Basic Trope: It's hard to tell what country a work is set in.
- Straight: A show called Life in Greenville revolves around Alice and Bob and all the people they know, living in a city called Greenville. Greenville is probably somewhere in North America as everyone (save Charlie, who was born in England and emigrated as an adult) speaks English with a North American-sounding accent, Christmas takes place in the winter, and prices are expressed in terms of dollars and cents. But no flags, presidents, prime ministers, nor any other national symbols are mentioned (and nor, for that matter, are any symbols of the subnational states or provinces). As such, it's ambiguous whether they live in the United States or Canada.
- Exaggerated: Every character has a different accent (and they collectively speak almost every extant human language). It's Always Spring while the month is never mentioned. Nor are currency or political titles mentioned, so the show could be set pretty much anywhere that is populated enough.
- Downplayed: Greenville is stated to be a town near the US–Canada border. As such, the show features cars with both American and Canadian license plates and American and Canadian brands of consumer goods. Shout-Outs to both American and Canadian popular culture are plentiful and the characters write words like "color/colour," "center/centre," "defence/defense," et cetera, interchangeably. But which side of the border the town is on is never shown nor said.
- Justified: According to Word of God, the work is set in the "North American Union" of an Alternate Universe, comprising what would be both countries (if not the entire continent) in Real Life.
- Inverted: The show is all about living in America or all aboot living in Canada.
- Subverted: The characters' nationality is unspecified until Alice mentions a president.
- Double Subverted:
- ...who is later revealed to be a fictional president of the unnamed country they live in, or even of a different country, merely sharing a name with a real-life figure.
- ...that is, the president of a local organization to which the main characters belong.
- Parodied: The characters themselves don't know what country they live in and when Alice tries to find it on a map, she says, "Ugh, there're multiple Greenvilles
each in America and Canada and I just can't tell which one is ours!" - Zig-Zagged:
- The show has Negative Continuity and sometimes is explicitly set in America, sometimes Canada, and sometimes nowhere in particular.
- In-universe, Canada and the United States are having a long-running border dispute that involves the Greenville area (and may even be at war for it). One country claims it for some time, then the other, then back.
- Averted: The show is explicitly located in Canada.
- Enforced: The show is filmed in Canada and the writers wanted to set it in America, but unfortunately, one of the TV producers they work with is a bit xenophobic, so they compromised by keeping it ambiguous.
- Lampshaded: "Wait ... what country do we live in?"
- Invoked: Greenville was built very close to the international border, possibly even straddling it, and from the beginning, the residents on both sides decided to deemphasize their respective nationalities for the sake of working more easily with communities on the other side.
- Exploited: The citizens of Greenville don't need to worry about people attacking them from other countries as nobody would know what country to attack.
- Defied:
- Bob says, "We live in America."
- Greenville secedes from its country and becomes an independent city-state.
- Discussed:Alice: Which country do we live in?Bob: I don't know, probably America or Canada.Alice: Which one?Bob: I don't know.Alice: Well, does our national head of government have the title president or prime minister? And do we have a governor for our home state or a premier for our home province?Bob: I don't know; I don't vote and I don't pay attention to the news, either.Alice: Hey, Charlie, we're trying to figure out which country this is. When you immigrated here, which country did you become a citizen of?Charlie: I don't remember.Alice: And our city name doesn't help either. I mean, we'd know where we were if we lived in "Milwaukee" or "Toronto", but "Greenville" could be anywhere!Bob: At least, it could be anywhere with a large English-speaking population.
- Conversed: "Do these characters live in America or Canada?"
- Implied: The only time Greenville is shown on a map, there are no political boundaries, but it seems to be very near the Canada–US border.
- Deconstructed: As the flip side to the advantage under Exploited, because nobody knows what country claims the territory of Greenville, it can't interact with any other communities or exchange goods and services with a larger government or firm.
- Reconstructed: Greenville is large and prosperous enough on its own that this isn't an issue.
- Played for Laughs: There's an episode focused on this question called "Where in the World Are Alice and Bob?" that doesn't answer it, simply because Status Quo Is God.
- Played for Drama: Greenville is the central location for a Spy Drama or Paranormal Investigation series, and the blatant obfuscation of its geographic placement is hinted/revealed to be very much deliberate.
- Played for Horror: Greenville is the Vice City to end all Vice Cities, with all the vilest criminals for a long way around coming from there. And they all operate with near impunity because neither the American nor the Canadian government appears to have jurisdiction to go to Greenville and arrest them.
Back to Canada Does Not Exist.
