Hated Hometown

"Sure, when I'm driving in my big Ferrari,
With some luscious rich chick as my pet,
Believe me,
How I'll miss this beautiful Twenty-seventh Street—
(Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you—)
I'll miss it every chance I get!"

— Joe, Golden Boy, "Don't Forget 127th Street"

"Oh, so you're from Troperville? I'm going there next month, how is it?" "Hell on Earth."

When a character for whatever reason hates the place where they were born and raised. Maybe the people were jerks, maybe they disagreed philosophically, maybe they didn't like the smell. Whatever the reason, before or over the course of story they leave it, either to protect the townspeople's sorry asses or to get revenge, or because they were kicked out.

Small Town Boredom and Big Town Boredom are both a Sub-Trope- this has a far more negative emotion involved and is often at a larger scale.

Compare Never Accepted in His Hometown, and contrast A Hero to His Hometown, although it is very possible someone could dislike their hometown and still be considered a hero there.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass: Lelouch Lamperouge to the Brittanian empire.
• Cross Ange: By the second half of the series, Ange utterly despises her own family's empire. It's not hard to see why, given their prejudice towards the Norma and how they try to kill her upon her return.
• Fairy Tail: Lucy Heartfilia dislikes living in her family's mansion, given her mother Layla's death as well as her father Jude's subsequent focus on his business to the point of neglect. Thus, Lucy only returns to the mansion when she has to.
• Naruto: Sasuke Uchiha after learning the sacrifices Itachi made and due to his unstable nature, swore to destroy Konoha. He seems to have gone against this after meeting a revived Itachi.
• In Space☆Dandy, Meow hated living on his home planet of Betelgeuse. He left as soon as he could to travel through space and was very resistant to returning to it. The entire planet is basically an economically declining small town, with very little to do.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Nobody is proud of being a native of Satellite; both Jack Atlas and Rex Godwin lied for years about the fact that they were from it.

Comic Books

• In Creature Tech, Dr. Ong hates Turlock, CA, because he thinks there's too many rednecks for his taste.
• New Mutants: Rahne hates her hometown of Ullapool. The fact she spent it being emotionally abused by Reverend Craig is a major contributing factor. When one of Legion's more malevolent alters threatens to blow the place sky high, Rahne — normally one of the more moral New Mutants — says "go ahead", and when asked later if she actually meant it doesn't answer.

Fan Works

• Chloe Cerise in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail hates her hometown of Vermillion City because she feels that there's no one who truly cares for her and everyone is willing to push what they want onto her. So when she sees the Infinity Train, she's willing to enter it and then stay in it so she never goes back.
  Chloe: “Goodbye Vermilion City. I hope you find someone else to take over my dad’s job.”

Films — Animated

• Cody Maverick from Surf's Up: "Good-old Shriverpool. *razz* This place sucks, bro!"

Films — Live-Action

• Yul Brenner (not to be confused with Yul Brynner) from Cool Runnings hates Jamaica. The only reason he joins the bobsled team "is to get offa this stinkin' island".
• The Reflecting Skin - Just as Cameron returns to his hometown he makes a remark on how ugly it is there.
• Star Wars:
  • Anakin Skywalker hates Tatooine. Must be the sand.
    Anakin: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
  • Luke Skywalker's not too keen on the place either.
    Luke: (to C-3PO) Well, if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from.
  • Rey feels the same way about Jakku. And so does everyone else.
    Luke: Where are you from?
    Rey: Nowhere.
    Luke: No-one's from nowhere.
    Rey: Jakku.
    Luke: All right, that is pretty much nowhere.
  • Han Solo and Qi'ra both want to get the hell off Corellia. The only reason Han plans to go back is to rescue Qi'ra, and that gets forgotten when he finds her working with Crimson Dawn.
• Struck by Lighting: Carson despises his hometown, Clover.
• When Sweeney Todd agrees that "there's no place like London," his tone is acid. And when we learn what happened to him, we learn he has every reason to believe such.
• Young Adult:
  Mavis Gary: I hate this town! It's a hick, lake town that smells of fish shit!
  

Literature

• In the Bright Falls Mysteries by C.T. Phipps, Jane Doe is a weredeer teenage girl who wants to get out of her hometown and go onto bigger as well as better things. Each book results in her taking on more responsibility like being the town shaman and taking over her parents diner. She finally makes it out in the end of the third book and gets a job doing movie security.
• Creature of Havoc: The Sorcerous Overlord Zharradan Marr was born to the Daughters of Dree, a village of witches, but came to see their magic as embarrassingly primitive. He magically erased every record and memory of his original surname Dree and cut all ties with the village. They return the sentiment with interest.
• The Locked Tomb: Gideon the Ninth: Gideon feels nothing but resentment for the Ninth House, is beyond delighted to leave it behind, and loves the idea of the whole place just dying and disappearing. Character Development eventually has her letting her hatred go, and it's a major sign of growth that her last words are "For the Ninth!"
• Tress of the Emerald Sea: Averted; Tress is noted to actually like living in her tiny, dull town on a barren island in the middle of the sea. Hoid notes how unusual this is for this kind of story, where the main character is supposed to long for adventure and dream of the wider world. By the end of the book, she's undergone enough Character Development that she starts to play it straight, and the thought of going back to her old boring life after all the adventures she's had makes her sad.

Live Action TV

• Often discussed on RuPaul's Drag Race. Many contestants come from rural towns and/or the Deep South, and their background involved moving to a more queer-friendly city where they could safely perform drag. For instance, Season 4 finalist Phi Phi O'Hara was originally from San Antonio, Texas, which at the time she was growing up was terribly homophobic due to its large military presence. She moved to Chicago as a young adult where she started her drag career.^note To San Antonio's credit, Phi Phi acknowledged that the city's present-day atmosphere has vastly improved from when she was growing up in the 90's.
• The Magicians: Elliot absolutely loathed his hometown of Whiteland, Indiana^note A real-life farming town near Indianapolis, due to all the torments he experienced as a Camp Gay kid in the rural Midwest. It got to the point that he didn't even tell his closest friends (including Margo) he was from there, having invented a new identity as an NYC hipster once he left for college. However, his background came in handy when he had to teach the people of Fillory mundane farming after the realm lost its magic, since they had been dependent on magic for centuries.

Music

• A Day to Remember's "All Signs Point to Lauderdale", with the narrator even stating he hates his hometown and never felt like he's fit in.
• Bowling for Soup's "My Hometown".
• Mischief Brew plays with this in "O, Pennsyltucky!". The song is structured as an ode to Pennyslvania, but most of the lyrics list negative things about it, and the chorus features a number of derogatory nicknames for the band's hometown of Philadelphia. Nevertheless, there's a undercurrent of affection throughout; the overall sentiment is "yeah, my hometown sucks but I wouldn't have it any other way."
• Simon & Garfunkel's "My Little Town".
• Voltaire song "Bomb New Jersey". Also, the song "Hate Lives in a Small Town" is mostly about a Town with a Dark Secret, but the singer grew up in one and hates it; one verse mentions him being beaten up by football players for supposedly being gay, and he left as soon as he could for the big city.
• "One Great City!" by the Weakerthans, in which every verse ends with "I... hate... Winnipeg," although lead singer John K. Samson's relationship with his hometown is more mixed.
• Near-universal in Pop Punk music. There's a reason for the joke: "why did the pop punk kid cross the road? To get out of this town!"

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy

• Whenever Natasha Leggero brings up her hometown of Rockford, Illinois, it is to feature this trope. She enjoys joking about how boring and backwards the place is and how glad she is to have left.
• From Patton Oswalt's Werewolves and Lollipops:
  Now I love the fact that I grew up in Sterling, Virginia. I really do. I’m so happy. Because, when you’re growing up in a nondescript, soulless, boring town, you’ve been given a present from God. And the present is: The Test Of The Small Town. And you pass the test when you go, “I’M LEAVING BEFORE I KILL EVERYONE AND THEN MYSELF.” That’s when you pass. You fail when you go, “I’ll get a job at the CITGO and fill my truck up for free!”

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Hyeon, as a corollary to hating the high school, is sick of being stuck in Oldport and wants to beat a hasty retreat as soon as he's old enough.
  • Barbra expresses a similar sentiment, saying that her first step would be to leave Oldport if her superpower turns out to be something cool.

Theatre

• The Musical of Golden Boy has "Don't Forget 127th Street," a satirical ensemble number celebrating everything wrong about Harlem.
• The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals has Emma monologuing about being forced to come back to Hatchetfield, where she was trying to get away from all her life. This is the opposite of Paul, who never wanted to leave his same hometown. They agree over their shared hatred of the sister city Clivesdale.
• The musical 13 has a whole number tellingly called 'The Lamest Place In The World', which is Patrice lamenting how much she hates living in small-town Indiana.

Video Games

• Billy Candle from Call of Juarez hates his hometown (as well as everything from his crappy childhood, except his mother), but has to return to it in the beginning of the first game.
• Marina in Fear & Hunger: Termina hates her hometown of Prehevil, which she calls a dump multiple times. In contrast to Levi, she doesn't seem to have much issue with the whole town being infested with monsters.
• Cloud in Final Fantasy VII spent much of his childhood wanting to get away from his hometown, Nibelhiem. The only memories of value he holds are of his mother and Tifa.
  • Yuffie hates what her hometown, Wutai, has become: a tacky tourist destination.
• Downplayed in Final Fantasy X-2. Yuna's attitude towards her hometown, Bevelle, is one of ambivalence. She has lived twelve of her ninteen years in Besaid and considers the tropical island village her home.
• Final Fantasy XII has several examples across the spectrum.
  • Zigzagged - Vaan seems to hate living in Rabanastre, but stll wants to drive out the Archadian occupiers.
  • Played straight- Balthier hates his hometown of Archades.
  • Inverted - Fran was exiled from her home, Eruyt Village, but misses it.
• In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, Keiss, upon visiting his home, reluctantly says "home sweet home... I guess." He's not on good terms with the local leader.
• Issun from Ōkami refuses to even talk about Ponc'tan because he ran away after he failed to become a potential candidate for the role of Amaterasu's Celestial Envoy. Even after he did his best artistic works, his grandfather always demanded him more effort and was never satisfied. Issun never returns there, even after his grandfather regrets having motivated his escape, but does manage to become the chosen Celestial Envoy.
• Kazuya Mishima form Tekken abandoned his nationality Japan in Tekken 8.

Visual Novel

• In Heart of the Woods, Morgan hates her hometown of Eysenfeld, a backwater village run by her mother where everyone treats her like a pariah. The only reason she doesn't leave is that if she does, her mother will choose someone else's body to steal.
• Kazusa Touma from White Album 2 hates Japan, especially after being away from that country for five years. Not for a real dislike of the country, but because it's the place where she was forced to leave behind the man she loved.

Web Original

• Off the Page and into Life is set in Pageson, a vaguely Southern but never-actually-plotted-on-the-map small town, where there's nothing for the local teens to do but get on each other's nerves and cause trouble. Most of the cast can't stand Pageson, but due to circumstances (natural disasters, the economy, the fact that they're reincarnations of literary characters and a Mad God is messing with things to keep them where they are...), no one ever leaves.
• The Hard Times: Pop Punk Band Feuds with Country Band About Whether Hometown is Good, Bad. The Pop Punk band in question writes most of their songs about how their hometown sucks and they can't wait to leave, while the country band writes about how much they love it.

Western Animation

• Challenge of the GoBots; Counter-X much prefers Earth to Gobotron, as there's very little use there for a robot like him who turns into a submarine. (Gobotron seems more like a giant space station than a terrestrial planet, and as a result, has no oceans.)
• In one episode of G.I. Joe, a group of the heroes are hacking their way through the jungle-like brush of a tropical island, and Gung-Ho keeps complaining.
  Flint: What's the matter, Gung-Ho? I thought this would remind you of home.
  Gung-Ho: It does! Now you know why I left!
• The Simpsons: Homer Simpson has sometimes expressed this feeling about Springfield. In "A Star is Torn":
  Homer: You [Lisa] and I are gonna write and sing our way out of this godforsaken hellhole.
  Marge: But your song said you liked Springfield.
  Homer: I wrote it about Shelbyville then changed the names.

Real Life

• Ludwig van Beethoven felt this way about Bonn, after being forced to make a brief return he left for Vienna in 1792 and never returned.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart cared little for his birthplace of Salzburg and not at all with the archbishop who once employed him there. As he stated in one of his letters: "I shit on them."
• Janis Joplin was known to feel this way about her hometown of Port Arthur, Texas.
• Margot Kidder did not look fondly on her hometown of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.
• Andy Warhol was not especially proud of being from Pittsburgh; certainly, he identified more with his adoptive city of New York than the place he was born and raised. Lou Reed (who knew Warhol pretty well) had this to say about Warhol (from "Smalltown"):
  "There's no Michelangelo coming from Pittsburgh."

---