- Anecdote of Error starts off as a cute story about a girl at a magic school. Then the oppressive caste system is revealed, and the ghastly dismemberments, and the women forced into domestic servitude, and the brutal war that’s been waging for years between two sides that are both guilty of war crimes.
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, like Kevin & Kell, remains lighthearted and happy only because everyone's used to the utter savagery of their world. Here rather than the normal food chain, the majority of sentient creatures of all species, "Beings," are hunted for food and sport by stronger races, protected only by vigilantes (including the eponymous Dan) who themselves are nearly all guilty of Van Helsing Hate Crimes against those of those races (a category that also includes the eponymous Dan) who don't take this attitude. Meanwhile, the whimsical, godlike fae (like the eponymous Mab), while not aggressive in the same way, treat everyone else as playthings, with all that entails. Although the ramifications are treated more seriously than Kevin & Kell, a little bit of Moral Myopia in this world goes a long way.
- Everything is Fine: There is something very very off with the neighborhood and its residents. Everyone is so overly cheerful and polite all the time, to the point of coming off as Stepford Smilers and anything negative, like dead dogs, is just straight-up ignored. Add to that the plethora of cameras positioned everywhere and the fact that for some reason everyone is wearing a mask that hides their heads completely.
- Fabuland Housewives is a Stepford Suburbia with extremely cute Lego Funny Animals.
- Girl Genius, as pointed out in its YMMV page. Yes, the world is full of cool Steampunk tech, which is almost Magitek in its sheer scope (for example, genetically engineered lifeforms created via alchemy), there's a noble, chivalric attitude, and the people seem to be genuinely content. On the other hand, actual scientific process has ground to a halt. For similar reasons, at least the entirety of Europe is trapped in a functionally Victorian cultural level, albeit with some more "modern" attitudes like women's rights and anti-racism. The aristocracy is exclusively reserved for Mad Emperor Scientists who can cause incredible harm and destruction by virtue of the fact that the Spark genuinely drives them mad, and who will pick enormously destructive fights with their neighbors if there's no strong hand preventing it. The world is crawling with all manner of highly dangerous monsters, diseases and rogue devices that want to kill everything in sight, courtesy of the abundance of Mad Scientists who tend to lose control over their own creations more often than not. There's a reason one minor character in an official side-story points out that Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer, and his belief that world peace requires the annihilation of all Sparks, is a valid case of Villain Has a Point.
- Homestuck: Beforus, if one reads between the lines of Kankri's Holier than Thou babbling, falls under this heading. Instead of being killed, lowbloods and the defective are placed under the care of highbloods, which sounds very nice until one realizes this is mandatory, and they are never permitted to do anything useful or fend for themselves. It's mentioned that Latula, who lacks a sense of smell but is otherwise healthy, would have had this happen, and would probably have preferred death.
- Hooves of Death: While the comic has a adorable visual style that takes cues from later generations of My Little Pony, it's still a bloody world full of zombies and danger, and shows early on it won't pull any punches. While still looking adorable.
- Kevin & Kell. A cute, quirky world of Funny Animal characters... where fangs are more powerful than ideals and savage instinct triumphs over reason and empathy. By the world's local ethos (its ok to kill as long as you eat it) ethnic cleansing could just be another name for a BBQ. Perhaps even worse, a Ripped from the Headlines storyline reveals that there is an organization dedicated to opposing this — WikiBeaks, which publishes confidential data that has the potential to cause the predators some serious harm: They post which species are targeted, confidential hunting areas, that sort of thing
. Sounds nice? Too bad they are being directly persecuted by the government. That's right, if you're a prey species, there's nothing out there to protect you, and the only effective organization that even tries is acting illegally. - Lovely People: The social credit system first seems to be working for everyone's benefit, until it becomes clear that the way it works will turn dissenters into pariahs who are forbidden from buying necessities.
- Moképon is based on the idea of deconstructing the basic setting of Pokémon, resulting in a world that is shiny and happy on the surface, but violent and depressing underneath.
- The world of Night Terror is one, big time. As Father Time's neverending visions of the future show, the Dreamscape is extremely dangerous, with characters dying at obscene rates (albeit those deaths being their alternate timeline selves). It gets worse when Night Terror 2 reveals that the Boogeyman can break in seemingly whenever he wants, killing and maiming whoever's unfortunate enough to be nearby when it happens.
- Underneath its façade of a bright, colourful utopia, full of crystal Pegasi and talking snowmen, the snow world in Nixvir is not an exceptionally happy one. Religious fanaticism permeates every aspect of the snow world’s society, the government is run by nine fanatically religious zealots, and their society is organised in a rigidly classist system, leaving little room for upward social mobility.
- The World Oak as a whole may count as this, much like the Classical Mythology the creator of the comic draws from. It's a wonderful world, full of fantastic creatures... ruled over by a bunch of Jerkass Gods who will gladly mess with mortals whenever they can.
- The Order of the Stick: While the Empire of Blood is Obviously Evil and Elan is just too happy to be with his father to notice, this trope is played straight within small sections of the empire. For example, Elan plays in a child's ball pit, only for the comic's wide angled shot shows that there are several skeletons at the bottom.
- Azure City parodies the worst aspects of Wutai; while the city-state is favored by the Eastern Gods and a culturally-rich nation, it is also ruled by corrupt aristocrats who have mastered deception and manipulation to the point that they created character classes that No-Sell evil-detecting spells. They use the honor-bound paladins to raid neighboring villages, and leave the paladins holding the bag when the gods get angry. In short, Evil Running Good is the motto of the city's government. When Azure City finally gets raided and conquered by its pissed-off victims, it is rebranded as Gobbotopia, meant to be a utopia for goblins - but ultimately, it just becomes a killing ground for said goblin civilians due to frequent La Résistance terrorist attacks, and gets progressively worse.
- Outsider: The Loroi act very civil towards Alex and the races in their alliance, so they seem better than the aggressive, totalitarian Umiak. However, at least half of the races in the Alliance are only in it as a subjugated population or out of fear, as the Loroi have committed or attempted xenocide on multiple occasions, and the Loroi are themselves a highly stratified, totalitarian militaristic society. There's a general, somewhat sinister "be nice to us or we'll kill you" tone to their interactions with others.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One page shows a talking jelly bean calling the mayor of Happyland a "doodoo-butt" in the first panel, the second panel is a newspaper article about his execution for sedition.
- Sleepless Domain takes place in a currently unnamed city where it seems the citizens all have a very high standard of living. Everyone has a good place to live, plenty of food to eat, and nice clothes to wear. Furthermore, the animesque art style means that everything is made of smooth lines and circles, with no sharp edges. It looks and sounds like a very comfortable utopia, except for the strange purple monsters that invade each night. But don't worry, the Magical Girls stand ready to stop them! These Celebrity Superhero teenagers patrol the city every night and destroy all the monsters they find, keeping the rest of the inhabitants safe. Just don't pay attention to how frequently these Child Soldiers are injured or even killed on the job, or consider the trauma being inflicted on them even if they manage to survive until they age out and lose their powers. And certainly don't think about how, for all we know, the world beyond the city is a wasteland filled with these invading monsters and that we're ultimately doomed to a slow annihilation as the monsters overwhelm us. No, focus instead on the latest product endorsement or tv interview by our plucky young defenders!
- Sluggy Freelance:
- 4U City tries to be this... it's referred to as a utopia, and everybody is mandatorily happy — any sign of unhappiness results in being immediately pumped full of 'Happy drugs', while any serious departure from the accepted happiness-standard gets you thrown down the 'Judgement Chute', never to be seen again. However, despite this, it fails MISERABLY at looking like a utopia at first glance, because it's always raining.
- The "Dimension of Lame", whose inhabitants are so pacifist that they embrace the invading demons and readily offer to sacrifice the one person who has any chance of saving them, all in the name of preventing more bloodshed.
- Snarlbear: "If you happen to like lurid hell holes, this place is a magical wonderland"
- In Sparklecare, despite all the bright colors and friendly characters in Sparklecare Hospital, it's a really messed-up place with some sick minds on the staff, as well as disturbing diseases and treatments.
- Tamberlane: The Silver Sage islands are a fairly peaceful place and seem to have a good standard of living but as the comic goes on we see that it is steeped in nationalism, xenophobia and a great dislike of "desenting" ideas, to the point that they talk about going "abroad" like it's going into Hell itself.
- unOrdinary: It soon becomes apparent that underneath the sunny plazas and candy-coloured hair the world is a rather awful place to live, with superpowers creating a class system where the low-tiers can be freely bullied by high-tiers. The authorities ignore social injustice, instead supporting the high-tiers, while mentally crippling the god-tiers to control them and, if Remi's speculations are correct, assassinating the superheroes to preserve the existing status quo.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/CrapsaccharineWorld/Webcomics
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