What Standard Fantasy Setting and Standard Sci-Fi Setting are for Fantasy and Science Fiction, this is for Super Hero genre: a setting of the sort in which most (though not all) superhero comic books and other narratives take place. Though the genre dates to the 1940s, the clear and definite rules for generic superhero settings weren't really solidified until The '60s, when Marvel Comics and DC Comics started making full use of their Universes. See also Superhero Prevalence Stages.
Common ingredients:
- Big Applesauce: Incredible amount of super hero stories are set in either New York City or a fictional metropolis strongly resembling it. If not, there will in all likelihood still be a City of Adventure out there.
- Superhero Capital of the World: When a specific location in a superhero narrative is used long enough, its character roster of heroes and villains becomes so saturated that the location In-Universe and out becomes synonymous with hero-villain activity.
- Comic-Book Time: Expect characters to last for decades without aging at all. note
- Status Quo Is God: Prevalent, with heroes preserving status quo and all changes being mostly cosmetic or temporary. Even in books that avert it, there's often a period of relative stability/routine adventuring, either in the Backstory, or the first act.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Most times, a generic Super Hero world has everything from gods to angels and demons to Eldritch Abominations, from wizards and vampires to mad scientists and aliens to Zeppelins from Another World. Every mythical creature may appear at some point.
- Crossover Cosmology: Usually one mythological pantheon running around is not enough.
- Secret Identity
- Shared Universe: Most times, the setting is built around many comics sharing the same world or acting like there are others.
- The Cape: There is usually one of those, who inspires others and is seen as an example to follow. Nine cases out of 10, a Captain Ersatz of Superman, though sometimes may be replaced by Captain Patriotic.
- The Cowl: Street-level vigilante, most times based on Batman, not the nicest of superheroes, usually serving as Foil for The Cape.
- Distaff Counterpart: There are usually several female heroes inspired by and/or related to male heroes who strive to become renowned heroes on their own, usually following the model codified by Supergirl and often overlapping with the Sidekick.
- Super Team: Expect one main and biggest, working on global scale, and several smaller and local to appear here and there.
- The Golden Age of Comic Books: If there is a definite time period when superheroes appeared for the first time, it will usually be in the 1940s, though the very first superhero may have shown up in 1938, the year the first Superman comic was published. Occasionally, earlier heroes will be recognized, but even then, expect this era to be a turning point, one way or another.
- The Silver Age of Comic Books: Most of the time, The '60s will be noted as the time of the biggest superhero boom in history.
- The Bronze Age of Comic Books: The time when superheroes began getting flaws and tackling more serious problems in the world. The '70s are the go-to decade for this age.
- The Dark Age of Comic Books: On a similar note, if a decade is singled out as darker and filled with Anti-Heroes, it will probably be the The '90s, or less commonly The '80s.
- Super Power Lottery: People are probably getting all kinds of superpowers everywhere.
- Required Secondary Powers: In later years, it has become more common to make use of this trope.
- Flying Brick: At least one will certainly be there.
- Let's You and Him Fight: It's hard to tell a situation where two superheroes meet and don't start beating each other.
- Crossover
- Radiation-Induced Superpowers, Lightning Can Do Anything, Touched by Vorlons, The Chosen Many: Classic origin stories.
- Phlebotinum du Jour may occur in case of long-running universes.
- Meta Origin, Mass Super-Empowering Event: Getting more and more popular.
- Super Heroes Wear Capes
- Super Heroes Wear Tights
- Not Wearing Tights: If they don't.
- The Unmasqued World: The variation where fantastic elements have always existed- in a superhero setting, magic and aliens are not a secret- they make the evening news.
The following may be removed if the setting falls in certain values of Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, or due to other Implementation Details:
- Clark Kenting: Concealment of a Secret Identity by means of a Paper-Thin Disguise that everyone just goes with.
- Death Is Cheap: Superheroes and other characters die all the time in comic books, only to be brought back.
- Deconstruction, Reconstruction, Decon-Recon Switch
- Hero Insurance: Who's going to pay for all the damage done by superhero battles? Often done in more cynical works.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Villains who make no bones about their evil-ness and actually revel in it. Often seen in many idealistic works.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: A character cannot use their amazing inventions to better the world around them, because Status Quo Is God.
- Beware the Superman: Superpowers aren't always a good thing, and can sometimes be a source of fear if the one bearing them does not have your best interests in mind.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: A villain uses their powers and gadgets to commit robberies when they could easily use their gifts to get money the legal way.
- Smug Super: Some supers have massive egos to match their powers, and aren't shy about rubbing this in the faces of others.
- Super Registration Act: A law requiring those with superpowers to be registered with the government in a national database or face penalties. If it's not a villainous plot to get rid of superheroes, it is often the subject of more cynical stories.
- Cape Busters: Normal humans who combat super-beings with technology, smarts and ruthless tactics. Can be heroes or villains depending on the work.
- Super Hero School: A school that teaches young people with superpowers how to be superheroes.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Marvel Comics:
- DC Comics:
- DC Universe, being the other of two Trope Makers.
- WildStorm Universe (now incorporated into the DC Universe)
- Image Comics Universe which is a mix of several smaller, that may or may not be in one continuity, depending on whatever the writer feels like. Most of them (Spawn is a little debatable), fit this trope.
- Valiant Comics Universe
- Astro City, as a Decon-Recon Switch of the genre, hits most, but not all, of the above.
- Irredeemable, though usual Status Quo has been thrown out of the window at the very beginning.
- The Boys, though it plays with expectations.
- PS238
- Zenescope Entertainment
- Wild Cards is something of a subversion. There are people with remarkable powers, and even a rough Golden and Silver Age (an alien viral outbreak shifted the world from nonpowered WWII heroes to superpowered individuals), the overwhelming majority of those afflicted (and more than a few of our protagonists) don't engage in traditional superheroics.
- Wearing the Cape a Reconstruction.
- Soon I Will Be Invincible
- Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain
- Hero
- Super Powereds is based in one of four super hero colleges set up to train future super heroes. The books dig pretty deep into how such a system would actually work, including the various government agencies, licenses, and paperwork that had to be created to handle everything.
- Corpies is a spin off that focuses on hero and a group of non-heros who do search and rescue work, and the differences between those who got a hero license and those who didn't.
- Justice Squad
- Whateley Universe: While the series as a whole is set in a Superhero School (even if the school administration would disagree on the 'hero' part, as the school is technically a Truce Zone between heroes and villains), the overwhelming majority of Superhero setting tropes have some degree of expression in the series, whether deconstructed or played straight (or often, both). There even were the equivalents of the Golden and Silver ages in the series Back Story.
- Worm is an interesting deconstruction of the setting but takes the opposite approach of most deconstructions; instead of playing all the standard tropes straight and seeing what the world looks like with them taken to their logical extremes, it instead starts with a Standard Superhero Setting and then explores what set of circumstances would have been necessary to generate it.
- Mutants & Masterminds
- Champions
- Superpowers Companion module for Savage Worlds assumes this.
- Sentinels of the Multiverse
- Acrobat
- Almighty Protectors
- Bad Guy High, though it's rather played as a parody most of the time.
- Essay Bee Comics Presents Fusion
- Heroes Unite
- Magellan
- Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi, being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between several cartoons from which many are from Super Hero genre or already are examples of this trope, obviously turned out into this.
- Entire DC Animated Universe
- Teen Titans (2003)
- The Venture Bros.
- Young Justice (2010)
- Both Dexter's Laboratory with its two sub-shows - Dial M for Monkey and Justice Friends and The Powerpuff Girls. Even more so if you count Canon Welding between them, caused by apperances of superheroes Major Glory and Valhallen in both shows, among many other things.