Settings

The time, place and circumstances of the narrative.

Time Tropes

• After the End
  A catastrophe - manmade or natural - has wiped out a large portion of the human civilization and/or population. The survivors fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world.
  • Animal Is the New Man
    Animals take over after humanity falls.
    • Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth
      Little vermin becames the dominant life form.

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  • The Apunkalypse
    Punks usher in the collapse of civilization; the apocalypse ushers in the age of the punks. It's all the same song and dance, and the punks are here to stay.
  • Reclaimed By Nature: Nature grows over the remains of Mankind's infrastructure.
  • Ruins of the Modern Age
    The Empire State Building is growing moss and most of its concrete is fading away.
  • Scavenger World
    The world has been ruined, and people rely on what they can salvage from the old world to survive.
• Alternative Calendar
  If the end of World War II were used as an era, it would be the year 73 instead of 2018.
• Anachronistic Orphanage
  A traditional orphanage in a first-world setting.
• Anachronism Stew
  Is that man wearing a toga, wielding a Katana and listening to an iPod?
• Big, Fat Future
  Obese is slim in 25 years.
• Cassette Futurism
  The early digital era of the 20th century's last quarter extrapolated into the future. The grungier post-microchip, pre-iPod successor to Raygun Gothic.

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• Chandler American Time
  A nastier relative of Genteel Interbellum Setting
• Civil Rights Movement
  From the mid-50s' to the late 60s,' minorities in America, particularly African-Americans, and their white sympathizer marched and engaged in acts of civil disobedience to attain equal rights for all.
• Cold War
  Iron curtains, nukes and spies.
• The Dark Times
  Between the dinosaurs and early human civilization there were dragons, wizards and evil beyond imagination.
• Day of the Jackboot
  War's over. We lost.
• Days of Future Past
  Middle Ages + Spaceships = Star Wars.
• The Dung Ages
  Happens during Dark Age Britain.
• During the War
  • Alien Invasion
    They don't come in peace.
  • Arab–Israeli Conflict
  • Bug War
    Humans vs. Insectoid Aliens.
  • The Gulf War
    Operation Desert Storm (1990 - 1991).
  • The Korean War
    1950 - 1953
  • The Magic Versus Technology War
    The Sorcerors fight the Scientists.
  • Robot War
    Robots turn against the creators.
  • The Vietnam War
    1955 - 1975

• Works Set in World War II
  1939 - 1945

• Earth Is Young
  Though events take place on Earth during the recorded period of human history, the age of the planet is merely thousands rather than billions of years.
• The Edwardian Era
  Between Queen Victoria's death and the outbreak of World War I, everybody's upper-class indulgent and foreshadows a lot.
• Enforced Technology Levels
  Only certain kinds of technology, or a certain level of technology, is allowed. By law, manmade or natural.
• Fantastic Nature Reserve
  A zoo, wildlife reserve, or other home for supposedly extinct or mythical creatures.
• Fantasy Americana
  Magic, fantastic creatures, and figures of folklore lie in the wilds of North America, just beyond the reaches of civilization.
• Feudal Future
  Sub-category of Days of Future Past.
• The Future
  100 - 200 years into the future. Think of how every house in The Jetsons looks.
  • The Future Is Noir
    We do not use sufficient lighting in the future.
  • Standard Sci-Fi History
    The Far Future, the Really Far Future of Space Opera.
• Genteel Interbellum Setting
  Sometime between 1918 and 1939.
• The Golden Age of Piracy
  Scoundrels, treasure, and swashbuckling adventure upon the high seas.
• Here There Were Dragons
  Once upon a time, Kings had wizards as courtiers and knights slew dragons.
• Hole in Flag
  When everybody got tired of the nukes and spies.
• Just Before the End
  We are a few days from extermination.
• Just One Second Out of Sync
  A time out of place.
• A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far Far Away...
  Far distant in space, time or both. They've probably never even heard of Earth.
• Medieval European Fantasy
  Swords, kings and Tolkienian lore.
• Medieval Prehistory
  Pre-industrial human society set against a prehistoric backdrop.
• Medieval Stasis
  Technology hasn't changed since 1250.
• Modern Stasis
  4000 years later, still no jetpack.
• Next Sunday A.D.
  Just ahead of the present. That's why you haven't noticed the Alien Invasion.
• 1 Million B.C.
  Hollywood Stone Age. All cavemen look Neanderthalish and live in harmony with dinosaurs.
• Overpopulation Crisis
  Wherever you are, there are too many other people for it to be sustainable.
• Place Beyond Time
  A place out of time.
• Popular History
  When movies set in 1968 look like they are set in 1968.
• Present Day
  When a show is set in the same year it is produced in.
• Present-Day Past
  The city wouldn't let the production close down streets so our movie set five years ago is full of recent car models and billboards.
• Raygun Gothic
  Shiny spaceships, artistically designed rayguns, Tin Can Robots, and jet packs, all done in an Art Deco style. The chief setting of futuristic stories from the the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
• The Soviet Twenties
• Space Age Stasis
  You have the jetpacks, but they're the same as the ones made a thousand years ago.
• The Time of Myths
  Ancient Myths (Bronze Age Greek, what-have-you) are not only real, they are mashed together into one time period.
• The Troubles
  Between the 1960s and 1998 in Northern Ireland.
• 20 Minutes into the Past
  Not a Period Piece, but not quite the present, either.
• 20 Minutes into the Future
  In the year 2016 everyone is a robot and speaks 10 languages.
• The War on Terror
  9/11 to the Present.
• The Wild West
  Every Spaghetti- and Western.
  • Dawn of the Wild West
    Just before and the beginning of the Wild West.
  • Twilight of the Old West
    The Wild West gradually gives way to the New Old West.
  • New Old West
    Cowboys Now.
  • Space Western
    Cowboys in space.
• Wooden Ships and Iron Men
  The Age of Sail.

Space / Place

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer
  Sewers with high enough ceilings for people to walk around comfortably and enough space to hold an entire castle.
• Academy of Adventure
  In every class you learn to fly and shoot laser beams out of your eyes.
• Adminisphere
  The back office that administers the organisation, and is likely to be out of touch with the sharp end of the business.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis
  Exactly what it says on the tin. Often found in the darkest jungle. May overlap with City of Gold.
• Adventure Towns
  Travel between towns for new quests.
• Adventurers Club
  When the globe-trotting hero isn't about his exciting business, he can relax at the club and swap stories with the like-minded.
• Airstrip One
  Where The Empire strips a conquered nation of its identity and assigns it a number.
• Aliens in Cardiff
  Unusually, the Alien Invasion has gone off the Tokyo-New York-Los Angeles-London tourist route to land in Plymouth.
• All-Ghouls School
  Faculty for the freaky and fanged.
• Amazing Technicolor World
  A colorful world.
• The Amazon
  The biggest jungle ever.
• Amusement Park
  It's usually closed and happens during the night.
• Amusement Park of Doom
  No one has entered in ages and because of that, the place is riddled with traps that kill you.
• Ancient Africa
  Everyone in Africa has a bone in their nose and hair, dances around a bonfire, and lives in a straw hut.
• Ancient Tomb
  Tombs, burial chambers, sepulchers, mausoleums, charnel houses, ossuaries, catacombs, crypts, sometimes even dungeons.
• Arcadia
  Quiet life in the countryside.
• Area 51
  A top secret research facility. In the desert.
• Ascetic Aesthetic
  In this setting, less is more.
• Athletic Arena Level
  Football and Baseball and Hockey, OH MY! And all of them are trying to play at once.
• Atlantis
  The perfect lost world.
• At the Crossroads
  Where the paths of two fates cross.
• Bad-Guy Bar
  Everyone inside is a macho wrestler with an evil look on his face.
• Bar Full of Aliens
  The clientele on this place is kind of... alien.
• Barsetshire
  A bucolic, often English countryside in which tales of ordinary personal comedy and drama take place.
• Base on Wheels
  How is it possible to keep an entire city on wheels that can drive anywhere, even submerge? Beats me.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre
  A marketplace in the Middle East. You'll find all sorts of this and that in there.
• BBC Quarry
  The ISO Standard alien planet set, a disused or rented quarry, full of interestingly dull rocks and fascinatingly monotonous scenery, the perfect alien-landscape-on-a-budget.
• Beach Tropes
• Beautiful Void
  Peaceful, but oddly empty.
• Bedlam House
  Asylum on steroids.
• Beneath the Earth
  People living under the crust. Their technology is primitive and they fear the outsiders.
• The Bermuda Triangle
  Where planes and ships go to enter inter-dimensional rifts (maybe).
• Big Applesauce
  Because New York is the only city aliens and monsters like to destroy.
• Big Fancy Castle
  Much like Big Fancy House, but with more towers. And secret passages. And dungeons.
• Big Fancy House
  A house on a hill. It's not dirty. It has more rooms than any other house around.
• Bigger on the Inside
  A building that looks small - possibly ridiculously small - but opens up into a giant mansion or other area.
• Big Labyrinthine Building
  A huge building consisting of nothing but a maze.
• The Big Rotten Apple
  Where New York is a squalid decaying crime-ridden Hell on Earth.
• Big Store
  The setting for a Long Con. It looks like a business now, but it'll be empty again next week.
• Bizarrchitecture
  Implausible, ridiculous, bizarre architecture.
• Boarding School of Horrors
  The breeding ground of Sadist Teachers and cutthroat battles for social dominance.
• Boom Town
  Whoa, these guys build and breed fast.
• The Bridge
  Where sci-fi guys go to get to know each other.
• Bright Castle
  A beautiful fairy-tale castle.
• Bubbly Clouds
  A world set in the clouds.
• Building of Adventure
  A single building is the setting.
• California University
  When kids in a High School drama get too old to be believable, expect most of them to go here.
• Campbell Country
  Lovecraft Country...in England!
• Canada Does Not Exist
  What do you do when you're ashamed to be shooting your show in Canada, but can't set it in America?
• Chez Restaurant
  Expect snails, frog legs, temperamental chefs, and snotty waiters with funny accents.
• Circle of Standing Stones
  A ring of giant stones where important events often occur.
• City in a Bottle
  There has never been anything outside The City. Beyond its well-policed walls is unknown darkness.
• City of Gold
  A country chock full of wealth and splendor.
• The City Narrows
  Basically, your typical city slum, but even more dangerous.
• City Noir
  Like a city, except it's always dark and rainy, crime is everywhere, and the Police are Useless (or even worse).
• City of Adventure
  All the adventure and excitement you could possibly crave conveniently rolled up into a single city.
• City of Canals
  A city where waterways are used as streets. Usually mirrors Venice.
• City of Everywhere
  Lady Liberty's just a few blocks from the Louvre.
• City of Spies
  City. With Spies. Get it?
• City with No Name
  The writers were lazy when thinking about the location, or wanted it to be anywhere.
• Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity
  Tall walls of rock keeping you from your destination.
• Clock Tower
  The town clock, the one that everybody sets their clocks to. May be a bell tower you have to ascend.
• Close-Knit Community
  Whether rural, urban, or suburban, a place where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other.
• Cobweb Jungle
  A spooky, abandoned location where cobwebs are as thick as jungle undergrowth.
• Commune
  A place where everybody lives together in a self-sustaining community. May or may not be part of a Free-Love Future, may or may not include the New-Age Retro Hippie.
• Company Town
  A town created by a company for its employees, where they're the law for all practical purposes.
• Container Maze
  A labyrinth of crates or containers in a warehouse, storeroom or dock.
• Cool Airship
  An airship, but with lasers.
• Cool Boat
  A boat, but with lasers.
• Cool Garage
  A garage, but with lasers.
• Cool House
  A house, but with lasers.
• Cool Ship
  Anything that's called a ship and has lasers.
• Cool Starship
  A starship, but with even more lasers than usual.
• Coolest Club Ever
  So great, it's always packed. (If it plays techno, it may even have lasers!)
• Corpse Land
  A devastated location where no one has cleaned up the bodies of the fallen (and maybe never will).
• The Couch
  It's very soft, and is always center stage.
• Crappy Carnival
  Like Disneyland, if Mickey was a grubby Con Man.
• Creepy Basement
  Like a regular basement, but with more lasers spiders.
• Creepy Cathedral
  The bells are haunting at midnight.
• Creepy Cemetery
  The place with the reputation for mass-producing the undead.
• Criminal Convention
• Crystal Landscape
  A setting filled with or completely composed of crystals, gemstones and jewels.
• Cult Colony
  An isolated group of religious settlers.
• Cut-and-Paste Suburb
  Hey, I think I saw that house before. And that one too!
• Cutesy Name Town
• Dacha
  The Russian home away from home.
• Dances and Balls
  England between 1700 - 1900
• Dangerous Workplace
  Drinking from the water cooler will burn down the building.
• Darkest Africa
  Tarzan and co. See also Ancient Africa above.
• Daycare Nightmare
  A daycare (US) or nursery school (UK) where you really wouldn't want to send your kids.
• Decadent Court
  The entourage of the leaders conduct warfare in an ostensibly polite and civilised social battlefield.
• Death World
  Watch out for that grass!
• Deep South
  Rednecks, moonshiners, KKK and all that
• Den of Iniquity
  Where the Mooks and Minions unwind.
• Derelict Graveyard
  Ship graveyard
• Deserted Island
  No one lives there. Good place to be marooned. Full of Jungle Japes.
• Domed Hometown
  City in a dome. Underwater optional.
• Down in the Dumps
  Is that a skyscraper of wrecked cars?
• Down L.A. Drain
  The LA storm drain system is used as the setting in a film/TV show, usually a car chase.
• Drive-In Theater
  Sit in your car and enjoy the show.
• Dungeon-Based Economy
  Dungeon delving is the major local industry.
• Dying Town
  Having lost its reason to exist, the town is largely shuttered and abandoned, home to only those who couldn't move elsewhere.
• Easily Conquered World
  Nothing could ever harm us.
• Eerie Arctic Research Station
  A remote lab in an icy cold location as a tension-filled setting.
• Elaborate Underground Base
  A base that has a hangar, silo and laboratory.
• Eldritch Location
  Because Euclidean designs are for morons!
• Elephants' Graveyard
  A secret place where elephants go to die.
• Enclosed Space
  Hope you don't have claustrophobia!
• Endless Corridor
  Keep walking forever.
• Evil Tainted the Place
  A location that has been corrupted forever because it was once home to an evil presence.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness
  That tower that's larger than the mountains? Definitely not the Evil Overlord's lair!
• Extranormal Institute
  Super-trope of all your schools for people with weird powers or abilities.
• Extremely Dusty Home
  A abandoned house with layer upon layer of dust and cobwebs.
• Fan Convention
  Places where fans gather to engage in their hobbies.
• "Far Side" Island
  A tiny island in the middle of nowhere housing a single palm tree.
• Fat Camp
  A summer camp where parents send overweight kids to diet and to get off their butts and go outside.
• Fictional Country
  See also Fictional Culture and Nation Tropes
• Fictional Province
  A fictional subset of a real country.
• Floating Continent
  A floating chunk of land as an exotic locale.
• Flyover Country
  The middle of America, where no one from New York or California seems to want to film.
• Forbidden Zone
  A dangerous place no one wants to go (except the heroes, of course).
• Friendly Local Chinatown
  Sections of large American cities where Chinese culture can be found close at hand.
• Gadgeteer's House
  An inventor lives here, so nearly everything is automated.
• Garden of Evil
  A place where most or all of the plants are poisonous, carnivorous, or otherwise dangerous.
• Gayborhood
  A neighborhood where the population is predominantly openly LGBT in a city where most people aren't.
• Genius Loci
  A place that is intelligent and often in control of itself or the things living in it.
• Geographic Flexibility
  When the setting grows, shrinks, adds, and loses features as the plot demands.
• Ghibli Hills
  Pristine, untouched wilderness, often within easy reach of civilization.
• Giant Corpse World
  A setting where people live in or on a giant decaying corpse.
• Gingerbread House
  A house or other building made of food, usually candy and sweets. Usually a fairy-tale setting.
• Ghost Town
  An abandoned town.
• Good-Guy Bar
  Where the heroes hang out after hours. Villains are welcome if they behave.
• The Good Kingdom
  Where good monarchs reign. Usually small, pleasant, and an underdog against The Empire.
• The Good Old British Comp
  Modern British schools
• Grass Is Greener
  An idealized place that a person desperately wishes to leave and go to.
• Greasy Spoon
  A roadside diner, often stuck perpetually in the American 1950's and serving anti-diet food.
• Great Big Library of Everything
  An absurdly large and well-stocked library.
• Hacker Cave
  A room filled with an over-the-top mess of computers and monitors and other bits of geekery, where hackers somehow get work done.
• Halloweentown
  A setting with a very stylized creepy, gothic, Halloween theme.
• Haunted Castle
  A spooky castle where there be monsters.
• Haunted Headquarters
  A spooky place where there be monsters, and you're stuck living or working there.
• Haunted House
  A spooky house where there be monsters.
• Hedge Maze
  A maze made up hedgerows, usually found somewhere fancy and rich.
• The Hedge of Thorns
  A large bramble of nasty thorns, usually where faeries or evil sorcerers want to block your way.
• Hell Hotel
  A creepy hotel where bad things happen.
• Hell of a Heaven
  When Heaven sucks just for you.
• Hidden Elf Village
  A secret, safe place far from the eyes of those other meddling nations.
• High School
  School for teenagers, grades 9 (or 10) through 12.
• Holy Ground
  Not full of holes. Or divine coffee.
• Home of Monsters
  Any place monsters call home, whether it be a lair, a whole dimension, a Monster Town or Island of Mystery.
• Hospital Paradiso
  A seemingly perfect hospital or other workplace. Often rejected by a hero who wishes to focus on the downtrodden instead of the kind of people who can afford to get help there.
• House of Broken Mirrors
  Where someone gone mad from loathing their appearance has smashed all their mirrors and left them.
• Hungry Jungle
  Jungles are out to kill you.
• Ice Palace
  A castle made of ice or one that's completely frozen over.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place
  A place with a sinister name.
• Incompetence, Inc.
  An office culture where nothing of value gets done, and where it's a mystery how they stay in business.
• Indian Burial Ground
  A place where someone desecrated the graves of Native Americans by building something on it. Expect ghosts.
• Industrial Ghetto
  A slum near or inside an industrial area, often made of scrap and filled with crime and pollution.
• Injun Country
  The North American lands filled with folks who were there before the settlers arrived.
  • The Rez
    The modern-day Hollywood version of the Indian Reservation.
• Inn Between the Worlds
  A pub that connects to multiple worlds, where people of all types can relax and swap stories.
• Inn of No Return
  An inn or hotel where the owners kill and then rob or eat their customers. Often a Hell Hotel.
• Inner City School
  An impoverished city school where the teachers have given up, and students are on the fast track to prison.
• Inside a Computer System
  Inside a self-contained virtual world (unlike Cyberspace, in which locations correspond to the real world).
• In the Doldrums
  A featureless location, often an empty plane or void. More than just somewhere boring.
• Island Base
  A Supervillain Lair on an isolated island.
• Island of Misfit Everything
  A haven for the misfits, rejects and forlorn.
• Island of Mystery
  An island with any one of a number of unusual things on it.
• Isle of Giant Horrors
  An island inhabited by giant creatures.
• It Came from Beverly Hills
  Takes place in Beverly Hills, California.
• Kirk's Rock
  A distinctive set of striated sandstone slabs, sharply-angled and pointed at their tops, conveniently located about 30 miles north of Hollywood.
• Lady Land
  Where women rule, and men are either subservient or absent.
• Landfill Beyond the Stars
  A world full of junk.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base
  A secret base hidden under or in some famous landmark.
• Last Fertile Region
  The last bit of nature and greenery in a wasteland dystopia.
• The Lava Caves of New York
• Layered Metropolis
  A city with multiple, vertically-separated levels, usually with the rich on top.
• Layered World
  A world with multiple dimensions, where locations in each dimension map to each other, creating "layers" of reality.
• Legitimate Businessmen's Social Club
  Where mobsters hang out and plan crime.
• Lethal Eatery
  A restaurant that violates health codes in staggering ways. Usually played for comedy.
• Level Ate
  A Video Game location made entirely of food.
• Lighthouse Point
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday
  A magical shop that appears out of nowhere to sell a MacGuffin and then disappears when it causes trouble.
• Local Hangout
  Where the cast spends most of their time hanging out. Brits may use My Local (pub) instead.
• Locked in the Dungeon
  A medieval-style underground prison / torture chamber.
• Locomotive Level
  A Video Game level that takes place on a train.
• The Lost Woods
  A large, old-growth forest in which nature (and often magic) are supreme.
• Lost World
  A mysterious, isolated place not found on any maps where exotic adventures can occur.
• Lovecraft Country
  A creepy, horror version of rural New England, where Corrupt Hicks conspire with dark forces.
• Lover's Ledge
  An outside window ledge where The Casanova must hide to avoid being caught during Interrupted Intimacy.
• MacGuffin Location
  When the MacGuffin everyone is competing over is a place.
• Mad Science Fair
  A contest or convention involving mad scientists and their mad experiments.
• Mage Tower
  The Tower where a wizard does his research (or plotting) above and away from the people. Often contains telescopes, orreries, hidden artifacts, secret passages, tomes of eldritch lore, etc.
• Magical Library
  A library of magic books, often itself enchanted and often safekeeping magical artifacts.
• Major World Cities
  An index of the largest and most important real world cities used in fiction.
• Make-Out Point
  A secluded place, often with a good view, where teens go for Auto Erotica. Bad things often happen there.
• The Mall
  A modern, indoor, shopping complex, peaking in The '80s. Home of the Valley Girl and the Mall Santa.
• Malt Shop
  A popular teen Local Hangout in The '50s where burgers, hot dogs, and malted milkshakes are served while the jukebox plays.
• Mars
  The Red Planet. Not (necessarily) the planet where communism rules.
• Martyrdom Culture
  A culture that glorifies death in the name of some cause or belief.
• Masquerade Ball
  An elaborate, period dance where all the attendees wear masks. Duplicity often occurs.
• The Maze
• Mega City
  A city with the size or population of a country.
• Merchant City
  A trade city, ruled or mostly populated by merchants, bankers, and traders.
• Mercurial Base
  A base on a planet close to a star that stays out of the sun by following the night around the planet.
• Metal Poor Planet
  A planet where the key ingredients for technological civilization are missing.
• Micro Monarchy
  A modern, very tiny nation ruled by a royal family. Usually an eclectic mix of tradition and modernity.
• Middle-of-Nowhere Street
  A very small location that is a Weirdness Magnet, and no one outside notices or minds.
• Mishmash Museum
  A museum with no apparent rhyme or reason to the ways its exhibits are laid out.
• Misplaced Wildlife
  A place where animals that don't belong are present, usually due to creator error.
• Missing Floor
  A secret floor in a multilevel building. Often skipped by the buttons in an elevator.
• Mobile Maze
  A maze which changes (itself) to make it hard or impossible to escape.
• Möbius Neighborhood
  Conservation of Detail applied to a TV neighborhood, usually to save budget on actors and sets.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain
  A rocky terrain feature resembles, or is, a giant creature or portion thereof.
• Monster Town
  A town entirely populated by monsters. May have a twisted, alien culture or one Not So Different from ours.
• Monumental Battle
  Dramatic battles always seem to take place around major landmarks.
• Monumental View
  A place with an impossible cool view (often of a landmark) that is way beyond the means of its owner.
• Mordor
  A Shadowland where the Big Bad's Fisher King-ness poisons the land and makes it utterly inhospitable and Obviously Evil.
• Museum of Boredom
  A boring, often extremely niche museum in which (almost) none of the cast is interested.
• Museum of the Strange and Unusual
  An awesomely eclectic museum with a collection of impossibly cool and downright bizarre stuff.
• My Local
  A pub, where the main cast usually hangs out. A British-specific Local Hangout.
• Mysterious Antarctica
  One of the last explored places on Earth's surface. Popular location of lost civilizations and hidden Nazi bases.
• Native American Casino
  All movie Indian reservations have casinos.
• Neo-Africa
  Cyberpunk Africa, often with all the problems of today made worse by the technology of tomorrow.
• The Neutral Zone
  Territory in between nations in a Cold War that is off-limits to keep a war from restarting. Opposite of Truce Zone.
• Never Land
• New Neighbours as the Plot Demands
  Remember the New Guy? as applied to a small town setting.
• New York Subway
• No Communities Were Harmed
  The geographic equivalent of a Bland-Name Product or Captain Ersatz.
• Non-Residential Residence
  A building or location someone is living in that was not intended to be a residence.
• No-Tell Motel
  A sleazy motel that caters to a low-class clientele.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here
• Not-So-Safe Harbor
  A Wretched Hive of seaside villainy.
• Ocean Punk
  Take your standard dystopian Punk setting and Just Add Water.
• Old, Dark House
  The classic setting for Ten Little Murder Victims. A Haunted House without the actual haunting.
• Ominous Floating Castle
• Opium Den
  A 19th century drug house, often far more romanticized than modern equivalents. Associated mostly with the British Empire and China.
• One Degree of Separation
  Every character has a direct connection or relationship with every other character.
• One-Gender School
  Single-sex education. In modern works, expect Situational Sexuality.
• One-Product Planet
  For simplicity's sake, a planet in SF is only ever famous for a single good or service.
• Only Law Firm in Town
  The law-firm at the center of a show about a law-firm.
• Only Shop in Town
  Small towns (or towns of any size in most Video Games) only have a single store run by the town's Shopkeeper.
• Oppressive States of America
  A fictional United States in which democracy doesn't exist anymore.
• Orphanage of Fear
• Orphanage of Love
• Outlaw Town
  A town run for the benefit of criminals or one entirely populated by criminals.
• The Outside World
  Any place outside a place of confinement, isolation, or seclusion.
• The Pampas
  The endless grasslands of South America, and home of the gauchos. Very common in Latin American Literature, specially Argentine Literature
• Parking Garage
  Nothing good ever happens in a parking garage.
• Patchwork World
  A world assembled from multiple other worlds or sources. If done haphazardly, may result in a Patchwork Map.
• Penal Colony
  A remote land to exile criminals to to make sure they can't escape (in theory). Populated only by crooks & guards. Sometimes used to dump off the poor and other undesirables too.
• The Pentagon
• People Zoo
  An alien zoo containing humans and other intelligent life as part of the exhibits.
• Phone Booth
  An outdoor booth intended to give privacy to people using public pay telephones. Obsoleted by more space-efficient boothless pay-phones in the 80s & 90s and later by cellphones.
• Physical Heaven
  Heaven on Earth... literally.
• Place of Power
• Planet England
  A series that starts in a small, named region of a greater world will use that name for the greater world once you are introduced to it.
• Planet of Copyhats
  Writers use the quirks of a single character as the "hat" for their entire people. (e.g. When you visit the drunk guy's homeland, everyone else is an alcoholic too.)
• Planet of Hats
  All alien or foreign cultures are homogenous, and a single stereotype or quirk applies to everyone from that place.
• Pleasure Planet
  An entire planet is dedicated to being a perfect leisure spot. May or may not be a trap.
• Polluted Wasteland
  A land destroyed by pollution. SF and modern equivalent of Mordor, but don't expect quick fixes.
• Port Town
  A city by the sea.
• Portal Crossroad World
  A world where one can easily travel to many other worlds.
• Possessive Paradise
  A paradise setting with an unfortunate tendency towards the yandere.
• Premiseville
  The name of the place establishes the premise of the setting.
• Prison
  • The Alcatraz
    A high-security prison where there's lava instead of the ocean and the guards are huge robots.
  • Cardboard Prison
    A prison that is way too easy to escape, so that villains can be reused.
  • Epiphanic Prison
    To exit: Have epiphany.
  • POW Camp
    Populated by soldiers captured on the field of battle by their enemies.
  • Tailor-Made Prison
    A prison made specially to hold an individual a normal prison cannot. Frequently fails anyway.
• Privately Owned Society
  Everything is owned by individuals, nothing is run by the government (at least not effectively). Expect Straw.
• The Promised Land
  The place that promises to be better than where we are. Where the Grass Is Greener.
• Quirky Town
  A small town filled with quirky and adorable characters.
• Railroad to Horizon
  A railroad disappearing into the distance is used as a metaphor for the journey ahead.
• Red Light District
  The part of town where all the brothels, bars, and other places of seedy night-time enjoyment can be found.
• The Rez
  Reservations. Communities where Native Americans were herded by settlers and the government.
• Ridiculously Difficult Route
  When a route is usually never used because it's just too difficult and/or there are other, easier ways.
• River of Insanity
  People who go on a journey down a river into the unknown will not make it back unchanged.
• Runaway Hideaway
  Where The Runaway hides.
• Sapient Ship
  Your spaceship has a mind of its own and often flies itself.
• Scavenged Punk
  People rely on junk and other "found" technology rather than manufacturing their own, either due to it being After the End or due to living the shadow of human society.
• Scenic Route
  Scenery Porn while traveling.
• School Is Murder
  A school with a Weirdness Magnet that results in a high student mortality rate
• Sea Stories
  Any story taking place with the ocean as its primary setting.
• Secret Government Warehouse
  Where the government hides all the stuff the people are better off not knowing about.
• Secret Shop
  A shop whose business model somehow revolves around having great stuff and telling next to no one about it.
• Secret Underground Passage
• Self-Inflicted Hell
  A character suffers in the afterlife only because they believe they deserve it.
• Set Behind the Scenes
  Hollywood, but not Hollywood.
• Setting as a Character
  The setting is as important a driver of the story as any character but is not truly an intelligent person in its own right like a Sapient Ship or Genius Loci.
• Settling the Frontier
  Can serve as either a setting for a story or as a Plot.
• Severely Specialized Store
  We sell one thing, and one thing only.
• Shaped Like What It Sells
  A shop's storefront or whole building is shaped to advertise the product it sells.
• Shattered World
  A planet broken into pieces and floating in space / the void but still inhabited.
• The Shangri-La
  A paradise high up in the mountains.
• Shining City
  The greatest and most beautiful city in the world. The home of righteousness, justice, and civilization.
• Simulated Urban Combat Area
• Sinister Subway
  The Absurdly Spacious Sewer's more realistic and spooky counterpart.
• Small, Secluded World
  It may be safe here, but there's got to be a bigger world out there, beyond the walls...
• Skyscraper City
  In the future, skyscrapers will be tall. An entire city of Star Scrapers.
• Small Town Boredom
• Small Town Rivalry
  Two small towns close by, but that hate each other intensely.
• Smart House
  A Cool House with a built-in AI. Hope luck is on your side.
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club
  Where stereotypical rich men hang out away from wives, servants, and other common people.
• Soapbox Square
  A public park or square where rabble-rousers can make impassioned speeches to cheering or booing crowds.
• Soiled City on a Hill
  The ruins of a failed Shining City.
• Solid Clouds
  Clouds that you can walk or even build on top of. Commonly seen in Fluffy Cloud Heaven.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job
  Office work place that is boring and stultifying.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job
  Stock Parody of Walmart and other big box retailers.
• Southern Gothic
  Creepy, gothic Lovecraft Country in the Deep South.
• Souvenir Land
  A disappointing, cheap Theme Parks that tries (and fails) to ride on the coattails of A-list parks like Disneyland.
• Space Amish
  A space colony that gives up use of advanced technology after making the initial trip.
• Space Brasília
  Everything looks like identical whitewashed concrete towers with the same odd angles.
• Space Cadet Academy
  The Sci-Fi equivalent of a Wizarding School.
• Space Station
• Spy School
• Standard Office Setting
• Standard Royal Court
  An explanation of the structure of a typical fictional royal court.
• Star Scraper
  A sky scraper taller than modern technology can build.
• Steel Mill
  Lots of large machinery, fiery furnaces, molten metal and heavy objects falling from heights. Often a Smoke And Sparks Factory.
• Stepford Suburbia
  When the Cut-and-Paste Suburb meets the Town with a Dark Secret and everyone has a Stepford Smile.
• Strawman U
  College stereotypes. You're either a hedonistic liberal la-la-land or a fascist and higher-stakes redux of all the worst, bullying cliques of High School.
• "Stuck at the Airport" Plot
  The characters are Snowed-In or otherwise unable to leave a transportation hub/terminal
• Sub Story
  A story that takes place on a submarine (not a minor plot in a larger work).
• Suburbia
  Useful notes on the sprawling residential areas surrounding larger US cities, post WWII.
• Suck E. Cheese's
  A Stock Parody of The '80s wave of family restaurants with arcades and animatronic puppet shows, most of which were pretty run-down by The '90s.
• Suddenly Significant City
  A real-world city becomes significantly more important in the story. (e.g. Chicago becomes capital of Earth.)
• Summer Campy
  Summer Camp Played for Laughs.
• Superhero School
  Where kids with superpowers go to learn to be superheroes (and maybe math and stuff).
• Super-Sargasso Sea
  Where all the lost stuff ends up.
• Supervillain Lair
  The cliche, surprisingly elaborate facility in which a supervillain plots and prepares for their villainy.
• Swamps Are Evil
  Swamps are out to kill you.
• Sweet Home Alabama
  When the Deep South's and the Good Ol' Boy's better sides are played up.
• That Nostalgia Show
  Our world, as you remember it, 20-50 years ago.
• Theme Park Landscape
  The land of all-natural rollercoasters and water slides.
• Thirsty Desert
  Deserts are out to kill you.
• Tidally Locked Planet
  Natural satellite where one side always faces the body it orbits and the other always faces away.
• Thriving Ghost Town
  Cities in RPGs and other Video Games have impossibly low populations.
• Tokyo Tower
  A broadcast tower in Tokyo that is the single most unlucky landmark in all of Japanese media.
• Torture Cellar
  The room in which unspeakable things are done to captives. Modern equivalent of Locked in the Dungeon.
• Town with a Dark Secret
  Everyone in town is in on some terrible secret that the hero is not.
• Trailer Park Tornado Magnet
  Trailer parks have a reputation for attracting tornadoes due to the disproportionate damage they receive.
• Traveling Landmass
  Makes it kind of hard to find on maps. May serve as a Base on Wheels.
• Treasure Room
  Here there be dragons! Expect difficulty leaving with it.
• Treehouse of Fun
  A popular hang out for a kid's closest friends.
• Tree Top Town
  When adults make an entire town out of Treehouses of Fun. Don't expect safety railings.
• Trophy Room
  Where a character keeps mementos of their greatest adventures.
  • Shrine to Self
    When a narcissist takes this trope Up to Eleven.
  • Superhero Trophy Shelf
    When a superhero takes this trope Up to Eleven in a different way.
• Truce Zone
  Neutral ground between two hostile nations where their peoples are encouraged to mingle to help warm relations and build a future peace. Opposite of The Neutral Zone.
• Tunnel Network
• Turtle Island
  A turtle, whale, or other creature big enough and old enough to support a mobile ecosystem on its back.
• Uncanny Atmosphere
  Some vague sense of wrongness in an area sets the heroes on edge.
• Uncanny Village
  A seemingly idyllic small town isn't quite what it appears on the surface. The townsfolk may or may not be in on it.
• Undefeatable Little Village
  A small, close-knit community manages somehow to repeatedly repel an enemy power far more massive than it.
• Undercity
  A city that suffered some calamity has been built-over and forgotten — but it's still there.
• Underground City
  A city Beneath the Earth which may have been buried, built by non-humans, and/or as a bunker to survive the apocalypse.
• Underwater Base
  An underwater Supervillain Lair.
• Unholy Ground
  
• United Europe
  Europe is one, united superpower, acting as a single unit.
• Unnecessarily Large Interior
  Buildings with impractically high ceilings and cavernous rooms. Architectural Rule of Cool.
• 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.
• Urban Segregation
  Cities in fiction are very neatly divided between rich parts and poor parts with little patchwork or mixing.
• Veganopia
  Peaceful societies don't eat meat.
• Vestigial Empire
  The corrupt, declining remnant of a once mighty empire.
• Vice City
  A crime-ridden urban setting that has not quite yet declined into Wretched Hive status. The default setting used in most Wide Open Sandbox games.
• Video Arcade
• Villain World
• Volcano Lair
  A Supervillain Lair in a (usually inactive) volcano. Saves time digging. Beware victory.
• Wacky Homeroom
  A High School comedy setting, focused on a class of eccentrics who share an arbitrarily assigned homeroom.
• The War Room
  Hollywood's version of a command and control center. Rarely well-lit.
• Water Is Air
  Underwater shows ignore water resistance.
• Whitehall
  Where British shows about government agencies and politics take place.
• The White House
  Home and office of the President of the United States.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame
  Hollywood gay bars, where everything is cooler and more stylish, and stereotypes are taken Up to Eleven.
• White Void Room
  A white featureless location, often an empty plane or void. Sometimes just meant to look futuristic.
• Wild Wilderness
  The untouched wilderness is a place of adventure and is treated as almost another world.
• Windmill Scenery
  Decorative windmills scattered around grassland.
• Wizarding School
  Where kids with magical talent go to learn to cast spells (and maybe math and stuff).
• World in the Sky
  All civilization is sky-based.
• Wretched Hive
  A lawless land, populated almost entirely with cutthroats and other scum.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks
  The bad places to be in a setting with Urban Segregation.
• Ye Olde Nuclear Silo
  In the future, abandoned nuclear silos are ready-made Elaborate Underground Bases.
• Youth Center
  Places for kids with little parental supervision to play that's safer and more wholesome than the streets.

Perspective Types

• Knee-High Perspective
  The characters are children, babies, small or tiny animals, small fey beings, or toys, and adults are viewed from the waist, knee, or ankle down.

Dimensions / Universes

• Alien Space Bats
• All Myths Are True
• Alternate World Map
  When an RPG has alternate worlds.
• Bizarro Universe
• Bloody Bowels of Hell
• Constructed World
• Cyberspace
• Dark World
• Dream Land
• Elseworld
• Fire and Brimstone Hell
  The Common Hell
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven
• For Want of a Nail
• Giant Food
• Heaven
• Hell
• Hell Is War:
  Hell is dedicated to the aspects of war
• Ironic Hell
• Land of Faerie
• Magical Land
• Mental World
• The Metaverse
• Mirror Universe
• Mouse World
• The Multiverse
• Only One Afterlife
• Phantom Zone
• Place Beyond Time
• Platonic Cave
• Pocket Dimension
• Role-Playing Game Verse
• Retro Universe
• RPG-Mechanics Verse
• Spirit World
• The Underworld
• Wackyland
• Warrior Heaven
  Where Proud Warrior Race Guys go when they die.
• World of Chaos
• World of Ham
  Where a simple conversation is spoken in ALL CAPS and PUNCTUATED! FOR! EMPHASIS!

Other / Multiple

• Adventure-Friendly World
• Avalon
• California Doubling
• Camelot
• Casual Time Travel
• Cloudcuckooland
• Crapsack World
  • Crapsaccharine World
  • Crapsack Only by Comparison
  • Dystopia
  • Dystopia Is Hard
  • Gaia's Lament
  • A World Half Full
  • Wretched Hive
• Culture Chop Suey
• Desolation Shot
• Divided States of America
• Doubling for London
• Earth Drift
• Egopolis
• Emotions vs. Stoicism
• Environmental Symbolism
• Everyone Is a Super
• Exotic Backdrop Setting
• Expanded States of America
• Expanded Universe
• Expansion Pack World
• Fallen States of America
• False Utopia
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture
• Filming Location Cameo
• Fisher King
• Fisher Kingdom
• Götterdämmerung
• Hell on Earth
• Invaded States of America
• Legion of Lost Souls
• Location Song
• Lost Colony
• Mary Suetopia
• Matriarchy
• Metro Specific Underworld
• Mundane Dogmatic
• Never Recycle a Building
• New Age
• One Degree of Separation
• The Outside World
• Past Right Now
  When something very much like the past is found in present day, either recreated or preserved.
• Place Worse Than Death
• Planet of Hats
• Planetville
• Recycled IN SPACE!
  An existing story is given a new setting.
• RTP-Style Period Piece Location Shooting
  When you take archive footage and make it like your characters were doing stuff in the exact moment the footage was being filmed.
• Schizo Tech
• Science Destroys Magic
• Shadowland
• Shared Universe
• Single-Biome Planet
  A desert planet, ice planet, ocean planet.
• Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty
• Small, Secluded World
• Somewhere Song
• Spooky Silent Library
• Standard Fantasy Setting
• Standard Sci Fi Setting
• Standard Superhero Setting
• Sugar Bowl
  A bright, colorful, happy world.
• Techno Dystopia
• Television Geography
• Terminally Dependent Society
• There Are No Good Executives
• The Unmasqued World
• Urban Ruins
• Utopia
• The 'Verse
• Wainscot Society
  The setting may look like our world to most of its inhabitants — but there's a whole secondary society in hiding.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future
  Setting where Frickin' Laser Beams are portrayed as superior to kinetic weapons.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?
• The Wonderland
• World Gone Mad
• World of Badass
  Everyone is a badass.
• World of Ham
  Everyone is a Large Ham.
• The World as Myth
• World of Pun
• World of Symbolism
• World of Weirdness
• World Shapes
  • Dyson Sphere
  • Flat World
  • Hollow World
  • Ring World Planet
• You Would Not Want to Live in Dex