Basic Trope: The U.S. is shown either as a beautiful, peaceful country of liberty, a war-mongering nation of poorly-educated morons, or something in-between.
- Straight:
- The plot of a movie centres around two Mexicans who flee to the United States after being targeted by drug cartels. When they finally reach the U.S., the people there are shown as kind and tolerant, police are shown as trustworthy, and violence is nowhere to be seen.
- The plot of a British sitcom involves Bob, an American tourist. He is shown as poorly educated, vulgar, racist, and hateful of nearly every other country, compared to the British characters who are shown as cultured, polite, and modest.
- Exaggerated:
- The plot of a movie centres around two Canadians who take a trip to America. When they leave the airport, they are greeted with a glimmering forest of skyscrapers bathed in perpetual sunlight and the endless bustle of millions of incredibly muscular men wearing powdered wigs and staggeringly beautiful women wearing flowing dresses emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes. Overhead, swarms of eagles and F-22s fill the sky. Upon beholding the majesty of the United States, the Canucks proceed to fall on their knees in tears before a 100-foot tall golden statue of Ronald Reagan holding an AR-15 rifle in one hand and the decapitated head of Saddam Hussein in the other before the tremendous amount of liberty fries their maple syrup-weakened minds.
- The plot of a British sitcom involves Bob, an American tourist. He is so obese he needs a mobility scooter to get anywhere and has a prosthetic leg to replace the one he lost to a grenade thrown by an Iraqi child soldier. He is so poorly educated he struggles to perform elementary mathematics and thinks all countries outside of the U.S. are ruled by North Korea. Whenever anyone makes a remark about him that can even be construed as derogatory, he instinctively reaches for his Glock before being informed that he is in a peaceful country where firearm ownership is strictly regulated. He cannot understand the metric system, instead needing to have distances explained to him in terms of Super Bowl fields. He ends up being killed by a truck while running away from a Sikh man he thought was a Muslim terrorist.
- Downplayed:
- The plot of a movie centres around two Mexicans who flee to the United States after being targeted by drug cartels. It is shown as a rather developed, free, and peaceful country, though it does have some issues.
- The plot of a British sitcom involves Bob, an American tourist. He is shown as having a poor grasp of geography and being somewhat vulgar.
- Justified:
- The U.S. is indeed a nice place to live compared to the violence that the two fled from.
- The sitcom is set in the future after decades of American moral decay.
- Inverted: The two are inversions of each other.
- Subverted:
- The plot of a movie centres around two Mexicans who flee to the United States after being targeted by drug cartels. It is shown as being peaceful and developed in many aspects, but also being full of its own problems with violence.
- The plot of a British sitcom involves Bob, an American tourist. He is shown as vulgar and rather dumb, but also as strong, hard-working, and very loyal.
- Double Subverted:
- Despite America's problems, the American people are shown dealing with them in ways that other countries couldn't dream of.
- Ultimately, Bob is shown as a brutish thug who doesn't care about anything he can't link to his twisted sense of patriotism.
- Parodied:
- The United States is depicted as an overly-sweet Sugar Bowl world. Actual problems are depicted as good things drenched in rainbows. It's also literally Fluffy Cloud Heaven, where virtuous Old Worlders go when they die.
- The actual, current United States is depicted exactly like a fictional dystopia - Airstrip One, World State, Imperium of Man, Gilead, take your pick - just with all the names swapped out for current politicians and cultural figures.
- Averted: The story takes place in a setting where America doesn't exist or is never mentioned.
- Invoked:
- Bob is actually a smart, shrewd guy, but his Obfuscating Stupidity shtick includes playing the part of a dumb, earnest hick with a cowboy hat and Texas drawl.
- Discussed: "This is America! Either the greatest beacon of liberty the world has ever seen, or a place of gun-toting, geographically illiterate morons."
- Conversed: "Why aren't there ever any nuanced depictions of America?"
- Deconstructed: The main characters' stereotyping of Americans causes them to badly misjudge someone, whether it be naively assuming America is a prosperous utopia or snobbishly condemning an American as being a brutish boor.
