Baltimore

Baltimore and morgue share enough letters that the joke assembles itself.

The blend folds morgue into Baltimore, and it belongs to a whole set of nicknames built on the same statistic: Bodymore, Bulletmore, Murderland, Murdaland. Wiktionary labels it derogatory and records online citations from 2000 to 2016, a stretch in which Baltimore repeatedly posted one of the highest murder rates in the country. Baltimoreans use it about their own city as readily as anyone else; the homicide rate fell to a near fifty-year low in 2024.