Basic Trope: Zoos or menageries are terrible places.
- Straight: The Troperville Zoo keeps its animals in enclosures that are much smaller than their natural habitats and doesn't feed them properly.
- Exaggerated: The Troperville Zoo has to replace all its animals at least once every month, because the small cages, lack of proper food, and torment by the zookeepers and the patrons produce a high mortality rate.
- Downplayed: Troperville Zoo is understaffed and can't provide its animals with the best care thanks to funding shortages, but they usually get somewhere adequate.
- Justified:
- The work takes place in the 19th century, where these conditions were common.
- Troperville Zoo is unaccredited by the AZA and their priority is profit, not conservation, wildlife rehabilitation and education.
- Troperville has been a no-go area since Hurricane Katrina hit it in 2005, the zoo has been all but abandoned. note
- Inverted: Troperville Zoo is such a magnificent place that the zookeepers don't even need to have animals caught for it; they come from all over for the privilege of living there.
- Subverted: Alice comes out of Troperville Zoo ranting about the poor animals and the terrible conditions...but it turns out she's an Animal Wrongs Group activist and the zoo is quite nice.
- Double Subverted: The zoo in the neighboring town of Troper's Landing isn't, though.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Parodied: The protestors frequently roam outside the zoo, telling how they abuse the animals by not providing gourmet meals to them.
- Averted:
- No zoos appear in the work at all.
- the zoo tries to replicate the animals' habitats as much as possible and makes sure they have food.
- Enforced: The author originally writes the zoo as a fairly normal place, but the producer thinks adding an abusive background will make the zoo animal heroes more sympathetic.
- Lampshaded:Alice: If you're going to keep a bunch of animals, you could at least take care of them right.
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Wanting a way to get rid of Alice, Dr. Evilstein drops her into the zoo and damages the fencing to let some of the carnivores out, hoping no one will suspect that it's murder given the environment.
- Defied: The protests make the conditions of the animals better.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
The Menagerie of Misery is right this way, past the bored and half-starved lions...
