Crap Saccharine World/Playing With
Basic Trope: A setting that looks like a nice place but really isn't.
- Straight: Sugarville is a beautiful, tidy town with kind and smiling citizens and no virtually no poverty or crime. Eventually it turns out that the town is secretly run by a murderous cult.
- Exaggerated: Sugarville has a perpetually nice weather, everyday is a holiday and all everyone is singing and dancing all the time. Eventually it turns out the townspeople are prisoners in their own bodies that are controlled like puppets by an Eldritch Abomination.
- Downplayed: The town's "dark secret" is that most of its citizens have an extreme political ideology.
- Justified: The cult doesn't want to attract the attention of federal police. It does, however, want to attract the attention of unsuspecting lost travelers.
- Inverted:
- Sugarville is a dirt-poor hamlet in an inhospitable wasteland, and all villagers are ugly, grim-faced and snarky. Nevertheless, most of them are content with their lives and have a warm community.
- Darksdale is very dark and depressing, but the people feel free in their state.
- Subverted: Sugar Bowl
- Double Subverted: Sugar Apocalypse
- Parodied: Bob the unsuspecting traveler tours cheerfully around the town, oblivious to the black robes on cloth-lines, the hanging rope that doubles as a children's swing and surprisingly large knives in his hostess' kitchen.
- Zig Zagged: The nice and peaceful city turns out to have traps placed in all the homes! But they only activate if somebody other than those on an approved list, keeping intruders out. But they seem to get oddly violent when you talk about the outside world. Actually, one of their best citizens who helped to get the city running as well as it is write a guide to talking with people outside of the community named "the outside world".
- Averted: Sugarville is as good or bad of a place as it appears.
- Enforced: "So we need a Crapsack World, but let's up its creepiness and add some surprise."
- Lampshaded: "But it all looked so cute and nice!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The hero steals all the unused items and sees all the cameras before entering. He loads all the items in his caravan before interacting with he town.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: "This place is way too happy for a show like this. I bet half of those people are psycho murderers."
- Conversed: "Why does it seem that the nicer a place is, the worse a secret it has?"
Back to Crap Saccharine World, where everyone is happy! Granted, it's because those who refuse to take their Mind Control drugs are quietly disappeared, but still...