Artistic License Geography: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== General ==
* The idea that the Great Wall of China is visible from space is incorrect, even at the closest point that could be considered space. The variations for being visible from the space shuttle or the moon are even more so; from the moon, only massive cloud systems, continents, and the oceans are distinguishable with the naked eye. If you ever want to try, consider trying to pick out the highway systems of [[Russia]] in the same view, as they are wider and longer- but it's ''still'' too small.
== Anime and Manga ==
* In 'London Calling' from the ''[[Beyblade]]'' series, the main characters are ditched in Southampton, England, on their way to Russia for a tournament battle. As the ship pulls into harbour at the start of the episode Southampton appears to have [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMj70pnY2T0 green mountains and picturesque brick houses]. It's actually a large modern city and its docks look something like [http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/83/2248380_e9b83cbe.jpg this]. Definitely no mountains, too.
** Then the show redeems itself only a little, relying mostly on [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. The scene suddenly jumps from Southampton to London, which means a distance of eighty miles. Kenny has previously mentioned that they have no money, and it's not said whether they walked, hitchiked or anything else. However their arrival on foot does suggest that they walked. Yet the sky is still bright when they get there, and the only thing to suggest that Southampton is not [[Britain Is Only London|right next door to London]] is Kenny's (vague)comment that seeing Big Ben reminds him of how much time they've lost.
* ''[[Blood
** In one episode in Vietnam, Kai ''walked'' from Hanoi to a port and back in a day. Firstly, if you look at the map, Hanoi has no port, the nearest one from there is in Hai Phong, which takes 4 hours to travel by car (assuming it doesn't cross the speed limit), and another 4 hour to go back, and somehow Kai traveled back and forth between the 2 places on foot... in a day... before the sunset. And no, Kai is a human character in this vampire series, and even for the vampire characters, only the Schiff variants have sonic speed power.
** Averted, though, in ''[[Darker than Black]] 2'', where they've ''did'' the research. Sure, the weather was shown to be a bit too balmy for a season, but warm spells ''do'' tend to happen around New Year, and everything else was pretty much spot on.
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** The author butchers London (hell, all of Great Britain) just as badly. The Channel Tunnel goes directly to London, from which you can catch the Tube to "whales", home to cliffs from which you can jump into Loch Ness.
* Invoked in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series]]'', which has a flashback where Bakura is introduced as a new student from Britain and some generic student yells "Go back to Russia!"
* Far too many [[Fuku Fic]]s say that Ranma can get from Nerima to Minato quickly, or the Sailor Senshi can make the inverse trip just as quickly, by roof-hopping. In Real Life, the two wards are as far apart as Baltimore and [[Washington DC|Washington]] are.
* In the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fic ''[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12562072/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Daft-Morons Harry Potter and the Daft Morons]'' by "sinyk", it's pretty obvious that the author (who is Australian) is unfamiliar with the geography of the American Northeast, when he mentions that Harry has a real estate agent looking for properties for him in the Hamptons in upstate New York. For the uninformed, the Hamptons are on the far eastern end of Long Island, more than a hundred miles east-southeast of the southernmost locations anyone could reasonably refer to as "upstate New York". More succinctly, one goes ''north'' from New York City to go "upstate", and ''east'' to get to the Hamptons. "Sinyk" also apparently thought that Wales was an island separate from Great Britain, describing a Welsh estate purchased by Harry as being "in the center of the island".
== Film ==
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**** So they'd take a detour. It is possible to go from Salzburg to Switzerland without ever leaving the mountains.
***** And if you're trying to avoid being caught by the Nazis, sticking to remote wilderness routes rather than cutting directly across the flat ground is a ''good idea'', even if it means taking a longer trip. At least you run into fewer traffic checkpoints in the mountains.
* Parodied in ''[[Team America: World Police]]'', where Team America's operations regularly destroy historical landmarks that are [[Theme Park Version|nowhere near each other]] (for example, the Pyramids and the statues of Ramses).
* The film version of ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]'' features an enormous, derelict suspension bridge on Chicago's waterfront. This is presumably the remains of the Chicago Skyway, an elevated expressway that connects industrial Northwest Indiana with the South Side of Chicago. The real Skyway, however, doesn't now and never did have a suspension bridge. Presumably the [[Rule of Cool]] says suspension bridges are cooler than steel truss bridges.
** Actually its appears to be the remains of the Mackinac Bridge, due to a land-reclimation project having drained Lake Michigan. The only problem is that the Bridge is located ''200 miles'' from Chicago.
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* The obscure American 1940 movie, Ski Patrol, follows a group of Finnish soldiers in the 1939 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. The movie depicts the countries' border as a [http://www.elitisti.net/web/public/captures/reviews/001750/001993-b.jpg Middle European mountain range] - for reference, [[Did Not Do the Research|even the highest points of the countries' border doesn't rise above half a kilometre in height.]] Reportedly, the first panorama of this sight made the Finnish audience [[So Bad It's Good|burst in laughter]].
* The [[Tommy Lee Jones]] vehicle ''[[Blown Away (film)|Blown Away]]'' culminates with a car careening, in a straight line, through the Back Bay of Boston while our hero tries to defuse a bomb attached to the dashboard. If you traveled through the Back Bay, for that long, that fast, in a straight line, you wouldn't need to worry about the bomb, because you'd be ''underwater.''
* ''[[Stealth]]'' has an ''interesting'' relationship to geography. As [[Roger Ebert]] noted
{{quote|Various unexpected developments [in Tajikistan] lead to a situation in which Wade's plane crashes in North Korea while Gannon is diverted to Alaska (they get such great fuel mileage on these babies, they must be hybrid vehicles).}}
== Literature ==
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** There are other issues, too, such as there being "Stockton State Prison" and a DOJ facility in the series. Neither exist in real life.
* In an episode of [[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]] Dee describes running down Spring Garden street, through fairmount park in order to get to Paddy's Pub which is canonically located on South Street. Feel free to look at a map of Philadelphia and try to figure out how that works?
* One of the first instances on TV likely occurred on ''[[I Love Lucy]]''. Lucy thinks that Ricky is homesick and decides to make over the house to look like "home." Ricky is Cuban, but she makes the house over to look more like Mexico (complete with sombrero-and-poncho stereotypes a la Speedy Gonzales). They both speak Spanish and are in the same general area, so, bless her heart, she was ''close,'' but then comes out and sings a song dressed as Carmen Miranda, who was a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian. Wrong continent, wrong language, wrong ''hemisphere.''
** Lucy and Ricky's address for the entire series is 623 E. 68th Street. In real life, that would be somewhere in the East River. (Although this is likely intentional. Many shows use [[555|deliberately fake addresses and phone numbers]] so the real places aren't constantly hassled by fans and pranksters.)
* An important plot point in Season 4 of ''[[24|Twenty Four]]'' occurs near [[The Mountains of Illinois|the mountains of Iowa]]. Take a good look at this [[media:iowa-state-map.gif|topographic map]] of Iowa. See any mountains? The highest point in the state is a little under 1,700 feet above sea level.
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* In the series finale of ''Sisters'', which took place in Winnetka, IL, a man tells a taxi driver to "Take the Kennedy to Sheridan Road." Those roads/highways are not connected in real life.
* ''[[Happy Days]]'' seems to take place in a Milwaukee where mountains and palm trees populate the landscape (especially in the opening credits), along with California housing styles which never went near Wisconsin.
* [[Fox News Channel]] broadcast a map of the Middle East with [https://web.archive.org/web/20120329224149/http://mediamatters.org/blog/200907270040 Iraq labelled as Egypt].
** They also placed Sydney, Australia on the north coast of Australia during their recent{{when}} Tsunami coverage.
*** CNN also had a blunder covering the same story (which ''[[The Daily Show]]'' called them out on) where they called the Galapagos Islands "Hawaii".
* In Season 1 of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Sylar visited a man in Virginia Beach, VA. A quick peek outside the door revealed rocky hills, scrub, and lots of dust. Viewers in coastal Virginia rolled their eyes.
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* ''[[QI]]''. One example being a question about the smallest English county - expected "wrong" answer being Rutland, with the "correct" answer being the Isle of Wight, which apparently has a smaller area at the relevant tidemark. Unfortunately, in traditional terms the Isle of Wight isn't a county (it's part of Hampshire, and Rutland ''was'' the smallest traditional county), and in modern terms, both the reinstated Rutland and the IoW are unitary authorities - the smallest of which is Blackpool.
** The traditional counties are counties which used to exist but don't necessarily still exist or have their original boundaries. A unitary authority, while being for most purposes a county in all but name, is still considered for ceremonial purposes to be part of a county. Hence the entities known as Ceremonial Counties, which are the current officially existing counties, which have the ceremonial institutions of a county such as a Lord Lieutenant & which may govern all their own territory, or alternatively some or even all of their territory may be under the control of unitary authorities. In any case, QI was wrong because the City of London is a seperate Ceremonial County in its own right, not part of Greater London
* The [[Soap Opera]] ''[[The Young and The Restless]]'' recently{{when}} featured a storyline where a character faked his own death and escaped Wisconsin. Then he went to Ottawa. Then he went to Brazil. So his father followed him to Ottawa on a vengeance mission. Apparently, Ottawa is some harbour-front dive-down, inhabited by rednecks in cowboy shirts. In order to enter Ottawa, you have to parachute out of a clunker aeroplane. [[It Got Worse|And then]], another character follows the father to Ottawa. By chartering a boat. ''From Wisconsin''. While geographically possible, it still requires a detour through four
* In ''[[Friends]]'', Phoebe had a scientist boyfriend called David, who went to Minsk on a research trip. Minsk is stated to be in Russia several times, while it actually is the capital of Belarus. Belarus was the part of the Soviet Union to which Americans often referred as "Russia", but the Soviet Union was dissolved years before ''Friends'' even started.
** Still, the characters would have been adolescents to adults at the time the Soviet Union fell apart, with already formed speech habits when it came to the geography they'd learned in school.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* An [[Old World of Darkness
** In the World Of Darkness, Auckland is located in Australia - and Australia's capital is Sydney.
** Also in the World Of Darkness, New Orleans apparently has a subway system. On the gulf coast. Below sea level.
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== Webcomics ==
* In the Mafia themed ''[[La Cosa Nostra]]'' set in the Mid 1800s where the Irish main character emigrating to America meets a Japanese boy on a ''ship going across the Atlantic''. The sad part is, that isn't [https://web.archive.org/web/20130421003012/http://badwebcomics.wikidot.com/la-cosa-nostra the only instance].
** That's only a real Wall Banger if you assume that the Japanese boy was coming over from Japan. In Real Life, the Japanese diaspora has been sizable if not that large pretty much since the Shogunate was kicked out, and many came first to Europe via the Suez Canal and from there to New England. And they weren't the only confusing case of this as well, such as in the "Great Railroad race", where the company on the Pacific coast primarily used Irish labor while the company on the Atlantic used Chinese. Hence why [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]
* In [[Scandinavia and The World]], America literally cannot see Denmark and cannot tell the difference between Sweden and Norway. On the flipside, he seems to be the only main character that acknowledges South America.
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** 'American' is normally used as a referent for 'resident of the United States of America', not 'resident of a country part of the North American continent'. The term used to refer to the entire group of continents is not "America" but "the Americas", to avert confusion with one peculiarly generically-named country (indeed there are lots of countries in the Americas which use or have used generic terms like "United" or "State" in their name, the United Mexican States being the most obvious example). By the original trope entry's reasoning, a citizen of Costa Rica would be an 'American'.
* There's also the common misconception that [[Canada|Canadians]] all reside north of the 49th parallel. That line actually refers to just one piece of the international boundary, extending west from Lake of the Woods to the BC Lower Mainland.
** The International Boundary itself is an error-ridden travesty of geography. Article 2 of the ''Treaty of Paris (1783)'', by which the Great Britannic Empire rid itself of a certain traitorous Thirteen Colonies, states "And that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared, that the following are and shall be their boundaries..." and proceeds to draw a line through Lake Superior and the middle of Long Lake "...to the said Lake of the Woods; thence through the said lake to the most northwesternmost point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi; thence by a line to be drawn along the middle of the said river Mississippi until it shall intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north latitude." At that point, the whole effort goes haywire due to a topographical error: the Mississippi River does not reach north to the Lake of the Woods. The head of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca, is in Minnesota – where it lies to the south of Lake of the Woods, rather than northwest of it.
** To add insult to injury, an 1818 attempt to fix the mess lops off a peninsula, the [[wikipedia:Northwest Angle|Northwest Angle]], from mainland Manitoba and places it geopolitically as the northernmost point in Minnesota (where it remains today). It's north of 49°N and the only way in by land is through [[Canada, Eh?]]
** And then there's [[wikipedia:Fort_Montgomery_(Lake_Champlain)#"Fort_Blunder"|Fort Blunder]], the 1817 "works", "fortification" or "battery" at Rouse's Point – mistakenly built on the Québec side of the 45th parallel.
* One of the most notorious examples is the co-opting of the word ''Aryan'' by [[Those Wacky Nazis]]. Uh, Adolf, there's some [[Kipling's Finest|Rajputs, Punjabis, and Parsis]] that might wish to discuss the point.
** And then there's "Hun"gary, named in the mistaken belief that the people there were Huns. Nope... the Huns were a Germanic people, the inhabitants of what is named "Hungary" in English and some other Western languages are actually Magyar.
** Or Turkey, but in that case the bird was named for the country in a mistaken belief that it originated there. Much like the "guinea pig" is neither from Guinea nor a pig...
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
[[Category:Hollywood Science]]
▲[[Category:Artistic License Indexes]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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