History Main / CityNoir

* Detroit in ''Film/TheCrow'', in a heightened and stylised manner.

* Detroit (again) from ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'', along with Hengsha in Shanghai, in somewhat different styles. Detroit is very obviously based on ''Film/BladeRunner's'' LA, and Hengsha looks more like [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Midgar]]. New York from [[VideoGame/DeusEx the original]] might have counted, too, but we don't get to see much of it, and it's too poorly-rendered to tell. The developers had big plans for the Montreal level, but time constraints forced them to [[WhatMightHaveBeen cut out the entire thing in exchange for a single mission level.]]

* Chicago in ''VideoGame/{{Hitman Absolution}}'' is portrayed as this, straight out of a Frank Miller comic, fitting for its more grindhouse tone.

* ''Literature/BoneSong'' by John Meaney has Tristopolis, an UrbanFantasy version of this trope where humans live side by side with mages, witches, [[RevenantZombie zombies]], [[OurGhostsAreDifferent wraiths]], FelineFolk, [[OurGargoylesRock talking gargoyles]], and other fantasy creatures. The city's culture largely centers around death (the citizens invoke "Hades" and "Thanatos" in place of "God", and skulls are a prominent decorative element in architecture), the donut shops sell Tarantula Creams and coffee in snakeskin cups, and the city is powered by necroflux, a type of energy derived from the bones of the dead.

* HR Giger created a [[https://www.budsartbooks.com/product/h-r-giger-n-y-city/ book of art prints based on a visit to New York City]], first printed in 1981.
His biomechanical texture in full use at this time, we end up with towering forms in this texture, often with deep valleys between units of some giant alien machine and some... [[https://www.artsy.net/artwork/h-r-giger-new-york-city NSFW]] public transport units.

* ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'''s New York, especially when viewed from Rorschach's perspective.

* Mega City One in ''ComicBook/TheSimpingDetective'', a spinoff of ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''. It's not really an example in its parent series since Dredd is one of the super-cops actually running the city, but ''Simping'''s protagonist Jack Point is a hardboiled detective who navigates the strange underworld of MC-1 and happens to dress like a clown.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* ''Film/DarkCity'' is this setting taken to surreal heights through deliberate use of DieselPunk by the city's alien overlords.

* Every location in ''Film/TheMatrix'' trilogy, both in the real world and the simulated one, seems to be either one of these or a WretchedHive.
** The first movie in particular plays with this trope. While at the beginning of the movie and in all of the "Real World" scenes the scenery is dark and depressing, all of the scenes in the Matrix after Neo is awakened take place in broad daylight with only moderate cloud cover.

* Kanai Ward in ''VideoGame/MasterDetectivesArchivesRainCode'' is basically this, being a dystopian city run by a corrupt security force with a corrupt corporation serving as its government, while blanketed in a gloomy, rainy atmosphere.

* ''VideoGame/ShadowsOfDoubt'' has every randomly generated city be like this, with a combination of desaturatd palette, glum atmosphere, and dystopian backstory giving the entire city a callously hopeless vibe which only resonates further when you encounter desperate homeles people trying to rob you, illegal gun shops and under-the-table cybernetics providers, and at least one insane cult/narcotics ring.

* Hudson City, the "Dark Champions" default setting for ''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'', is a troubled setting based strongly on the old "urban jungle" perception of New York City. The most obvious crime and grime are in the [[WrongSideOfTheTracks Southside neighborhoods]] (south of the Stewart River), but thanks to [[ViceCity organized crime and corporate corruption]], even the nice neighborhoods of the Northside often have dark secrets hiding behind the facade.
* Night City, the default setting of ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' 2020, has all that defines a Cyberpunk-style City Noir.
* ''TabletopGame/{{City of Mist}}'' has this trope as its setting, or at least the half of the setting that [[{{Muggles}} most people]] [[ExtraStrengthMasquerade can]] [[InvisibleToNormals see...]]

* ''VideoGame/Nightshade1992'''s Metro City is about as old an example as you're going to get. (Even if it's mostly a [[ParodiedTrope spoof]] of the genre.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Infamous}}''' [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed Empire City]], a fictional stand-in for smaller New York. The city is quarantined due to an apparent plague, and there are three enigmatic gangs known as the Reapers, the Dust Men, and the First Sons who begin a turf war over the city. Empire City has areas in its sewer systems that can fit entire underground communities of homeless citizens.
* ''[[VideoGame/NeedForSpeed Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit's]]'' Empire City [[SarcasmMode (Wonder why this name is so common?)]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'s'' New York

* The first level from ''VideoGame/{{The Punisher|THQ}}'' game from 2005 begins with a monologue about how even though the politicians have tried to clean up the city, all they succeeded in doing was pushing crime to other neighborhoods.

* The urban locations in Kingpin: Life of Crime. Features everything between desolate ghettos and classy, but equally vile Radio City with it's Art Deco architecture (bearing a suspicious resemblance to some places in ''Film/{{Payback}}''). Also noteable for a weird mix of modern as well as 20's, 30's and steampunk-scifi styles (Cypress Hill music, Tommyguns, and thugs with cybernetic facial modifications all in the same setting!)
* ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST''[='s=] version of New Mombasa evokes this in the nighttime sections, though the city was brighter and more welcoming before the Covenant invaded.

* Bezoar City of the obscure CyberPunk shooter HardReset is perhaps the vastest, most towering example to be found on this page. When we say towering, we damn well mean it too; at certain points the wind whistles by fast enough to suggest you are a very... appreciable distance from the ground that you most definitely can't see. Yet, when you look up? There's still a lot more city to go. At least once you will go down the street through an industrial complex, only to find yourself on the ledge of a skyscraper.
* ''VIDEOGAME/BearWithMe'': Paper City seems to be a LighterAndSofter version of a Noir city, everything is black and white and it always rains, the local politicians are corrupt and the police are incompetent.

* ''VideoGame/{{Nightshade}}'''s Metro City is about as old an example as you're going to get. (Even if it's mostly a [[ParodiedTrope spoof]] of the genre.)

The localized, urban version of a CrapsackWorld. ApatheticCitizens shuffle though [[TheCityNarrows a dangerous maze of alleys]] among [[EvilTowerOfOminousness overbearing black skyscrapers]], [[NoTellMotel cheap hotels]] and {{Sinister Subway}}s as sirens wail in the background. Expect [[DeliberatelyMonochrome a limited color palette]], a palpable air of [[WrongSideOfTheTracks decay and depression]], and a [[ViceCity high crime rate]].

The localized, urban version of a CrapsackWorld. ApatheticCitizens shuffle though [[TheCityNarrows a maze of]] [[EvilTowerOfOminousness overbearing black skyscrapers]] and {{Sinister Subway}}s as sirens wail constantly in the background. Expect [[DeliberatelyMonochrome a very limited color palette]], a palpable air of [[WrongSideOfTheTracks decay and depression]], and an [[ViceCity unbelievable crime rate]].

Usually, cities like this [[UrbanSegregation will consist]] of a downtown area full of {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s surrounded by [[WretchedHive one giant slum]].

It will often be informed by ''Film/TaxiDriver''[[TheBigRottenApple -era New York]] (sinister clouds of steam emerging from the sewers, prostitutes on every corner, depressive [[KnightInSourArmor Knights in Sour Armor]] moaning about how crappy the place is, etc.), though the origins of City Noir are [[OlderThanTheyThink actually]] in GermanExpressionism. It may take these things to surreal lengths.

If our story takes place in the future, it will be a CyberPunk {{dystopia}} full of hideous dark {{Star Scraper}}s (symbolizing class oppression) and other signs of [[BadFuture a future gone wrong]]. If it takes place in the past, the City Noir of choice will probably either be [[UsefulNotes/{{London}} industrial revolution-era London]] or a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture fantasy counterpart]] version of it. Facsimiles of cities like New York and Chicago during TheGreatDepression might alternately pop up, although for American audiences they may well be shot through the NostalgiaFilter.

* Deliberate according to WordOfGod in ''Series/BronBroen''. The series consciously avoids any well-known tourist sites in Copenhagen or Malmö, with all scenes set in either bland, characterless office buildings or run-down, workaday suburban or rural places.

It will often be informed by ''Film/TaxiDriver''[[TheBigRottenApple -era New York]] (sinister clouds of steam emerging from the sewers, prostitutes on every corner, depressive [[KnightInSourArmor Knights in Sour Armor]] moaning about how crappy the place is, etc.), though the origins of City Noir are actually in GermanExpressionism. It may take these things to surreal lengths.

If our story takes place in the future, it will be a CyberPunk {{dystopia}} full of hideous dark {{Star Scraper}}s (symbolizing class oppression) and other signs of [[BadFuture a future gone wrong]]. If it takes place in the past, the City Noir of choice will probably either be [[UsefulNotes/{{London}} industrial revolution-era London]] or a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture fantasy counterpart]] version of it. Facsimiles of cities like New York and Chicago during the Great Depression might alternately pop up, although for American audiences they may well be shot through the NostalgiaFilter.

Cities Noir enjoy [[AlwaysNight twenty hour nights]] and [[CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain constant cloud cover.]] The remaining four hours of daylight consist of two hours of [[GrayRainOfDepression rain,]] one hour of thunderstorms, and one hour of sunsets. Sunrises usually mean the story is [[CueTheSun ending]].

* ''WesternAnimation/BlackDynamite'' features a very limited color palette when it portrays its city setting. As well the city's palpable air of decay and depression and high crime rate, most action takes place in a ghetto overrun by whores, orphans and corruption, where the cops are crooked and the IRS is psychotic. PlayedForLaughs.

* Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned, densely populated settlement in Kowloon City, UsefulNotes/HongKong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the Walled City became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to the UK by China in 1898. Its population increased dramatically following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. By 1990, the walled city contained 50,000 residents in 14 story high buildings so densely packed within its 2.6-hectare borders that the sun never reached the lower levels. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was controlled by local triads and had high rates of prostitution, gambling, and drug abuse.

A sister trope to SoiledCityOnAHill, ViceCity, WretchedHive and {{Gangsterland}}. The ShiningCity is the [[OppositeTropes antithesis]]. A NeonCity may verge on a CityNoir if enough of the signs are broken. See also TheCityNarrows and TheBigRottenApple which is what you get when you cross City Noir with the BigApplesauce trope. See CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain for the CyberPunk City Noir weather forecast.

* The video for Music/MichaelJackson's song "Music/BillieJean" is set primarily in a CityNoir. The shops on the street are closed, trash piles on the corners and billows in the wind like tumbleweeds. The only life outside of Jackson and the paparazzo following him is a homeless man sleeping in an alley. This is reinforced in the opening of the video which is DeliberatelyMonochrome.
%% * The music video for Bush's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FExyoAh6Ng "Greedy Fly"]] is CityNoir mixed with MindScrew. For added points, it was filmed in the same building as ''Film/{{Se7en}}''.

* Night City, the default setting of ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' 2020, has all that defines a Cyberpunk-style CityNoir.

** Moscow, however, has nothing on [[UsefulNotes/TheCityFormerlyKnownAs the second capital of Russia]], which has been a CityNoir for ''centuries'' -- before the term was even conceived -- probably ever since its inception. Even the classical writers of Russian literature would agree: Creator/FyodorDostoevsky himself famously called Saint-Petersburg the "City of the Half-Mad" in ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', while Creator/NikolaiGogol devoted an entire short story describing how gloomy and dark it was. And there's a good reason for that: [[TheNightThatNeverEnds on average, there are only two hundred days in the year that are rainy and only fifty that are sunny]], and the weather and life conditions were (and are) so unbearable that most of the peasants who constructed the city died and became the city's foundations. The (beautiful, mind you) famous baroque architecture of the city does not help either: [[InvokedTrope knowing full well that the place where Saint-Petersburg stood was naturally very gloomy]], they chose to use bright, pastel tones like yellow and cyan to add some color to the city, which, as Dostoyevsky pointed out, [[GoneHorriblyWrong made it look like a giant insane asylum]]. Saint-Petersburg also became famous for its rampant crime during TheNineties, and albeit the power of TheMafiya waned after Putin's ascension, the atmosphere of the city still reeks of criminality. In short, it is the ''quintessential'' CityNoir, with all of its main characteristics with the sole exception of huge skyscrapers. However, even that only applies to the old part of the city. The newer districts have a lot of tall ugly buildings [[note]]most of those may not really count as skyscrapers, since they're about 75-100 meters tall[[/note]], and [[https://severdol.ru/forum/download/file.php?id=39226&mode=view/XVlf9twz0w4.jpg several suburbs]] [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNjVqGvWkAABUKq.jpg consist entirely of them]].

* The Gotham City of 1981 as presented in ''Film/{{Joker|2019}}.'' Imagined as a love letter to earlier city noir films such as ''Film/TaxiDriver,'' this version of Gotham is dirty, depressing, overloaded with trash and inhabited by citizens who are apathetic at best and total, assholes at worst. You can tell things are really bad when the ''Joker'' is made out to be one of the few sympathetic people living there.