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Deep South
aka: The Deep South

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Mullets, banjos, and stills galore, oh my!

"Governor Clinton, let's be frank. You're running for president, yet your only experience has been as the governor of a small, backward state with a population of drunken hillbillies riding around in pickup trucks. The main streets of your capital city, Little Rock, are something out of Li'l Abner, with buxom underage girls in their cutoff denims prancing around in front of Jethro and Billy Bob, while corncob-pipe-smoking, shotgun-toting grannies fire indiscriminately at runaway hogs."
Sam Donaldson, Saturday Night Live, Debate '92

The Deep South: home of corrupt, fat redneck sheriffs, shotgun-toting hillbillies, moonshiners, The Klan, tobacco-chawin' Good Ol' Boys missing half their teeth, and all other manner of Small-Town Tyrants and Lower-Class Louts, not to mention fire-and-brimstone preachers, iron-bound matriarchs, white-suited plantation owners, Confederate revanchists, Southern Belles in either flouncy gowns (in period works) or short-shorts with crop tops (in more modern ones), and possums. Some Kissing Cousins and other forms of Hillbilly Incest could also be in the mix somewhere.

Although the real mid-Southern and Southeastern United States has a far wider range of locales and settings, the Deep South as it appears on TV is usually one tiny rural town after another, separated by miles of farmland, desert, or steep, forested mountainsides. Its inhabitants always seem to be about fifty years behind the times, at least as far as social issues are concerned (or worse, stuck in the Wild West era and/or fighting The Recent Unpleasantries).

If you're a liberal urbanite from one of the coasts, then this is probably the last place on Earth you'd ever want to visit. Especially if you belong to an ethnic, religious, and/or sexual minority. In fact, it will be the last place on Earth you'll ever go to if you piss off the locals, since everyone — including the tobacco-chewing sheriff who glowered at you in the gas station — is quite happy to make your godless, yuppie ass disappear if they take a dislike to your demeanor. The only people in the Deep South who don't carry guns are the axe- or chainsaw-wielding serial killers.

This scenario is also used to depict the cultural differences between the South and the North. Ironically, in the days when Puritanism was widespread in New England, the South would often be looked upon — usually by New Englanders, of course — as a land of moral laxity and even debauchery. It's worth noting, for example, that Christmas was celebrated as a public holiday in the South long before it was in New England, which the Puritans insisted had to be observed purely as a religious holiday because of the pagan origins of most secular Christmas traditions.

As an example; while pre-marital sexual encounters and casual one-night stands are common nowadays, sex is Serious Business down there, with Southerners firmly believing in the golden rule of "marriage before sex" — or at least, "marriage before childbirth" — so do not try to knock up one of the local girls there, or you will be married to her for the rest of your life (Southerners are historically extremely averse to abortion and divorce—although since about the 1980s, the aversions to divorce and out-of-wedlock birth have dropped off, leading to some fairly high divorce rates and rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing). If the girl in question is a typical Southern Belle, you are a really lucky guy; but if she is not any of these but a hillbilly as bucktoothed as the rest of their family (as in most of these cases), you'll have to marry anyways; if you try to run away, it's quite possible that they'll either maim or kill you. No, really. Their honor code demands it.

The highest figure of authority down there is the reverend of the local evangelical Protestant congregation (usually either Southern Baptist or Pentecostal), leading to the zone being often called the "Bible belt." Unlike the rest of the country, the Moral Guardians and the Culture Police are actually supported and respected. So don't complain about the military, don't say how much you love Lil Nas X, don't try to explain how Paganism has nothing to do with devil worship, don't go out to the secluded farm house when your car breaks down in the rain, don't be gay, and if you're a woman, don't try to be anything other than a Baby Factory... Unless the Southern Hospitality is being played up, that is.

People will often have two names, with men having the second name Bob (Jim Bob, Joe Bob, Billy Bob) and girls will have Mae (Billie Mae, Bobbie Mae, Bettie Mae).

Any part of the region that is not rural, backwoods, mountains, or bayous shows up on TV as merely The City or Suburbia with an accent; the modern, sprawling metropolises of Atlanta and Houston might as well not exist. And while Nashville and New Orleans do exist, they're not without stereotypes of their own: N'awlins being a party city with the occasional vampire or Hollywood Voodoo shenanigans, and Nashville only known for Country Music despite its diverse population, large healthcare industry, and Punk Rock and Hip-Hop scenes that rival the country one in size. As far as writers — largely based in Southern California — are concerned, the only true South is the Deep South. And any old state down there will do. Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Marylandnote ...what's the difference?

This is where the Southern-Fried Private comes from; the Southern-Fried Genius is from here as well, although the South they know and grew up in is very often the "city/suburbia with an accent" flavor. Texas is part of this region, but it has enough of its own distinct stereotypes to warrant its own page. Florida is similarly complicated. Its rural areas are as Deep South as it gets, especially in the Panhandle, but its major cities have their own quirks due to the influx of Northerners and Latin immigrants.

Outside southern Louisiana, the region usually averts Christianity Is Catholic. Whether white or black, the churches are usually either Baptist or Pentecostal.

Compare Flyover Country and Appalachia, as all three regions might as well be Jupiter for screenwriters from the coasts. For various British equivalents, see Oop North, The West Country or Norfolk. Contrast Sweet Home Alabama for the more idealized version of the South. For the vicious horror-themed version, try Hillbilly Horrors, The Savage South, Sinister Southwest, or Southern Gothic.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Seth from The Authority is pretty much the worst of Southern stereotypes blatantly distilled into a genetic freak of nature. Among other details, he was conceived from his uncles porking his mother and is shown to be homophobic and racist (he makes fun of Apollo and Midnighter for being gay and at one point says the N-word).
  • In Bitchy Bitch, Marcie surely comes from the deep south. She's a stupid and extremely prejudiced (but cute) Southern Belle type with a heavy accent.
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! features team member Fastback, whose real name is "Timmy Joe Terrapin" and hails from the "Okey-Dokey" swamp in Earth-C's American south. Timmy Joe usually is shown (when not in superhero action) as perpetually-unemployed or between-jobs, and has a hayseed personality/speaking voice. The trope is partially averted in the 2007 miniseries (where he starts his own express delivery service company), as well as perhaps fully averted by fellow southern teammate Alley-Kat-Abra (who hails from "Mew Orleans").
    • The series also mentions several Earth-C southern cities, including "Memfish" (Memphis) and "Tallahatchee" (Tallahassee, Florida), along with Mew Orleans.
  • The Sewell family of Copperhead are a Space Western equivalent: a large family in an isolated, self-sufficient farmhouse far from civilization prone to fistfights both among themselves and against outsiders. They're also one-eyed and four-armed as a nod toward inbreeding stereotypes.
  • Doug TenNapel's Creature Tech thoroughly subverts this with the town of Turlock. First, the town's sub-literate rednecks turn out to be more accepting of a giant insect-man than the protagonist is. Second, several townspeople are revealed to be quite intelligent: the pastor was formerly a biologist, and another man taught himself quantum mechanics. Third, Turlock is actually in rural California.
  • In the 1980s, Drew Friedman did a comic parody of The Andy Griffith Show where Andy, Barney, and the good citizens of Mayberry take Klan vengeance on a black motorist with the temerity to stop in town. A good deal more caustic than most of Friedman's work.
  • Averted in Gold Digger. The Diggers family lives in Atlanta, but it's treated pretty much like any other big American city.
  • Preacher: Hoo boy. Among others, coveralls-wearing swamp warfare expert T.C. who'll screw anything (including, but not limited to: a chicken, a fish, (possibly) a one-eyed boy's eye socket, a birthday cake...), a fundamentalist matriarch, Klansmen (including one who has sex with meat piled into the shape of a woman and his Nazi secretary), and a family of hillbillies so inbred their kids only have one eye (and they're among the most sympathetic people you'll ever meet).
  • The Punisher tends not to do very well when going south... he's met gun smugglers, raging homophobic ministers, an alligator-raising Cannibal Clan...
  • Scare Tactics (DC Comics): Fang comes from a clan of hillbilly werewolves somewhere in the Appalachians. When the band unwittingly returns there, he is captured by his family and dragged off for a Shotgun Wedding.
  • Von Herling, Vampire Hunter: The setting is in the fictional town of Richten in Tennessee. When the local teens at a party catch on that August Von Herling is not from around there, they start teasing him.
  • Ultimate X-Men: Unlike classic Juggernaut who hails from New York, this one hails from the South like Rogue, even referring to himself and her as "trailer trash who made good."

    Comic Strips 
  • Li'l Abner: The sheer definition of every possible Deep South cliché!
  • Pogo: Apart from the fact that we're dealing with talking animals here all action takes place in a typical Mississippi swamp, with alligators, opossums and the likes talking typical Southern slang.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Ace Ventura: When Ace is tracking down Ray Finkle's latest whereabouts he drives to Collier County, Florida which is populated by disgruntled rednecks who lost all their money betting on Finkle.
  • Alien Abduction (2014) takes place in the deep woods of North Carolina. Sean and his unseen brother Scott are both cabin-dwelling hunters and survivalists, and Sean freely uses terms like "slow" and "retarded" to describe the autistic Riley.
  • There are several racist rednecks in The Blind Side; Lynne Tuohy lampshades this trope by calling one of them "Deliverance" (even though, whatever their other flaws, the villains in Deliverance were not explicitly racist). On the other hand, the Tuohys are representative of Sweet Home Alabama.
  • Borat has a number of scenes set in various "red states," including those specifically in the deep south, attempting to exploit stereotypical conservative attitudes. Borat dines with a family in the South and displays a wide range of boorish behavior, but they courteously endure him until be brings in a prostitute, at which point they kick him out. A cut scene has him try to adopt a dog from a kennel with the stated intention of defending himself from Jews, but the owner of the kennel chewed him out for such beliefs, which didn't fit the narrative.
    • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm also has a few, such as a scene with a debutante ball in Georgia, to showcase a new rise in conservatism.
  • The screenwriter of the Cape Fear remake directed by Martin Scorsese admits as a "New York Jew", he wrote Max Cady to be a "Monster of the South" speaking in tongues like something out of a tent show revival.
  • The movie Deliverance infamously portrays a group of city slickers rafting through the Deep South and running afoul of creepy locals who abuse them.
  • The Devil's Advocate: The real Gainesville, Florida is a modern college town with several hundred thousand permanent residents and whose courthouses are all modern multi-level buildings made of concrete and steel located in a busy downtown. What do we see in the film? A Civil War-era whitewashed courthouse on an isolated dirt road, more fitting of Black-Belt Mississippi or Alabama (even there it's unlikely unless the county seat moved) than anywhere in Florida.
  • Down by Law takes place in Louisiana and features a lot of Scenery Porn of the swamps and a little of New Orleans.
  • Fletch Lives. The protagonist inherits a Big Fancy House in Louisiana and dreams (literally) of living the idle life of a Southern Gentleman. Turns out the house is derelict and he's pestered by Dirty Cops, horse-molesting criminals and Klansmen (though the latter is suffering somewhat from Badass Decay). However it turns out that these things have been arranged to scare him off so he won't interfere in the scheme of the Big Bad.
  • Forrest Gump - which, of course, takes place from the 1950s to the 1980s, so it covers an entire generation's worth of social change in the South and elsewhere.
  • The Mexican-German film Guten Tag Ramon shows the Mexican version of this trope: Ramón, the titular protagonist, is a Mexican Northerner hillbilly from the Northern state of Durango, who is forced to migrate to Germany having no other choices on hand. Part of the charm of the film is the Culture Clash between the backwards mentality of the main character with the European mindset of the Germans.
  • Harold and Kumar visit the Deep South in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and encounter, among other things, a Ku Klux Klan rally, an inbred mutant child, and Neil Patrick Harris.
  • Hannah Montana: The Movie takes place in the fake Tennessee town of Crawley Corners.
  • Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects.
  • In the Heat of the Night. Virgil Tibbs is arrested because he's black. Back home in Philadelphia, he's a homicide detective.
  • The stereotyped cruelty of the Deep South is used as both plot device and major driving force in the award-winning film Lawn Dogs. Many people in the gated community there are cruel, quick to judge, and look down upon hard-working lower-classman Trent. He is even beaten, twice, for things he didn't do. What's more, the screenwriter, who created the story, is from the Deep South herself.
  • Mississippi Burning is set in the deep south and tackle racism and Small Town Tyrants.
  • My Cousin Vinny mines a lot of comedy from a Fish out of Water story of two Italian-Americans from New York City going to a small, deep south town and getting into various clashes of culture. Unlike most representations, the city slickers more than hold their own with their street smarts and toughness. That said, Vinny only succeeds by becoming familiar with the ins and outs of the local culture. And for their part, the local southern authorities are shown to be entirely modern and professional.
  • O Brother, Where Art Thou?? takes place in 1930's Mississippi.
  • Poor Pretty Eddie is an exploitation film set in an isolated lodge and the nearby small town somewhere in the South.
  • Requiem for a Dream: The boys end up in a Southern prison, which doesn't take kindly to drug-addicted New Yorkers.
  • Much of Shy People takes place in a remote part of the Louisiana bayous, where Ruth and her clan live in virtual isolation from the outside world.
  • The documentary small town gay bar centers around...gay bars in small town. Homophobia and persecution is prevalent, and the patrons use the local gay bar as a sanctuary. Basically, Where Everybody Knows Your Flame + The Deep South.
  • Smokey and the Bandit is based heavily on Southern culture of the era, particularly trucker and CB culture.
  • Song of the South takes place in a sanitized version of Reconstruction. The movie contains Uncle Remus stories about Br'er Rabbit ("Please don't throw me in the briar patch!") and gave us "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah".
  • Southern Comfort pits a bunch of Nation Guardsmen against a gang of local Ragin' Cajun s who don't take too kindly to outsiders invading their territory and stealing their boats.
  • Straw Dogs (2011) moves the setting from England to Mississippi, and the antagonists are a group of pickup truck-driving redneck rapists.
  • The whole premise behind the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes film series is rooted in this trope.
  • In Timber Falls, everyone dwelling the West Virginia backwoods is either a fundamentalist religious maniac or a Hillbilly Moonshiner.
  • X and Pearl are primarily set in a small Texas farm owned by a particularly murderous couple.

    Literature 
  • Mark Twain may have created the most ancient of all the tropes associated with the Deep South, especially in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
  • Nick Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel is set in one of the most vile hicktowns ever: Ukulore, founded by a psychotic heretical backwoods prophet, where almost everyone is either blasted out of their mind on moonshine, or a hypocritically pious sadist. Inbreeding is everywhere, too.
  • Mostly averted in Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, set in the area where Kentucky, Tennesee and North Carolina all meet. Subverted however in "The Devil Amongst The Lawyers'' where northern journalists, visiting for a murder trial in the 30s deliberately project the stereotypical image because they know that it's what their readers want to see.
  • Brown's Pine Ridge Stories: This anthology of stories (all set in rural southern Georgia) runs on this trope. An example that somewhat lampshades this: "Once a year we came under attack from the North! No, not Yankees, I'm talking about the Goat Man."
  • Deliverance by James Dickey. Southerners will complain at length about the movie and the novel and the horrible stereotypes it represents. It's worth noting Dickey was born and raised in Atlanta, living and working in the Southeast for most of his life.
  • In Kim Newman's Demon Download series, the main Op Agency in the the Southern States is called 'The Good Ole Boys,' and the most prevalent gangcults are the Klu Klux Klan and The Knights of The White Magnolia. The G.O.B are portrayed as being pretty much an entire organization of J.W Peppers and Boss Hoggs, chewing tobacco, lording it over "the coloured folks" and generally being a bunch of bigoted rednecks. With guns. And the legal power to arrest you and sell you into slavery.
  • Judd "Scanner" Sandage, one of the principal side characters in the Fortunes of War books, is basically a hillbilly in a Starfleet uniform, complete with thick accent, garrulous mannerisms, and a bit of a lack of boundaries, but he knows his stuff when it comes to sensors and is a competent officer overall.
  • Derek Robinson took time out from his usual 20th century war fiction to write Kentucky Blues, which sought to subvert notions of the Deep South as effectively as his WW1 air-war trilogy subverted the Biggles genre. Seen through the eyes of several feuding white families, and through the eyes of the slaves who are later freed, the novel is satirical Black Comedy.
  • William Bradford Huie's novel The Klansman is set in the Deep South, in a politically corrupt county in the years immediately preceding the Civil Rights movement. bBlacks are vilified and lynched - a central plot point is the alleged rape of a white woman by a black man. This is set against the deliberate false imprisonment and rape in prison of a visiting black woman from the North, who is viewed as "uppity" by local whites who determine she needs to be taught a lesson.
  • The Little Friend by Donna Tartt takes place in rural Mississippi and tackles race relations, plantation fiction, snake-handlin' churches, meth use and manufacturing, and plenty of poverty.
  • William Faulkner's short story A Rose for Emily is set in this fair land, and at first it seems quite idealized, with social classes firmly in place, black servants that keep their masters' secrets, and gorgeous, stately mansions... that are riddled with decay, and years past the times.
  • The much-beloved To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee focuses partially on racism revolving around a falsely-accused black man.
  • Victoria sees the downfall of the decayed future United States, and one of the successor states is a reformed New Confederacy which invokes every stereotype relating to this trope, from the Southern Gentleman to The Klan. The protagonist is a Yankee, but visits the South and aids them in their battles against their home-grown Dirty Communists.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: One of the members of Lily's clique of evil witches is Lucille Ballard, an imperious girl from Mississippi with a thick accent who occasionally drops southernisms (like saying 'bless your heart' to a rival classmate that she's in the process of killing via magic).
  • Subverted in Zombies of the Gene Pool, which is set in Tennessee. Jay Omega worries that he and his fellow professor-slash-girlfriend Marion have stumbled upon a diner like this. Then a big bearded man comes up to the table and starts intimidating Jay...until Marion tells him to knock it off. It turns out, the "redneck" is a Joyce scholar professor and a friend of Marion's who wanted to have a little fun at the expense of yet another "Deliverance sucker" as he puts it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 30 Rock episode "Stone Mountain" features Liz and Jack visiting Kenneth's hometown of Stone Mountain, Georgia, which is portrayed as being a small town full of white rednecks. This actually ends up being an example of Television Geography, as in real life Stone Mountain is a suburb of Atlanta and is over 50% Black.
  • The Amazing Stories episode "Mummy Daddy" is set here, with a movie-actor stuck in his mummy costume attempting to escape from a bloodthirsty band of local hicks and reach the local hospital where his wife is giving birth.
  • American Gothic (1995) takes rural Iowa as its inspiration.
  • The Beverly Hillbillies: The early seasons featured Mr. Drysdale and Miss Hathaway as the straight men, looking on at those wacky hillbillies and how unfamiliar they were with the big city. They eventually shifted to Jed being the straight man, solving problems because his homespun wisdom made him smarter than city folk, with Mr. Drysdale being a comic character. Later on, much of the humor of the Clampetts' unfamiliarity with the modern world came from making fun of the stranger aspects of the modern world, like when the Clampetts meet a bunch of hippies.

    Of course, as the title of the series states, the Clampetts are, specifically, "Hillbillies". That is, rural Appalachian hillfolk rather than just generic Southerners. The Clampetts were from Tennessee (The Movie incorrectly says Arkansas - whose hillfolk instead come from the Ozarks, which also stretch into Missouri), but Appalachian culture goes as far north as Ohio and Pennsylvania, so it's not even an exclusively "Southern" stereotype.
    • In the vein: while many people not from the South are familiar with (and make fun of) the Southern use of the plural second-person pronoun "y'all" (a contraction of 'you all'), far fewer know of the much less common "you'uns (a contraction of 'you ones'). The second is used by people from Knoxville, Tennessee in the Cumberland and Great Smoky Mountains to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where it's famously contracted even further to "yinz") in the Allegheny Mountains, all part of the Appalachian Range.
  • On of the Noodle Incidents in Community's fake-Clip Show involves the gang visiting a Ghost Town in the Deep South. It involved Troy and Abed (black and Palestinian Arab respectively) getting shot at by a guy in red long underwear.
    Troy: By the way, that dude was hardcore racist. Like 18 hundred's Disney-style. We learned new ways to hate ourselves.
  • An episode of Criminal Minds Zig-Zagged this. The episode centered on a feud between two stereotypical West Virginia hillbilly clans, who shot at federal agents and insisted on referring to JJ as "Mrs" rather than "Agent Jureau". The BAU come to the conclusion that the two are cooking crystal meth and the rivalry has spiraled into a drug war. Subverted when it turned out they were both making clean, efficient, bio-fuels. Then it went right back to playing it straight when the matriarch of one clan and the patriarch of the other are revealed to be brother and sister, and the Villain of the Week is their inbred son who was raised in the backwoods by a Crazy Survivalist.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard features an exaggerated depiction of the Deep South, filled to the brim with Civil War-obsessed moonshiners, yokels and corrupt officials. It also popularised the modern Southern girl fashion sense of crop tops and short shorts.
  • ER brought Dr. Benton to the backwater town of Pascagoula, Mississippi, where minorities were looked upon with suspicion and residents were wary of treatment from him. When this episode aired, it caused residents of the real Pascagoula (a medium-sized city) to protest its portrayal.
  • The ABC show GCB is about a single mother and widow who moves from Santa Barbara, California to her hometown of Dallas, Texas. The show pretty much plays up all of the stereotypes of the South and Texas.
  • Referenced more than a few times on Good Eats. The "polenta/grits" episode begins with Alton being invited in by a family ("Southern Hospitality") for breakfast, and pissing them off by saying that grits and polenta are the exact same thing. In two episodes, he contrasts regional differences between the North and South with banana pudding note  and chicken-and-dumplings. note  In the (after-) Thanksgiving Episode, Alton, his "relatives," and his TV crew are Snowed-In...by which we mean there was an inch of snow on the ground, because this is Georgia. He also did an episode dedicated to gumbo, and an episode dedicated to rice and beans, two dishes heavily influenced by the Cajun and Creole cultures found in the region. And when the recipe is distinctly Southern, such as fried catfish, mint juleps, or ambrosia, expect Alton's "uncle" Col. Bob Boatright (a parody of KFC's Col. Sanders) to appear.
  • Hannah Montana never lets you forget the main character's Southern roots (specifically, Tennessee). Taken to extremes when a snooty set of parents spent the entire episode mocking The Deep South.
    • Interestingly enough, Disney apparently originally tried to make Miley Cyrus speak in that standard bland SoCal dialect that all their other personalities use, but even the most rigorous dialog coaching failed to erase her accent, so they just gave up.
    • Miley herself in interviews and in Real Life will self-deprecatedly refer to her accent or Southern culture as "hillbilly" (though she certainly is proud of her roots). Accounts on her Twitter feed that she follows and YouTube videos she favorites show a fascination with the South (serious or tongue-in-cheek).
  • The Heart, She Holler portrays the South so negatively that it makes Deliverance look like a tourist ad.
  • At least one episode of The Incredible Hulk (1977) had Banner running afoul of a corrupt sheriff in a little Southern town.
  • In the Heat of the Night deals with this even more than the original book and movie did, with racism and other traditions, good or ill, of the Deep South being a frequent theme and contrasted with the newer attitudes of the late eighties/early nineties.
  • Justified tries to provide a more nuanced portrayal, with the corruption, backwardness, and economic despair of Harlan County, Kentucky (actually in the very heart of Appalachia) having more to do with the place being a veritable Wretched Hive, than all Southerners being innately bigoted or criminal. The fact that Raylan and his fellow US Marshals are from the south helps to balance things out, as well.
  • Leverage's "The Bank Shot Job" is set in a backwater town here, and features the team trying to bring down the Small-Town Tyrant judge.
  • The Magician: In "Lightning on a Dry Day", a hospital patient is spooked senseless by the fire in one of Tony's charity magic acts. His investigation into the young man's past leads him to a small Town with a Dark Secret somewhere in Appalachia that is riddled with suspicious residents, including a corrupt sheriff and an Evil Matriarch, and the nystery centres around illegal moonshine production.
  • Matlock is set in a version of Atlanta which apparently neglects to include the sports teams, the multiple Fortune 500 companies, the obscene traffic and overflowing interstate system, and focuses primarily on plantation style houses, small town streetscapes, and a sense of general suburbia (which, to be fair, Atlanta has a lot of, especially to its north).
  • A few Miami Vice episodes whose plots require the protagonists to travel outside Miami involve them dealing with such crises as a turf war between redneck families in the Everglades. Crockett himself is a very stereotypical southerner at times.
  • Seen in several Murder, She Wrote episodes, except that garrulous New Englanders who interfere in everyone's business don't come to horrible ends.
  • My Name Is Earl appears to be located in an area like this, though it's unknown precisely where Camden is located.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000—Joel, Mike and the Bots would take jabs at the Deep South anytime a movie featuring the stereotypes was screened. Since absolutely everyone—fat or thin, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, smart or dumb—gets lampooned equally on the show, it's not worth getting worked up about.
  • Pennsatucky from Orange Is the New Black comes from a community like this.
  • Britain's favourite black American, Reginald D. Hunter, was sent back to his homeland by the BBC to present a series making sense of the Deep South states for British viewers. Reginald, from Georgia, accomplished this with style and insight in Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South. See him here explaining Tennessee to the British.
  • Dr. Leonard McCoy of Star Trek: The Original Series exemplifies mostly good aspects of Southern stereotypes: humane, passionate, polite, and a great cook, although with a mild streak of racism directed against Vulcans and androids.
  • Many pageants featured on Toddlers & Tiaras take place in rural Southern towns.
  • Although the trope is based on an exaggerated stereotype, the Top Gear team proved that it's still not a good idea to drive around in Alabama with cars sporting such slogans as "NASCAR sucks" and "Manlove rules OK", to say nothing of "Hillary 4 President". They pulled in for gasoline and eventually had to flee while rocks were chucked at them. The jury's out on whether the locals kicked off as a result of being offended by what was written, or at being trolled with the stereotype...
  • Somebody in the crew making True Blood must have been reading TV Tropes, because the opening credits show all clichés from the main entry, pretty much in the order they are listed. The Sookie Stackhouse novels - upon which True Blood is based - explores this trope as well, but with a far more balanced perspective.
    • Though the show itself is more mixed. The small town of Bon Temps is up to date in technology and current events, the sheriff and the assistant sheriff are basically decent people, and you can count the number of episodes where people have a problem with the Camp Gay black guy in the kitchen on one hand. It's just that whole vampire thing that brings out the populous' more bigoted side.
  • True Life had an episode called "The Theriot Family: The Riot in the Bayou" about a large Louisiana family that likes to have fun. They fall into most of the stereotypes of the South as well as some New Orleans stereotypes.
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway? has had more than a few hillbilly jokes thrown up, but Wayne Brady can always be counted on to provide his own unique spin on the trope:
    ["Scenes from a Hat" suggestion: "Visions of Hell other than fire and brimstone."]
    Colin: (miming driving) Mississippi... I'm still in Mississippi...
    Wayne: Mississippi... I'm still in Mississippi!
    [From a different session: "Unlikely state songs"]
    Wayne: (singing) Oh, you won't find me in Alabamaaaa...

    Music 
  • Anthony and Those Other Guys "Sunburn" which is loosely based on a real person.
  • Cormorant has the song "Blood on the Cornfields", which is about the Nat Turner rebellion.
  • Charlie Daniels' first hit, "Uneasy Rider" has the narrator forced to stop in a small Southern town to get his car repaired. Being a long-haired hippie, he doesn't get a warm welcome from the locals. He has a bad (if hilarious) encounter with "a fat old drunk chick and some guy with green teeth".
  • Occurs in Insane Clown Posse's "Chicken Huntin'", "Your Rebel Flag", and others. Additionally, the former Psychopathic Records artist Boondox, simply is this trope personified.
  • Tom Lehrer, "I Wanna Go Back to Dixie", from Songs by Tom Lehrer, mixes parodies of sentimental songs about the South with satirical commentary on its racist tendencies.
    I wanna go back to Dixie
    I wanna be a Dixie pixie
    And eat corn pone till it's comin' outta my ears
    I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen
    And put that white sheet on again
    I ain't seen one good lynchin' in years
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd. Especially "Sweet Home Alabama", Trope Namer for more positive portrayals of the Deep South. As the quintessential Southern Rock band, their entire sound is pretty much synonymous with stereotypical "Southernness" nowadays, though whether you regard this as good or bad is a matter of opinion.
  • "The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia" by written by Bobby Russell and sung in 1972 by his then-wife Vicki Lawrence before being Covered Up by Reba McEntire recounts a sad tale of poverty, adultery, murder, and corrupt public officials in the Deep South. (World-famous professional wrestler John Cena has included the famous four-note piano melody from this song's chorus as a sample - now played on horns - in his entrance theme, "The Time is Now", since 2005.)
  • Tends to be a favorite setting for Randy Newman, especially his controversial hit "Rednecks"note  and the more subtle, but just as pointed, "Birmingham".
  • Phil Ochs' "Here's to the State of Mississippi".
  • Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam"
  • Ray Stevens' song "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" invokes this trope.
  • Neil Young's Protest Song "Southern Man", against which "Sweet Home Alabama" is partly a Take That!, is an opposing example, graphically portraying and condemning the abuses of slavery and racism.
  • For a Take That! at "Sweet Home Alabama" itself, see Warren Zevon's "Play it All Night Long." The first line is "Grandpa pissed his pants again" and that sort of sets the tone.
    • "Sweet home Alabama / Play that dead band's song..." Ironically, Lynyrd Skynyrd is still touring, while Warren Zevon has been dead for years—though that depends on whether you consider the current Lynyrd Skynyrd to be the same band as the one that wrote "Sweet Home Alabama".note 
  • Most Country Music leans into Deep South iconography, as it presumes that's who their audience is. Even artists that aren't from there have songs about living in Deep South, such as Keith Urban's baffling ode to a Southern youth "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16," despite being Australian. With a very thick accent when not singing. What side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism scale songs fall on regarding Deep South stereotypes depends largely on the artist, but also the time period. 90s country music was into poking fun at the stereotypes, while post-9/11 country music played them straight as an arrow. The "bro-country" movement of the 2010s exalted the stereotypes as something to emulate.
    • Averted with Canadian Country Music artists, whose cultural stereotypes for the genre skew more "western plains/Rockie Mountains." Paul Brandt's "Alberta Bound" and Dean Brody's "Mountain Man," for instance, are both about the down-home culture of western Canada, sung about similarly to how American artists sing about say, West Virginia. Terri Clark's "Northern Girl" is an ode to a youth spent driving on the ice and playing the snow.

    Pinball 

    Stand-Up Comedy 
  • Todd Barry has a routine in which someone asks him "Oh God, what was that like?" after he brings up a gig he did in Alabama. He answers, "Oh, you know... chairs, microphone..." He then realizes what the person really wants to hear and goes on a condescending tangent of Deep South stereotypes before cursing at the person's narrow-mindedness:
    "Well, I flew into Birmingham... The Imperial Wizard from the Klan picked me up at the airport. Rode to the club on the back of an old mule, tried to get a joke out over the shouts of 'Jew boy, go home!' At the end of it I said 'Where's my check?' They go 'Yer not gettin' a check, yer gettin' this bag o' pork rinds!' ...Is that the answer you were looking for, you narrow-minded, fake-liberal fuck?"
  • Jeff Foxworthy is all about poking fun at stereotypes associated with the South. As he himself is from Georgia, much of his humor is autobiographical.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Shadowrun, the Confederated American States (or CAS) are this. The Data Trails sourcebook details that their national matrix grid (designated "CASnet") is based on the pre-war South, ca. 1850. However, the designers of said grid had just enough tact to not depict any slaves.

    Theatre 
  • The musical Finian's Rainbow is set in the fictitious state of Missitucky. What undoubtedly will help carry this Southern state "forward to yesterday" (to quote the stirring words of Senator Billboard Rawkins) are its poll tax, restrictive covenants and black servants carrying mint juleps (the traditional minstrel shuffling and "yawk, yawk" accents, however, are evidently not taught at Tuskegee).
  • Larry Shue's The Foreigner takes place in rural Georgia, featuring KKK members as the villains.
  • Oklahoma!note 
  • Li'l Abner
  • Parade, set in Atlanta.
  • Tennessee Williams was from Mississippi, and all of his plays are set in the Deep South.
  • In the musical Violet, the title character travels by bus from North Carolina, through Tennessee and Arkansas, to Oklahoma.

    Video Games 
  • This is actually zig-zagged in Big Mutha Truckers. The game takes place in Hick County, an area that you would think would consist of nothing but a city of hillbillies. And indeed, it has Ma's House, which while a big house, has the look of the backwoods redneck area. And there's Skeeter's Creek has the rundown and broken-down areas that you would associate with the stereotypical Deep South. On the flip side, Hick County has quite a few cities that are more higher-brow than you would think an area of its name has. Such as Capital City, with the store there being an art museum ran by a Frenchman. And there's also the Las Vegas-like city, Greenback.
  • Planned, but ultimately averted in BioShock. Atlas, your Mission Control, was initially given a deep south voice actor rather than his Irish one, but players immediately distrusted him and they had to change to a more trustworthy one. Given that Atlas reveals himself as the villain halfway into the game, having the player trust him was a significant part of the narrative.
  • Deadly Premonition 2 takes place in Louisana, and all the stereotypes associated with the region, both positive and negative, are shown or subverted.
    • This example is interesting because SWERY, the developer, actually physically visited the Deep South with his team to do research prior to finishing the game. According to his stream, he chose the area because he wanted a niche region of the US that even some Americans would consider somewhat exotic.
  • Destroy All Humans!—Although most if not all the humans your alien protagonist vaporizes are appropriately stupid, with most of them carrying around pretty vapid thoughts ("I Like Ike!") in their heads, your first mission takes place in an area called Turnipseed Farm, where you encounter incompetent mayors, violent farmers, ignorant housewives, ditzy teens, corrupt cops, and easy to fool cowboys. Slightly inverted because the area is located in the midwest instead of the Deep South.
    • And, in light of the "I Like Ike!" snippet described above, it's worth pointing out that the South was one of the few places where Dwight Eisenhower was not popular during the 1950s.
  • Fallout 3's Colonel Augustus Autumn has a reasonable, and at times quite good, Virginia plantation accent. Somewhat strangely for a game set partly in the ruins of northern Virginia, no other character has an accent remotely like his.
    • Something of a Truth in Television, as DC and the associated metro areas in Maryland and northern Virginia (NoVa, as the locals call it) consists almost entirely of standard urbanized populations drawn from throughout the country to take jobs in the Federal government. Once you leave the DC metro area and head further south, there's a marked change in culture. In a map showing election results by county in Virginia, you'll see four blue sections in a sea of red: the suburbs of DC, the southeast (home to Richmond, Norfolk, their respective suburbs, and a few majority-black rural counties south of Richmond), and the college towns of Charlottesville and Blacksburg.
    • The Point Lookout DLC is a straighter example, with its moonshining and mutated, subhuman "swampfolk" who tote double-barreled shotguns. However, it's based on a real-life location (Point Lookout State Park, MD) that remained Union territory during the Civil War, and arguably, like most subcultures in the Fallout universe, it has more to do with 200 years of isolation.
  • Far Cry:
    • Hurk Drubman Jr., first introduced in Far Cry 3, is a Cloudcuckoolander Blood Knight with a Southern accent who teams up with Jason Brody to battle Hoyt Volker's privateers in hopes of getting Rakyat tattoos and the chance of having sex with Citra. He's quite a friendly individual, if disturbingly obsessed with using monkeys as bombers. He pops up again in future games as the one character establishing continuity between the different settings and plots of the series. Hilariously, Far Cry Primal reveals that his ancestor Urki had the same accent, despite Urki being from prehistoric Central Europe. And then Far Cry 5 reveals that Hurk and his family are from Montana. To add to the Mind Screw, his voice actor is Canadian.
    • Funnily enough, another character from Far Cry 5 also qualifies as this: Father Joseph Seed, who is from Georgia, and it shows in the game's ending and when all three of his siblings have been killed, when his true accent starts slipping out. Ironically, Joseph's voice actor is also Canadian.
  • Grand Theft Auto VI: This isn't the first game in the series to be set in the Southern United States, but while previous depictions of Vice City, the Grand Theft Auto universe's version of Miami, were restricted to just the city alone, this game includes the surrounding countryside on top of it. Vice City may be a world unto itself, but the trailer demonstrates that the rest of the state of Leonida is still a Southern state, with muscle cars speeding through dusty rural towns, crazed rednecks driving lifted trucks, airboats running through the swamp, and a party held in a mud pit.
  • Death on the Mississippi and Till Death Do Us Part missions in Hitman: Blood Money. Notably, Till Death takes place at a very redneck wedding, and is the only time in the game 47 can openly carry (even fire in some areas) long guns without alarming civilians.
  • The villains in inFAMOUS 2 are Anti Mutant Rednecks.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 chronicles the journey of four survivors of a Zombie Apocalypse making their way from Savannah, Georgia to New Orleans. Two of the characters are Southerners: Ellis, an overly energetic mechanic who loves guns, rambles at length about "mah buddy Keith", and is generally too good-natured to be a Good Ol' Boy, and Coach, an African-American high school football coach who loves food and plays the role of Team Dad. They are joined by two Northerners, Rochelle, a reporter from Cleveland, Ohio who takes on the dual roles of the Team Mom, and Nick, a Vegas con-artist and borderline Guido Deadpan Snarker. Much of the humor in the game is based on Rochelle and Nick's observations of the Deep South views vs. Ellis and Coach's Sweet Home Alabama views. The latter two share a somewhat stereotypical love for NASCAR and southern music, Ellis going so far as to wish he were a woman so he could have his favorite racer's children. Nick makes fun of a more repulsive southern stereotype in the "tunnel of love" section of the Dark Carnival campaign by saying that the tunnel was created for hillbillies and noting that it used to give discounts for cousins. In the second level of the game, one possible dialog has Ellis say he knows of a gun store where they can get better equipped. Nick snarks "Looks like living in this place is finally paying off", taking a stab at the stereotypical Southerner's gun obsession, and Coach doesn't like it, though he's civil about it. The places they pass through, however, are less Deep South than they are Southern Gothic.
  • Maneater is set in Louisiana, specifically a version of such lifted from "rednecksploitation" Reality TV shows like Swamp People and Duck Dynasty. The Big Bad, "Scaly Pete" LeBlanc, is a Ragin' Cajun Good Ol' Boy shark hunter who serves as the star of one such show. What we see of the landscape is a parody of the Gulf Coast at its worst: rednecks in the bayou, a Wretched Hive of a city, wealthy retirees living in ecosystem-destroying country clubs and coastal developments with high walls to keep out "the locals", a SeaWorld-esque marine park that abuses animals, industrial pollution courtesy of politicians who only care about economic growth, you name it.
  • Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is set in an alien version of this, populated by hillbilly chicken people and toadlike outlaws.
  • Redneck Rampage, of course, rolls in this trope.
  • Chapter 3 and 4 of Red Dead Redemption 2 storyline is primarily set in these parts, in particular the State of Lemoyne which heavily inspired by Louisiana and other Southern states. It even has an expy of New Orleans, the city of Saint Denis. There's also Scarlett Meadows, a mixed land of hills and bayou swamp where two inbred clans hate each others' guts, and traces of the Civil War and slavery can still be found.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is set in a huge, derelict plantation like something out of True Detective - only with superhuman cannibal hillbillies.
  • StarCraft:
    • The Terrans are the Deep South Recycled In Space. Nearly all the Terrans are apparently from the Deep South; many of the heroic and the villainous Terrans use syntax and expressions stereotypically attributed to Deep Southerners. In the expansion pack, the non-Terran humans are European, specifically Russian and German—and are almost universally evil. The United Earth Directorate is, more or less, a mishmash of Commie Land and Nazi Germany. Not every Terran has a Southern accent though: Sarah Kerrigan does not, and Jim Raynor's is debatable, as his accent is a sort of "Generic Rural" that can sound vaguely Southern at times (listen to him say "right on"). Tell you what, it's an Indiana accent. Southern Indiana. Basically Midwestern, but with a few traces of Southern from the dialect of Indiana's original Virginian settlers. If the Battlecruiser voices are any indication, there are also some Russians lumped in with them as well. The wiki even mentions traces of Japanese culture. Still, it seems that much of Terran civilization is dominated by heavy American (i.e., Southern) influences.
    • StarCraft II's SCV amplifies the redneck stereotypes, including telling you "You got a purdy mouth" if you annoy him.
    • The Terran Confederacy were originally comprised of prisoners who crash landed in the Korprulu Sector. It is pointed out that the Terran Confederacy (using a modified Confederate States Army naval Jack as their flag) is considered corrupt, is plagued by several rebel groups, has nuked a rebelling planet (Korhal) and is eventually overthrown by the even worse Terran Dominion. Actually, most of the human factions are shown as more or less evil, except Raynor's Raiders.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Daughter for Dessert, Whiskeyville seems to be here. It’s a sleepy little town with a diner and not much else, and Olivia, who fixes their jukebox, speaks with a drawl and wears sexy cowgirl clothes.

    Web Comics 
  • Subverted in Nip and Tuck. The titular redneck foxes are erudite, intelligent, and informed, the local political zealot is a Democrat, no one much seems to mind people from different walks of life, and visitors get Southern Hospitality in spades. In other words, it's probably a better reflection of the South than you'll get anyplace else (except, you know...the actual South). On the other end of the spectrum, look no further than Gus Guthrie. As you might expect, the brothers' disdain for him stems as much from the fact that he's exactly what comes to mind when someone says "Deep South," as from the fact that this makes him a pain in the ass to rival casaba-sized hemorrhoids.
  • Early in Questionable Content an interesting aversion is set up; Faye's sister is a lesbian who continues to live in her native Georgia rather than move to Massachusetts where Faye now lives. Nothing much is ever made of this. All the more notable considering that QC is set in Northampton, which is one of the most famously lesbian-friendly towns in the US (think of a gender-bent San Francisco). Fans of the strip will notice that the local "Smiff College" appears to have one or two gay women in the student body.

    Web Original 
  • Camp Camp: After spending most of the episode pretending to be a Kentuckian that was accidentally sent to Camp Campbell for a foreign exchange program, Brian reveals himself to be a Kentucky secessionist hoping to steal Cameron Campbell's fortune in order to fund his state leaving the union. He gains a much thicker accent and begins to embody all the stereotypes of the Deep South (except the racist parts).
  • DEATH BATTLE! co-host Boomstick harbors a few of these traits, his accent and love of guns being the most noticeable.
  • In Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv) Matt speaks with a rednecky accent.
  • Donald in The Lightningbolts: Light of The Sun talks in a deep southern accent on the voiced video segments like this example, there is also his negative religious views being mention on his bio and being outright said in episode 13 where he revealed himself as General Nazi.
  • Decades of Darkness is an Alternate History story in which, during the War of 1812, all of the states northeast of Pennsylvania seceded and formed a Republic of New England while the British seized a large swath of the Midwest (including Detroit and Fort Dearborn) to later become part of Canada. The rump United States left behind, dominated by the planter aristocrats of Dixie, turns into an expansionist empire based in white supremacy in which slavery is still legal and celebrated well into the 20th century, by which point it has evolved into a racial caste system not unlike Latin America's thanks to its many conquests in that part of the world over the years. The culture of the ruling class is described as a mix of Southern gentry and the Hispanic criollos who collaborated with them.
  • Diabetus of Let's Play and Retsupurae fame is from Alabama, and will occasionally exaggerate his accent for the sake of a joke.
  • Subverted in Survival of the Fittest with Margaret Tweedy, who was a favorite target of bullies at school largely because of her Southern roots, despite being neither stupid nor behind the times. Said bullying did, however, make her bitter and perpetually angry.

    Western Animation 
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender believe it or not, featured the Foggy Swamp Tribe, a distant cousin of the Water Tribes. But when one of them reveals this fact, the Water Tribe siblings (mostly Katara) look a bit disturbed. Because of the show's fantasy setting the Foggy Swamp dwellers aren't necessarily backwards in technology or stupid, only dirty and rustic. Their elder does dispense some very meaningful spiritual advise to Aang that he takes to heart, a personal philosophy derived from living in the swamp. That said, they don't seem to like wearing pants.
    Elder: Pants are an illusion, and so is death.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head was set in the small town of Highland, Texas, and Mike Judge was not flattering in how he portrayed it. Highland was a crude, ignorant, white-trash bunghole where the titular protagonists waste their days watching MTV and engaging in various loutish shenanigans, most businesses are either corporate chains or cater to lowlifes, and the few people with any ambitions in life are absolutely miserable. (Compare it to the more positive depiction of small-town Texas that Judge featured on King of the Hill.) One of those ambitious people, Daria Morgendorffer, later moved a new town when she got her own spinoff, and while her new Stepford Suburbia home of Lawndale (stated by Word of God to be located somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region) was still a Crapsack World, she still preferred it to Highland, because at least there wasn't uranium in the drinking water making everyone crazy.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy has the Kanker Sisters. The three live in a trailer park called Park N' Flush, May and Lee have Southern accents. May fits the image of a hillbilly best as she has 2 buck teeth and is very stupid. The cartoon's movie even reveals Lee has 3 eyes, implying that the Kanker Sisters were inbred.
  • In the episode "Inherit the Judgement-The Dope's Trial," Duckman heads to the Deep South where he is put on trial for being an "eggolutionist."
  • Family Guy, set in Rhode Island but written by a bunch of Southern Californians. God, where to even start with this one:
    • The show visits one of these locales in an episode entitled "To Live and Die in Dixie". The South is one of the series' favorite punching bags, and it receives a lot of low blows from the show. According to the show, the people in the South are still bitter about losing the The American Civil War, and are behind about a hundred years in terms of culture and technology. The neighborhood schoolkids, who go to class in a one-room schoolhouse note , can be easily outsmarted by a pig, and their personal standards are so incredibly low that they think Meg is a goddess.
      • That particular episode, though, also ended showing some of the South's positive qualities ("We look after our own!"), so it wasn't quite as low a blow as... some other episodes (see below).
    • The episode "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" has a (Emmy-winning) musical number that contains the throwaway line "The country's changed, that is, except the South", accompanied by a shot that looks like it belongs in "To Live and Die in Dixie".
    • Despite not even going to the South this time, the episode "Airport '07" starts with Peter becoming a redneck, making fun of said stereotype.
    • It comes up yet again in "Lois Kills Stewie", this time targeting North Carolina with a sign reading "First in Flight, 48th in Education" (note that this information was very out of date - at the time of the episode's 2007 airing, N.C. was ranked 24th in education). An amnesiac Lois is lost in North Carolina, but finds work at a fat camp for obese kids who keep trying to eat each other. She soon makes a friend at the local small-town diner, who turns out to be a white supremacist, and is assaulted with a blunt object after an anti-Semitic joke when she tries to point out that same train of thought started the Holocaust. This might be barely justified as part of Stewie's virtual-reality simulation of what'd happen if he tried to kill Lois, but it's never treated as an inaccuracy. It certainly fits in with the rest of the show's treatment of the South, and, if anything, is even meaner-spirited than those earlier portrayals. There are no ridiculous accents this time, at least. note 
    • The episode "Boys Do Cry" is set in Texas. You can tell the writers had a fun time with that one.
    • "Back to the Pilot" hits two of the writers' favorite targets, the South and George W. Bush, at the same time. Brian manages to prevent 9/11 by warning himself in 1999; this causes Bush to lose the 2004 election because he didn't have the threat of terrorism with which to scare people, so he turns the Deep South into a new Confederacy and enters a nuclear war with the United States that ruins the country.
    • If that wasn't enough, they've been doing it from the very first episode!
    Brian: It's amazing; you can barely drive a car and yet you're allowed to fly a blimp.
    Peter: Yeah, I know, America's great, isn't it? 'Cept for the South.
    • The episode "Cool Hand Peter" revolves around the stereotypical corrupt sherrif interring the Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire, and there's a Deleted Scene that parodied Deliverance:
    Cleveland: These backwoods parts of the deep south ain't a place for a man to get lost in.
    (cutaway)
    Redneck: I'm gon' make you squeal like a pig.
    Other Redneck: And I'm gon' make you squeal like a pig. (to the camera) Deep south.
  • The Flintstones featured two episodes revealing Fred's paternal ancestors were hillbillies from the state of "Arkanstone", and that they were all wiped out in a long-running feud with the Hatrock family. Said feud was revived when the Flintstones and Rubbles visit Arkanstone to claim an estate Fred had inherited.
    • Although "Arkanstone" works as a typical Flintstones Punny Name, it's also a case of geographical artistic license (or Rule of Funny) since the Hatfield/McCoy feud occurred along the Tug River, which forms part of the border between Kentucky and West Virginia (both culturally very Southern but historically ambiguous), nowhere near Arkansas.
  • Futurama:
    • Pays a visit to the submerged, forgotten city of... Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta, largest city in Georgia and a major metropolitan area. Apparently the 1000-year timeskip has regressed this city back into a municipality inhabited by southern dandies, as all the "quality" people (and Jane Fonda) left when they airlifted the entire city out to float the ocean, built too much on it, and it sank. Also they all evolved into mermaids due to the proximity of the Coca-Cola bottling plant. Appropriately, the episode this is from is called "The Deep South".
    • Another big example in Futurama: the backwards redneck farmer... on the Moon. There is even a Confederate jack painted over his lunar car. The Moon will rise again!
  • The Simpsons: Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel, his wife Brandine and all their children evoke all clichés about Southern hillbillies.
    • Whenever either Bart or Lisa imagine themselves as obese, they also get a southern accent for some reason.
  • Alabama Man from the South Park episode "Chinpokomon".note 
    • They did it again in "Worldwide Recorder Concert" where the class all travels to Arkansas, and Mr Garrison is forced to confront his father about molestation, specifically, why his dad didn't molest him. The episode goes on to insinuate that Arkansans other than Mr Garrison, Sr. are a bunch of child molesters.
  • Squidbillies This is one of the biggest offenders. Every single character, with the exception of the very smart, business-good, but arrogant and petty Dan Halen, is either inbred, a moron, a criminal, or as politically incorrect as can possibly be, and combinations of any of these are hardly uncommon.
  • Mostly subverted in Stroker and Hoop. For example when Hoop tries a pair of fake gross teeth to "fit in" his cousin that lives there is offended and even gets out a phone book to show they have plenty of dentists.
  • David Banner's That Crook'd Sipp was a One-Episode Wonder about the Beauregards, a dysfunctional family whose members embodied just about every unflattering Southern stereotype imaginable, from stuffy Old South plantation owners to unwashed rednecks.
  • Appears 2000 years in the future in Thundarr the Barbarian, when the hero in question encounters a Small-Town Tyrant sheriff in the populated ruins of 'Lanta.
  • Total Drama: Scott and Sugar, despite being Canadians like everyone else on the show, fit many of the stereotypes associated with the American South (Sugar even has a noticeable Southern accent). This is probably due to the fact that their real-life inspirations (Russell Hantz and Alana "Honey Boo-Boo" Thompson respectively) are both known for hailing from the South.
  • Wally Gator has various characters like this, due to where some of the episodes were set. The main offender was a redneck turnip grower called Mr. Swampywater who was trigger-happy and angry, but there was also Harmony (a stereotypical Southern Belle alligator) and Beauregard (a beefy male alligator with tints of Southern-Fried Private who still wore the confederate symbol on his cap, although he wasn't exactly stupid). Wally himself is portrayed more at home in the Deep South outside of his title series, often being found in swamps in crossovers (like Yogi's Great Escape, which also showed him to be good at cooking things like gumbo) and excelling at events set in and around water, especially marshes (in Laff-A-Lympics).

    Other 

The Trope Maker

  • The 1996 Summer Olympic Games:
    • When the Olympics were held in Atlanta, the New Yorker had a cartoon ("Too Busy City") on the cover in sepia (like an old photo), with a hayseed with straw in his mouth at the Olympics, wearing a sash inscribed with the word "HOWDY" and flanked with not one, not two, but three chickens. It received some very angry letters.
    • On the other hand, when Jeff Foxworthy made very similar, if not worse, jokes about the very same subject, there was no uproar whatsoever, since he himself is from Atlanta.
    • Many Atlantans do, however, credit the Olympics for making them a modern city. Even Foxworthy himself admits Atlanta was "just a town" when he was growing up there.
    • Partly as a response to the criticism of Atlanta hosting the Olympics, the rural community of East Dublin, Georgia, located about 140 miles (~225 km) southeast of Atlanta, hosted the "Redneck Games" annually from 1996 to 2012 in celebration of the trope, with events such as "bobbing for pig's feet" and the "mud-pit belly flop". The concept has been since copied in other places, including those north of the Mason-Dixon line, such as Malone, New York and Minto, Ontario.
  • In A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins described how he did just that, from New York to Louisiana. In the picture he paints of the South in the 1970s, certain parts play this trope straight; others avert it. In one town, a small contingency of police basically ordered him to leave and vaguely threatened to hang him if he didn't. In the next town, however, a hospitable family actually "adopted" him for a few months as he worked at a local factory to replenish his cash. In an Alabama town, he was threatened by a group of men, but when he explained to them that they were confirming this trope's stereotypes, they backed off. One of the men felt so bad about the incident he invited Jenkins to come eat with his family.
  • The portrayal of churches as Baptist is pretty well justified. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the US, and every Southern state has a Baptist plurality or majority except Florida (a Catholic plurality driven by Cuban immigrants and Northern retirees) and Texas (Catholic plurality, though East Texas is overwhelmingly Baptist), though the Cajun and Creole populations form a significant Catholic pocket in Louisiana's French Triangle region. The only non-Southern state with a Baptist plurality is Missouri, which is considered a border state, and southern Missouri is culturally aligned with the South. However, the qualifier Southern Baptist is very important for this discussion. The Baptist church in America began in Rhode Island in 1638, but arguments over slavery led the Southern Baptists to split off into a separate group in 1845, with the Northern Baptists reorganizing as the American Baptist denomination, which is much less conservative in its theology and politics than the SBC. Since it's repudiated its white supremacist roots and has spread far beyond the South, there has been a push to rename the Southern Baptist Convention (a few churches have relabeled themselves as Great Commission Baptist).
  • This article talks about the portrayal of the South in fiction and compares it to reality.

Other Countries

  • Some countries have a local version of this stereotype:
    • In Mexico, this could be inverted as the Deep North, as Mexican Northerners have similar stereotypes as their American peers, except they tend to be more outspoken than their countrymen from the rest of the country. Curiously, the Mexican Deep South, while it has some points in common with the American one, tends to be more the opposite version of the Northern one, not to mention, while the Mexican North, West and Central parts of the country are staunchly Catholic, on the other hand in the Mexican South, Protestant sects and sometimes even Islam tends to be the most notorious churches in that region.
      • Another odd stereotype about Mexican Northerners, especially those from the city of Monterrey or the whole state of Nuevo Leon, is the fact they're normally stereotyped in Mexican media as being greedy, basically turning them into the Mexican version of the Greedy Jew stereotype.note 
    • Australia also has the Deep North. The term is sometimes used for Queensland, which actually has a history of plantations (sugarcane rather than cotton) staffed by labourers some of whom were forcibly abducted from across the sea (the South Sea Islanders), as well as the second most rural population of any Australian state. In this sense, it is somewhat similar to Alabama. Its education system has been described as "the least secular in the country". Pauline Hanson, a politician whose short career was based on campaigning on such issues as the 'danger' Australia would be 'swamped by Asians', was more popular in Queensland than anywhere else. And during the 1970s and 1980s, Queensland was ruled with an iron fist by state premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who eventually stepped down in the wake of a massive corruption scandal. For these reasons and others, Queensland is often stereotyped as redneck, or else as the Australian version of Only in Florida.
    • Norway has this split fairly down the middle, while both kinds are to be found in the extreme South and west of the country. The "bible belt" of Norway is placed along the coastline from cape Lindesnes all the way to Stavanger, and the usual stereotype is justified by the many "prayer houses" and small local sects (some of them insanely local), as well as a lot of squabbling on the "righteous" way of living. If a priest shows up in Norwegian media, like a Movie or a TV series, he is traditionally prone to have a Southern accent due to the strong religious piousness in the area. As for the "redneck" part - there is the valley of Setesdal. This valley didn´t have a proper road until at least 1845, and the Railway came much later. Medieval Stasis was a practical result of this, and inbreeding was commonplace. To make Things even more interesting, a lot of fights and knife nuts are being reported there. When a guy from the Coastal areas was asked about his wiew of the valley dwellers, he responded: "something between Neanderthals and baboons", roughly translated. Inverted by a Rich Cultural inheritance, both in music and silver workings, as well as wood carving.
    • In Britain, this niche is filled by East Anglia and The West Country, two largely agricultural regions which in the main were bypassed by the Industrial Revolution. All the tropes of yokels, inbreeding, hostility to outsiders, and a generally held perception that to adjust to local time you need to set your watch back by two centuries, are to be found here. Further reinforcing this is the fact that the American South was settled mainly by people from the West Country, East Anglia, Scottish Border, and Ulster.
    • The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Quebec are sometimes perceived as being the "South" of Canada. For Alberta it's usually due to the more conservative political leaning and focus on oil, gas and agricultural industries, while for Québec it's due to the fierce protection of French Québec culture by Québecers which has led to tensions with English-speakers and immigrants, as well as its similar history to the South, such as historically lagging behinds its peers economically and socially until the 1960s and being considerably more religious. Within Québec specifically there is a notion that the further you get from Montreal the more backwards and racist people are. One small town in Québec, Hérouxville, became infamous in January 2007 for publishing a "Code of Conduct" which was seen as a barely subtle attempt at intimidating immigrants (especially Muslims) into staying out of the city.
    • Brazil has both a Deep South and a Deep North, which both share similarities with the American stereotype
      • The south (specifically the South Region), people are stereotyped as being racist and even Nazi and speak a funny accent, and the region has a tendency to vote towards conservative politics. There is also the notion that the further you get away from the cities, the more backwrds and racist people are. For these reasons and others, the South Region is stereotyped as being the Brazilian equivalent to Canada's Quebec province.
      • The north (specifically the Nordeste) has a history of plantations staffed by slaves taken from Africa. It is also has among the largest rural populations in the country. People there are stereotyped as being poor (due to it being comparable to Appalachia), not too bright or even inbred, and having a (different) funny accent. In an inverse of the usual politics associated with this trope, the region tends to vote for leftist politicians.
    • France has both a Deep South and a Deep North, which both share similarities with the American stereotype.
      • In the South (mostly eastern Occitanie and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), people are stereotyped as being racist, having a funny accent, using "con"note  as a punctuation and drinking a lot of pastis. While these are partially derived for the famed rivalry between Paris and Marseilles, some of them have a kernel of truth, such as Vitrolles (a city near Marseilles) being among the first cities in France to elect a mayor from the Front National , a nationalist far-right party, and the Rassemblement National being popular in the region to this day.
      • In the North (especially the Hauts de France region), people are stereotyped as being poor (due to it being comparable to the "Rust Belt"), not too bright or even inbred, having a (different) funny accent, as well as racist, while the weather is almost constantly rainy. While some of these are partially true (as such the Rassemblement National is popular here too), many of these were lenghly discussed and partially discredited by the movie Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, which made a point that, at the end of the day, they aren't so different to the rest of France, and that some clichés are outright false.
    • Japan has both a Deep South and a Deep North with the Kansai and Tohoku regions respectively, which both share similarities with the American stereotype.
      • In Kansai (save for Kyoto), people are stereotyped as lacking in mannerisms, having a funny accent, greedy, hot-headed, alchoholic, gluttonous and perverted. While these are partially derived for the famed rivalry between Tokyo and Osaka, some of them have a kernel of truth, such as Edo-era society aspiring to the Samurai culture of Edo, who valued reserve and dignity, and considered the more commercial-minded Osakans' focus on business to be rude and uncouth and thus below themselves.
      • In Tohoku (especially the Aomori prefecture), people are stereotyped as being poor, not too bright or even inbred, and having a (different) funny accent, while the weather is almost constantly rainy and it snows real hard in the winter.
    • The former East Germany is regarded like this by Western & Southern Germany, ever since the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was reunited, thanks to 4 decades of Soviet-imposed central planning and closed borders in the East. Here's one explanation.


 
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Alternative Title(s): The Deep South, To Live And Die In Dixie

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iDubbbz as a southern cornhead

iDubbbz eats corn on the cob the southern way and also stops hiding his accent while wearing a country cap backwards.

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