Basic Trope: A city is a haven for criminal elements and other unsavoury characters and activities.
- Straight: Trope City is notorious for being home to all manner of criminals, from petty thugs to organized crime syndicates, who the decent people of the city live in fear of. Prostitution, drugs and smuggling are all rampant.
- Exaggerated: Absolutely everybody in Trope City is involved in crime in some way, including the police and the city officials.
- Downplayed:
- Trope City is rough, poverty-stricken, and dangerous, but a Knight in Sour Armor can make a dent, or at least help some people get by honestly.
- The City Narrows of Trope City is a rough neighbourhood that the authorities advise people to steer clear of, but other than that, the city is fairly upstanding.
- Justified: Trope City has fallen on such hard times that a lot of people were forced to turn to a life of crime just to get by.
- Inverted: There's no crime in Trope City at all.
- The city becomes wretched not because of crime and vice but tyrannical overenforcement and puritanism. People avoid the city which causes a downward spiral.
- Arcadia/Utopia
- Subverted:
- Trope City puts on a "tough town" act, but it's just a gimmick to draw in tourists.
- The cops are just as tough as the criminals. Statistically speaking, the place isn't any worst than any other city — the problem then becomes something like how many criminals are "exported" or whatever it's done to maintain the balance of power.
- Trope City's reputation is a result of Malicious Slander - it actually has a lower crime rate than the suburbs and a higher rate of reporting.
- Double Subverted:
- The real criminals of Trope City are actually far worse than the city lets on.
- One gang eventually gets something that disrupts the balance of power in its favor, making life hellish during that period of time where it considers itself invincible.
- That Malicious Slander was not built completely out of lies: a Dark and Troubled Past composed of Once Done, Never Forgotten events is still wrapped around the Trope City's metaphorical neck like the metaphorical albatross even after it has improved its stance on crime by leaps and bounds.
- Parodied:
- Street criminals are frequently seen berating police officers for attempting to enforce the law. The police comply.
- The lawlessness of Trope City is proudly displayed as a tourist attraction — and people actually come in droves so they can be pick-pocketed, swindled and can stand in the middle of (or even partake in) gang wars with all the regularity of walking through, say, Disney World.
- Zig Zagged: There's parts of Trope City that not even an army of Batmen at full "Bat-God Mode" would be able to clean up (at least not without heavy casualties), but there's parts of Trope City that are downright heavenly (and aren't the luxurious parts, even).
- Averted: The Trope City Police Department crack down on any criminals and gangs before they have the chance to become a serious problem.
- Enforced:
- The creators dislike a certain city and use making Trope City a thinly-veiled caricature to voice their hatred of it.
- Executives want Alice and Bob: The Series to be a virtual remake of The Wire, a Police Procedural where both good and bad guys live a pretty rough life. They decide to do so by making Trope City a hellhole with a societal ecology that chews up and spits out everybody.
- Lampshaded: "Seems like this city is a place that law just plain forgot about."
- Invoked: Mayor Pain Jim believes that if he does stuff that will screw up the livelihoods of all the other citizens of Trope City and allow criminals to prosper, he will have more money coming his way pretty soon.
- Exploited: Criminal Mastermind Doctor Evulz has moved to Trope City, knowing that as long as he doesn't does something stupid like blow the whole place up, he will be able to maintain a consistent headquarters for him to fall back to if his schemes go awry.
- Defied: Trope City is under martial law. It's a pretty uncomfortable way of life, but the thing that is absolutely sure is that there is no crime on the streets.
- Discussed: "Here we go — a "Mister Sandman" Sequence showing how bad the town is. They're even using something ironic like Al Jolson's "I'm Sitting On Top of the World"! Nice little jaunty tune for shootouts, muggings and rotting streets!"
- Conversed: "Well, of course the city's falling apart! That's what happens without law and order!"
Back to Wretched Hive, I don't recommend going back there, ever.
