"If I owned this place and Hell, I'd rent this place out and live in Hell."
— Toombs, on Crematoria, The Chronicles of Riddick (and paraphrasing a quote about Texas usually attributed to Philip Henry Sheridan)
Because there are so many types of Dystopian settings, a Supertrope index was needed.
This is intended to cover both those settings where virtually any honest, decent, rational people wouldn't want to live if they had a better choice, and those that while some people REALLY wouldn't want to live here, others would find them to be a paradise or at least acceptable.
In a nutshell, for settings that are Dystopias. For those who hate regional or National Stereotypes, please instead see the Hollywood Atlas. When the oppressed fight back, see Civil Unrest Tropes. Compare Being in This Index Sucks.
Tropes:
The Big House: It might look a warm and cozy place to spend the night, but most guests are going to be gravely disappointed.
- Amusement Park of Doom: An amusement park that's dangerous due to either being abandoned and in poor condition, or being run by evil characters.
- Apartment Complex of Horrors: An apartment building is an awful place to live, whether for supernatural or mundane reasons.
- Bad Guy Bar: A bar where villains hang out.
- Bedlam House: A loony bin that's old-fashioned, has abusive staff, and is usually unsanitary.
- Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: Sending an old relative to a retirement home is a source of drama, the home itself is either dingy or boring, and the staff are at best patronising and at worst abusive.
- Boarding School of Horrors: A boarding school with mean teachers, bullies, and bad living conditions.
- Cloudcuckooland (in examples showcased In-Universe to be harsh places to live in): A place full of wacky customs.
- Circus of Fear: A circus that's abusive and/or run by supernatural horrors.
- Dangerously Garish Environment: A place that's brightly-coloured, but dangerous.
- Daycare Nightmare: A daycare where the workers are either mean to the kids, too patronising, or have a bad time themselves.
- Dystopian Oz: A Dark Parody or dark adaptation of Land of Oz.
- Gas Station of Doom: Horror movies that feature lonely American gas stations.
- Haunted House: A house that's either haunted by evil spirits or appears to be.
- Hell Hotel: A hotel that's scary, often due to being abandoned or run by a shady character.
- Inn of No Return: A place for accommodation that kills the people who stay there and steals from their corpses.
- Lethal Eatery: A restaurant that serves terrible food.
- Locked in the Dungeon: A character gets imprisoned in a dungeon.
- Menagerie of Misery (for animals, especially those from wild species): A zoo or similar that's abusive.
- Nightmarish Nursery: A nursery or playground that seems anything but child-friendly.
- No OSHA Compliance: A workplace is very unsafe.
- Old, Dark House: A spooky old house with poor lighting, in which people get murdered.
- Orphanage of Fear: An orphanage where the orphans are abused (usually via being punished severely and unfairly), made to do nasty chores, served bad food, and aren't allowed to play.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons (for animals, especially stray house pets): Pounds are portrayed as analogous to prisons.
- Prison (especially The Alcatraz, Hellhole Prison and Tailor-Made Prison): A show is set in prison.
- Sickening Slaughterhouse: A slaughterhouse that's even messier than real-life slaughterhouses, neglectful to the workers, and/or inhumane to the animals.
- Sinister Southwest: The American Southwest is a death trap.
- Sucky School: A school which is bad at teaching due to budget issues, and usually full of bullies and mean teachers.
- Town with a Dark Secret: A small town, where all the citizens are in on a terrible secret.
- Trashy Trailer Home: Trailer parks are run-down, violent, and unsafe.
- Überwald: A castle in a rural Eastern European neighbourhood that harbours a suspicious character such as a vampire or Mad Scientist.
- World of Jerkass: A setting that would be an ordinary place, except everyone (or almost everyone) is a terrible person.
After the End: see Apocalyptic Index.
Nightmare worlds: It's Nightmare Fuel and doesn't bother to hide it.
- Anarcho-Tyranny: The leaders seize or maintain control through permitting lawlessness and chaos.
- Bad Future: A future Dystopia.
- The Big Rotten Apple: New York is polluted, crime-ridden, full of poverty, sleazy, or a combination.
- Campbell Country: A horror story set in the UK.
- Childless Dystopia: No children, no hope.
- City Noir, if it's as mean and depressing as it seems.
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: Whether the setting qualifies as a dystopia is arguable.
- Danger in the Galactic Core: The galactic core (the middle of a galaxy) is inaccessible or dangerous.
- Dark World: A twisted parallel universe.
- Death World: The laws of physics and the very landscape hate you.
- Despotism Justifies the Means: Someone is fine with creating a dystopia as long as it means they get to rule in the end.
- The Dictatorship: When the government is repressive towards the population, or at least a significant portion of it, and can't be removed through democratic means.
- Dystopia: A setting that's bad due to sociopolitical issues.
- Dystopia Is Hard: Even the triumph of evil decays over time.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: Someone goes out of their way to make everything as crapsack as possible.
- Eldritch Location: A place that disobeys the laws of physics.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: Not only is the system horrendously cruel and repressive, in the end, it doesn't even work.
- Forbidden Zone: It's forbidden for a reason.
- Gaia's Lament: The world, or part of it, is rendered terrible due to pollution or a natural disaster.
- Garden of Evil: Mother Nature has decided her purpose in life is to kill you.
- Grim Up North: A very cold, scary, Northern place that may house an evil lair.
- Hell: See Infernal Tropes.
- Hellgate: An entryway between someplace normal and someplace very bad.
- Hellish L.A.: Los Angeles is a crime-ridden, corrupt shithole.
- Help! Help! This Index Is Being Repressed!: The specific elements that dystopian societies run on.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: this one even warns you.
- Lady Land: It sucks to be a guy here.
- Legalized Evil: Evil has the law on its side and there's nothing you can do about it.
- Lovecraft Country: A horror version of rural New England.
- Mordor, Walk into Mordor: One does not simply do it (read: these places are really hard to get into).
- Never Land: An area ruled by kids or people who look like kids.
- Nightmarish Factory: A factory that's deliberately a bad place to work.
- No Woman's Land: You really don't want to be a woman here.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: A dictatorship disguised as a republic that has a democratic-sounding name.
- Place Worse Than Death: A place where nobody wants to go.
- Police State: A place run by corrupt law enforcement.
- Polluted Wasteland: A nightmarishly polluted area.
- Repressive, but Efficient: Hard to live in, but could be vastly worse.
- Ridiculously Difficult Route: A character has to take a route that's difficult and/or dangerous to travel.
- The Savage South: A southern area where the people are rude and/or the animals are dangerous.
- Socially Scored Society: Everything is dependent on your social interactions being ranked or scored. Good luck getting a job if you're unpopular!
- Vichy Earth: Aliens enslave Earth's population.
- Villain World: The Bad Guy Wins and shapes society in their own image.
Too Good To Be True: Just like a Utopia...Until you scratch the surface.
- Crapsaccharine World: A place that looks saccharine but is actually horrible.
- False Utopia: A place which seems perfect but has serious flaws in actuality.
- House-Hunting Montage: Houses shown in these often seem perfect but have a tiny problem that makes them horrible to live in.
- Santa's Sweatshop: Santa's workshop is portrayed as a sweatshop.
- Stepford Suburbia: A suburbia that's too good to be true.
- Suburban Gothic: A suburbia with a dark secret, but which lacks the "too perfect" vibe of a Stepford Suburbia.
- Techno Dystopia: Because it's got all this pretty future technology it must be good, right?
- Uncanny Village: A creepy village that seems like a nice place to live but has a dark secret.
- World of Silence: A world with no conflict... but no individuality either.
There Ain't No Justice: Possibly a good place to hide from authorities, if you can keep from being victimized yourself.
- Caught in the Bad Part of Town: A town that has a dangerous part where outsiders aren't welcome, and a character accidentally winds up there.
- The City Narrows: A lawless area of a city.
- Crapsack World: Anything and everything that can go wrong will go wrong, in the worst possible way.
- Failed State: A fallen nation that lacks the ability to enforce its laws or provide for its citizens.
- It Is Beyond Saving: A place so messed up that people are arguing for either abandoning it, actively destroying it, or both. (Though whether it belongs here or in Not So Bad is up for interpretation.)
- Neglected Rez: Impoverished reservations for Native Americans, often exploited by outsiders for resources and facing disproportionately high rates of addiction, crime, unemployment, and suicide.
- Not-So-Safe Harbor: A dangerous coastal town full of drunken sailors and pirates.
- Outlaw Town: By criminals, for criminals.
- Sadist Show: Everyone in this show's setting is abusive, abused, or both and no one is sympathetic.
- The Savage South: See its description in the "nightmare worlds" place.
- Soiled City on a Hill: A city that was so bad it was destroyed.
- Totalitarian Gangsterism: When the criminals are the ones performing the Day of the Jackboot, you know you're in a hellhole.
- Urban Hellscape: A look 20 Minutes into the Future, where the city is infested with violent criminals, and the police are either too ineffectual to stop them or can only do so by being that much more brutal.
- Vice City: Crime rates are so high, it's a wonder that people still live there.
- World of Badass: Everyone is a badass... even that innocent little Heartwarming Orphan.
- World of Ham: Everybody has to take and act out everything in such an overly exaggerated manner that it often resorts to screaming, chasing and fighting all over the place.
- Wretched Hive: ...of scum and villainy, of course.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The poor area of town.
Not So Bad: A bit smelly, a bit sour, but it's ours. (Or to quote Aladdin: "It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.")
- Advert-Overloaded Future: The future is full of ads.
- Bad Present: The present is fine for us, 'cause we're used to it, but the time-traveller from the past sees it as bad.
- Crapsack World, Escapist Sanctuary: It's an awful place to live, but as long as you can dream and play, it's bearable.
- The Dung Ages: The Dark Ages are portrayed as grody but not terrible.
- Dingy Trainside Apartment: A cheap, dilapidated urban apartment next to train tracks. At least the rent is relatively affordable.
- Doomed Hometown: The place the hero first appears in will get destroyed.
- Dying Town: A town that isn't thriving.
- Egopolis: Dictators renaming towns after themselves.
- Ghost Town: A town that's abandoned or has very few citizens. Often portrayed as spooky but not straight-up evil.
- Hated Hometown: A character hates the place they grew up in.
- Horrible Housing: A house in poor condition, meant to highlight the residents' poverty.
- Industrial Ghetto: A poverty-ridden, usually polluted, industrial neighbourhood.
- It Is Beyond Saving: Those who disagree will likely consider it more along the lines of this. Again, whether it belongs here or "there ain't no justice" is up for interpretation.
- Lost World: A place that's kept off the maps.
- Quirky Town: Those that don't have a dark secret can actually be pretty nice when you get used to them... or at least get used to not being able to get used to them.
- Scavenger World: When a lot of people are killed, the rest has to scavenge as they don't know how to make things.
- School Is Murder: Students are routinely murdered by monsters, but it's the only school in town.
- Small Town, Big Hell: A small town with a Close-Knit Community... but if something happens to you, everyone will know about it.
- Throw-Away Country: A made-up country that disaster strikes.
- Used Future: In Rust We Trust!. Namely, sci-fi tech that looks dingy and used but works.
- A World Half Full: A world that's dark and gritty but there's hope.
- World of Snark: A place that isn't so bad, except everyone's got a sharp tongue.
