I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Difference between revisions

Some cities have [[Cutesy Name Town|cute names]]. Some [[Istanbul Not Constantinople|weird names]]. And some have [[City With No Name|no name at all]].

 

 

Note: if the place has a bad reputation, but the name itself is not scary (like [[Friday the Thirteenth|Camp Crystal Lake]] or [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Sunnydale]]), it does not count. These are places that tell you right up front: ''this is not a nice place''.

 

Related to [[Doomy Dooms of Doom]]. The location counterpart to [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]. The inverted version of this trope would be [[Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom]], except in that trope, the thing ''must'' be actually bad.

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** Gotham itself would count as this a bit, though at least it was founded a couple hundred years before the 'gothic' genre became a class of stylized horror story.

* ''[[Superman]]'': One Metropolis neighborhood's name on city maps is Hob's Bay, but the locals call it something else: Suicide Slum.

** Metropolis also has Suicide Swamp on the outskirts of town. Those people do not know a thing about marketing.

* ''[[Sin City]],'' although its actual name is Basin City.

* Averted in ''[[Dr. No (Film)|Dr. No]]'', where the diabolical doctor's base from which he aims to upset the balance of terror between the USA and the USSR through missile toppling is called... Crab Key.

* ''[[Cutthroat Island]]''.

* ''[[The Princess Bride (Film)|The Princess Bride]]'' has the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp and the Zoo of Death.

* In one of the ''[[Three Stooges]]'' shorts, '''Gents Without Cents''' (1944) the boys are acting out a skit for dockworkers. Curly is given a suicide mission to deliver a message. His directions are, "Now, you go through Skeleton Pass, over Murder Meadow, to Massacre Junction. Then you follow the trail to Poison Creek, around Funeral Mountain, and head directly for Dead Man's Gulch."

** Not exactly Canon, but in ''[[The Pyrates]]'', George Macdonald Frazer suggests that the Dead Man's Chest on which fifteen men were once marooned was in fact a sand bar that resembled the torso of a floating corpse poking out of the water.

* Small mining town [[Desperation (Literature)|Desperation]] in eponymous [[Stephen King]] novel. [[Body Horror|Good for one's health]], [[Artifact of Death|original sculptures]], [[Rabid Cop|charming]] [[Eldritch Abomination|residents]] - fun for the whole family!

* ''[[Deltora Quest]]'' has loads. Dread Mountain, the Maze of the Beast, the Isle of the Dead, the City of the Rats, the Shadowlands... no wonder Lief freaked out upon seeing where his quest would lead him.

* ''Red Harvest'', by [[Dashiell Hammett]], is set in the industrial town of Personville, which is almost always called ''Poisonville'' by its inhabitants.

*** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', set in the same world, has the Necrohol of Mullonde. In the [[Translation Train Wreck|PSX version]], it was Murond Death City. The map of the final battle? Graveyard of Airships.

** ''[[Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy XIII]]'': Hanging Edge, The Vile Peaks, {{spoiler|Orphan's Cradle}}. Individual zones within also have ominous names, for example: A Silent Maelstrom and A City No Longer (Lake Bresha), Wrack And Ruin and Devastated Dreams (Vile Peaks), and Maw Of The Abyss and Deep In The Dark (Mah'habara)

* ''[[La-Mulana]]'' has the Chamber of Extinction, which isn't quite the formidable challenge its name implies. (The Chamber of Birth is arguably worse.)

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' has The End of the World - both a place and an event. ''[[Chain of Memories]]'' takes place entirely within Castle Oblivion. ''[[Kingdom Hearts II (Video Game)|Kingdom Hearts II]]'' ups the ante with The World That Never Was, which itself has subsections like The Hall of Empty Melodies, Brink of Despair, and the Altar of Naught.

** Honorable goes to Proof of Existence, which isn't ominous sounding by itself until you remember [[Fridge Horror|the true nature of the antagonists as undead/non-existent beings]]. What is Proof of Existence then, you ask? ''A graveyard''. {{spoiler|Sure, it works as a connecting room to each Organization member's quarters, but ''still''}}.

** Dark Land in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]'' says it fairly clearly, even without you knowing it's hell incarnate. Or maybe Bowser in the Dark World/Fire Sea.

** And ''[[Mario Party (Video Game)|Mario Party]]''. Bowser's levels have some mighty dangerous sounding names: Bowser's Warped Orbit, Infernal Tower, Bowser Nightmare, Bowser's Enchanted Inferno,

* Baol Dungeon in [[Mabinogi Fantasy Life|Mabinogi]] could count as baol is Gaelic for "Danger". For a plus, it lives up to its name as its one of the hardest dungeons in the game.

* Episode 3 of ''[[Doom]]'' is pretty much nothing but these: "Hell Keep," "Slough of Despair," "Pandemonium," "House of Pain", "Unholy Cathedral," "Mt. Erebus"<ref>Erebus was a Greek god, son of the god Chaos, and represented the personification of darkness.</ref>, "Gate To Limbo", and "Dis".

* ''[[Future Cop LAPD]]'' has the delightfully named [[The Alcatraz|Hell's Gate Prison]]. A classic maximum security prison, with the only ground routes essentially being ''killzones and firing lanes'' protected by multiple turrets with overlapping arcs of fire and elevated positions for guards, ultimately designed to make a mass-escape from within the facility absolutely suicidal.

* The ''[[Catacomb Fantasy Trilogy]]'' is full of these. The titular Catacombs of Despair contain such levels as The Garden of Tears, The Demon's Inferno, The Town of Morbidity, The Garden of Forgotten Souls, The Lost City of the Damned, Hall of the Wretched Pox, The Chamber of the Evil Eye, The Chamber of the Invisible Horror and so on. Meanwhile, the levels contain areas named The Corridors of Death, The Way to Certain Peril, The Insufferable Ways of Pain, The Chamber of Ultimate Doom...

* ''[[Storm Hawks (Animation)|Storm Hawks]]'' gives us Terra Cyclonia, Terra Gruesomus, the Black Gorge, and the ever-popular Wastelands.

* ''[[Earthworm Jim (Animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'', trying to track down Psycrow, reads the Idiot's Guide To Hideously Dangerous Places; featuring entries on The Pit Of Unimaginable Fear, The Cavern Of Flesh Ripping Weasels, and [[Take That|Det]][[Detroit|roit]]. He turns out to be at The Boulevard of Acute Discomfort.

 

 

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