View source for Aliens in Cardiff

{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Joyce''': Why '''''Canada'''''?
'''Head Alien''': I figgered "Who'd f***ing notice?" God''damn'' was I right.
|''[[Walkyverse|It's Walky!]]''}}

Looking for a place to set the disaster of the week/alien invasion/supervillain's base/origin of the bad guys etc? Well, you can use the classics: [[Big Applesauce|New York]], [[Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe|Tokyo]], [[Britain Is Only London|London]] or [[Gay Paree|Paris]] for the first three and places like [[Commie Land|Russia]], North Korea or the Middle East for the last. Of course, you may think that's too cliché. Another alternative is having the last three take place in [[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here|a fictional town in the middle of nowhere]] and have the villains come from some equally-fictional [[Ruritania]] or [[Qurac]].

Or you may [[Take a Third Option]]. Have the center of the plot be in an actual place, but some relatively harmless semi-known non-exotic location which makes you ask "Why THERE, of all places?". That is the basis of '''Aliens in Cardiff'''. Are aliens landing in [[Flying Saucer|UFOs]]? They'll land in [[District 9|Johannesburg, South Africa]], or Roswell, New Mexico. Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's in Luxembourg. Is there a magical gateway between worlds? It's in [[Cornwall]]. Is a [[Hell Gate|Hellmouth]] opening? It's opening in [[Cleveland]]. [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|One of them]], anyway. Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the earth's surface, wherein aliens once upon a time created all life on earth? It's underneath [[Brazil (useful notes)|Sugarloaf Mountain]].

This is sometimes [[Played for Laughs]], though in most cases it rather realistically points out events do happen in the world outside its largest cities. The trope namer is ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and subsequent spin-off ''[[Torchwood]]''. This is [[Creator Provincialism|due to to the fact]] that the revived Doctor Who was produced by BBC Wales. Though Cardiff very often found itself [[Doubling for London]] or New York, Space, the Scottish Highlands for that matter.

This trope has a complicated relationship with [[Creator Provincialism]] and [[Small Reference Pools]]. What seems obscure to the global West/North can be the center of the universe to locals; the aforementioned Johannesburg is the most populous city in South Africa with millions of residents. Or consider Jakarta, which outdoes NYC in every population metric and is capital of Indonesia, which has two thirds the population of the US, but you'd hardly hear of, never mind see playing a major role, in most non-Southeast Asian media. Even the trope namer, while only crossing 1 million pop if you stretch like Hell, is still the capital and biggest city to native Welshmen.

Not to be confused with [[Aliens of London]] (though this doesn't mean they are mutually exclusive). Contrast with [[Canada Does Not Exist]], where it's forbidden to name the semi-known location.

{{examples}}
==  Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Soul Eater]]'', Death City, the home of [[The Grim Reaper]] and his school, is located in Nevada. It's a play on the grimly named desert, Death Valley, which spans parts of California and Nevada. This lead to anomalies like the world's most powerful ''[[Ninja]]'' setting up base in Nevada.
* Vladivostok gets to feature not just in one, but in ''two'' completely unrelated shows with a supernatural touch. But while ''[[Darker than Black]]'''s representation is [[Real Place Background|completely accurate]], ''[[Blood+]]''{{'}}s was [[Hollywood Geography|almost unrecognizable.]]
* Mizuho-sensei of ''[[Please Teacher!]]'' lands her spacecraft in Lake Kizaki, Nagano Prefecture, presumably for the [[Scenery Porn]]. The spinoff ''[[Please Twins!]]'' is set in the same area, and their spiritual successor ''[[Waiting in the Summer]]'' ends up there during that series' climax.
* The Maguar and the aliens fighting them in ''[[Figure 17]]'' are confined to rural Hokkaido.
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', one would have expected the capital of [[The Empire|Britannia]] to be somewhere on the North American eastern seaboard, perhaps in one of the original thirteen colonies or the other Britannian (British) New World settlements. Instead, it's located in the middle of OTL Arizona, either around where Yuma (as it was located on a map) or Phoenix (going by the surrounding mountains and southwestern desert landscape) would have been.
* [[Makoto Shinkai]] has done this multiple times:
** ''[[Voices of a Distant Star]]''{{'}}s Earthbound scenes take place in Saitama City, capital of the prefecture of the same name. While to the immediate north of Tokyo, it is otherwise much less populous and famous than its southern neighbour, and the average foreigner is more likely to have heard of [[One-Punch Man|the namesake caped baldy]] than actually set foot there.
** ''[[The Place Promised in Our Early Days]]'' has "the Union" build their mysterious tower in Hokkaido. The film starts in cold, desolate Aomori Prefecture on the northern tip of Honshu, and while a midway detour to Tokyo has vital plot significance, heads back up north for the climax.
** While ''[[5 Centimeters per Second]]'' starts in Tokyo and returns there for its third act, much of the first act concerns Takaki's cold, lonely journey up north to Iwafune in Tochigi Prefecture. The second act takes him even further away, to the remote southern island of Tanegashima.
** ''[[Your Name]]'': While Mitsuha's hometown of Itomori is technically fictional, it is based on the real Hida City in Gifu Prefecture, a part of central Japan largely unknown to the outside world before this, and it is there that {{spoiler| a fragment of the comet Tiamat lands.}}
** While ''[[Suzume (film)|Suzume]]'' does have vital scenes in Tokyo, it starts and ends in the Tōhoku region, and various intermediary scenes are set in the less well-known Miyazaki, Ehime and Hyōgo Prefectures.
* ''[[Kamichu!]]'' is set in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. While no tiny town and genuinely having many religious sites in reality, it's still quite out of the way and a far cry from Kyoto, Ise or any of the other places most might think of as significant.

==  Comic Books  ==
* In ''[[Halo]]: Uprising'', when a captured UNSC Soldier is [[Cold-Blooded Torture|tortured]] by the Covenant, he tells them the "Key of Osanalan" is in Cleveland. {{spoiler|It was a ruse to keep them from glassing the city where his brother was living.}}
* In ''[[Gold Digger (Comic Book)|Gold Digger]],'' the Diggers family lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Consequently, all the supernatural and superscientific friends, enemies, and acquaintances they make during the course of their globe-trotting and multiverse-hopping adventures inevitably end up finding their way there.
* The Jaime Reyes runs of ''[[Blue Beetle]]'' deviated from the standard "stick the hero in a counterpart of a real-world city" DC formula by having Jaime patrol... El Paso, Texas.
* In the 4-issue ''[[Great Lakes Avengers]]'' series, Maelstrom manages to create his universe-ending device successfully, and has only the titular D-List team to face him. He notes that he succeeded in creating his doomsday device because he didn't go to a major city like Los Angeles, London, or New York, but instead went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin!
* ''[[Alpha Flight]]'' is superheroes in Canada.
* Pretty much the whole point of The 50 State Initiative. A super Hero team for every state, even Iowa. And of course, our friends The Great Lakes Avengers patrol Wisconsin as The Great Lakes Initiative.
* In [[Alan Moore]]'s first ''[[Swamp Thing]]'' story line the [[Justice League of America]] is caught completely off guard when the Floronic Man makes his move.
{{quote|Green Arrow: Man, I don't believe this! We were watching out for New York, Metropolis, for Atlantis... But who was watching out for Lacroix, Louisiana?}}
* ''[[Howard the Duck (comics)|Howard the Duck]]'' was based in [[Cleveland]].
* ''[[ROM Spaceknight]]'': a major center of the Dire Wraith invasion is Clairton, West Virginia.
* ''Eduardo Risso's'' (with scripts by Barreiro) "Parque Chas" turns this into a joke, setting a detectivesque [[Most Writers Are Writers|comic writer]] in the very quiet, middle-class, small and residential neighbourhood of Parque Chas, in Buenos Aires, where a lot of crazy paranormal stuff is going on due to a dimensional gate. The craziest part is that there are indeed urban legends about Parque Chas, due to its weird [[Alien Geometries|circular]] streets.
* An escape pod carrying the infant survivor of an [[Last of His Kind|otherwise extinct alien species]] crash lands in.... Smallville, Kansas. [[Superman|Of course.]]
* ''[[Empowered]]'' has a ninja clan in New Jersey.
* The [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage|Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] run into ''all kinds'' of supernatural crap. It's easy to overlook when they're in New York, but it feels jarring when they're constantly running into aliens and eldritch abominations in Northampton, Massachusetts.
* Post-[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]] [[The Mighty Thor|Asgard]] floating over Broxton, Oklahoma, anyone?

== [[Fan Works]] ==
* The [[Mega Crossover]] shared-world story ''[[My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character]]'' both plays the trope straight and plays with it. Hoping to find a displacee in [[New York City]]? Sorry, try [[Joisey|New Jersey]] instead... at least until the Muppet Theater shows up or somebody actually sees [[John Munch]]. [[London Town|London, England]]? No, Kent County, UK and [[In Dublin's Fair City|Dublin, Ireland]]. [[Toronto]]? Try heading up the road to Ottawa. [[Motor City|Detroit]]? You'll have to cross the river to Windsor. And the largest collection of [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]] displacees are nowhere near Silicon Valley, having ended up in [[Boston (useful notes)|Boston]] instead. However, some displacees did appear in [[Montreal]] and [[Los Angeles]], including in the latter group [[Cardcaptor Sakura/Characters#Tomoyo Daidouji|one with an interest in cinematography]].

==  Film  ==
* [[Cleveland]] is where ''[[Howard the Duck (film)|Howard the Duck]]'' took place, complete with aliens trying to take over the world.
* The ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000|MST3K]]'' B-Movie ''[[The Giant Spider Invasion]]'' takes place in Merrill, Wisconsin.
** ''[[The Final Sacrifice]]'' takes place in Eagle Hat, South Alberta.
* From ''[[Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid]]:''  {{spoiler|'At least we managed to get... [[Throwaway Country|Terre Haute... Indian-uhh...]]'}}
* In ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'', the aliens are first spotted in the town of Muncie, Indiana. They land at Devil's Tower, Wyoming (the mountain Roy keeps trying to sculpt.)
* ''[[Alien vs. Predator (film)|Alien vs. Predator]]: Requiem'' takes place in the small college town of Gunnison, Colorado, about as far out in the sticks as possible. The movie exaggerates, however, making the town several times larger than it really is, and giving it a power station and other such accoutrements (it was actually filmed on Vancouver Island, Canada).
* In ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]'' the Vulcans first land in Montana, though they had a pretty good reason as they were looking for {{spoiler|the people who managed to create spaceship with warp technology in their basement.}}
* Except for the big battle in [[San Francisco]], the President's [[War Room]] and the undisclosed location of the monster prison, most of the action in ''[[Monsters vs. Aliens]]'' takes place in Modesto, California.
** This is [[Lampshaded]] in the TV [[Halloween Special]] ''Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space'': "Why is it always Modesto?"
** Birthplace of [[George Lucas]].
* ''[[Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers]]'': Why, the aliens definitely would attack [[The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires|Buenos Aires]] first, of course. By the way, if you have ever passed more than a couple of days in that city, expect a gross [[Did Not Do the Research]] ratio, specially in [[The Movie]].
** This was probably meant to be a [[Shout-Out|reference]] to the book. At one point the Johnny Rico mentions that Buenos Aires had been bombed, but he doesn't care<ref>In the book, Johnny is Filipino, while in the movie he's from Buenos Aires</ref> much about that until he discovers his mother had been vacationing there at the time.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] and [[Justified Trope]] in ''[[The Faculty]]''. When one character points out the absurdity of aliens secretly invading via a [[High School]] in [[Everytown, America|small town Ohio]], another [[Genre Savvy]] character points out that it'd be easier to secretly invade in somewhere out of the way than try to blow up [[The White House]], which the whole world will notice.
* [[Lampshade]]d in the first ten minutes of ''[[District 9]]'', where the sick, malnourished aliens had the misfortune to make first contact with Johannesburg, and notes when the ship first appears over the city that it wasn't some place like New York, London, or Chicago. [[Fantastic Racism|Cue thinly-veiled apartheid parallels.]]
* The remake of ''[[The Stepford Wives]]'' [[lampshade]]s this during the antagonist's speech near the end:
{{quote|{{spoiler|'''Claire:'''}} "I asked myself, where would people never notice a town full of robots? *mocking gasp* ''[[Take That|Connecticut!]]''"}}
* Congratulations, tropers. While [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|you]] were reading this, [[Humongous Mecha|humongous alien mecha]] were [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk devastating Montevideo]. Montevideo, obliterated!!! Nothing can save us now!!!
* Lampshaded in the opening title of ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'':
{{quote|On the Twenty-third day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced, as such enemies often do, in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places...}}
* ''[[Bloodshot (film)|Bloodshot]]'': Rising Spirit Technologies is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and other rarely-seen places featured include Mombasa, Kenya, Budapest, Hungary, and East Sussex, England.

==  Literature  ==
* The first Martian ship to reach Earth in ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' lands in Horsell Common in Woking, Surrey. Orson Welles' radio production, and many subsequent adaptations, move it to Grover's Mill, New Jersey.
* The small town of Illium, NY, is where the world-destroying substance Ice-9 is developed in [[Kurt Vonnegut]]'s classic ''[[Cat's Cradle]]''.
* In ''[[The Puppet Masters (novel)|The Puppet Masters]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]], aliens invade Grinnell, Iowa (changed for very little good reason to Ambrose, Iowa, in [[The Movie]]).
* [[Daniel Pinkwater]] likes setting the weirdness in his books in odd places like Hoboken (''The Hoboken Chicken Emergency'') or other obscure towns (''Yobgorble: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario''). And that's when the weirdness isn't happening in [[City of Adventure|Hogboro]]...
* In [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''[[Doorways in The Sand]]'', the rogue terrorist threatening the world (or at least threatening the world's good relations with its new alien friends) does indeed turn out to be Australian.
* The ''[[Captain Underpants]]'' series takes place in Piqua, Ohio, a real city with a population of a little over 20,000.
* ''[[Good Omens]]'' has Lower Tadfield, an unremarkable village somewhere in rural (probably) Oxfordshire, as the location of [[Anti Christ]] and start of the Apocalypse.
* The short story [http://www.sfreader.com/contest-2008-1.asp "On a Clear Day You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy"] by Desmond Warzel is a literal case of [[Aliens in Cleveland]]; well, actually, aliens in the upscale suburbs of Gates Mills and Lyndhurst (apparently even extraterrestrials have standards).
* The first scouting sortie of the alien collective in [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''A Call to Arms'' encounters as its first human contact a musician in a fishing boat off the coast of Belize.
* The events of Scott Westerfeld's ''[[Midnighters]]'' trilogy takes place in Bixby, population: 13,000.  {{spoiler|Though the location is important to the plot.}}
* ''[[The Chrysalids]]'' portrays a surviving enclave of civilsation after an implied nuclear holocaust. Naturally it's in Newfoundland (althought New Zealand seems to be doing pretty well too.)
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' is set in Forks, Washington, a place the residents have barely heard of. Another vampire clan lives in Denali, Alaska. Considering they've been there for a while and how rural, scenic and insular these places are, this may also overlap with [[Lovecraft Country]].
* In the novels of the ''[[Black Dagger Brotherhood]]'', the largest vampire population—and the headquarters of the eponymous secret society—is in Caldwell, NY. Yep.
* The [[Mercy Thompson]] series of books, sure people know OF the Tri-Cities in Washington, but few can name all three, and remember this is three cities that take up the same amount of mileage as the ONE city that Washington is known for.
* An entry for the Bulwer-Lytton [[It Was a Dark and Stormy Night|worst-first-sentence contest]] discards the Big City and sets the putative action in a more unlikely venue:
{{quote|"It had been three days since Torfongu had eaten Los Angeles, and now he sat staring down at Bakersfield...a tasty little morsel, indeed."}}
* ''The Gerosha Chronicles'' makes heavy use of this for almost all its entries.  ''The Tragedy of Lord Zeras'' happens somewhere outside Rome.  ''First Meethlites'' and ''Rise of the Phaelites'' may happen on other worlds, but are immediately followed by stories like ''A So-Called Heretic'', which happens in Lynn, MA.  ''Experiments and Offspring'' shows Centipede Charlie being recruited ''in Joplin, MO.''  Emeraldon begins his superhero career in Evansville, IN.  Ciem was born as Candi Flippo, in the town of Gerosha which was built on the remains of Boonville, IN.  The Gray Champion's ''Modern Legends'' tales take place in Boston and Miami.  ''Navyrope'' takes place in Oklahoma City.  ''Pilltar'', however, takes place in Ankeny, Iowa.  Both ''Blood Over Water'' and ''Sorbet'' happen in Big Rapids, MI.  Things finally culminate in ''Sodality'', where everyone finds themselves eventually in Houston.  Even in ''Centipede + 49'', well-known towns that aren't DC or Boston are avoided.  And New York is avoided ''like the plague''.  Only the non-canon ''Percolation'' takes place partially in New York - and only because it's a crossover with ''Marvel: Avengers Alliance''.

==  Live-Action TV  ==
* The Trope Namer is the [[Whoniverse]], which ever since the new series started made Cardiff, the capital city and most populous county of Wales and the headquarters of BBC Wales (the producers of the show), a [[Weirdness Magnet]] courtesy of a dimensional rift. This trope is repeatedly lampshaded by several characters in both ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and ''[[Torchwood]]'' by their dumbfounded reactions to the thought of supernatural stuff happening in Cardiff. While the Doctor only visits Cardiff on occasion (to "refuel" the TARDIS) the first two series of ''Torchwood'' are set there.
* An episode of ''[[My Hero (TV)]]'' had Thermoman stop an abandoned Russian space station from crashing into the center of Grimsby.
* Used in a ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' sketch about aliens who come to destroy "the very heart of civilization." Their target: New Pudsey.
** That's just where they started. Their ultimate goal was [[Wimbledon]].
* Frequently used in ''[[The X-Files]]'' (e.g., a building full of identical clones in Allentown, Pennsylvania; a shapeshifter assassin in Syracuse, New York).
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' makes occasional references to a second Hellmouth in Cleveland.
** In fact, Cleveland is rather frequently a subject of this trope, hence its alternate title, [[Aliens in Cleveland]]. It's part of a long-[[Running Gag]] in popular culture that Cleveland is a depressing hellhole of decay, corruption, and a river of fire. The city's demonic influence permeates into its residents, who actually ''like'' it there.
*** It's got a really great orchestra through.
*** And it does [[Cleveland Rocks|Rock]].
* The Roswell episode of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' had Nog fabricate a story about alien conquest of earth, randomly pointing to the initial landing site on a map (next to a 'blue blob'). The soldier who is listening to him leans in and exclaims, "Your people are going to invade... Cleveland???"
* One of the 'unseen' scenes from ''[[Harry Hill's TV Burp]]'' parodies an occurrence of this in some drama or other; a long list of cities scrolls past, from "Lagos", "New York", "Tokyo", and then the map zooms in and the final location affected is revealed: "Norwich". Harry starts to go into a panic: "But where will we go to see puppet dramas without the Norwich Puppet Theatre? And where will we buy our many varieties of mustard when [[Running Gag|The Mustard Shop]] is destroyed? Oh no!" ''([[Aside Glance]])'' "I'm kidding. I love Norwich!"
** It's ''[[Eleventh Hour]]''. They were listing cities that would be destroyed by [[Hollywood Global Warming|rising sea levels]]. The paradox was that they wanted to list a British city for impact but retain scientific accuracy, and that was the [[narm]]y [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|result]].
* In the pilot of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', an interplanetary incident is set off when a Klingon crash-lands in... Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Since only very few parts of the world lie close to major urban centers, something falling from space crshing in the middle of nowhere actually makes a lot of sense.
* ''[[Being Human (UK)]]'' has vampires planning a vast global empire from their headquarters in Bristol, England.
** [[Lampshaded]] by George, who directly asks the question of 'Why Bristol?'
** And later, in season 3:
{{quote|{{spoiler|Mitchell}}: It can't happen like this! Not here! Not in ''WALES''!}}
* Charlie Jade takes place in three alternate universe versions - one dystopian, one ecotopian and one normal - of ''Cape Town, South Africa''.
* Other than the occasional Hollywood haunting, all of the action in ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' takes place in small- to mid-size towns, mostly in [[Flyover Country|flyover country.]] [[Big Bad]]s have been vanquished in [http://www.tv.com/supernatural/devils-trap/episode/677588/recap.html?tag=episode_header;recap Jefferson City, MO;] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110308223243/http://www.tv.com/supernatural/all-hell-breaks-loose-1/episode/1003161/recap.html?tag=episode_header;recap South Dakota]/[https://web.archive.org/web/20110308204308/http://www.tv.com/supernatural/all-hell-breaks-loose-2/episode/1003162/recap.html?tag=episode_header;recap Wyoming;] [http://www.tv.com/supernatural/no-rest-for-the-wicked/episode/1199072/recap.html?tag=episode_header;recap New Harmony, IN;] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20110312193409/http://www.tv.com/supernatural/lucifer-rising/episode/1267467/recap.html?tag=episode_header;recap Ilchester, MD.] Funny how all of the above (including Hollywood) seem to have the same general [[Stargate City|climate...]]
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' goes all over the place. The most prominent cities are major population centers (New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles), but plenty of other locations are visited. Claire Bennet (and one of Primatech's major facilities) is in Odessa, TX. The Volume Three finale is set in Hartdale, NY and Fort Lee, NJ. The plane carrying all the heroes at the start of Volume Four crashed in Oklahoma.
* ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'' is set in Rutherford, Ohio. The place is fictional, but it's obviously meant to be a typical Midwestern town.
* ''[[24]]'':
** The state of Ohio in general seems to be awfully prone to this. Midway through season 7 of ''[[24]]'', Colonel Dubaku targets a pesticide plant just outside Kidron, Ohio (pop. 30,000), for his next terrorist attack.
** A season of ''[[24]]'' features a significant plotline involving terrorists in Palmdale, California, a mid-sized city several hours outside of the greater LA area. It's justified by the fact that the terrorists are hiding out and ''intend'' to target major cities when they're ready. {{spoiler|It's also small enough to get nuked without completely changing the world in which ''24'' takes place}}.
* ''[[True Blood]]'', and ''[[The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries]]'' the show is based on, are set in Bon Temps, a fictional suburb of Shreveport, Louisiana. Most of the action is split between the two locations. The characters have also traveled to Dallas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Nevada.
* The flourishing gay community in the American ''[[Queer as Folk]]'' is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city otherwise almost never seen on American television—unlike the locale of its UK source material, Manchester, which [[Oop North|surfaces regularly]] on British TV. Pittsburgh was picked as a blue collar steel town with similarities to Manchester's industrial roots—not that you see a lot of blue collar types in the American ''QAF''.
** And Pittsburgh is doubled by Toronto anyway—lampshaded when the main characters visit Toronto for a gay wedding.

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Subverted-by-[[Real Life]] example: The designers of ''[[Shadowrun]]'' originally picked Seattle for their game's home base, because as large North American cities went, it was relatively obscure in pre-90s pop culture. Little did they suspect that movies, TV shows, grunge and Starbucks would conspire to elevate Seattle's cultural prominence in the years to follow.

==  Video Games  ==
* In ''[[Tomb Raider]]: Legend'', we learn that King Arthur's tomb is under a tacky Camelot tourist trap... in Cornwall.
{{quote|'''Lara''': As in take the M5 to the A30 Cornwall?}}
** Though, to be fair, Cornwall is pretty relevant in the context of Arturian legend.
* A level of ''[[No One Lives Forever]] 2'' has you fighting an army of ninjas... in Akron, Ohio.
** There are a bunch of nukes under Akron. Not that many people know that...
* [[Infocom]]'s ''[[Leather Goddesses of Phobos]]'' has the player start in a bar in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.
* In ''[[Resistance]]: Fall of Man'', there are aliens in Cardiff. Of course, they are all over Southern Britain.
* In ''[[Half-Life]]'', the invasion of earth by extradimensional aliens starts in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Somewhat justified as an old missile research facility from the cold war is currently occupied by the worlds leading team in interdimensional travel research.
** And in ''Half-Life 2'' the office of the entire planet's military administration is located in a small city at the Black Sea. Which coincidentally is exactly the same place where the few survivors of Black Mesa have created their secret rebel headquarter. Though it might have been the cities exceptionally high rebel activity that caused the administration to relocate there.
* Any level in the ''[[Halo]]'' series that takes place on Earth is set in Africa, specifically New Mombasa and Voi. Also, one of Earth's space elevators is located in New Mombasa, making it less Cardiff and more Rotterdam (one of the largest ports in the world).
** It's also the location where  {{spoiler|[[Precursors|The Precursors]] build the portal to the Ark, and also located right next to the area where the first modern humans originated}}.
* In ''[[Command & Conquer]] [[Command & Conquer: Tiberium|3]]'', upon landing on Earth the Scrin start off by attacking the cities in the Blue Zones. Although this more to keep the humans distracted while they go on harvesting tiberium.
* When the Geth poked their heads out of the Perseus Veil for the first time in 300 years in ''[[Mass Effect]]'', they went for an obscure human colony named Eden Prime. They had reasons (recently-discovered [[Lost Technology]] sample), but still.
* ''[[Superhero League of Hoboken]]''. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].
* Played for laughs in an [[Interactive Fiction]] game, where part of the backstory details Satan's arrival on Earth and his construction of a hellish citadel to house his legions and punish humanity for their sins... in New Jersey. Apparently it was a few years before people realized something was wrong.
* ''[[Persona 4]]'' has {{spoiler|one of the co-creators of Japan}} in the game's fictional rural town.
* In ''[[MDK]]'', the population centres threatened with annihilation by the invading city minecrawlers were Laguna Beach, Lindfield, Livingston, Kirkaldy and Sparrow Pit. In ''[[MDK2]]'' the city minecrawler in the opening mission was targeting Edmonton.
* While most of the ''[[Ryu ga Gotoku|Yakuza]]'' games take place in big, famous Japanese cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and other prefectural capitals, ''6: The Song of Life'' spends a large amount of time in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. While not exactly tiny at over 140,000 residents in 2016, it's hardly well-known to the wider world.
* Some levels in ''[[Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance]]'' take place in Denver, Colorado. While hardly a nowhere as it's the capital of the state, it's also a place that rarely appears in popular culture.
* ''[[Generation Zero (video game)|Generation Zero]]'' is [[Robot War]] in the Swedish countryside.

==  Web Comics  ==
* In an ''[[Walkyverse|It's Walky!]]'' storyline, Head Alien experiments with his new time freezing technology in a small town in [[Canada]], leading to the exchange in the page quote. It's also an excuse for a [[Crossover]] with another webcomic, ''[[Avalon (webcomic)|Avalon]]'', set in small-town Canada, which was in the middle of a long hiatus.
* In the flash series ''[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/97573 21]'' (a parody of ''[[24]]''), plumber Al Johnstone has 21 minutes to save Norwich from a nuclear explosion.
* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' takes place in a heavily fictionalized version of Cumberland, Maryland. Nobody in the comic thinks anything of it.
* Although being a very populous place, there are not many superhero stories taking place in [[The Berlin Republic|Germany's]] Ruhr Area, a fact that was one of the motivations of [[Creator Provincialism|Ruhr Area native]] Arne Schulenberg for creating ''[[Union of Heroes]]''.
* [[Spinnerette]] features superhero action in Columbus, Ohio.
* Fairville, the town where [[The FAN]] takes place is actually the author's hometown, [[wikipedia:Targu Mures|a real transilvanian city called Marosvasarhely]].
* The main setting of ''[[At Arm's Length (webcomic)|At Arms Length]]'' and seemingly main magical entrance portal to Earth is… Houston. Apparently monsters like to target Hermann Park.

==  Web Original  ==
* The [[Protectors of the Plot Continuum|PPC]]'s main base in the real world (or "World One") is a city in New Caledonia, a French overseas territory. Nobody is quite sure why, though there are other doors to HQ scattered about Earth and the multiverse in general.
* [[Brental Floss]]' ''[[Civilization]]'' song includes the line "learn to write before you can read and build the Taj Mahal right in Cleveland".

==  Western Animation  ==
* An episode of ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'' animated series featured a bunch of supervillains known as "The Swiss". Who were dressed in uniforms bearing the Swiss flag and wielded giant Swiss Army Knives. Led to an hilarious [[Cassandra Truth]] moment:
{{quote|'''Die Fledermaus''': Listen to me! The Swiss are invading The City!
'''American Maid''': Switzerland is a neutral country, you goober.
'''Die Fledermaus''': ''[showing his arm in a cast]'' YOU CALL THIS NEUTRAL? }}
* Vlad from ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He's a Green Bay Packers nut.
* Partial example: While most of ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' takes place in [[Motor City|Detroit]], Megatron's disembodied head landed on the farm Isaac Sumdac grew up in near [[wikipedia:Paw Paw, Michigan|Paw Paw]], a village with a population of about 3,300. It's also [[Creator Provincialism|where the art director/lead character designer is from]].
* In ''[[Megas XLR]]'' every alien, monster, giant robot, or other assorted anime parodies all for varying reasons all attack Jersey City.
** Actually, [[Weirdness Magnet|Coop]] [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|is responsible for most of them]].
* ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'' has the epicenter of alien activity on Earth in Hawaii—it's not even on the biggest island, but Kauai. The fact that there weren't any major cities on the island was a plot point: Stitch [[Super Drowning Skills|can't swim]] so he wasn't able to immediately commence with the mass destruction he was built for.
** Apparently the original idea was for Stitch to crash-land into a very rural area of Kansas. Possibly, they changed it to cover the aforementioned issue of why he couldn't just walk to another city.
* Alien invasions were the order of the day in Terlawk, New Jersey on ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]''.
** Hilariously [[Justified Trope|justifed]] in one episode where it's revealed that one of the town's residents used to work for NASA, and spray painted "Hey aliens! I dare you to attack Terlawk!" on a satellite.
* [[The Iron Giant]] landed in Maine.
* In the ''[[Danger Mouse]]'' episode "Multiplication Fable" DM and Penfold investigate a spaceship crash landing in Birmingham, England.

==  Real Life  ==
* [[Roswell That Ends Well|The events of Roswell, New Mexico]] come to mind. Aside from the odd military base, the closest notable landmark are the Carlsbad Caverns, and even that is a bit of a stretch.
** Of course, Roswell is ''now'' a landmark, but that's because of the landing more than anything else.
** Following WWII (and at the time of the Incident) Roswell was the home base for the 509th Bombardment Wing, the world's only nuclear strike force. Which almost certainly has nothing to do with the Incident, but it makes ''great'' conspiracy theory fuel.
** It is also worth noting that Roswell is where Robert H. Goddard, a founding father of modern rocketry developed and tested rockets in the 1930s. A local high school is named in his honor.
** Given that it was a facility for rocket testing, locating it as far away as possible from anything was most probably intentional.
** That Roswell's planes are well positioned to visit China Lake—the largest bombing area on earth, which we even invite Russia over to use—the conspiracy theories have great legs; it's probable that non-US planes visit there and add more fuel to the fire.
* Bonnybridge in Scotland has an average of three-hundred U.F.O. sightings per annum, earning it the nickname "U.F.O. Capital of the World" despite the fact it's a fairly obscure town (even in Scotland).
* The Flatwoods monster/alien that was seen in Flatwoods, West Virginia, in 1952. The town has a population of 348.
* The stereotypical monster/alien sighting is the redneck who lives out in the middle of nowhere.
* A non-alien example, but when the Live 8 concert locations were announced back in 2005, with concerts in places like London, Paris and Berlin, Canada's concert venue was held in ... Barrie, a cottage town about 60 miles north of Toronto. This was much to the bemusement of many, particularly residents of Barrie.
* The Tunguska event, largest asteroid/comet impact in recorded history, was in the middle of nowhere - fortunate, given had it hit a city it would have levelled it (and Tunguska is at the same latitude as Saint Petersburg, within one degree of latitude). Of course, conspiracy and fringe theories about the cause abound.
* Without looking it up, can you name something about Hiroshima or Nagasaki other than the atomic bombings thereof?<ref>[[The Comically Serious|Well, Hiroshima is the place where ''okonomiyaki'' -- a crepe-like dish -- originated, and Hiroshima-style ''okonomiyaki'' remains one of the most popular varieties...]]</ref>


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