History Main / BleakAbyssRetirementHome

-->--''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS21E11MillionDollarMaybe Million Dollar Maybe]]"

* Averted with Min Mar Manor, the assisted living place in Creator/AmyTan 's ''The Bone-Setter's Daughter''. Ruth's estranged husband Art helps her locate a clean, cozy place where some of the attendants speak Mandarin and there's appropriate food and activity. Because [=LuLing=] would never take charity, Art creates a fake "radon leak" evacuation notice and tells her the city's going to pay for her stay in this nice hotel. In reality, he plans to pay for it himself. His conspiracy with Ruth to help her mother ends in their reconciliation.

* ''ComicBook/LePetitSpirou'': Mr. Mégot the gym teacher is shown living in one in a dream sequence. Little is shown of the home itself (but it's literally called "The Last Gasp") as the focus is on the hugely muscular adult Spirou and Vertignasse, come to extract vengeance from their old gym teacher. This causes Mégot to wake up and cancel the day's exhausting workout.

* In ''Film/TheInventionOfLying'', there is a nursing home called "A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People."
* ''Film/TheRealMacaw'' plays with the trope: The plot revolves around preventing the main character's grandfather from getting put in a retirement home, but it's because of the grandfather's enormous debt. They had to sell his house to pay it off.
* In ''Film/WinWin'', much of the plot revolves around a well-off elderly man unwillingly consigned to an assisted living facility, and who bears responsibility for this. The facility is apparently decent, but the man is still unhappy about leaving his home.

* Carl Reiner's dark farce ''Film/WheresPoppa'' has a scene where the lead character tours a Dickensian nursing home that he's considering putting his senile mother in.

* ''Film/GranTorino'': One of Walt's sons tries to convince him to move into a retirement home but not at all out of genuine concern for his bitter, elderly, and recently-widowed father, oh no. He just wanted the house, some of the stuff and hoped he'd get the titular CoolCar out of the deal too. One can only presume that this trope would have followed. Walt tells him to go to Hell.
* In ''Film/CloudAtlas'', publisher Timothy Cavendish ends up in one. He is on the run from a client's gangster relatives, and asks his brother Denholm for help. Denholm is fed up of helping Timothy, and Timothy soon finds out the place where he expected to lie low for a while is really a well-appointed prison where people dump their parents, and he can't get out. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's PlayedForLaughs, and Timothy is soon invited to join the escape committee.
* The Australian movie ''Film/TheEmptyBeach'' (1985) has PrivateDetective Cliff Hardy stumble across a NightmareFuel version, where the residents are locked in their rooms so their pensions can be collected and spent by the criminal running the place, who disposes of their bodies via an incinerator in the basement when they die of starvation and neglect.
* The 1986 comedy ''Film/ToughGuys'' is about two aging ex-cons who are let out of prison. One of them is not happy to be told he's reached mandatory retirement age and so has to live in a retirement home. He's reported to his parole officer for being a 'disruptive influence' after he demands proper food and sleeps with a female resident.

* "Grandma", the last episode of ''Film/IfIHadAMillion'' (1932), is about Idylwood, a 'rest place for elderly ladies' run by Mrs. Garvey (Blanche Frederici) who makes the girls sit in rocking chairs in drab uniforms and won't allow cats, cards or even a little cooking. Feisty Mary Walker (May Robson) often stands up to the old bitch... and she's the one who gets a million dollars from tycoon John Glidden, who's giving his fortune away to random strangers instead of his greedy relatives. She turns Idylwood into a private club with luxurious furnishings, party nights with gentlemen friends (including Glidden, who takes quite a shine to Mary) and, of course, cats everywhere.[[note]]It wasn't until the mid-1980s that the therapeutic value of allowing pets to either visit or stay full-time in assisted living and elder care places began to be acknowledged.[[/note]] What do the old staff get paid to do? Sit in their rocking chairs and [[TakeThat rock, and nothing else]].
* ''Film/INeverSangForMyFather'' has Creator/GeneHackman's character touring one of these in anticipation of having to house his aging father there, and being overcome with horror and guilt.
* ''Film/ChildrenOfNature'': The old folks' home in Reykjavik. There doesn't appear to be any sign of overt physical abuse, but it is clearly a warehouse where people wait to die, and the nurses are really jailers. The administrator, while claiming that everyone is free in the home, also tells Thorgeir and his daughter that the staff limits how much pocket money the residents can hold. Notably, the secretary that serves them coffee asks the daughter "how does he take it?", rather than asking Thorgeir, who is sitting right there. When Thorgeir first arrives Stella is being forcibly taken back to her room; later we learn that she was caught at the bus station. After she gets a little to vocal when complaining to Thorgeir, she is again forcibly escorted back to her room. The two of them eventually escape in the middle of the night.
* ''Film/IWantYouBack'': Peter's grandmother stayed in a retirement home in the last years of her life. He described it as a sad, smelly old building with terrible food and bad movies, and is the reason he wants to found his own cozy retirement home. Instead, he's stuck working for a similarly bleak retirement home company.
* ''Film/ICareALot'': Justified. Sam, the director of an assisted living facility, is part of Marla's conspiracy of rob the elderly. She imprisons them in his facility so she can seize and liquidate their assets without interference. In exchange for a cut of the profits, Sam has his staff control and abuse the victims to keep them from stopping Marla's fraud.

* In ''Literature/RedDragon'', the villain grew up in his grandmother's house modified into a retirement home. '

* Carlotta gives her kittens to a retirement center in ''Literature/CatPack''. It's well-kept but lonely, so she wants her kittens to brighten up the place.
* Averted with Min Mar Manor, the assisted living place in Creator/AmyTan 's ''The Bone-Setter's Daughter''. Ruth's estranged husband Art helps her locate a clean, cozy place where some of the attendants speak Mandarin and there's appropriate food and activity. Because [=LuLing=] would never take charity, Art creates a fake "radon leak" evacuation notice and tells her the city's going to pay for her stay in this nice hotel. In reality, he plans to pay for it himself. His conspiracy with Ruth to help her mother ends in their reconciliation.

* In ''Series/HouseOfAnubis'', Sarah thinks of her retirement home as this.

* Inverted in ''Series/TheSopranos''. Tony's mother Livia constantly refers to her nursing home[[note]][[InsistentTerminology "It's a retirement community!" ]][[/note]] as if it's a hell-hole (and that Tony doesn't visit her often), but on the whole it's shown to be a relatively pleasant place to live (and that Tony visits as frequently as his schedule allows, and substantially more often than a lot of others might).
* ''Series/WaitingForGod'': The management of Bayview Retirement Village, Harvey Baines, is continually attempting to find ways of cutting costs and making the place more profitable, usually at the expense of the residents. His schemes include poor food, underpaid workers, and having the heat. Fortunately, the main characters are (usually) able to foil his plans and improve their conditions.

* {{Subverted|Trope}} on a two-part episode of ''Series/RaisingHope''. Maw-Maw is admitted to a nursing home after her family [[AbuseMistake is suspected of elder abuse]] and they try to break her out because they think the nursing home is going to be like this. However, Burt and Virginia realize the staff at the nursing home are doing a better job taking care of her than they were. When she is kicked out and returns home, her family uses some of the techniques they learned from the staff to take care of/deal with her.

* Averted in ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' with the Sunshine Home, where Edith first works as a volunteer, then as an employee. It doesn't have a lot of frills, but has a warm, laid-back ambiance and the residents are happy. The one time Edith does CPR, it's on a visitor, a 40ish high-stress businessman who has a heart attack at his mom's birthday party.
* ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'': Referenced by one aging SerialKiller who lets himself be caught because [[GetIntoJailFree a life sentence]] would be more comfortable than any retirement home he could afford.
* ''Series/{{Cheers}}:'' Subverted in the second-to-last episode, when Cliff puts his mother in a home, which she treats like this, and is later on mentioned to have been on ''Series/SixtyMinutes'' twice. However, it soon turns out Cliff's ma is having a great time. Cliff's objection comes from the price, which is more than he can afford.

* ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'': [[OlderThanTheyLook Tommy]] decides he's had enough of being forced to pose as the "teenager", so he retires from the mission and moves into a local retirement home. He enjoys it at first, but after a few days he gets so bored he loses track of what day it is. Eventually he decides he can't take it anymore and asks to rejoin the mission.
-->'''Tommy:''' They keep the TV too loud, it's too hot, everyone's on drugs. It's like a rave without the babes.

* The video for ''Heavy Metal Breakdown'' by Music/GraveDigger features the band sneaking out of one to a graveyard, drinking and letting a drop fall on a certain grave, whereupon Death turns them into their (not that much) younger selves, allowing a gig to occur involving drinking HornyVikings and amazons on flying creatures, before they turn back, go back to the facility - and are met by Death again, who introduces them to their coffins. The sign bearing the name of the place has the subheading "A Nice Place To Die".

* The care center in ''Allelujah'' is competently staffed and relatively inviting, but it is suffering ''horribly'' from NHS budget cuts and everyone there knows it. [[spoiler:Not taking into account one of the nurses ''murdering'' any patient she personally feels is beyond help... which, in her opinion, is any patient who ''can't control their bladder''.]]

* The Retirement Castle in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is a perfect example of this. The orderlies even go out of their way to make life miserable for the elderly to keep them docile and zombie-like, because it makes their jobs easier. In early seasons, the home was portrayed as a totally drab and depressing place, although back then the staff ''did'' at least take care of them. Even back then, the Retirement Castle's [[OurSloganIsTerrible slogan]], "[[BlackComedy Where the Elderly Go to Hide from the Inevitable]]," really told you all you need to know about the place.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'' has the cast leave Toot in a nursing home because they realize that she's technically in her 80's (despite 'toons not aging), and a few out-of-context moments make them think she's senile. The nursing home is a filthy mess, but this trope ends up being subverted when its revealed that ''there is no such thing as Alzheimer's''. Old people just fake it to get their loved ones to pay for a nursing home where they can be pampered and they can treat the staff like shit with no consequence.
* ''WesternAnimation/HarvieKrumpet'': The staff at Harvie's old-folks home doesn't appear to be abusive but it's still a melancholy place. The Alzheimer's patients have a habit of wandering out and waiting at the bus stop to visit long-dead relatives, so the staff builds a fake bus stop on the grounds.
* In ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', the nursing home that Stan's grandfather is put in is compared to a prison, complete with a gang of elders that sells drugs to the local birthday entertainers and a prison economy that uses Hummel figurines as currency.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ScaryLarry'', some of the residents are so miserable they seize control of a nearby power plant in order to raise awareness of their cause.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' episode "[[Recap/BojackHorsemanS4E11TimesArrow Time's Arrow]]", after finding out that his now-senile mother [[spoiler:put amphetamines in his half-sister Hollyhock's coffee, thus making her ill, in an attempt to cause her to lose weight because Beatrice was so used to eating “pretty pills” in her youth]], [=BoJack=] punishes her by taking her out of her more comfortable nursing home and putting her in the worst one he could find, which looks pretty rundown and has her room overlooking a dumpster.
* In ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor,'' when Numbuh Three's first [[CompanionCube Rainbow Monkey]] starts getting too old to accompany her on missions, she brings him to a retirement home for Rainbow Monkeys [[spoiler:that turns out to be a trap set by Nurse Claiborne so she can take kids' Rainbow Monkeys and grind them up into Rainbow Munchies cereal]].
* {{Exaggerated|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/TheProudFamily'': Happy Endings Retirement Home is a luxury resort like Potemkin Village, beneath which is a straight-up ''slave plantation'' where the elderly are forced to harvest okra.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' subverts this in the episode "The Point of No Return" when Twilight and Spike go to see the old Canterlot librarian to return a long-overdue book. While Twilight ''thinks'' of the retirement home they go to as this at first, it turns out it's a great place with lots of fun activities for the residents to do, ranging from theater to painting to ''water-skiing.''

* In ''Film/BubbaHoTep'', Music/ElvisPresley and UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy lived in a run-down rest home.

* In ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'', after finding out that his now-senile mother [[spoiler:put amphetamines in his half-sister Hollyhock's coffee, thus making her ill, in an attempt to cause her to lose weight because Beatrice was so used to eating “pretty pills” in her youth]], [=BoJack=] punishes her by taking her out of her more comfortable nursing home and putting her in the worst one he could find, which looks pretty rundown and has her room overlooking a dumpster.

* The Australian movie ''The Empty Beach'' (1985) has PrivateDetective Cliff Hardy stumble across a NightmareFuel version, where the residents are locked in their rooms so their pensions can be collected and spent by the criminal running the place, who disposes of their bodies via an incinerator in the basement when they die of starvation and neglect.

* "Grandma", the last episode of ''If I Had A Million'' (1932), is about Idylwood, a 'rest place for elderly ladies' run by Mrs. Garvey (Blanche Frederici) who makes the girls sit in rocking chairs in drab uniforms and won't allow cats, cards or even a little cooking. Feisty Mary Walker (May Robson) often stands up to the old bitch... and she's the one who gets a million dollars from tycoon John Glidden, who's giving his fortune away to random strangers instead of his greedy relatives. She turns Idylwood into a private club with luxurious furnishings, party nights with gentlemen friends (including Glidden, who takes quite a shine to Mary) and, of course, cats everywhere.[[note]]It wasn't until the mid-1980s that the therapeutic value of allowing pets to either visit or stay full-time in assisted living and elder care places began to be acknowledged.[[/note]] What do the old staff get paid to do? Sit in their rocking chairs and [[TakeThat rock, and nothing else]].

-->--''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "Million Dollar Maybe"

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/JapanInc.'' had a chapter in which the main characters visit a nursing home (one of them has an elderly parent who may need such a facility and the others use this as an excuse to investigate a possible investment.) The place is decent enough, but very depressing, and the characters decide to recommend investing in ways for senior citizens to continue living with family.

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder: Fan Works]]

[[folder: Films -- Animated]]

[[folder: Films -- Live-Action]]

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV]]

* In the ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheXFilesS02E11ExcelsisDei 'Excelsis Dei']], the Excelsis Del Nursing Home is one, with a possible poltergeist.

[[folder: Music]]

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Web Comics]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* On ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'', Madame Foster believes retirement homes are a sort of prison where the elderly are brainwashed into compliance with tapioca pudding. The caretaker of the episode’s retirement home ends up later admitting that was the case.
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "A Clone of My Own" features a virtual reality to this effect.
-->'''Farnsworth:''' It was as though I were living in a facility in Florida with hundreds of other old people. All day long we'd play bingo, eat oatmeal and wait for our children to call.
-->(''The rest of the crew gasp in abject horror'')
-->'''Leela''': It's a hundred times more horrible than anything I could imagine!

* In the ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheXFilesS02E11ExcelsisDei 'Excelsis Dei']], the Excelsis Del Nursing Home is one, with a possible poltergeist..

* ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'': [[OlderThanTheyLook Tommy]] decides he's had enough of being forced to pose as the "teenager", so he decides to retire from the mission and move into a local retirement home. He enjoys it at first but after a few days he gets so bored he loses track of what day it is. Eventually, he decides he can't take it anymore and asks to rejoin the mission.

The home could be run-down and dingy, but even if it isn't, it will often be clinical, antiseptic, and dehumanizing. Attempts at warmth with arts-and-crafts projects on the walls will be about as effective as [[FauxtivationalPoster motivational posters at a corporate office.]]

For the grandkids visiting their grandparents who live here, this is [[TheBore an incredibly boring place to visit]]. Expect there to be nothing to do aside from "talking to Grandma and Grandpa", which [[RamblingOldManMonologue isn't exactly the most interesting thing for a child]]. Having to spend the week here is usually imposed as a punishment to get kids to behave better.

For the grandkids visiting their grandparents who live here, this is a ridiculously boring place to visit. Expect there to be nothing to do aside from "talking to Grandma and Grandpa", which [[RamblingOldManMonologue isn't exactly the most interesting thing for a child]]. Having to spend the week here is usually imposed as a punishment to get kids to behave better.

On the other hand, if the kids have some unresolved [[ParentalIssues issues with their parents]], then they might see putting the parents in sub-par nursing homes and never coming back as [[KickTheSonOfABitch kicking the father-of-a-bitch.]]

* The Australian movie ''Film/TheEmptyBeach'' (1985) has PrivateDetective Cliff Hardy stumble across a NightmareFuel version, where the residents are locked in their rooms so their pensions can be collected and spent by the criminal running the place, who disposes of their bodies via an incinerator in the basement when they die of starvation and neglect.

* ''Brotherhood of the Rose'' by Creator/DavidMorrell. The intelligence services of the world have set up several luxury "retirement" communities on [[TruceZone neutral ground where no-one is allowed to be harmed]]. Only the men running them know that the residents (ambitious men who've fallen from grace, cooped up in a Gilded Cage which eventually palls) are frequently DrivenToSuicide.

->'''Lisa:''' I can't believe you would take away their fun to make your jobs easier!
->'''Nurse:''' They should have had their fun before they came here!