Home Base

The lair. The hideout. Hero headquarters. Home Base. That place to which the heroes or villains return after a hard day of fighting or committing crime. This is where planning takes place and where teams regroup after missions. Generally hidden, but may be ostentatious.

Some variants are exclusive to certain jobs. For example, the Mad Scientist will naturally live in the Mad Scientist Laboratory, and a Cop Show inevitably has a precinct. In a show where a team is wandering around, their Cool Ship, Cool Boat or other cool vehicle may double as Home Base. Larger bases for villains may have a Den of Iniquity for off-hour "recreation".

Home Base may also literally be a private home, which makes it all the more personal when a villain breaks in.

Incredibly common, since it's obviously cheaper to shoot in a single recurring set than to build new locations.

Not to be confused with the British hardware store of the same name.

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Sub-tropes:

• Airborne Aircraft Carrier
• Base on Wheels
• The Battlestar
• Bigger on the Inside
• Cave Behind the Falls
• Collapsing Lair
  • Load-Bearing Boss
• Elaborate Underground Base
• Evil Tower of Ominousness
• Exploring the Evil Lair
• Haunted Headquarters
  • Haunted Castle
  • Haunted House
• Island Base
• Landmarking the Hidden Base
• Last Bastion
• Mad Scientist Laboratory
• Mission Control
  • Mission Control Is Off Its Meds
• Ominous Floating Castle
• Player Headquarters (for video games)
• Space Base
• Supervillain Lair
• Underwater Base
• Volcano Lair

Related Tropes:

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us
• Bookcase Passage
• Den of Iniquity
• The Siege
• Storming the Castle
• Trash the Set
• Watching Troy Burn

Examples that don't fit in other tropes:

Anime and Manga

• It is quite frequent in Humongous Mecha shows (Justified, since you can not easily keep a giant, humanoid machine war in your home unless your name is Banjo Haran):
  • Mazinger Z: The Photon Atomic Research Institute was the heroes's base where they kept the Humongous Mecha and all tools they needed to repair them and upgrade them. Originally it was a civilian use building -a laboratory researched the newly discovered Photon Atomic energy-, but Dr. Hell pretty much forced them to make some modifications (such like installing a Beehive Barrier). Over the half of the series, The Hero and his little brother moved to the Institute, making the example even more literal. Big Bad Dr. Hell had two Supervillain Lair: Bardos Island And Hell Island. Both of them counted like Elaborate Underground Base, Island Base and Mad Scientist Laboratory.
  • Great Mazinger: The Fortress of Science was the place where the heroes lived and their HQ to fight the Mykene Empire. It stood out in sea beside the Japanese shoreline and it could submerge -doubling like an Underwater Base-. Some parts of the building could detach off the remain and work like a submarine or a flying carrier. Mykene Empire Home Base was necessarily an Elaborate Underground Base because they were a civilization lived underground.
    • It was parodied, too. Boss' gang were looking for a Home Base for his Humongous Mecha. When they found one place, Boss was pretty angry it was nothing but a rundown shack with one wall crumbled and holes on the roof.
  • UFO Robo Grendizer: The Space Science Laboratory was the base of the heroes. The Vegans Home Base was a Space Base located on the Moon.
  • Kotetsu Jeeg: The Build Base, although Hiroshi and his family lived in another place.
  • Combattler V: The Nanbara Connection was located by the coast and was protected by a Beehive Barrier.
  • Voltes V: The Camp Big Falcon was located on a penninsula -so it nearly was a full-fledged Island Base- shaped like a bird of prey with its wings spread out. The base also doubled like The Battlestar.
  • Daimos: The Daimobic worked like this. It was a rocket-shaped building.
  • Zambot 3: The Zambase was a Airborne Aircraft Carrier AND a Cool Starship.

Comic Books

• Most superheroes or teams have (at least) one of these, though most, like Batman, opt for an Elaborate Underground Base:
  • The Watchtower in Justice League
  • Happy Harbor, Maine, in Young Justice
    • This was actually the Justice League's original base.
  • Avengers Mansion in The Avengers
    • And Avengers Tower.
  • The Fortress of Solitude in Superman, though he actually doesn't spend a lot of time there (go figure).
    • He goes there when he wants to be *by himself*. Thus the name.
  • The Batcave, of course.
  • The Baxter Building in Fantastic Four

Fan Works

• Grunnel's house serves as one for part of the story in With Strings Attached. However, after the four return with the third piece of the Vasyn, they discover the other two pieces missing and the house empty of nearly everything—so much for that Home Base.

Live Action TV

• The library in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Giles' house in season four also qualifies. Later, so do the Magic Box and the Summer's household.

Newspaper Comics

• The Skull Cave for The Phantom.
• Xanadu for Mandrake the Magician

Tabletop Games

• In Ars Magica, the wizards' covenants qualify as Home Bases.

Video Games

• In Persona 4, the heroes have a "special base": the Junes food court.
• Metal Walker gives the hero various base camps, which he can place at nearby signs.

Web Comics

• In Blue Yonder Claremont Apartment complex. It's just a complex that happens to have a lot of retired capes in it.

Western Animation

• Professor Utonium's home in The Powerpuff Girls.
• The Planet Express offices in Futurama.
• Space Ghost has a whole Ghost Planet!
• Castle Grayskull for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
• The crashed Ark spaceship in The Transformers.'
• The basement of the Silver Dragon restaurant in WITCH.