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Überwald

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Castle_Frankenstein_by_PReilly_196.jpg
Through the valley travel the meek;
Something wicked awaits at the peak...
note 
Image courtesy of PReilly. Used with permission.

"The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East..."
Jonathan Harker's Journal, Dracula, Chapter 1

You think you are in a nice little Ruritania somewhere in Eastern Europe. Only the black forests are even blacker than you expected, and even more full of wolves. Some of which seem to be walking on their hind legs. When you finally get to the little town you were aiming for, the vaguely ethnic and primitive locals are huddling fearfully in the tavern, refusing to talk to you except to give vaguely worded and heavily accented warnings. (Bonus points if the warnings come from a Magical Romani character.) So you go up to the castle in the hope of finding some civilization. Bad move.

If there's a local nobleman living there, he will probably welcome you warmly — although he may be strangely insistent that you "enter freely and of your own will". He will probably be the kind of old-school nobility that views peasants as little more than animals. Very old nobility. Blood nobility. Alternatively, there might be somebody more modern and technically minded living there, along with his lab assistant and his daughter. Unfortunately, he will probably not be big on the Precautionary Principle and make strong attempts to persuade you to "volunteer" to take part in his research. Sometimes, the castle might not even be inhabited by anybody... visible.

Don't expect too much help from anyone: if things get really out of hand the Torches and Pitchforks might get broken out, but the locals probably think that outsiders get what they deserve, even if they aren't all actively involved in the nastiness.

Congratulations. You are now in Überwald. Hope you survive — er, enjoy your visit.

Überwald is named after the region in Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. It is also an antiquated German name for Transylvania.

Invented by Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Frederick Marryat ("The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains"), and Bram Stoker (Dracula), codified by the Universal Horror movies of the 1930s and '40s, and carried on into the 1950s and '60s by Hammer Horror. Regarded as a bit kitsch nowadays and just as easily played for laughs, to the point of being an Undead Horse Trope. Can also get you into trouble now that there are a lot more Eastern Europeans in the English-speaking world. Of course, there are always the Weird West, Sinister Southwest, Southern Gothic, Lovecraft Country and Campbell Country as alternatives.

Compare with Don't Go in the Woods, Wild Wilderness, and other Tropes of Nature locations. Will often be the setting of The Old Country.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Record of Grancrest War: Played with with the Forest of Eternal Darkness. While it is an intractable stretch of dense, shadowed woodlands steeped in the supernatural, with frequent incursions by Chaos and an insular population that seems to be mostly vampires, werewolves or witches, the vast majority of said population regardless of pedigree are decent, friendly and even loyal to outsiders who prove their worth (such as Theo and Villar).
  • Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase: Hazuki's homeland in Germany is a lot like this.

    Comic Books 
  • Marvel Comics:
    • Doctor Doom's Latveria fits this trope pretty well, especially in some of the earliest comic books. Doom's Supervillain Lair is a creepy castle, although it is full of futuristic tech. Latveria was developed slightly after Reed decides to invade although still very Überwald-ish. Everyone speaks a funny accent, there are plenty of gypsies and it seems as if most of the population are still living in thatched cottages. Of course, the place looks old-fashioned and quaint because that's the way Doom likes it, and the reason Latveria is full of Romani is that Doom, being one himself, is much more sympathetic to them than other nations in the region.
    • Nearby Transia, home of the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, the High Evolutionary and the evil Elder God Chthon, is sometimes portrayed this way as well.
    • Marvel also has a Transylvania of its own, which is sometimes portrayed an independent nation and, unsurprisingly, an Überwald.
    • Winzeldorf, Nightcrawler's hometown in the X-Men comics, is consistently depicted like this, complete with gypsy sorceresses and torch-and-pitchfork wielding mobs, despite being explicitly stated to be in present-day Bavaria.
  • A Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic issue caused some offence to European fans by depicting modern Germany in this manner. It was specifically shown to be an out-of-the-way, not at all normal town, akin to a Sunnydale counterpart, but... well, Germany has a fourth of the US' population and is about the size of Montana. There is really no such thing as an "out of the way" place there.
  • The Changeling Kingdom in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), from what we've seen so far. Don't expect to find any locals, though.
  • The town of Richten, Tennessee from Von Herling, Vampire Hunter combines elements of this trope with Southern Gothic. While set in Tennessee, it has the woods and mountains associated with Transylvania.
  • Dracula's domain in of Resurréction in Requiem Chevalier Vampire is like this and it's ruled by vampires. It helps that Resurréction is meant to be Houston.

    Comic Strips 
  • Doctor Who Magazine comic strips:
    • In "Exodus/ Revelation/ Genesis", the Doctor is confronted with a group of mad scientists in a creepy old castle, in a society with a distinct central European aesthetic, and has to determine which of them is plotting with a group of Cybermen, whose resonances with Frankenstein are played up.
    • In "Universal Monsters", the Doctor arrives in a village where the people live in fear of the mad scientist in the castle and the monsters he creates.

    Films — Animation 
  • Malaria from Igor. The country is filled with castles for mad scientists high up on tall mountains.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In the 1934 film The Black Cat, newlyweds Peter and Joan Alison leave the real world at Viségrad station in Hungary and enter Überwald on a bus ride to their fictitious destination Gömbös, “the pearl of the Carpathian Mountains”. An accident strands them at equally fictitious Máramaros, the mansion of mad architect Hjalmar Poelzig. Starring both Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi, The Black Cat is one of the Universal horror films that codified the trope in the early 1930s.
  • Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks is set at some unspecified location in Europe that ticks most of the boxes for the Überwald: a Mad Scientist living in a castle that is prone to lightning strikes, a village full of superstitious villagers itching to form a Torches and Pitchforks mob, a local official trying to drag the region into the modern day, and wild Neanderthals living in the forest (It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context).
  • The foremost advocate of the Überwald was Hammer Films. They set most of their many versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, along with several other movie horrors, in some Victorian never-never-land, not quite Germany, not quite Transylvania, not quite anywhere else between France and Russia. Hammer didn't make all this up. In the 19th Century, much of eastern Europe had German-speaking upper classes with peasants, villagers, and travelers who could be Germans, Slavs, Magyars, Turks, Jews or Romani.
  • In Love at First Bite Dracula lived there... and ten minutes later, he was kicked out by the Romanian government.
  • Translyvania in Nosferatu.
  • Played for Laughs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which has an Überwald in a suburban American town.
  • Severance (2006) is a not-too-serious slasher flick about a bunch of British corporate drones on a trip in Hungary who come across bloodthirsty psychopathic former soldiers.
  • Transylvania 6-5000 has portions of this, especially during the night scenes.
  • Van Helsing, being mostly set in Transylvania, and pastiching both Hammer Horror and Universal Horror.
  • Young Frankenstein, which parodies the Universal horror movies, is another example. The film is clearly set after World War I, but the police wear Austro-Hungarian Empire-type uniforms and the whole country apparently has just one railway station! ("Pardon me boy, is this the Transylvania station?")
  • The village of Karmingam in Kill, Baby, Kill! is a desolate, ancient place boasting a haunted villa, a ruined church, and a creepy child ghost.

    Literature 
  • The Überwald region (a collection of a lot of geo-political entities, in fact) of Discworld is a parody of this trope, while simultaneously being a lot more true to the original than most examples. The name is a Bilingual Bonus; Transylvania and Uberwald both roughly mean "across/through the woods". The uncommon grammatical form would suggest Sir Terry did not come up with it independently but knew of the historical name. It could alternatively, and possibly more true to some of its inhabitants' lifestyles, allude to Nietzsche's "Übermensch" and mean something like "superior forest".
    • Even the people there know how to handle it. Nanny Ogg gives a handy list of how to handle being in vampire country:
      1. Don't go near a vampire's castle, no matter how bad the weather.
      2. Having gone near the castle, don't knock at the huge forbidding door.
      3. Having knocked at the huge forbidding door, don't accept the invitation from the strange man in black clothes to go inside.
      4. Having gone inside, don't go into the guest bedroom.
      5. Having gone into the guest bedroom, don't — whatever you do — sleep with the window open.
      6. Having slept with the window open, don't come runnin' to me to complain.
    • One old and particularly Genre Savvy vampire even lampshades his own lifestyle. He lives in Dontgonearthe Castle. (With typical tourist trap signs posted along the road: "Just 2 miles to Dontgonearthe Castle," "Last chance to not go near the castle," etc.)
    • In Pratchett's conception, Überwald is mainly Bavaria, Switzerland and Austria with a Discworld glossnote , although he has introduced Far Überwald, where a language suspiciously like Russian is spoken; other locally born characters, such as vampire iconographer Otto Chriek, appear to have a possibly-Czech, possibly Polish, "Slavonic" identity to them. note  Überwald maps to a sort of Eastern Europe which would fit the pre-1945 political and ethnic reality on this planet: principally Germany, with widely mixed and scattered language groups owing to centuries of ethnic mixing. The double-headed bat emblem of the old Dark Empire is deliberately based on the Imperial Eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on our world.
    • The Compleat Discworld Atlas and its very detailed map of the Disc provides more interesting information. The lands on the fringes of Far Überwald and overlapping into it — such as Mouldavia - have a definitely Russian vibe going on. There is a River Fistula with rich flat farmland on both sides. The Forest of Skund has hints of a Discworld Romania. The border region of Escrow has feudal overlords with a suspiciously Hungarian name...
  • Harry Potter's Durmstrang has shades of this, even though it's much further up north than the classic depiction (possibly due to a case of Artistic License – Geography). Unlike Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, which are explicitly British and French, Durmstrang takes students from all over Europe, the headmaster is a vaguely Slavic man who used to be involved with a British terrorist cult, the resident star athlete is Bulgarian and the infamous wizard they expelled a long time ago was German.
  • In Bailey School Kids book Mrs. Jeepers' Batty Vacation, the kids accompany their presumed Classical Movie Vampire of a Stern Teacher Mrs. Jeepers to her childhood home in Eastern Europe, which unsurprisingly turns out to be one of these.
  • Some of Solomon Kane's adventures took place in the Black Forest, such as "Death's Black Riders", "The Rattle of Bones", and "The Castle of the Devil". Although the Black Forest is actually a few hundred miles to the west of most portrayals of this trope, the 16th-early 17th century setting justifies it.
  • Ralph Cram gave us a rare Scandinavian example in "The Dead Valley". It can be read here. Sweet dreams.
  • The famous British comedian Eric Morecambe wrote two novels for children, The Reluctant Vampire and The Vampire's Revenge, which are set in a parody Überwald environment.
  • Other children's books based around Überwald parodies include Willis Hall's The Last Vampire and Allan Rune Pettersson's Frankenstein's Aunt.
  • Deliberately and glaringly averted in The Historian — it's a novel featuring Dracula that deliberately tries to portray South-Eastern Europe and its culture realistically and in depth, instead of as a stereotyped evil fairyland.
  • Shana Abé's Drakon Series depicts the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania as the ancestral home of drakons rather than vampires. This might be because the name "Dracula" is based on Romanian world "Dracul" which means "dragon" and was derived from Prince Vlad II of Wallachia's membership in the Order of the Dragon.
  • The Moors in Wayward Children are a portal-fantasy world that runs on this. The part we see has a vampire's castle and the town he claims as his property, with Mad Scientist Dr Bleak's windmill on the fringe and werewolves out in the wilds; Dr Bleak provides a human pole in the balance of power, especially since anyone resurrected by his methods (which involve the classic lightning bolt) cannot be transformed into a vampire and anyone who is resurrected twice and retains their humanity is still going to need to be recharged regularly. The twins Jack and Jill (blame their parents) went there, and Jack became Dr Bleak's apprentice, while Jill developed a rather unhealthy relationship with the vampire lord. At the school they go to after they return to Earth, full of other people who've been on portal-fantasy adventures in other worlds, they're known as "the Addams twins".
  • Carmilla takes place in Styria, which is a bit to the west of traditional Überwald (today, it is divided between Austria and Slovenia), but otherwise fits the trope quite well, with Gothic ruins, a Haunted Castle and the titular Lesbian Vampire.

    Live-Action TV 

    Music 
  • "Dracul's Bluthochzeit" by E Nomine.
  • "Carpathia," by The Vision Bleak:
    When the soft white shrouds of morning dew lay down on the meadows green,
    Thy prais is due, but keep thy poetry for the night you haven't seen
    For when the sun doth set in Carpathia...
    And the worm that gnaws the grave, crawls hence forth from gulf and cave
    And when the moon doth rise in Carpathia...
    Then the creature leaves the lair and the ghost is on the stair
  • Ghoul claim to be from the country of "Creepsylvania", which incorporates every single stereotype that could possibly be associated with this trope.
  • Ghost is fond of this trope. The video for Square Hammer revolves around the band attending the premier of a film shot on location in the real Translyvania with Papa Emeritus taking the place of Dracula/Orlok.
  • Iron Maiden has an instrumental titled "Transylvania," the single's cover art depicts Eddie with with a stake and mallet about to kill Dracula and a creepy castle with bats is in the background.

    Roleplay 
  • The upcoming Forum/RPG, Grave Academy's whole 'verse is based on this, the eponymous academy being a Haunted Castle, and the students? Monsters; although it wasn't still confirmed whether or not it is set on our world.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In British fantasy RPG Dragon Warriors's setting (which is also the setting of Blood Sword and Golden Dragon Fantasy Gamebooks), the lands of Analika, Hudristania and Molasaria, being basically the Balkans of the Fantasy Counterpart Culture European region of the world, fill in this role, so much so that it's pretty much the only description they get in book 6's gazetteer.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Principality of Boldavia in Mystara, a province of Glantri "rumored to" be rife with The Undead. "Boldavia is also a large producer of garlic..." Boldavia's ruler, Prince Morphail, received his undead status as a divine "gift", turned the local nobles into vampires and/or nosferatu, and then issued the Vampire Law which prohibits his vassals from converting non-nobles and killing while feeding. Things got a bit grimmer in Boldavia, but business goes on as usual. Some of the other wizards in Glantri know what Prince Morphail is, but they realize that if someone manages to destroy him — and he's a top-ranked Glantrianall his undead magic-using spawn will become fully free-willed at once, and no-one wants to see how that may end.
    • More or less sums up the domain of Barovia in the Ravenloft (which also happens to be the seat of its oldest and most iconic Big Bad), although virtually all the prominent domains embody the trope at least a little. This should come as no surprise, as Ravenloft itself drew heavily upon gothic horror, both in the form of the original literature and movies such as the Hammer series.
    • Eberron's Karnnath used to be like this. In some places in the current era, the trope is still played straight.
  • Magic: The Gathering:
    • Early in Magic's lifespan, the sets The Dark and Homelands were an attempt at this sort of flavor. However, the more recent plane of Innistrad executed this style much better.
    • Innistrad is home to vampires, werewolves, demons, zombies, ghosts, geists, and all sorts of nasty things; while the human government dominate the pastoral province of Gavony, the deep forests of Kessig are dominated by werwolves and denizens of the wilderness, the mountains of Stensia are ruled by vampires and seaside Nephalia is the realm of Mad Scientists and the unquiet dead. note 
    • Interestingly, though, Innistrad tends to put the most focus on the huddled masses of humanity, coming together to survive this monster-infested world and rebuild what they lose.
  • Pathfinder: The Immortal Principality of Ustalav has Varisians (Roma) as the primary human ethnic group, a lich serving as its ruler for a few centuries in its past, and features vampires, lycanthropes, mad scientists, ghosts, and evil cults. Except for the County of Versex, which is more in line with Lovecraft Country (so, not really an improvement). Not surprisingly, it serves as the setting for Carrion Crown, the gothic horror Adventure Path, and the starting place for Strange Aeons, the the Cosmic Horror Adventure Path.
  • Warhammer
    • Sylvania, ruled for centuries by the Von Carstein bloodline, is considered remarkably backwards even by the standards of the Old World. Steeped in sinister magic and dark legend, it has many charming local traditions such as burying the dead face down so that if they start digging they won't be able to run (well, shamble) around the place. Not that it works often, mind. Most peasants live in houses with boarded up windows and heavy doors adorned with strong locking bolts and charms and fetishes to dozens of gods.
    • The province of Mousillon in Bretonnia is a dreary swampland where most of the people died in a plague years ago, and the survivors spend their days catching frogs and snails, tending to skinny goats, rebuilding their homes or grave robbing. A lot of the dead don't even need help getting out of the grave. The previous lord of Mousillon was murderously insane and never pulled up the visor of his helmet for some reason. The rest of Bretonnia has pretty much abandoned the place.
  • The nation of Mauristatia in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook and RPG universe is like this, with vampire lords lurking in castles and mad scientists alchemists trying to build monsters out of bits of corpses.
  • A version of the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu using the Gumshoe system called Trail Of Cthulhu has the scenario book Shadows Over Filmland inspired by horror films from the 1930s. It also introduces this setting, here referred to as Backlot Gothic.
  • The country of Crosswoods in Ironclaw, the home of oupires and based on the same linguistic joke as "Uberwald".

    Theatre 

    Theme Parks 

    Video Games 
  • The Cainhurst Castle of Bloodborne is one, it is a foggy, dark East European castle inhabited by bloodthristy Cainhurst Knights. That said, in a world where everyone (including you) is basically a vampire, calling someone "bloodthirsty" would be redundant.
    • Heck, the game is set in what amounts to the wreckage caused by a defunct crusade between Lovecraft Country and Überwald... that took place in the Dreamlands and/or Unlondon.
  • Battalion Wars has the Xylvania and its Iron Legions.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • The kingdom of Gilneas in Cataclysm expansion. A sizeable number of its population have chosen to become Worgen to protect themselves from the invading zombies and Forsaken. And Silverpine Forest, the second place a Worgen will visit, is a similar pinewood paradise simply infested with wolves, bats, giant spiders, rogue Worgen and the invading Forsaken. It rains almost constantly, there's always a full moon, and everybody sounds like they're either nobility, or choking on a cockney.
    • Tirisfal Glades to the north, starting zone of the Forsaken, isn't any better. While your enemies are more likely to be things that have been mutated by the Plague, there seems to be a mad scientist in every house, dwellings have a similar 18th century vibe, and the woods are no less creepy just because of the Sickly Green Glow.
    • Battle for Azeroth brought the witch-infested woods of the non-mountainous parts of Drustvar, on the continent-isle of Kul Tiras, specially if one gets closer to Waycrest Manor. The woods are not only full of evil witches, but also have ghosts, half-plant monsters animated by the witches' magic, and decadent aristocrats living in dilapidated castles and manors.
    • Shadowlands adds Revendreth, the Purgatory of the Shadowlands, a gothic realm of looming keeps, downtrodden peasant and vampiric aristocrats (though they feed on mana and not blood), with dark mountains and fog-filled forests. It is supposed to be an example of Dark Is Not Evil as the Venthyr (the aristocrats of the realm) are meant to be helping souls redeem themselves by breaking their pride, however its ruler, Sire Denathrius, has darker, outright evil, motives.
  • Most of the Castlevania games take place in an Überwald setting. Some travel further afield (Bloodlines treks all over Europe, Aria of Sorrow takes place in future Japan and/or the moon), but it's where the series' roots are.
  • Quest for Glory IV is set in Mordavia, which like a miniature Überwald, with Killer Rabbits.
  • Morytania in RuneScape, complete with all kinds of classic horror tropes: a werewolf village, swamps full of killer ghasts and leeches, haunted woods filled with vampires and claw-shaped trees that scratch at you, a literal ghost town, a Vampyre metropolis where human slaves are herded like cattle, and multiple large, foreboding, gothic-style castles. And undead chickens. Did we forget to mention the nest of Giant Spiders?
  • The nation of Ulm in Dominions has turned into this in the Late Age. Vampires, wolves and sinister gypsies are included. The Illuminati add some extra color with their plots and blood magic.
  • The Blackmarsh in the Awakening expansion for Dragon Age: Origins.
  • The world of Nosgoth in the first Legacy of Kain is a pretty straight Überwald with Vampires, Zombies and other supernatural creatures roaming about, and the insane corrupted leaders only adding to the misery of the populace. The later games, while maintaing gothic aesthetic, are less like Überwald.
  • Modern supernatural MMORPG The Secret World has Transylvania as one of its three main quest zones. Its 'attractions' include communist gnomes, vampires who want to take over, an alcoholic Forest God, and left-over Soviet research projects. Dracula as well, of course (though in a subversion of the usual trope, here he's an immortal vampire hunter).
  • Rift has Gloamwood, a dark and spooky region of forest known for its giant spiders, werewolves, ghosts and walking dead, and an ancient Hag.
  • Quackshot has Donald Duck visiting a Transylvania that includes Dracula's Castle.
  • Hjaalmarch in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Features: dismal foggy swamps, a single quaint, rustic town, a large vampire lair with a scheming master vampire, an old crone with mystical fortune-telling powers as a Jarl, a strategically important fortress overrun by a cabal of bloody necromancers, no roads and a general dark, mysterious atmosphere. You can also build and own an estate there; adopted children, however, do not like to live there, they find the place too scary.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent takes place in a castle in 19th century Prussia, surrounded by black forest and the small village of Altstadt.
  • Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Transylvania? Check. Ominous castle on a mountaintop? Check. Thunderstorm at night? Check. Vampires? CHECK.
  • Fear & Hunger: Termina is set in Prehevil, a Dying Town in 1942 that already had an ominous atmosphere, with a hotel owner being a Serial Killer and the Orphanage of Fear being ran by priests who abused the children. And then you arrive to find out that it's now full of monsters.
  • Allods Online has Darkwater, a slav-themed land, complete with a castle dungeon within the dark forest full of werewolves, home to Mor'Ghuun, a relatively powerful Igor.
  • Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink, a Hidden Object Game by Artifex Mundi, is set in the isolated mountain village of Hochwald, where the locals have vaguely German accents. The castle nearby is home to a Mad Scientist and his Mechanical Monster army.
  • In Victor Vran, the events happen inside a city with the Eastern European-sounding name of Zagoravia, several characters have Slavic/Germanic names, and involves classical monsters like skeletons, giant spiders, ghosts, vampires, gargoyles, etc. The protagonist is a Van Helsing expy.
  • In Gems of War, Ghulvania (one of the numerous kingdoms you can visit) is ruled by evil vampire lords who keep the population terrorised. The "vania" part of the name is presumably a nod to Transylvania.
  • In Total War: Warhammer, having a high level of Vampiric Corruption in a province causes it to turn from a lush Arcadia into this trope. The trees wither as the forests become haunted, crops fail as the soil goes black with blight, green balefires begin to dot the landscape, screams of terror and anguish can be heard as you zoom in closer, proud Empire forts turn into lairs for vampires and necromancers, and charming farming hamlets give way to run-down villages full of terrified and oppressed peasants.
  • In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Geralt goes to Velen, a war torn region which has this trope in spades. Botched mad science experiments, Godlings, creepy forests, an attractive village witch, a Pellar, superstitious peasants, a cursed swamp ruled by The Ladies of The Wood, you name it. There isn't a Dracula expy, but there is a Bloody Baron. The whole Witcher universe could be considered one giant Uberwald, but none embody so fully as Velen.
  • Wizard101 has Darkmoor, complete with it being Always Night there with a perpetual full moon.
  • The Sims 3 has the world Midnight Hollow and The Sims 4 has Forgotten Hollow, which both fall into this trope. Forgotten Hollow is only populated by vampires and night lasts longer than in normal worlds.
  • Resident Evil Village takes place in a Romanian village ruled by a mysterious figure known as Miranda and her four "Lords", a group of villains themed after stock horror monsters. By the time that Ethan has come by, the village has been overrun by a mutation that has turned most of the locals into wolf-like creatures.
  • The lampshade-tastic Dreadsylvania Clan Dungeon from Kingdom of Loathing. The country consists of a haunted forest, bordering a haunted town, bordering a haunted castle. The denizens are elementally-aligned werewolves, bugbears, zombies, ghosts, skeletons, and vampires, with not a single live human seen outside of the inn on their border, the Terrified Eagle. KOL being what it is, the vampire count whose domain it is is a drunkard.

    Webcomics 
  • Girl Genius is actually set in Transylvania. Some research was done: dialogue is stated to be translated Romanian and German, one character is a Transylvanian Saxon, and another, being a descendant of a steppe warlord, is presumably a Szekler.
  • In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, in the story "Punch Dracula", Dr. McNinja has to go to Transylvania to hunt Dracula. Transylvania does all the Überwald clichés for a couple of comics until Dracula blasts the Doctor with a giant laser and teleports him to the Moon where he really lives.

    Web Original 
  • Miir, The City of Shadows from The Tale Of Gaven Morren, has more than a few Überwald leanings.
  • The Whateley Universe has Wallachia (Vlad Tepes Bessarab was Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia), which since the Iron Curtain fell has been ruled by a powerful mutant now known as Lord Paramount.
  • The rural parts of Litharna from The Wulf Archives tend toward this. In "All Souls' Night," Wulf visits a village whose big-city mayor wants to "modernize" the town by forbidding the old customs that the townsfolk like to practice, including the custom of leaving food for the dead on the eponymous night so that they don't rise from their graves and kill them all. True to the trope, Wulf eventually has to fight the undead, culminating in a battle with a vampire with the help of a sorceress who he's rather smitten with.

    Western Animation 
  • Bugs Bunny ends up at one in "Transylvania 6-5000", though he initially believes he is in Pittsburgh as a pun on Pennsylvania's name.
  • Animaniacs did almost the same joke with their short "Draculee, Draculaa" — the Warners were trying to visit Pencilvania, their ancestral home. (They're cartoon characters, hence their ancestors were pencils.) Of course they meet Dracula, and of course they end up driving him crazy.
  • Futurama:
    • Spoofed with the robot village of Thermostadt (in the Robo-Hungarian Empire, of course).
    • And more recently, planet Doohan 6, the Scottish version of the trope.
  • The Simpsons:
    • "Treehouse of Horror IV" depicts Pennsylvania this way, with Mr. Burns taking the part of Dracula. Out of all the states, though, Pennsylvania actually fits, outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The culture is heavily Central/Eastern European, especially German and Czech, and conservative. The population is largely farmers (many of whom maintain hex signs) including the Amish, and yes, there are castles.
    • In the canon episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts", the Springfield Republican Party had their meetings in a spooky castle in a place like this. One member of the group is even an Orlokian vampire who gets a glass of blood instead of wine.
  • In The Venture Bros., Baron Ünderbheit is the Evil Overlord of Ünderland, a perfect example of this. Ünderland is eternally cast in shadow and its people are destitute and miserable. The assumption that it is located in eastern Europe is subverted: somehow, it borders Michigan.
  • As Count Duckula is a Funny Animal parody of Dracula, naturally he inhabits a Transylvania drawn straight out of this trope. Whilst Transylvania can be surprisingly modern if it's good for a laugh — different episodes feature a surprisingly modern Town Hall that offers things like grants for repairing crumbling buildings, computer-controlled banks, an airport, and even a functioning space study and exploration center called TRASH — it is generally portrayed as impoverished, technologically inferior, and full of stupid peasants and corrupt government types.
  • Morgana's family in Darkwing Duck lives in one, appropriately enough. The nearby villagers have access to not only Torches and Pitchforks, but also firearms, tanks, and a good-sized air force.
  • The Fab Four visited a stereotypical Transylvania, complete with vampire, in one episode of the The Beatles cartoon (which gave us the startling revelation that George Harrison was, in fact, Transylvanian).
  • The series Mary Shelley's Frankenhole could literally be retitled Überwald, and would still make no difference.
  • Inspector Gadget visited such a country (a top-secret police convention was being held there). Uniquely, he insisted throughout the episode that it was all for the tourists' benefit. There was even a haunted castle; unsurprisingly, it was Dr. Claw up to his usual hijinks.
  • Frankenstein's Cat is set in the village of Oddsburg, in the shadow of Frankenstein's Castle, somewhere in deepest Überwald.
  • Where Dr. Wily films his movie in the Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) episode "Night of the Living Monster Bots."
  • The Big Knights has the Land of the Vampires, which follows this trope to a tee.
  • The Real Ghostbusters has several examples:
    • Lupusville, a town founded by werewolves (and then taken over by vampires) is like this.
    • Boldavia (a fictional country said to be part of what was once Transylvania) that they visit after they are hired by the local (and not evil) vampire lord.
  • Episode "Who's Minding the Monster?" of The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show has the team traveling to this trope's version of Transylvania where the local population is scared for the roaming of the Frankenstein Monster, reason why they end up working as babysitters for the Draculas in the Frankenstein Castle (although the Real Life Frankenstein Castle is in Germany, mind you). Also Dracula's son is a werewolf, not a vampire, making this episode an example of Überwald, Monster Mash and Creepy Family episode all together.
  • Transylvania is depicted as such in the Scooby Doo movie Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf, apparently ruled by Dracula himself and with a very apathetic peasant population.
  • Transylvania, Pennsylvania from Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy, which is actually invoked by its townspeople, who are ethnic Transylvanians, somewhat similar to the Amish to quote the movie.
  • Transylvania in Laff-A-Lympics also fits the trope. It's even presented as inhabited by ghouls.
  • In the 2015 version of Danger Mouse, Transylvania is portrayed this way in the episode "From Duck to Dawn". Lampshaded by The Narrator.
    Narrator: Transylvania. In reality, a modern province of Romania. But thanks to lazy writing in this show, a terrifying place populated by hunchback peasants and monsters!
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has the Everfree Forest, which is home to plenty of scary stuff, including timber wolves (made of real timber), manticores, cockatrices, pony-eating plants, a Witch Doctor, and a creepy old castle that was once the site of an epic battle between two Physical Gods. However, to the ponies its scariest feature is that it does not follow the rules of the rest of their world, the weather runs by itself and the animals need not be taken care of.
    Applejack: "It ain't natural!"
  • Castlevania (2017), true to the video game series, is set in a grim and gothic version of historical Wallachia that is inhabited by vampires and beset by demons.
  • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi depicts Slovakia as a gloomy, dark Transylvania-esque country...with a vampire band that drains talent.

 
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Gilneas

The human kingdom had supported the Alliance during the Second War, but King Greymane had no qualms about severing all ties to the outside world when it became clear that the Alliance needed Gilneas more than Gilneas needed the Alliance. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, darkness fell on Gilneas after the Greymane Wall's gates had been closed, and the Worgen curse ravaged the nation. Before long, Gilneans were fighting against Gilneans in a bloody civil war that left the kingdom in tatters. Remarkably, the people of Gilneas have somehow managed to hold on to the last vestiges of their humanity... for now.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

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Main / Uberwald

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