Picking the time and place is important for a story.
A setting is the time, geographic place and circumstances of the narrative.
The setting provides the main backdrop for a story. It often includes context beyond the rooms or buildings we see in the story. For example, the story may tell us about the culture, social customs or beliefs of the characters. The setting may show only one point in time, or it may depict time passing (by showing changing seasons).
There are many types of settings, such as natural outdoor settings, historical settings, or depicting a person's home.
See also Common Historical Settings.
Tropes:
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Categories
- Abandoned Area: Derelict places that are no longer used or inhabited by any people.
- Amusement Park Index: Tropes about amusement parks.
- Anime Settings: Places which are often found in anime and manga stories.
- Apocalyptic Index: Settings which have been devastated by world-ending disasters.
- Beach Tropes: Everything about coastal lands directly touching the sea.
- Building Tropes: All types of artificial structures.
- Bathroom Tropes: Places where one washes themselves for hygienic purposes.
- Castle Tropes: Castles and fortresses.
- Eating Establishments: Restaurants and other dining areas.
- Grocery Store Index: Shops where one may buy food and other home necessities.
- Hospital Tropes: A place you may need to visit if you're not feeling well.
- Hotel Tropes: Temporary lodging for travelers on the go.
- House Tropes: All kinds of buildings which at least someone calls their home.
- Museum of Tropes: Places where artifacts are on display for educational purposes.
- Prison Tropes: Buildings designed to lock up people in captivity.
- School Tropes: Educational facilities.
- The Tower: Buildings that are very vertically tall.
- Circus Index
- The City: Large urban settlements and adjacent suburbs of a metropolitan area.
- Countryside Index: Rural regions away from urban areas, where one gets closer to farmlands and the natural wilderness.
- Desert Tropes: Arid, dry regions which receive very little rainfall.
- Fictional Culture and Nation Tropes: Fictional countries and civilizations, along with the peoples who live in them.
- Hollywood Atlas: The general geography of Earth.
- The National Index: Sovereign countries and nation-states around the globe.
- Hollywood History: Settings inspired by the long history of the real world.
- Alternate History Tropes: Settings which are inspired by, but intentionally deviate from, periods of our historical past.
- Home Base: The headquarters and/or residence for the main characters.
- A Mountain of Tropes: Everything about hills and mountains.
- Otherworld Tropes: Parallel realms separate from the one we live in.
- Punk Punk
- Setting Gimmicks
- Small Towns: Rural or suburban settlements that are much smaller than big cities.
- Sewer Tropes: Underground waste storage facilities.
- Tropes at Sea: The big blue ocean.
- Tropes in Space: The vast universe beyond our own planet Earth.
- Tropes of the Jungle: Lush green rainforests in (semi-)tropical regions.
- Video Game Settings: Levels, maps, stages, and other places which are often found in video games.
- We Will Not Use an Index in the Future: All tropes concerning The Future and the world of tomorrow.
- You Would Not Want to Live in Dex: Various unpleasant settings which nobody would want to stay in if they were able to leave.
Time Tropes
- 20 Minutes into the Future: In the near future everyone is a robot and speaks 10 languages.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: Not a Period Piece, but not quite the present, either.
- After the End: A catastrophe — man-made 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.
- Age of Reptiles: A primordial period where reptiles ruled the Earth.
- Agri World: A planet, often depicted as a Single-Biome Planet, dedicated to agriculture.
- Alien Invasion: They don't come in peace.
- Alternative Calendar: If the end of World War II were used as an era, it would be the year 75 instead of 2020.
- 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?
- Animal Is the New Man: Animals take over after humanity falls.
- 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.
- Bible Times: The historical eras wherein The Bible is set.
- Big, Fat Future: Obese is slim in the future.
- Bug War: Humans vs. insectoid aliens.
- 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.
- Chandler American Time: A nastier relative of Genteel Interbellum Setting
- Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: Little vermin become the dominant life form.
- The Dark Times: Between the dinosaurs and early human civilization there were dragons, wizards and evil beyond imagination.
- Dawn of the Wild West: Just before and the beginning of the Wild West.
- 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
- 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: 1901 - 1910, from Queen Victoria's death to the outbreak of World War I.
- 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.
- Flooded Future World: In the future, the world becomes mostly or entirely covered by water.
- 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.
- Genteel Interbellum Setting: Sometime between 1918 and 1939.
- The Great Depression: The 1930s, a time of worldwide economic and political crisis that led directly to World War II.
- Heavenly Concentric Circles: Heavenly planes or beings are depicted as concentric circles in the sky.
- Here There Were Dragons: Once upon a time, Kings had wizards as courtiers and knights slew dragons.
- Hollywood Prehistory: Hollywood Stone Age. All cavemen look Neanderthalish and live in harmony with dinosaurs.
- 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.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: The Sorcerors fight the Scientists.
- 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.
- New Old West: Cowboys Now.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Just ahead of the present. That's why you haven't noticed the Alien Invasion.
- 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 ray guns, 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.
- Reclaimed by Nature: Nature grows over the remains of Mankind's infrastructure.
- Robot War: Robots turn against the creators.
- 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.
- Space Age Stasis: You have the jet packs, but they're the same as the ones made a thousand years ago.
- Space Western: Cowboys in space.
- Standard Post-Apocalyptic Setting: A post-apocalyptic featuring a lot of mutants, ruined cities, and brown palettes.
- Standard Sci-Fi History: The Far Future, the Really Far Future of Space Opera.
- The Time of Myths: Ancient Myths (Bronze Age Greek, what-have-you) are not only real, they are mashed together into one time period.
- Twilight of the Old West: The Wild West gradually gives way to the New Old West.
- The Wild West: Every Spaghetti- and Western.
- Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The Age of Sail.
- Works Set in World War I: 1914 — 1918
- Works Set in World War II: 1939 — 1945
- The Holocaust in Media: 1941-1945 (some start as early as 1933)
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
- Dreamville
- Elseworld
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: The common Hell.
- Fluffy Cloud Heaven
- 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.
- Where the Magic Went
- World of Chaos: A world where physical laws have been thrown to the wind and nothing makes sense.
- 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
- Crapsaccharine World
- Crapsack Only by Comparison
- Crapsack World
- Culture Chop Suey
- Desolation Shot
- Divided States of America
- Doubling for London
- Dyson Sphere
- Dystopia
- Dystopia Is Hard
- 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
- Flat World
- Gaia's Lament
- Götterdämmerung
- Hell on Earth
- Hollow World
- Invaded States of America
- Legion of Lost Souls
- Location Song
- Lost Colony
- Matriarchy
- Metro-Specific Underworld
- Mundane Dogmatic
- Never Recycle a Building
- Omegaverse
- 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
- Points of Light Setting
- Post-Soviet Reunion
- Ring World Planet
- 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
- Vestigial Crime Syndicate
- 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 Energy Weapons are portrayed as superior to kinetic weapons.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?
- The Wonderland: A strange, fantastical place that follows rules we aren't used to.
- World Gone Mad
- A World Half Full
- World of Badass: Everyone is a badass.
- World of Dumbass: Everyone is ignorant or lacks common sense.
- World of Ham: Everyone is a Large Ham.
- The World as Myth
- World of Pun
- World of Symbolism
- World of Weirdness: The mundane world is mixed with the supernatural and nobody bats an eye.
- World Shapes
- World Tour: When the story is set across multiple different locations around the Earth.
- Wretched Hive
- You Would Not Want to Live in Dex
Space / Place
A-D
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Sewers with high enough ceilings for people to walk around comfortably and enough space to hold an entire castle.
- Abusive Workplace: A place of employment that is detrimental to those who work there.
- Academy of Adventure: In class, you learn to fly and shoot laser beams out of your eyes.
- Adminisphere: The back office that administers the organisation. 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.
- Adventurer's 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.
- Afrofuturism: Africa as a place of technological wonder and modernity, rather than a primitive, savage land or a collection of impoverished third-world countries.
- Agri World: A One-Product Planet specifically dedicated to agriculture.
- Airstrip One: The Empire strips a conquered nation of its identity and assigns it a number.
- The Alcatraz: A high-security prison where there's lava instead of the ocean and the guards are huge robots.
- 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.
- Amusement Park of Doom: No one has entered in ages and because of that, the place is riddled with traps that kill you.
- Ancient Tomb: Tombs, burial chambers, sepulchers, mausoleums, charnel houses, ossuaries, catacombs, crypts, sometimes even dungeons.
- Apartment Complex of Horrors: Awful apartments, infested by horrors from awful neighbors to rats and ghosts.
- Arcadia: Quiet life in the countryside.
- Area 51: A top-secret research facility in the desert.
- Arms Fair: A market of military items.
- 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.
- Awesome Underwater World: The bottom of the ocean is an interesting place.
- Bad Guy Bar: Everyone inside is a macho wrestler with an evil look on his face.
- Bar Full of Aliens: The clientele of 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.
- 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.
- Bizarrchitecture: Implausible, ridiculous, bizarre architecture.
- Bleak Border Base: A fortress at the furthest corner of the country.
- 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.
- Bronson Canyon and Caves: A rocky area in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, whose relatively convenient location and desolate, remote appearance have made it a very popular filming location, particularly for works in the Science Fiction and Western genres.
- 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?
- Cardboard Prison: A prison that is way too easy to escape, so that villains can be reused.
- The Casino: A good place to gamble.
- Chez Restaurant: Expect snails, frog legs, temperamental chefs, and snotty waiters with funny accents.
- Christmas Town: Home of Santa Claus, the Christmas Elves and Christmas Magic!
- 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.
- Contemplation Location: A place where a character goes to think or meditate.
- Contrasting Sequel Setting
- 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.
- Creator Provincialism: If the creator lives in X, the setting in the work they created will be X.
- Creepy Basement: Like a regular basement, but with more spiders.
- Creepy Cathedral: The bells are haunting at midnight.
- Creepy Cave: Watch out for vampire bats! And for regular vampires.
- 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
- Dances and Balls: England between 1700 - 1900
- Danger in the Galactic Core: The wild center of the galaxy.
- Dangerous Workplace: Drinking from the water cooler will burn down the building.
- Darkest Africa: Everyone in Africa has a bone in their nose and hair, dances around a bonfire, and lives in a straw hut. Tarzan and his pals may be present
- Daycare Nightmare: A daycare (US) or nursery school (UK) where you really wouldn't want to send your kids.
- Death World: Watch out for that grass!
- Decadent Court: The entourage of the leaders conduct warfare in an ostensibly polite and civilized social battlefield.
- 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.
E-L
- 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!
- Elephant Graveyard: A secret place where elephants go to die.
- Enchanted Forest: A large, old-growth forest in which nature (and often magic) are supreme.
- Enclosed Space: Hope you don't have claustrophobia!
- Endless Corridor: Keep walking forever.
- Epiphanic Prison: To exit: Have epiphany.
- 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!
- The Exact Center of Everything: The galactic core or center of the universe is a MacGuffin Location.
- Exclusive Clique Clubhouse: Certain student groups get their own hideouts and housing.
- 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.
- Fantastic Underworld: A place underground with lots of interesting stuff.
- "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.
- Fake Town: A fake town or city built to look like a real one.
- 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).
- Foul Ball Pit: Filthy and/or dangerous fast-food playgrounds.
- 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.
- Gilded Cage: A comfortable place that keeps a character isolated from the real world.
- 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 1950s 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 of 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.
- Heel–Face Town: A Wretched Hive that became a better place to live.
- 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 who went 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.
- Idyllic English Village: A quintessentially English village full of dainty cottages with thatched roofs.
- Immortality Field: A place that functions as an Immortality Inducer.
- 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.
- Industrial World: A One-Product Planet specifically dedicated to material production.
- Industrialized Mercury: The planet Mercury is used as an industrial hub for a Colonized Solar System.
- Informed Location: The location of the setting is specified despite it being not relevant to the story.
- Injun Country: The North American lands filled with folks who were there before the settlers arrived.
- 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.
- Known by the Postal Address: The exact address of a place is often referred to in a work.
- 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: Lava or magma in locales that normally don't support volcanic activity.
- 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.
- Legalized Evil: Where acts of wrongdoing among the populace are legally allowed by the setting's ruling authority.
- 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.
- Level in the Clouds: A Video Game world set in the skies.
- Lighthouse Point: An atmospheric lighthouse.
- 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.
- 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.
M-R
- 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.
- 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
- Mechanical Ecosystem: A mechanical replica of a natural environment.
- Mega City: A city with the size or population of a country.
- Mega Dungeon: A dungeon-like environment that's big enough to spend the whole story there.
- Menacing Museum: A museum portrayed as ominous, dangerous or just plain evil.
- 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.
- Monster Menagerie: A facility where unusual creatures are contained, imprisoned, or studied.
- 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 similar to 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.
- Mountaintop Healthcare: Specialized medical facilities built on a picturesque, inaccessible mountain.
- 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.
- Mystical Hollywood: Hollywood presented as an Eldritch Location or as a place of supernatural activity.
- Native American Casino: All movie Indian reservations have casinos.
- Neglected Rez: Indigineous American and First Nation communities that were created via forced relocation by settlers and the government, whose policies have led them to fall into poverty disrepair.
- 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: A setting whose entire population is in eternal childhood.
- New Neighbours as the Plot Demands: Remember the New Guy? as applied to a small town setting.
- Nightmarish Nursery: A childish setting such as a nursery or playground played for horror or suspense.
- No Communities Were Harmed: The geographic equivalent of a Bland-Name Product or Captain Ersatz.
- Non-Heteronormative Society: Where being queer is seen as normal.
- Non-Residential Residence: A building or location someone is living in that was not intended to be a residence.
- Non Sequitur Environment: A setting that suddenly appears out of nowhere with no logical explanation or transition.
- No-Tell Motel: A sleazy motel that caters to a low-class clientele.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: The setting is so normal, it's boring... until something new comes in that upends that normality.
- Not-So-Safe Harbor: A Wretched Hive of seaside villainy.
- Ocean Punk: Take your standard dystopian Punk setting and Just Add Water.
- Oh Look, More Rooms!: A place looks fairly normal from the outside, but every door leads to more rooms than there should be given the size of the place.
- Old, Dark House: The classic setting for Ten Little Murder Victims. A Haunted House without the actual haunting.
- Ye Olde Nuclear Silo: In the future, abandoned nuclear silos are ready-made Elaborate Underground Bases.
- Off-Limits Room
- Ominous Floating Castle
- One-Neighbor Neighborhood: Conservation of Detail applied to a TV neighborhood, usually to save budget on actors and sets.
- Opium Den: A 19th century drug house, often far more romanticized than modern equivalents. Associated mostly with the British Empire and China.
- 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 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
- Outcast Refuge: A location where oppressed/outcast peoples can live in relative safety.
- 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.
- Overlaid Societies: Two or more communities that occupy the same space. They may interact with each other, or not be aware of each other's existence.
- The Pampas: The endless grasslands of South America, and home of the gauchos. Very common in Latin American Literature, specially Argentine Literature
- Paradise Planet: The most beautiful and most desirable world in the galaxy.
- 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.
- People Zoo: An alien zoo containing humans and other intelligent life as part of the exhibits.
- Physical Heaven: Heaven on Earth... literally.
- Physical Hell: A literal Hell on Earth
- 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 homogeneous, 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.
- P.O.W. Camp: Populated by soldiers captured on the field of battle by their enemies.
- Premiseville: The name of the place establishes the premise of the setting.
- Prison
- Privately Owned Society: Everything is owned by individuals, nothing is run by the government (at least not effectively).
- 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.
- Rich Recluse's Realm: A private domain bought and/or built by a super-rich recluse.
- 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.
- Rogue Planet: A planet which travels through space, with no home star.
- Runaway Hideaway: Where The Runaway hides.
S-W
- 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.
- Scenery-Based Societal Barometer: A single recurring location is used to measure the condition of a larger setting.
- School is Murder: A school with a Weirdness Magnet that results in a high student mortality rate
- Scienceville: A town, district or city well-known for its professional thinkers.
- Sea Sinkhole: Just when you thought falling off the edge of a flat earth wouldn't be a problem.
- 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 History: The work claims that it took place in Real Life, but the audience never heard of its events because In-Universe actors kept it secret.
- Secret Room: A hidden room in a building.
- 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.
- The Shangri-La: A paradise high up in the mountains.
- 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.
- Shining City: The greatest and most beautiful city in the world. The home of righteousness, justice, and civilization.
- Shrine to Self: When a narcissist exaggerates the trope.
- Simulated Urban Combat Area
- Sinister Southwest: The American Southwest is basically a death trap.
- 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, Big Hell: A small town with literally no secrets between their inhabitants. If something happens to you there, everyone will know about it.
- 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.
- Soulless Bedroom: Someone who lacks emotions has an unnaturally clean bedroom with few or no personal possessions.
- 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 Sector: Specific regions in space are described as "the Something Sector" or "Sector Something".
- 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 has No OSHA Compliance.
- Stellar Station
- Stepford Suburbia: When the Cut-and-Paste Suburb meets the Town with a Dark Secret and everyone has a Stepford Smile.
- Stock Star Systems: Star systems (such as Betelgeuse, Arcturus, or Alpha Centuari) which are well known by audiences and authors alike.
- 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).
- Suburban Gothic: Something sinister is happening in the suburbs.
- 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).
- Superhero Trophy Shelf: When a superhero exaggerates this trope in a different way.
- Super Multi-Purpose Room: A room that can be transformed to suit another purpose in an instant.
- Supernatural Scandinavia: The Scandinavian countries, but mystical and otherworldly.
- Super-Sargasso Sea: Where all the lost stuff ends up.
- Superhero Capital of the World: A location with an overwhelming surplus of superheroes.
- 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.
- Tailor-Made Prison: A prison made specially to hold an individual a normal prison cannot. Frequently fails anyway.
- 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.
- Tomorrowland: A region considerably more technologically advanced than its neighbours; often without explanation.
- Torture Cellar: The room in which unspeakable things are done to captives. Modern equivalent of Locked in the Dungeon.
- Totally Not a Criminal Front: Where mobsters hang out and plan crime, but deny that's the case.
- 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.
- Trashy Tourist Trap: Roadside attractions of varying quality.
- Trashy Trailer Home: The "worst" place to live is a trailer, according to fiction.
- 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.
- Treetop Town: When adults make an entire town out of Treehouses of Fun. Don't expect safety railings.
- Treetop World: When an entire setting exists within the canopies of titanic trees.
- Tropical Island Adventure: A tropical island.
- Trophy Room: Where a character keeps mementos of their greatest adventures.
- 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 built underground 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.
- Unnaturally Looping Location: A place that keeps repeating.
- 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.
- The Very Edge Of Everything: The last habitable area in a galaxy or universe before you hit an impassable barrier or an uninhabitable void or Eldritch Location.
- 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
- Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: Heroes live in idyllic or at least cosmetically pretty places were villains live in places of ruin and little.
- 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.
- Wacky Startup Workplace: An office that's fun and full of amenities.
- The War Room: Hollywood's version of a command and control center. Rarely well-lit.
- 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 exaggerated.
- 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).
- Workplace Horror: Monstrosities and serial killers showing up at a mundane job site.
- 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.