are not just disappearing but being written out of the memories of their friends and families, better still the area of the dome is shrinking...
* The ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' had a number of episodes featuring Uncanny Villages: "The Return of the Archons" gave us a peaceful low tech society of mindlessly smiling people policed by creepy hooded figures. "The Apple" and "This Side of Paradise" are set on literally Edenic worlds with carefree populations living lives of prelapsarian happiness. "Errand of Mercy" gives us such a society under threat from the Klingons and refusing to raise a hand in their own defense. ''Franchise/StarTrek'' had a thing for this trope and the {{Aesop}} Utopia ain't possible.

* The ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "Countrycide" explores a [[IdyllicEnglishVillage nice-looking country village]], where the villagers have a decennial event in which they [[ImAHumanitarian eat whoever passes through]].
* ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', Mystic Falls. May also count as a TownWithADarkSecret. The vampires, witches, and werewolves are one thing but the level of civic pride shown by the good folk of Mystic Falls just screams weird.
* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'':

** "Terminus" publicizes itself as a "sanctuary for all", including open gates and welcoming newcomers with barbecue and no questions asked. Turns out [[spoiler:the place is a community of cannibals that either locks up newcomers to serve as cattle or feeds them human flesh and then reveals the truth, giving them the choice of JoinOrDie.]]
* ''Series/TheXFiles'', "Arcadia": The Falls at Arcadia is a beautiful, peaceful planned community with a sinister secret. The peace is controlled by Home Owner Association, represented mainly by President Gene Gogolak. They have strict rules and regulations about everything and observing them is enforced by a killing monster. Most of the inhabitants know, but new-comers are not as lucky.

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%%* The LJ-RPG, RolePlay/{{Mayfield}} is built off of this trope.
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%%* In ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', some places in the game don't even start out as this, but over the course of the game become uncanny villages due to [[spoiler:Porky's influence]].
* In ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'', the Morninglight seems to create these kinds of communities wherever it sets up shop, from the peaceful hippy camp that just so happens to be [[EvilSorcerer Freddy Beaumont]]'s base of operations, to the kindly youth support center that's actually doubling as a training ground for suicide bombers. However, the biggest and most obvious example of this takes the form of "The Clubhouse," an underground club for young Morninglight prodigies: along with all the luxurious amenities offered to new recruits, it lacks the soul-crushing indoctrination used in other centers, and by all accounts, it was a pretty fun place [[spoiler: before the Filth outbreak]]. However, those who eventually prove themselves to the Morninglight leadership are granted access to the temple - and initiation into the deepest secrets of the cult.
%%* [[spoiler:Haven]] from ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''.
* Andale from ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' is made all the more jarring by being smack in the middle of an irradiated, mutant-strewn wasteland, and one of the few settlements not surrounded by scrap walls and armed guards. [[MookHorrorShow There's a good reason]] [[CannibalClan for that]].
* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheCuriousVillage'' has the eponymous curious village of St. Mystere. The reason the villagers are so strange is [[spoiler:that they're actually robots built to watch over Flora and her inheritance]].
* Sunny Town from ''VideoGame/StoryOfTheBlanks''. It seems like a happy little village of ponies until Apple Bloom [[spoiler:finds the remains of a dead body in a fireplace.]] ''Then'' [[MoodWhiplash things take a turn for the terrifying]].
* The city of Columbia in ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' initially appears to be a utopian paradise where everything is perfect and the technology is far beyond anything else at the time, when it is actually a brutal theocratic dictatorship that oppresses minorities like black people and eventually plans to [[spoiler: use its weapons to destroy the "Sodom Below."]]

* ''VideoGame/NelsonTethersPuzzleAgent'', the people in Scoggins are part of a brotherhood that worships the "Hidden People" (gnomes), [[spoiler: they allow them to take people because they were chosen by them to help them get home.]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* The small town of Warrick, in ''Literature/{{Twig}}'', is not-so-secretly the private playground of the [[TheCaligula Baron Richmond]]. The entire population is composed of convicts or vagrants who were offered a chance at a life of relative luxury in exchange for signing over their lives to him and is organized as a parody of normalcy with every person paired off with another, and each couple watched over by an engineered monstrosity created from their firstborn children which follows them everywhere. The town lives in constant fear, and that's ''before'' the Baron decides to pick out some people for stress relief...
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* The township of Dimmadome Acres set up in one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'' by resident CorruptCorporateExecutive Doug Dimmadome[[note]][[RunningGag Owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome!]][[/note]]. It appears to be a nice, clean suburb, but it's soon revealed that if you haven't drunk Doug's mind-controlling milk yet, [[TheAssimilator the hive-minded residents are going to make sure it doesn't stay that way]].
* The quaint little town of Wychford in the ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuestTheRealAdventures'' episode "Village of the Doomed" turns out to be this (as if the title wasn't ominous enough). When Jonny and his father Benton Quest arrive at the town for a bonding fishing trip, the townsfolk all seem very nice and polite. Then the Quests get attacked by a rabid man and they find out he has a microchip implanted in the back of his neck, which can be activated to control his emotions and has malfunctioned, setting the man on a permanent UnstoppableRage. They start to investigate the case. Turns out, Dr. Smallwood, the MadScientist who created the controlling microchip had been experimenting with ''all'' of the town's inhabitants, only everybody else's chips are set to "permanently nice" mode. Once Smallwood figures out that the Quests are sticking their nose in his business, he flips the switch on the chips, transforming the whole town into a horde of zombie-like, mindless, aggressive, drooling [[NightOfTheLivingMooks Mooks]]. Not quite the quiet vacation Jonny and Benton were hoping for.
* The town of Pottsfield in ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'' looks like a small village in a clearing in a particularly quiet neck of the woods, only all of the inhabitants are actually [[spoiler:animated skeletons wearing scarecrow outfits.]] [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]], however, in that the townsfolk [[spoiler:are actually completely harmless and well-meaning, and just wanted to make Wirt and Greg perform chores for breaking their stuff.]]
* The second half of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" centers on The Island, an AffectionateParody of The Village from ''Series/{{The Prisoner|1967}}''.

%%* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' has several of these.