
The series mainly centers on a young girl named Trinity Bales. Trinity and her parents move into the town of Raven Brooks. Things seem normal until Trinity notices a kid sneaking out of one of the houses in the neighborhood and she eventually meets the kid, Nicky, at school. Nicky explains to Trinity that he has been snooping in the house belonging to Theodore Peterson because he believes Mr. Peterson committed murder and is hiding something in there that Nicky is trying to expose. Trinity believes Nicky after finding some intriguing clues herself. From then on, Trinity does whatever she can to uncover the mysterious secrets in Raven Brooks, not just of Mr. Peterson, but also a strange figure whom she has nicknamed Crowface. Backing her up are Trinity's new friends Nicky, Enzo, Maritza, Ivan and Delroy.
Hello Neighbor Welcome To Raven Brooks provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: In the games, the neighbour, while dangerous, isn’t a murderer and for the most part leaves people alone if they stay away from him… Mr. Peterson, however, kills at least two people, assaults and beats the taxidermist (and would have done the same to a cop had Trinity not distracted him), designs actually lethal traps and tortures Nicky to the point he mentally breaks. He also acts a lot more malicious and openly threatens Trinity.
- The second season mildly downplays this by revealing that Mr Peterson DIDN'T kill those people and that was actually the work of the Crowface cult, but his much more hostile and malicious demeanor remains.
- Adults Are Useless:
- Without strong enough evidence that proves Mr. Peterson is plotting something bad, the kids can't get help from anyone, so they mainly deal with the situation on their own. Part of the reason they sneak into his house is that they are trying to find proof of his crime.
- This continues into Season 2. Wherein Trinity's parents would rather continue ostracizing Nicky for being visibly traumatized under the impression he's a bad influence, or outright blame her friends for their house exploding rather than assume it was a freak accident, let alone the cause of someone connected to the man who tried to kill her right in front of them.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Maritza likes to pick on her brother, Enzo, for being geeky, much to Enzo's annoyance, but when the two reunite after splitting up in "Search & Rescue", she gives him a hug, showing how glad Maritza is that Enzo is fine.
- Bookends: Between "New Neighbors" and "Search & Rescue" - the first and last episodes of Season 1:
- Both of the episodes' climaxes involve fleeing from Mr. Peterson's house, with one of the kids lampshading how he never chases them past his property line before taunting him via Blowing a Raspberry - Nicky does it in the former, while Trinity does it in the latter. Downplayed in that, in the latter occasion, Mr. Peterson breaks that rule, which screws him over.
- As Trinity explains to Nicky how they just need to figure what Mr. Peterson does outside of his house, she adds that "maybe, [they'll] get lucky". Before Mr. Peterson is taken away in the police car, he coldly states that Trinity used up all of her luck.
- Bullying a Dragon: Nicky (and by extension, his friends) suspects that Mr. Peterson is secretly a murderer who is scheming something sinister, yet he spies on him and sneaks in his house without help from the police or even his parents. When Mr. Peterson catches Nicky, he imprisons him in his house and twists his mind. After weeks of imprisonment, Nicky is mentally a complete mess.
- Bittersweet Ending: Season 1 ends with Mr. Peterson getting arrested in the midst of his attempt to kidnap Trinity, putting an end to (what the kids believe to be) his shady activities. However, Nicky's still psychologically scarred by what he has seen (which is explored in the following season) and, as Trinity discovers, there's more dangerous people in Raven Brooks (namely, the Crowfaces).
- Cassandra Truth: Trinity tries to warn the adults that Mr. Peterson is potentially plotting something evil, but they don't believe the kids because they choose to empathize with Peterson. The school principal explains that Mr. Peterson lost his wife in a car accident and both of his children are reported missing. In the adults' eyes, the kids are needlessly harassing a sad man who deeply misses his family.
- It turns out that Mr. Peterson is starting to exploit this by the end of the season, with his first line of dialogue being to rub it in Trinity's face as he abducts Nicky.Mr. Peterson: (through Nicky's walky-talky) Tell whoever you want. They'll never believe you.
- It turns out that Mr. Peterson is starting to exploit this by the end of the season, with his first line of dialogue being to rub it in Trinity's face as he abducts Nicky.
- Company Cross-References: In "The Gang is Alright", Mr. Peterson buys a selection of tools made by "Totally Reliable Tools." The name and company logo are a reference to Totally Reliable Delivery Service, another game published by tinyBuild. The same episode shows earlier that the school's cafeteria food is from Happy's Humble Burger Farm.
- Crazy-Prepared: Mr. Peterson fills his house with barricades and traps in order to keep out, catch and even kill snooping kids. The kids try to get past them as best as they can, with varying results.
- Crush Blush: Enzo has a crush on Trinity from the moment he first met her. So he naturally blushes whenever he socializes with her.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: The tropes that the Inventor's Club share as young heroes in a mystery story - Kid Detective, Snooping Little Kid, and Free-Range Children - end up falling apart one way or another by Season 2. The Crowface Cult hide themselves and their secrets too well for the kids to decipher, and are not afraid to manipulate them with their family's safety, as shown with Maritza. Nicky's reward for his insistence in figuring out the basement mystery is a severe mental scar from which he never truly recovers from (he also relapses later on after being insensibly confronted over his trauma). Trinity's parents are revealed to be very concerned over their daughter wandering off, not helped by her apparently having a history as a troublemaker.
- Don't Celebrate Just Yet: In "The Pieces", the man who broke his leg has been crawling all the way to the hospital. He finally reaches it, thinking he'll get treated, only to notice there is a huge line of injured people that reaches far outside the building. The poor man now has to crawl to where the line starts and wait his turn.
- Driven to Madness: When Mr. Peterson finally captures Nicky, he imprisons him in the basement. It's left ambiguous what Mr. Peterson did to him, but after weeks of being kept in the house, poor Nicky undergoes Sanity Slippage. Nicky was once a brave little boy, but when his friends found him in "Search & Rescue", he constantly feels frightened, always saying to nobody that he'll behave and wants to stay safe. He also covers his head with a bag that has button eyes and a smile sewn on it, concealing his head and sight. Even when his friends brought him out of his prison room, Nicky instinctively goes back to it and re-applies his head bag.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The 2020 pilot has plenty of divergences from the finalized series:
- The main cast's vocal performances were changed for the series; especially the ones for Nicky (going from a teenager-sounding voice to a more youthful sounding one) and Mr. Peterson (going from an elderly voice to a smoother, yet deep and menacing one).
- Going by a comment from Enzo, Trinity was part of the Inventor's Club members for a while, indirectly implying that either her family moved to Raven Brooks earlier in her lifetime or she was born in the town in the first place. The canon pilot, meanwhile, clearly show her as a newcomer to the town.
- Enzo appears to be the cautious one. That trait, and his initial accent, were given to Ivan in the series, while Enzo's character leaned more onto a Cowardly Lion with the addition of a crush on Trinity.
- The Inventor's Club attempts to explore the amusement park in the pilot - something that was pushed onto Season 2 in the series.
- The plot point of Nicky getting kidnapped, while kept in the series, happens differently. In the 2020 pilot, he's lured to the house by a basketball, which he assumes to be an call from Mr. Peterson's son. In the fourth episode, he's caught inside of Mr. Peterson's house when he's about to unlock the basement door.
- Godzilla Threshold: In Season 2, the Crowface Cult prove to be too difficult for the kids to handle, and halfway through the season, Mr. Peterson offers for Trinity to free him from prison so he can stop them and settle his score with them. Trinity's increasingly poor decisions drive the rest of the Inventor's Club away, and Nicky is carted off to the psych ward, leaving her with nobody else to rely on and forcing her to free Mr. Peterson.
- It's All About Me: Trinity's mother dismisses her worries about making friends at school: "This is gonna be great for you - and even better for me! Twelve outlets in my new home office!"
- Last Villain Stand: In the Season 1 finale, Mr. Peterson lost Nicky and another prisoner that the kids unwittingly freed during their escape. He chases after them, breaking his own "property line" rule and managing to grab Trinity by the wrist. When the police catches him on the act, he takes out many cops before they manage to tackle, shackle, and shove him inside the car - which he cracks the window of with his forehead, in one last spark of defiance.
- Police Are Useless: When Trinity sees Mr. Peterson kidnapping Nicky, she and Enzo call the cops. A single police officer arrives at Peterson's house but all he does is take a large bag full of coins and leaves. This suggests that either Mr. Peterson bribed the cop with the coins or the cop flat out robbed him and did nothing else. Either way, the kids conclude that the authority won't be of much help to them. The trope gets Subverted when several police officers, rather conveniently, show up on time to apprehend Mr. Peterson just as he is abducting Trinity.
- Rage Breaking Point: Mr. Peterson may be trying to get rid of the kids who are snooping around, but he is still smart enough to know not to do so in public. This is why he typically doesn't chase after them past his property line. However, when the kids unintentionally free Peterson's hidden prisoner, Mr. Peterson completely loses his patience and goes after Trinity right in front of her own house. Trinity's parents and the police see what's happening, so the authorities arrest Mr. Peterson on the spot.
- Too Dumb to Live: When Nicky sneaks into Mr. Peterson's house in episode 4, he brings a cupcake from Trinity's house... and tosses it on the ground just to get rid of it. Naturally, Mr. Peterson finds it, realizes someone's in the house, and captures Nicky.
- Villain with Good Publicity: In the eyes of Raven Brooks' inhabitants, Mr. Peterson's a friendly man with a melanchonic past; only the kids are aware of how strange and scary he can be, to boogeyman status.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In "No More Nicky", Maritza uses this trope when Trinity breaks one of Mr. Peterson's house windows by throwing a rock at the building out of anger.
