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When they are too perfect to be true, [[Cut and Paste Suburb|the suburbs of The Fifties and the present]] can be downright ''creepy''. Mom baking fresh apple pies every day, the kids getting A's in every subject on their report card, neighbours who [[Slasher Smile|grin like their teeth are wired open]]... there's something [[Uncanny Valley|unsettling]] about it.
 
This is a [[Town Withwith a Dark Secret]], with the added twist that the Dark Secret is hidden in this "idyllic" neighbourhood. The Trope Namer is, of course ''[[The Stepford Wives]]'', a thoroughly creepifying book about such a town.
 
[[Stepford Suburbia]] is the sister-city to the [[Uncanny Village]], and both are located in the [[Crap Saccharine World]]. Its residents include [[Teen Drama|angsty teens]], [[The Beautiful Elite]] and, of course, the [[Stepford Smiler]].
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== Comic ==
* An issue of ''[[Shade the Changing Man]]'' featured a [[Stepford Suburbia]] run by a man who had created a [[It Runs Onon Nonsensoleum|madness-powered]] machine that turned people "normal"<ref>He thought his father made it, but actually his father's machine was a self-flagellation device with which he punished himself for not being "normal"</ref>. He started as a [[Heteronormative Crusader]] with mild racism and an inablility to understand young people, but as his madness increased, his definition of "normal" grew even narrower ("You take milk in your coffee, right, Joe?")
 
 
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* ''[[The Stepford Wives]]''. ([[Trope Namer]])
* The town in ''[[Edward Scissorhands]]'' (shown above) was very much ''the'' creepy little 1950-'60s town.
* The town mock-up ''[[Indiana Jones and Thethe Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Film)|Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of Thethe Crystal Skull]]''.
* ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' is a British example.
** Although it's not as much a suburb as it is an actual (european) village.
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* The Chicago neighborhood in ''[[Stir of Echoes]]'' qualifies, in a comfortable, scruffy, working-class way.
* ''[[American Beauty]]''.
* Seahaven, in ''[[The Truman Show (Film)|The Truman Show]]''.
* ''[[Revolutionary Road]]''.
* ''[[Rebel Without a Cause]]'' was set in an idyllic American Dream suburbia filled with dysfunction and neuroses - and it was made ''during'' the Fifties.
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* ''[[Blue Velvet]]''
* ''[[Fido]]'' is set in an idyllic 50's community... Which just happens to employ zombies for menial labor.
* In ''[[The Cat in Thethe Hat]]'' live action film, the kids' neighboorhood could be described as this.
* In ''[[Targets]]'', Vietnam vet Bobby Thompson's empty existence in one of these is what finally sends him on a shooting spree.
* Camelot Gardens, the gated community in ''[[Lawn Dogs]]''.
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== Literature ==
* [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''[[Nursery Crime|The Fourth Bear]]'' opens in one of these, where creatures from cautionary tales, such as monsters under the bed, really exist to keep the kids in line.
* Camazotz from ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]'' appears to be an entire planet of [[Stepford Suburbia]]. Controlled by a [[Brain In Aa Jar|disembodied brain]].
* "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] is about a town where everyone's happiness is [[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child]] - literally.
* Waverton in the story of the same name. In this case, everyone in the neighborhood [[I'm a Humanitarian|is a cannibal.]] But the new couple in town doesn't know that.
* ''Candor'' by Pam Bachorz is about a town that uses subliminal messages to create its Stepford Suburbia--especially creepy in the teens, who love their SAT study parties a bit too much for comfort. The town was planned by the protagonist's father as a way to have a perfect world after his other son died.
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** This is played with in the films, where Privet Drive residents live precisely identical houses, and ''all drive exactly the same car''.
** Possibly the whole town since Harry came and went from the same house as pampered Dudley, scrawny and bruised and dressed in rags, and [[Social Services Does Not Exist|no one did anything]]. At least, anything successful enough for Harry to know about it. This is sometimes blamed on [[Omniscient Morality License|Dumbledore]].
* Parodied in a ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' short story, where the Doctor insists the true horror of suburbia is that there ''aren't'' sinister secrets behind the net curtains - it really is that boring.
* The eponymous town in the novel ''Tangerine'' is like this, to the extent that early in the story you start expecting mind-sucking aliens or an ancient curse or something. People are struck by lightning and part of the middle school is sucked into <s>hell</s> a natural sinkhole, and the viewpoint character's path to confronting this in the town and in his family forms the backbone of the story.
* From ''[[The Regulators (Literature)|The Regulators]]'', we have Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio. [[Stephen King]] spends the first 5 or 6 pages of the novel practically gushing over its all-American ''normalness'' with narration so upbeat it's almost manic. And then everything goes [[Would Hurt a Child|straight]] [[Gorn|to]] [[Eldritch Abomination|hell]], in typical King style.
 
 
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* In "Chuck Versus the Suburbs" the main characters of [[Chuck]] go undercover in a suburban cul de sac to figure out which of the residents is an evil spy. {{spoiler|They all are}}
* The new ABC series ''[[The Gates]]'', where everyone concentrates on petty issues of town status to distract from their bloodlust, channel the traditional [[Fur Against Fang|vampire/werewolf enmity]] into less destructive competition, and conceal two witches warring over the town.
* Featured in one episode of ''[[Fear Itself (TV series)|Fear Itself]]''.
* ''[[This Is Not My Life]]'''s Waimoana, an eerily perfect and homogenous New Zealand town of the future.
* Where [[Dexter]] moves to in season 4.
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* "Pleasant Valley Sunday", written for [[The Monkees]] by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
* "Shangri-La" and "Well Respected Man" by [[The Kinks]] are about suburbia and [[Stepford Smiler|the people who inhabit it]]. It was a regular theme with them, although there are subversions such as "Village Green" (where the singer longs for the "simple people," "fresh air" and 'Sunday school" of his idyllic hometown, and laments how modernization is turning it into [[The Theme Park Version]]).
* The video for [[Soundgarden (Music)|Soundgarden]]'s "Black Hole Sun." The song doesn't explicitly mention suburbia, but...this trope hardly seems out of place.
* "Shop Vac" by nerd favorite [[Jonathan Coulton]] is about a couple that moves from the big city to suburbia to start a family... only the husband really isn't happy with the move.
{{quote| ''We hung a flag above the door''<br />
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''And now even the fake ones have stopped calling'' }}
* The video for Das Weisse Licht by Oomph! shows that this order is maintained by replacing the inhabitants with robots, in a Stepford sort of way.
* Ben Folds' re-envisioned "[http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858598697/ Rockin' the Suburbs]" for the movie [[Over the Hedge (Filmanimation)|Over the Hedge]]:
{{quote| We're rockin' the suburbs<br />
We part the shades and face the facts<br />
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''As they dispense''<br />
''The kind of look that says they're perfect'' }}
* [The] [[Arcade Fire]]'s third album, ''The Suburbs'', is a [[Concept Album]] which focuses on, well, [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|the suburbs]]. It takes a somewhat nuanced view of the subject ([[The Face of the Band|Win Butler]] is on record as saying that it's a letter "''from''" the suburbs, not for them or against them), but the Stepford form is definitely visible (particularly "Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains").
* [[The Smashing Pumpkins (Music)|The Smashing Pumpkins]]' video for "Try, Try, Try" contains a sequence that takes place in a dark [[Stepford Suburbia]].
* [[Blur (Musicband)|Blur]] often sang about apparently normal suburban characters who are a lot weirder under the surface. ''Tracy Jacks'' and ''Stereotypes'' are two examples.
* ''The Sound of the Suburbs'' by The Members is a late '70s punk anthem about teenagers bored by suburban conformity.
* "No Birds" by [[Public Image Ltd]]
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== Tabletop Games ==
* "Night Horrors: Wolfsbane", a sourcebook for ''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken (Tabletop Game)|Werewolf: The Forsaken]]'' features a town where everything's nice and orderly, a little oasis in the midst of the ''[[New World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|New World of Darkness]]''. What made it so nice and orderly? Simple; several years ago, something blew over the town and ''ate everyone's souls''. So the town's spirit possessed all the inhabitants and put them on autopilot. The name of the setting is : "The Road to Stepford: Lonesome Forest" and it's in Chapter II : the shadows p.98.
* The ''[[Mutants and Masterminds (Tabletop Game)|Mutants and Masterminds]]'' module "A More Perfect Union" brought the player characters to the seemingly idyllic small town of Unity. With a name like that, what could possib-ly go wrong? {{spoiler|Hivemind}}
 
 
== Theatre ==
* The [[Ur Example]] is [[Leonard Bernstein]]'s 1952 mini-opera ''Trouble In Tahiti'', whose [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|generic American setting]] is even called [[Suburbia]]. It has a vocal trio cheerfully singing about the lovely life of a [[Happily Married]] couple, providing extreme [[Mood Dissonance]] counterpoint to the couple actually featured in the show, who are so "sharing, smiling, confiding, loving" that they struggle to remain on speaking terms with each other.
* Flaming Tree Grove, setting for the Australian play [[Ruby Moon (Theatre)|Ruby Moon]]
 
 
== Video Games ==
* The trope-naming "The [[Milkman Conspiracy]]" level of ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'' is a ''literally'' twisted (i.e. it [[Alien Geometries|looks like an Escher engraving]]), evil little suburb where the lawn flamingos turn to watch you and everyone is either a [[Girl Scouts Are Evil|Rainbow Squirt]] or a [[The Men in Black|G-Man]]. It's hilarious, but rather creepy once you realize that this is how [[Conspiracy Theorist|Boyd]] sees ''every'' affluent neighborhood.
** And by "affluent neighborhood" we mean "the world". He sees the entire world as a sham [[Stepford Suburbia]] that's ''watching him all the time''.
* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' features ''two'' of these, Andale and Tranquility Lane{{spoiler|, the virtual world of Vault 112}}. Suffice to say, there are other factors that make them both even creepier than the standard Stepford Suburbia.
** This applies to much of suburban America in it's pre-war days, where people were being killed in everything from government experiments, to malfunctioning factory robots, to ''taste-testing soda''. Chinese Americans were also being rounded up and imprisoned after the Sino-American war began in 2066, and fears of Communism and sabotage led to the Unites States becoming a police state in everything but name.
* Although most of the human characters in the first ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]'' game fit comfortable into the [[Stepford Smiler]] trope, Santa Modesta is set in a pleasant 1950s suburbia... in which everyone has various psychological hang-ups seething just underneath the surface.
* Although the setting has a somewhat more rural bent, the PC adventure game Harvester used the cliche 1950s idyllic suburb as the {{spoiler|virtual reality}} backdrop for a {{spoiler|evil cannibalistic cult}} in one of the most infamously disturbing, [[Squick]]-inducing video games of all time.
* At first, Tazmily Village in ''[[Mother 3 (Video Game)|Mother 3]]'' is a beautiful [[Sugar Bowl]] where no one locks their doors and even the ''concept'' of money is foreign. Then the [[Time Skip]] rolls around. All of a sudden it's a modernized suburbia with stores, a train station, cars, and all sorts of modern conveniences... {{spoiler|and anyone who doesn't join in has their house struck by lightning. The guy who ran the inn has it bought out from under him, every house has a "Happy Box" that people are compelled to stare at, anyone old and not rich is forced to live in a complete dump, everyone else (even the ''kids'') is expected to slave away in a factory for a living, and becoming a [[Mook|Pigmask]] is treated as a great career goal.}} [[It Gets Worse]].
* The eponymous town of ''[[Silent Hill]]'' looks like a quaint resort town, but looks can be deceiving. Shepard's Glen, its neighboring town that ''[[Silent Hill Homecoming]]'' features prominently, [[Town Withwith a Dark Secret|has some secrets of its own]].
 
 
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== Western Animation ==
* The Town Called Malice in ''[[The Venture Brothers (Animation)|The Venture Brothers]]''.
* [[Meaningful Name|Moralton]] in ''[[Moral Orel]]''. For all the [[Davey and Goliath]] stylings, it is a place filled with self-hating, hypocritical, abusive [[Jerkass|Jerkasses]] that seem dead set on crushing the naive and hopelessly optimistic protagonist. And that's when said protagonist isn't wreaking carnage because he takes the bad advice of his authority figures to extreme and unfortunate ends.
* The episode "Mooving Day" of ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'' involves Timmy moving to a very creepy suburb inspired by the [[Trope Namer]].
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