History Main / StepfordSuburbia

In the United States, whose suburbs largely inspired this trope, many of these too-perfect towns sprang up in TheFifties during the post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII housing boom. That's why this trope is commonly associated with the 50's and the cultural mindsets--for better or for worse--that went with the decade. Even if the show is set in the present day, the neighborhood will still have a decidedly old-fashioned vibe.

* This [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIoikPL-JVI Holsten Pilsener ad]] shows Creator/JeffGoldblum draving into such a place, where every house has identicaly dressed men in white shirts and glasses mowing their lawns in unison. Jeff quickly tries to leave.

* ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'' by Creator/IraLevin, along with its [[AdaptationDisplacement more famous film adaptation]], is the {{Trope Namer|s}}. In the titular small [[HollywoodNewEngland Connecticut]] suburb of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, the men are replacing their strong-willed, feminist-minded wives with docile [[RoboticReveal robot duplicates]]. Levin based the town on real-life Wilton, Connecticut (where he lived in TheSixties), only "a step away" from the city of Stamford.

* The Music/MelanieMartinez ConceptAlbum ''Music/CryBaby'' takes place in a pastel 1950s-styled universe. Cry Baby lives in a suburban town with her drug using brother, alcoholic mother, and distant, cheating father. It gets worse as time goes on. Cry Baby ends up heartbroken several time, [[OnePersonBirthdayParty no one comes to her birthday]], she ends up kidnapped and possibly raped, [[spoiler:she has to kill her kidnapper]], and she then undergoes a [[SanitySlippage mental breakdown]] as a result. Her mother also [[spoiler:kills her husband, his mistress, and possibly her brother]].

* This is the default setting of ''VideoGame/TheSims'', though it only gets [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential as dark as you are willing to make it]]. The aesthetic for the game was heavily inspired by American [[DomCom domestic sitcoms]], complete with the build menu in [[VideoGame/TheSims1 the original game]] having [[TheElevatorFromIpanema shopping mall muzak]] play whenever it is opened up. Creator/WillWright, the founder of Maxis and lead designer on the game, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32wN4IIDW1o&t=67m2s stated]] that the intent was to satirize the treadmill of consumerism that characterizes suburban life.

** The vampires in Alaska give the [[TheRenfield janissaries]] cozy suburban housing for themselves and their families in exchange for their loyalty. They get what people in TheFifties would consider a comfortable middle-class existence... in exchange for a lifetime of brainwashing and indoctrination to ensure loyalty to their vampire masters, enforced with brutal punishments for anybody who steps out of line.

* Creator/BrianDavidGilbert: The setting of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2f37Vb2NAE "Welcome to the Neighborhood!"]] The homeowner's association imposes strange, overly-arbitrary guidelines on the neighborhood, somehow possess intimate knowledge of the POV character's lifestyle (including ''the thread count of their bedsheets''), and takes the liberty of canceling their news subscription (presumably due to its grim contents). [[spoiler:And when the POV character kills their neighbor, an identical "new" neighbor appears the next morning, somehow cloned through the strange bathtub setup outlined in the HOA pamphlet.]]

Sees frequent use in the DomCom flavor of SubvertedSitcom. See also SuburbanGothic, which is less tight on the conformity but no less creepy.

* "Subdivisions", by Music/{{Rush}}, details the oppression of conformity in the "mass-production zone" -- and the inevitable draw they have on those who manage, briefly, to escape. In particular, from the chorus-verse bridge:

* The episode "Mooving Day" of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' involves Timmy moving to a very creepy suburb inspired by the TropeNamer. It turns out to be a plot from Doug Dimmadome (owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome), using genetically modified milk to turn people into social zombies so that they'll buy his new housing services.

%% ** Onett (PoliceBrutality), Twoson (the Happy Happy cultists), and Threed (Zombie outbreak) in ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}''.
** At first, Tazmily Village in ''VideoGame/Mother3'' is a beautiful SugarBowl where no one locks their doors and even the ''concept'' of money is foreign. Then the {{timeskip}} rolls around. All of a sudden it's a modernized suburbia with stores, a train station, cars, and all sorts of modern conveniences... [[spoiler:and anyone who doesn't join in has their house struck by lightning. The guy who ran the inn has it bought out from under him, every house has a "Happy Box" that people are compelled to stare at, anyone old and not rich is forced to live in a complete dump, everyone else (even the ''kids'') is expected to slave away in a factory for a living, and becoming a [[{{Mook}} Pigmask]] is treated as a great career goal.]] It gets worse.

** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': The classic episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" (and its remake in the [[Series/TheTwilightZone2002 UPN series]]) are examples of this trope and a deconstruction of it. Each version of this classic ends with the same twist, but two very different antagonists.
** The first episode of [[Series/TheTwilightZone2002 the 2002 series]] (titled "Evergreen") features an exclusive gated community where troublesome teens were turned into fertilizer to maintain idyllic family harmony.
** ''Series/TheTwilightZone2019'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone2019S2E10YouMightAlsoLike You Might Also Like]]", where everyone in the suburbs is awaiting the release of a new revolutionary product "Egg" - except this is the long-belated sequel of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", and the eggs are the killing blow. [[RussianReversal In Soviet Kanamit]], [[ImAHumanitarian Baby Eats You]]!.
* ''Series/TwinPeaks'' is a borderline example. The town is full of weird, dark, disturbing things, and everyone in town seems to have some kind of secret, but for the most part, they are good people. One episode features Agent Cooper giving a speech about how Twin Peaks is home to a kind of basic decency he thought was gone from the world, and then a few scenes later Bobby gives a speech blaming the whole community, "all you good people", for the murder of his girlfriend Laura Palmer, since "everybody knew that she was in trouble" and no one helped her. That Laura could go through the kind of torturous double life she did and nobody realized it is one of the key tensions of the show.
** The third series has a subplot set in a very surreal, empty-seeming suburb outside of Las Vegas, and an insurance agent who is almost literally sleepwalking through his life - [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight and nobody notices]].

* The 2023 event series, ''ComicBook/KnightTerrors has Poison Ivy's worst nightmare; a pastel colored 1950s suburb where heroes and villains come together. Harley Quinn even adapts a [[Main/StepfordSmiler Stepford smile.]]

%% ** Onett (PoliceBrutality), Twoson (the Happy Happy cultists), and Threed (Zombie outbreak) in ''VideoGame/EarthBound''.

* "Night Horrors: Wolfsbane", a sourcebook for ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken'' features a town where everything's nice and orderly, a little oasis in the midst of the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness''. What made it so nice and orderly? Simple; several years ago, the town's [[GeniusLoci spirit]] went completely power mad, ate everything nearby in the Shadow to become the only semi-sane ''[[HybridMonster magath]]'' in existence, and ''[[AssimilationPlot simultaneously Claimed the entire town]]''. Stay too long and he'll happily add you to his safe, happy, and duller-than-a-bag-of-hammers-on-downers HiveMind.

* The theatrical TropeCodifier is Music/LeonardBernstein's 1952 mini-opera ''Trouble In Tahiti'', whose [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield generic American setting]] is even called {{Suburbia}}. It has a vocal trio cheerfully singing about the lovely life of a HappilyMarried couple, providing extreme MoodDissonance counterpoint to the couple actually featured in the show, who are so "sharing, smiling, confiding, loving" that they struggle to remain on speaking terms with each other.

* The Zaibatsu corporation owns an upscale suburb in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto2'' called "The Village", apparently a shout out to ''Series/{{The Prisoner|1967}}''. It's a swanky community with pink cobblestone streets, art deco houses, and luxury cars roving the streets.
* In ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney'', Agent 47 pays a visit on a gated community located in southern California. The target of the day, Vinnie, is a mob informant living under witness protection with his family in an idyllic house. Scratch the surface, though, and the American dream isn't exactly working out for Vinnie: his wife is getting hammered on wine while hitting on pool boys, the feds are upstairs sniffing his daughter's panties, and Vinnie is too terrified to leave his bodyguard's side for even a second.
** In ''VideoGame/Hitman2'', Agent 47 pays a visit to a gated community in Vermont, in a mission homaging the above contract. The neighborhood is very nice and idyllic, though it looks like it stepped right out of the 50s. It doesn't take long to see the rot under the surface, however, as the target of the day is a former KGB chief living under a fake identity, his army of bodyguards are slowly purchasing the homes and taking the neighborhood over, there's a SerialKiller living nearby, one of the houses was vacated following a violent murder that was apparently covered up, and in one of the Elusive Target missions, another serial killer arrives in town looking for prey.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Mercenaries}}'', North Korean dictator General Song builds one as a backdrop for his propaganda films. What's creepy is that the buildings themselves are just facades with nothing behind them.
* The trope-naming "The MilkmanConspiracy" level of ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' is a ''literally'' twisted (i.e. it [[AlienGeometries looks like an Escher engraving]]), evil little suburb where the lawn flamingos turn to watch you and everyone is either a [[GirlScoutsAreEvil Rainbow Squirt]] or a [[TheMenInBlack G-Man]]. It's hilarious, but rather creepy once you realize that this is how [[ConspiracyTheorist Boyd]] sees the entire world, as a sham Stepford Suburbia that's ''watching him all the time''.

* Although most of the human characters in the first ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumans'' game fit comfortably into the StepfordSmiler trope, Santa Modesta is set in a pleasant 1950s suburbia... in which everyone has various psychological hang-ups seething just underneath the surface.

* ''VideoGame/MafiaIII''[='=]s UsefulNotes/NewOrleans-inspired setting offers up the neighborhood of Frisco Fields, an upper-middle class, white-picket-fence suburb that looks like something straight out of ''Series/TheBradyBunch''. It's also the home base of [[TheKlan the Southern Union]], founded as it was by people fleeing the integration of New Bordeaux, while many of the housewives are hopped up on 'weight-loss pills' that they didn't realize were actually PCP until TheMafia already had them addicted.
* ''VideoGame/GleanerHeights'' takes place in an idealistic rural village. You're the new farmer who recently moved to town. As it turns out, many of the local villagers have very dark skeletons in their closets.
* This is the default setting of ''VideoGame/TheSims'', though it only gets [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential as dark as you are willing to make it]]. The aesthetic for the game was heavily inspired by American [[DomCom domestic sitcoms]], complete with the build menu in [[VideoGame/TheSims1 the original game]] having [[TheElevatorFromIpanema shopping mall muzak]] play whenever it is opened up. Creator/WillWright, the founder of Maxis and lead designer on the game, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32wN4IIDW1o&t=67m2s stated]] that the intent was to satirize the treadmill of consumerism that characterizes suburban life.

* In ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'', Desert Bluffs, run by Strexcorp, seems to be this. They desire to keep growing, spreading across the world, making everyone as Happy and Productive as they are, even Night Vale. [[spoiler: They even succeeded for a while.]]

* This is the typical form taken by the "nature preserves" used by some of ''Website/{{Mortasheen}}'''s many MadScientist-types to isolate and study pure humans.

* Episode 150, Cul De Sac, of ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'' features one of these in its statement. The neighborhood the protagonist gets trapped in a suburb that goes on forever, and in it, all the houses are completely identical and all the street signs are only labeled things like "ROAD" or "STREET". He almost gets lost in it forever, only surviving through sheer luck. He finds a corpse in a house that suggest not everyone is so lucky.

* The neighborhood Malice in ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', appears to be populated primarily by professional costumed villains.
* [[MeaningfulName Moralton]] in ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel''. For all the WesternAnimation/DaveyAndGoliath stylings, it is a place filled with self-hating, hypocritical, abusive {{Jerkass}}es who seem dead set on crushing the naive and hopelessly optimistic protagonist. And that's when said protagonist isn't wreaking carnage because he takes the bad advice of his authority figures to extreme and unfortunate ends.

* Shaker Heights, Ohio in ''Literature/LittleFiresEverywhere''; the real life version is one of the first "planned communities" in the US (see below).
* Wink, New Mexico in ''American Elsewhere'' by Robert Jackson Bennett was this. It is beautiful and picturesque, but there is something ''extremely'' wrong with it. [[spoiler: For one thing, the human residents all live in fear of the EldritchAbomination residents, because while ''most'' of them mean no harm, some do, and even the "nice" ones are dangerous when crossed. The EldritchAbomination residents put themselves through various forms of discomfort because they learned how humans are "supposed to" act when they broke through during the 50s and 60s. Also, no one is able to leave and nothing ever changes, at least until the protagonist arrives.]]
* The titular short story in ''[[Literature/{{Weenies}} In the Land of the Lawn Weenies]]'' is set in a suburban community where the dads have a zombie-like obsession with lawn care. The protagonist fears that his own dad will succumb to the mindset.
* ''How Buildings Learn'' (non-fiction) by Stewart Brand has sections about the building styles that Brand calls High Road ("House Proud") and Low Road ("Nobody cares what you do in there").
** Houses in a High Road suburb may be built with a wider variety of floor plans, but they tend to be dominated by residents' committees which are terrified that if anyone does anything at all to their house, then it will reduce the value of everyone else's house. There are probably a few novels' worth of lingering resentments right there.
** Low Road suburbs are usually built with much less variety, because that's cheaper, but it's much easier for the residents to modify and extend their houses, so individuality tends to increase over time.
* Creator/SinclairLewis' ''Main Street'' was a [[UnbuiltTrope prototypical deconstruction]] of middle-class suburban America, notably written in 1920 decades before the great suburban boom of the mid-late 20th century. The setting of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota (a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed fictionalized version]] of Lewis' real-life childhood hometown of Sauk Center, Minnesota, which the residents were ''not'' amused by) may look like an idealized EverytownAmerica on the surface, and the protagonist Carol initially sees it as such when she moves there with her new husband, but she grows miserable as she realizes that all of her neighbors are vain, materialistic, smugly conservative social climbers and that the only people she can connect with are the town's outcasts. By the end, she leaves Gopher Prairie behind and moves to UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC to try and make it on her own, and her return to Gopher Prairie by the end indicates that she too is turning into a StepfordSmiler no matter how much she refuses to admit it.
* ''Literature/ProudPinkSky'' has William's hometown. Though it's pleasant on the surface, for a queer teenager it's a menacing and claustrophobic experience.

* In ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', Wisteria Lane is a place of constant secrets, lies, adultery, misfortunes and other nasty things.
* ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'':
** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': The classic episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" (and its remake in the [[Series/TheTwilightZone2002 UPN series]]) are examples of this trope and a deconstruction of it. Each version of this classic ends with the same twist, but two very different antagonists.
** The first episode of [[Series/TheTwilightZone2002 the 2002 series]] (titled "Evergreen") features an exclusive gated community where troublesome teens were turned into fertilizer to maintain idyllic family harmony.
** ''Series/TheTwilightZone2019'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone2019S2E10YouMightAlsoLike You Might Also Like]]", where everyone in the suburbs is awaiting the release of a new revolutionary product "Egg" - except this is the long-belated sequel of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", and the eggs are the killing blow. [[RussianReversal In Soviet Kanamit]], [[ImAHumanitarian Baby Eats You]]!.

%% * ''Series/TheXFiles'' episodes "Arcadia" and "Chimera".
* The hell dimension in the ''Series/{{Angel}}'' episode "[[Recap/AngelS05E17Underneath Underneath]]" invoked this trope. Lindsey is condemned with no memory in a cheerful, happy suburban home with a loving wife and son. The cellar of the house is a medieval torture cell where a monstrous demon cuts out his heart every night. When they try to escape, the wife, son, and postman pull out submachine guns and start firing. Gunn later describes the worst of it being the buried knowledge that the happy facade concealed horrors without ever being able to know what they were. Angel, who had his son's memories wiped and placed him with a happy, suburban family to conceal the horrors of his past, is silently but noticeably troubled by the description.
%% * Agrestic in ''Series/{{Weeds}}''. The reason why the ThemeTune is "Little Boxes" (see below).
%%* Series/TheRiches

%% * Featured in one episode of ''Series/FearItself''.

%%* Where ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' moves to in season 4.
%%* ''Series/{{Suburgatory}}'', of course.
* ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'': Like in its original comic book incarnation, Woodbury has dark secrets behind the cheerful facade of an "everytown USA" suburbia that are hidden from most of the populace.
* The ''Series/Charmed1998'' episode "[[Recap/CharmedS6E23ItsABadBadBadBadWorldPart2 It's A Bad Bad Bad Bad World Part 2]]", shows what our world would be like without sufficient evil to balance it out -- sure, everybody would be friendly and nice, but parking your car in the wrong place is a capital offense and using your cellphone in a hospital gets your hand lopped off.
* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E20WhatIsAndWhatShouldNeverBe "What Is And What Should Never Be" (S02, Ep20)]], Dean seems to feel the Lawrence, Kansas, with his mother still living in their childhood home is about as perfect an existence as he can expect, but the neighbor seems confused by Dean's cheerful wave while mowing the lawn.

%% * ''Series/Millennium1996'': Most prominently in the S1 episode "Weeds," but there are many other examples.
* Back when [[Creator/TheBBC BBC One]] was using the "Circles" idents, one of them featured a suburb where six blank-faced women were mowing their lawns, only for the pull-back to reveal that they were creating a single huge [[CropCircles Crop Circle]].
* ''Series/TheBoys2019''. When she finally makes an appearance at the end of Season One, Rebecca Butcher is raising Homelander's son Ryan in what appears to be EverytownAmerica. Season 2 however reveals that she's living in a Vought facility surrounded by prison walls, her house both inside and outside is monitored by hidden cameras linked to the guardroom, and the whole place is just a Potemkin Village to give Ryan a stable upbringing so he won't turn out [[BewareTheSuperman like his psychopathic father]]. Rebecca lampshades the trope by saying she coped with her GildedCage by pretending she was [[Series/TheBradyBunch Carol Brady]].
* ''Series/WandaVision'': Westview, New Jersey is a suburban community straight out of sitcom central casting that ComicBook/ScarletWitch and ComicBook/TheVision find themselves living in as a HappilyMarried DomCom couple. As the show goes on, the creepy elements go from mere subtext (why are two superheroes acting out this sitcom fantasy?) to outright text as it's revealed that [[spoiler:Wanda cast a Hex over the entire town due to her grief at losing Pietro and Vision and everyone's being forced to act out roles in her sitcom fantasies]].

* "Little Boxes", the 1962 folk song composed by Malvina Reynolds and popularized by Pete Seeger (and used as the original opening theme to ''Series/{{Weeds}}''). It was covered by Music/TheDecemberists, whose choice of chord progression drags the subtext kicking and screaming to the fore.
-->''Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky... And they all look just the same.''
* "The Kids Aren't Alright", by Music/TheOffspring, tells the story of a neighborhood full of promising lives that went FromBadToWorse: Jamie got pregnant and dropped from high school, Mark has no job and spends all his days playing guitar and smoking pot, Jay committed suicide, and Brandon OD'd and died. Supposedly, Dexter Holland wrote this song after finding his old neighborhood torn apart by tragedy.
* "Subdivisions", by Music/{{Rush}}, details the oppression of conformity in the "mass-production zone" -- and the inevitable draw they have on those who manage, briefly, to escape. In particular, from the chorus-verse bridge:
-->''Any escape might help to smoothe\\
The unattractive truth\\
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe\\
The restless dreams of youth''
* "Pleasant Valley Sunday", written for Music/TheMonkees by Gerry Goffin and Music/CaroleKing.
-->''Another Pleasant Valley Sunday\\
Charcoal burning everywhere\\
Rows of houses that are all the same\\
And no one seems to care''
* "Shangri-La" and "Well Respected Man" by Music/TheKinks are about suburbia and [[StepfordSmiler the people who inhabit it]]. It was a regular theme with them, although there are subversions such as "Village Green" (where the singer longs for the "simple people," "fresh air" and 'Sunday school" of his idyllic hometown, and laments how modernization is turning it into TheThemeParkVersion).
* The video for Music/{{Soundgarden}}'s "Black Hole Sun." The song doesn't explicitly mention suburbia, but... this trope hardly seems out of place.

* The video for Das Weisse Licht by Oomph! shows that this order is maintained by replacing the inhabitants with robots, in a Stepford sort of way.

* Living on Music/{{XTC}}'s "Respectable Street":
-->''Sunday church and they look fetching\\
Saturday night saw him retching over our fence\\
Bang the wall for me to turn down\\
I can see them with their stern frowns as they dispense\\
The kind of look that says they're perfect''
* Music/ArcadeFire's third album, ''The Suburbs'', is a ConceptAlbum which focuses on, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the suburbs]]. It takes a somewhat nuanced view of the subject (Win Butler is on record as saying that it's a letter "''from''" the suburbs, not for them or against them), but the Stepford form is definitely visible (particularly "Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains").
* Music/TheSmashingPumpkins' video for "Try, Try, Try" contains a sequence that takes place in a dark Stepford Suburbia.
* Music/{{Blur}} often sang about apparently normal suburban characters who are a lot weirder under the surface. "Tracy Jacks" and "Stereotypes" are two examples.
* "Paper Mache", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and recorded by Music/DionneWarwick.
-->''Twenty houses in a row\\
Eighty people watch a TV show\\
Paper people, cardboard dreams\\
How unreal the whole thing seems''
* "The Sound of the Suburbs" by The Members is a late '70s punk anthem about teenagers bored by suburban conformity.
%% * "No Birds" by Music/PublicImageLtd.
%% * "This Could Be Anywhere" by The Music/DeadKennedys.
%% * "The Spectator" by Misery Index.
* The Music/MelanieMartinez ConceptAlbum ''Music/CryBaby'' takes place in a pastel 1950s-styled universe. Cry Baby lives in a suburban town with her drug using brother, alcoholic mother, and distant, cheating father. It gets worse as time goes on. Cry Baby ends up heartbroken several time, [[OnePersonBirthdayParty no one comes to her birthday]], she ends up kidnapped and possibly raped, [[spoiler:she has to kill her kidnapper]], and she then undergoes a [[SanitySlippage mental breakdown]] as a result. Her mother also [[spoiler:kills her husband, his mistress, and possibly her brother]].
* The video for the Music/BarenakedLadies' song "Call and Answer" is set in this, with identical houses and all the driveways filled with Volkswagen New Beetles that repeatedly pull in, change drivers, and pull out again.
* "Suburbia Overture" by Will Wood is based entirely around this trope, with multiple references to drugs, violence, and the nuclear panic of the '50s and '60s throughout. Even the name of the fictional neighborhood, Mary Bell Township, takes its name from a serial killer.
-->''The dog bites the postman while basement eyes dream\\
Of a night at the drive-in with an AR-15''

* The opening track of Music/WillWood's ''The Normal Album'' describes a traditional American town... but with disturbing lines snuck in revolving around nuclear war. It dips into much darker lyrics about the citizens "cumming radiation" and eating each other's organs.

%% Trope was declared Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php?crowner_id=13qdhjkz
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%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/AWrinkleInTime2018 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/court_chu_asc_wrinkle_camazotz_houses_01.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Come inside, kids, dinner's ready!"[[note]]Unused concept art by [[https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9dkGy Court Chu.]][[/note]]]]

%% Caption selected per above IP thread. Please do not replace or remove without discussion in the Caption Repair thread:
%% https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1404492079030138900

* New Town from ''{{Manga/Soil}}'': everything is neat and clean, the residents' flowers are oh so perfect, and the everyone is so nice and normal. The town council president is obsessed with maintaining its purity from "foreign organisms" like recent newcomers [[spoiler: and possible interdimensional con artists]] the Suzushiro family. Privately he admits he too is a "foreign organism" what with the obsession and the [[spoiler: secret video cameras, blackmail, and [[{{Squick}} raping every boy in town]] thanks to [[DudeShesLikeInAComa being a dentist with laughing gas]]]].
* ''Manga/OnePiece'': Ebisu Town, located in Wano Country, is a small, impoverished settlement located East of the Flower Capital. The inhabitants are characterized for following a philosophy of always being positive, constantly laughing about their many troubles. [[spoiler: It is revealed the reason behind this is that [[DirtyCoward Shogun Orochi]] fed the starving population defective SMILE fruits. Those artificial Devil Fruits have the side-effect of preventing whoever has consumed them from expressing any negative emotions, forcing them to smile and appear happy regardless of anything, hence the name. To hammer the point, the residents' smiles are accurately described as [[BecomingTheMask masks that they're incapable of taking off]].]]
* Morioh-cho from ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable'', under normal circumstances, would be a beautiful suburb where everybody lives a vibrant life. However, add [[FightingSpirit Stand]] users into the mix, and Morioh becomes a little more than ''just'' a bizarre town. From two brothers living in an abandoned house attempting to kill their father who's been mutated into a grotesque monster, to a {{yandere}} taking over the mayor's seaside beach house so she can be with her beloved, to a [[AmbiguouslyHuman self-proclaimed alien]], to a man living inside of an electric pylon, to a ghost alley where giant hands will [[DraggedOffToHell drag you off to Hell]], to serial killings collectively amassed by a SerialRapist, an electric guitar player, and a CreatureOfHabit, Morioh may be a beautiful town, but it has ''many'' skeletons swept under the rug.

* An issue of ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'' featured a Stepford Suburbia run by an ObsessivelyNormal man who had created a [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum madness-powered]] machine that turned people "normal."[[note]]He thought his father made it, but actually his father's machine was a self-flagellation device with which he punished himself for not being "normal."[[/note]] He started as a HeteronormativeCrusader with mild racism and an inablility to understand young people, but as his madness increased, his definition of "normal" grew even narrower ("You take milk in your coffee, right, Joe?")
* ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'': Woodbury appears to be a type of this. It initially looks like a pleasant enough place inside the walls that protect it from the rest of the ZombieApocalypse, but then the viewer is given views behind the facade, including but not limited to a leader that has [[spoiler:aquariums with severed zombie heads]] and prevents anyone from permanently leaving the town.

* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'': When the heroes are defeated and forcibly disbanded by corrupt governments, the Engineer and Swyft are brainwashed and forced into horribly abusive marriages with actors paid to make their lives miserable ([[KidsAreCruel including children]]), all without being able to do anything about it.
* The whole of 60s Gotham City (or at least the North Side) is like this in ''Comicbook/GothamCityYearOne''. It's initially presented as the story of how one horrific event turned Gotham from a big city that felt like a small town to the WretchedHive it is today. It's actually the story of how one horrific event caused everything that was ''already'' wrong with the city to bubble to the surface so the Northsiders couldn't ignore it.

* The community of Stepford, Connecticut from ''Film/TheStepfordWives'', adapted from the novel by Creator/IraLevin (described in more detail under Literature).
* [[https://i.insider.com/561bcf71bd86ef175c8b5f72 The town]] in ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' was very much ''the'' creepy little 1950-'60s town.
* ''Film/HotFuzz'' is a British example. Sandford however starts off rather boringly idyllic, and only really enters creepy territory when its denizens start dropping like flies. Or more precisely, when the protagonist ''notices'' that denizens are dropping like flies. The locals are used to the attrition. "[[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident Accidents]] happen every day!"
* ''Film/{{Pleasantville}}'': the titular, eerily-monochrome setting.

%% * ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' and its artificial town of Seahaven.
%% * ''Film/RevolutionaryRoad''.
* Cinephiles have long pointed out that many of the {{Melodrama}} made in TheFifties were in fact UnbuiltTrope satire on the mentality and values of this trope:
** Creator/VincenteMinnelli's ''Some Came Running'' portrayed the SmallTownBoredom and hypocrisy of this era, the fact that the good family man is having a mistress on the side while publicly acting like a family man.
** Creator/DouglasSirk's ''Film/AllThatHeavenAllows'' attacks the sexism and DoubleStandard as well as the ConspicuousConsumption that people use as a substitute to solving their actual problems.
* Creator/NicholasRay also provided two famous attacks on this concept, both made ''during'' TheFifties:
** ''Film/RebelWithoutACause'' was set in an idyllic American Dream suburbia filled with dysfunction and neuroses.
** ''Film/BiggerThanLife'' attacks it from every angle. The father can only provide the lifestyle by working two jobs which he has [[UnconfessedUnemployment to lie to his wife about]], they are constantly struggling to make their ends meet and more or less live beyond their means just to maintain the facade.
* ''Film/{{Disturbia}}''. A good pair of binoculars can reveal that the children next door are secretly watching porn, the man across the road is having an affair with his maid, and [[spoiler:the quiet next-door neighbor is a serial killer with several rooms of his house designed to accommodate this...unusual habit]].
* ''Film/TheGraduate'' is, in many ways, about Ben and Elaine trying to escape this.

* The films of Creator/ToddSolondz feature this. For example: ''Film/Happiness1998'' is a BlackComedy that uses its deceivingly peaceful and idealistic settings to hide the fact that the world they're set in are exceedingly grim places and feature people who try to find Happiness in all the worst places.
* ''Film/BlueVelvet'' could mainly be called more of a SuburbanGothic, but the uncanny nature of suburbia is emphasized in the cinematography. The movie opens with a MisterSandmanSequence establishing the [[RetroUniverse retro-'50s setting]], with the habits of suburban life - picking up newspapers, mowing the lawn, etcetera - depicted as almost robotic movements.

* In ''Film/TheCatInTheHat'' live-action film, the kids' neighboorhood could be described as this.
* In ''Film/{{Targets}}'', Vietnam vet Bobby Thompson's empty existence in one of these is what finally sends him on a shooting spree.
%% * Camelot Gardens, the gated community in ''Film/LawnDogs''.
* The relatively obscure 1989 film ''Film/{{Parents}}'' is set in lovely '50s suburbia... and centers around a boy who's beginning to wonder where his parents buy [[ImAHumanitarian all the meat they cook.]]
* ''Film/OverTheEdge'' is about what happens when a bunch of suburban parents neglect their kids and their needs.
* The makers of ''Film/KingsRow'', set in a nice quiet small town, had to tone down the material quite a bit, as the source novel featured things like homosexuality and incest. But the film as it was made still features a MadwomanInTheAttic, a murder-suicide, and a psychotic doctor who maims or kills patients that he deems to be morally unworthy.
%% * The title space station in ''Film/{{Elysium}}'' is this, only RecycledInSpace.

* ''Film/FarFromHeaven'', set in 1950s Connecticut, is a GenreThrowback to Douglas Sirk's '50s melodramas mentioned above. ''Everyone'' and ''everything'' in this film looks perfect--hair, clothes, houses, etc. Except the protagonist and her husband are in a deeply unhappy SexlessMarriage, thanks to him being gay, she's slowly but surely falling in love with her African-American gardener, and their supposedly liberal community is actually quite bigoted and narrow-minded.
* In the ''Film/FearStreet'' trilogy, the town of Sunnyvale is full of rich jerks with unusually good luck, in contrast to the squalid town of Shadyside nearby - a town where people have the unusual tendency to suddenly turn into SlasherMovie villains. We eventually learn that [[spoiler: this is because of a DealWithTheDevil made by one of Sunnyvale's ruling families]].

* ''Film/TheBigHit'': Establishing shots of the suburban neighborhood are stylized to show all the neighbors doing everything in robotic unison.
* ''Film/{{Cypher}}'': After his interview with Digicorp, Morgan drives back home to his suburban residence. The cinematography puts emphasis on the uniform sterility of his neighborhood to justify why he would want to seek out a more exciting existence as a corporate spy.
* ''Film/{{Vivarium}}'': When young couple Tom and Gemma are looking for a home, they meet with an awkward real estate agent who thinks he has the perfect house for them. To their reluctance, he takes the couple to 'Yonder' - a seemingly perfect, idyllic neighbourhood. After being given a tour around a house, they decide to leave but realise they cannot. Trapped in a weird dimension, where every street is full of similar-looking houses, and no matter how many corners they turn, they always seem to arrive back at the same house...

* ''Film/DontWorryDarling'': Jack and Alice live in the picturesque, idyllic 1950s California desert CompanyTown of Victory. Jack and the other husbands go to work in the day; Alice and the other wives spend their days drinking, cooking, cleaning their beautiful homes, and enjoying various community amenities. However, Alice becomes increasingly unsettled when things aren't as they seem. Victory is later revealed to be [[spoiler:a simulation where the women are forcibly kept by their husbands.]]
* ''Film/Barbie2023'': The conflict is kicked off when Barbie grows increasingly uncomfortable with her town's saccharine, pastel perfection, and nearly ruins a perfectly planned dance party with an admission that she's starting to question their mortality. [[spoiler:It turns out that this is because Gloria has been playing with Barbie while remembering how she used to do so with Sasha before their estrangement. This feeling of bleakness and nostalgia, coupled with a midlife crisis, has caused her to unintentionally transfer similar feelings into Barbie while holding her. Later, when the Kens [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized take over Barbieland and turn it to the Kendom]], the Barbies start acting like Stepford Wives in all but name.]]

* ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'' by Creator/IraLevin, along with its [[AdaptationDisplacement more famous film adaptation]], is the {{Trope Namer|s}}. In the titular small [[HollywoodNewEngland Connecticut]] suburb of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, the men are replacing their strong-willed, feminist-minded wives with docile [[RoboticReveal robot duplicates]]. Levin based the town on real-life Wilton, Connecticut (where he lived in TheSixties), only "a step away" from the city of Stamford.
* In Mike Heimbach's novel ''Literature/TheSuburbanChronicles'', the Suburban Estates subdivision and surrounding area is nothing but endless streets of identical, pastel colored tract homes with everyone perfect, to the point that in over thirty years there has been not even one crime in the town. Apparently, the threat of the owner of everything as your neighbor makes everyone act as though nothing ever goes wrong there, even when things do.

* Camazotz from ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'' appears to be an entire planet of Stepford Suburbia. Controlled by a [[BrainInAJar disembodied brain]]. Pictured at the top of this page is a shot from the [[Film/AWrinkleInTime2018 2018 film adaptation]], with everybody going about their business in [[HiveMind perfect synchronicity]].

* Waverton in the story of the same name. In this case, everyone in the neighborhood [[ImAHumanitarian is a cannibal.]] But the new couple in town doesn't know that.
* ''Candor'' by Pam Bachorz is about a town that uses subliminal messages to create its Stepford Suburbia--especially creepy in the teens, who love their SAT study parties a bit too much for comfort. The town was planned by the protagonist's father as a way to have a perfect world after his other son died.
* The town of Joyful Travail in ''[[Literature/{{Indigo}} Revenant]]'', although it's run in a far more coldly efficient fashion than most examples of this trope.

* Little Whinging, or at least the neighborhood roundabout Privet Drive, in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series, at least if the Dursleys are typical residents, which seems likely since the neighbors are apparently "the sort of people who thought scruffiness [[ThereShouldBeALaw ought to be punishable by law]]." The Dursleys' attempts to appear as normal (read: boring) as possible are PlayedForLaughs and, of course, complicated by the fact that Harry is secretly a wizard.
** This is played with in the films, where Privet Drive residents live in precisely identical houses, and ''all drive exactly the same car''.
** Possibly the whole town since Harry came and went from the same house as pampered Dudley, scrawny and bruised and dressed in rags, and [[SocialServicesDoesNotExist no one did anything]]. At least, anything successful enough for Harry to know about it. This is sometimes blamed on [[OmniscientMoralityLicense Dumbledore]].
* Parodied in a ''Series/DoctorWho'' short story, where the Doctor insists the true horror of suburbia is that there ''aren't'' sinister secrets behind the net curtains - it really is that boring.
* The eponymous town in the novel ''Literature/{{Tangerine}}'' is like this, to the extent that early in the story you start expecting mind-sucking aliens or an ancient curse or something. People are struck by lightning and part of the middle school is sucked into a natural sinkhole, and the viewpoint character's path to confronting this in the town and in his family forms the backbone of the story.

%% * Erma Bombeck's humor is based on this.
%% * Despite the urban setting, Edith Wharton's ''Literature/TheAgeOfInnocence'' (and most of her other books) fits this to a T.
* In ''Literature/LucifersStar'' by Creator/CTPhipps, Cassius Mass used to be an AcePilot and TheWhitePrince but a TraumaCongaLine resulted in him becoming this. Notably, Cassius isn't actually that upset about it as he believes he deserves obscurity after serving as a soldier for TheEmpire and getting so many of his friends killed. Gary is notably such a RebelliousSpirit that he's constantly breaking through his brainwashing and so is his wife.

* [[MeaningfulName Moralton]] in ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel''. For all the WesternAnimation/DaveyAndGoliath stylings, it is a place filled with self-hating, hypocritical, abusive {{Jerkass}}es that seem dead set on crushing the naive and hopelessly optimistic protagonist. And that's when said protagonist isn't wreaking carnage because he takes the bad advice of his authority figures to extreme and unfortunate ends.

''Literature/ProudPinkSky'' has William's hometown. Though it's pleasant on the surface, for a queer teenager it's a menacing and claustrophobic experience.

* This is the typical form taken by the "nature preserves" used by some of ''WebOriginal/{{Mortasheen}}'''s many MadScientist-types to isolate and study pure humans.

* Music/ArcadeFire's third album, ''The Suburbs'', is a ConceptAlbum which focuses on, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the suburbs]]. It takes a somewhat nuanced view of the subject ([[TheFaceOfTheBand Win Butler]] is on record as saying that it's a letter "''from''" the suburbs, not for them or against them), but the Stepford form is definitely visible (particularly "Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains").

* The homeland of Kino of ''LightNovel/KinosJourney'' was one of these. Adults were all quite pleased and always smiling, happy to do their jobs. This turns out to be because when children turn twelve years old they go to the hospital and have an operation that changes their brains to think this way. It also seems to cause homicidal tendencies when someone questions this, as Kino herself is nearly killed for hesitantly asking if she could ''not'' have it. Things get particularly creepy when a man is stabbed and the town's residents ''cheerfully'' start trying to pull the knife out of him.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* "Planned communities," such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaside,_Florida Seaside]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida Celebration]] in Florida, are particularly subject to this trope. Some actually attempt to use this trope [[InvokedTrope on purpose]]. More than 25% of Orange County, California is made of such communities, with the crown jewels being [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California Irvine]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Viejo Mission Viejo]], which regularly top the FBI's Safest Cities in America list. See also HollywoodCalifornia for stereotypes on Orange County's lack of personality and vapid suburban sprawl.
** The town of Celebration is especially notable, given that it was developed by [[Creator/{{Disney}} the Walt Disney Company]] (though they soon relinquished control of it) as an idyllic model community inspired by the small towns of the '40s and '50s. The moment people heard that Disney was building a suburb, they [[http://gizmodo.com/celebration-florida-the-utopian-town-that-america-jus-1564479405 immediately expected this trope]], and they were not disappointed.
** One thing that both renders them extremely safe but also extremely monotonous is the sheer amount of these communities being started for religious purposes. Granted, sometimes the founders genuinely '''are''' that religious and not out to create a cult-like WretchedHive. Both Amish and Mormon communes qualify well under that regard.
** Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a rare example of a planned community that set out (after five decades of deed restrictions, mind you) to become as racially integrated as possible. [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/11/this-trail-blazing-suburb-has-tried-years-tackle-race-what-if-trying-isnt-enough/?arc404=true Results have been mixed.]]
* Many American cities have picturesque outer suburbs that sprang up from farmland and wilderness during the post-World War II housing boom. Their dark secret? Many of them were white-only, meaning racial minorities were forbidden from living there. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed housing discrimination, these suburbs grew because they were outside the reach of public transportation, which made it easier to maintain a "certain" image.
* Britain built a number of entire ''towns'' this way between the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and the mid-sixties. Most of them are still infamous for this trope, but at least one became a WretchedHive instead.
** Poundbury in Dorset was a direct response to "New Towns" and an attempt to defy this trope. The results were... mixed, at best.
* Darien, Connecticut: filming location for ''Film/RevolutionaryRoad'', both ''Film/TheStepfordWives'' films, and the basis for the book and film ''Gentlemen's Agreement''.
* The Levittown communities built by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitt_%26_Sons Levitt & Sons]] in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState Long Island]], UsefulNotes/NewJersey (in Willingboro, which briefly changed its name to Levittown), and UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} were among the first pre-planned communities in the United States, and helped pioneer the development of pre-made suburban communities. At its peak size, the Long Island Levittown contained over 17,000 homes built using the exact same floor plan for each house. Even in just aerial photographs from history textbooks, the eeriness of the unending rows of similarity can't be ignored.
** Ironically, despite it (like the other Levittowns and many other pre-planned suburbs) having been racially segregated initially, the New Jersey Levittown is now a majority black community (and still a middle-class one, at that).
* North Pole, UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}}, a town located about fifteen miles east of Fairbanks where it is literally ChristmasEveryDay. Every business is [[ChristmasTown Christmas-themed]] (even the UsefulNotes/McDonalds!), and sixth-graders are enlisted to reply to all the letters to Santa that the US Postal Service delivers to the town. Jon Ronson visited the town to shoot a documentary called ''[[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/23/usgunviolence.usa Death in Santaland]]'', about a foiled [[AxesAtSchool school shooting plot]] in 2006 by a group of 13-year-olds who allegedly had grown sick of/been driven mad by the CrapsaccharineWorld they lived in.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village Potemkin Villages]] are, "any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better." The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#/media/File:Castle_and_brewery_in_Kol%C3%ADn_2.jpg pic]] in the previously linked article illustrate this perfectly: by painting the front of the building it gives the impression the entire place has been renovated although the rest of the structure still shows the ravages of time.
[[/folder]]

* Subverted in ''Film/AScannerDarkly''. The protagonist's previous existence as a respectable husband with a wife and family is presented as bland and unfulfilling. Later however as an undercover narc he comes across the same house which is a ruin after being used a drug den and laments what as waste it is, as the house should have been used to raise a family.

* The video for ''Music/{{Soundgarden}}'''s "Black Hole Sun." The song doesn't explicitly mention suburbia, but... this trope hardly seems out of place.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

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

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village Potemkin Villages]] is "any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better." The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#/media/File:Castle_and_brewery_in_Kol%C3%ADn_2.jpg pic]] in the previously linked article illustrate this perfectly: by painting the front of the building it gives the impression the entire place has been renovated although the rest of the structure still shows the ravages of time.

Ah, {{Suburbia}}: the sunny lanes, the friendly neighbors, the smiling children, the pastel color scheme, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick the rotting skeletons hiding in everyone's closet]]....

When they are too perfect to be true, the suburbs can be downright ''creepy''. Mom baking fresh apple pies every day, the kids getting A's in every subject on their report card, neighbors who [[SlasherSmile grin like their teeth are wired open]]... there's something unsettling about it. Extra points if the houses were [[CutAndPasteSuburb built on the same floorplan]] with relatively minor differences between them, making each house look eerily similar. In the United States, whose suburbs largely inspired this trope, many of these too-perfect towns sprang up in TheFifties during the post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII housing boom. That's why this trope is commonly associated with the 50's and the cultural mindsets--for better or for worse--that went with the decade. Even if the show is set in the present day, the neighborhood will still have a decidedly old-fashioned vibe.