Artistic License Geography: Difference between revisions

[[File:world.jpg|frame|[[Blatant Lies|Mars, accurately drawn to scale.]] [http://bigthink.com/ideas/21162 (source)] ]]

 

 

A writer may want to set a story in a location, but that doesn't mean they want or need to be accurate- or even see it. This form of [[Artistic License]] can happen in a number of ways. The most common seems to be setting a story in a particular city without consulting a map, thus placing locations that are nowhere near one another quite close by, underestimating the time it would take to get from one to another, and sometimes transplanting whole landmarks from somewhere else entirely.

 

{{examples}}

== General ==

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** 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.

** 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.

* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket|Gundam 0080]]''; Bernie, disguised as an enemy soldier and claiming to be from Australia, talks about how much it would snow in December. Minutes later, the soldier to whom he was speaking [[Eureka Moment|realizes]] that the Southern Hemisphere's seasons are flipped around, exposing Bernie as a spy.

* ''[[Shinzo]]'' takes place 300 years in the future; apparently, geography has changed until New York is nowhere near an ocean and the Statue of Liberty is partially buried by the land. At the same time, Egypt is entirely covered by ocean, and you can reach it in half a day starting from the Alps while moving in a vehicle that goes about 30 miles per hour.

* Parodied in ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]''. New Zealand is a massive desert filled with monsters, which Excel kills and sells their pelts in order to get back to Japan.

** A massive desert filled with deadly creatures? That's probably just the usual mistake of thinking New Zealand is Australia.

* In the manga version of ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'', Rosette's journey from NYC to San Fransisco to rescue her brother goes as follows: She takes a pilgrimage to the time-frozen Seventh Bell Orphanage in Michigan. From there she drives to Washington DC (Roughly 500 miles the wrong way), where Satella destroys her car. Then she takes a train to Chicago (which gets hijacked and wrecked). From there, her superiors get tired of all the accidental destruction and charter a plane to take her directly to California. Since this rescue mission was the most important thing on Rosette's mind for the four years leading up to this trip, there are only two possible explanations for such a roundabout route: Either the mangaka forgot to plot the journey out on a map, or Rosette is incapable of cross-country navigation. Even with the story taking place 30 years before the creation of the interstate highway system, there ''had'' to be a more direct route than that.

 

* The first edition of ''[[Tintin/Recap/Land of Black Gold|Land of Black Gold]]'' took place in British Mandate Palestine, and Bab El-Ehr is a local insurgent against British rule rather than fighting directly with the Emir of Khemed (a name not heard until the revamped edition). As Tintin is led away into the desert, he eventually meets the oil-rich Emir Ben Kalish Ezab. Israel/Palestine famously has no oil in it. And Emir of what, anyway? Later editions have the story take place in a fictional country called Khemed.

** "[[Tintin/Recap/Tintin in the Congo|Tintin in the Congo]]" also fell victim to huge controversy. The continent is depicted as if all black people are lazy, stupid or in general big children. Of course, the album was originally drawn in 1930 when creator Hergé worked for a Catholic newspaper without doing any kind of research for his albums. In those days Tintin actually visited Belgian Congo, not "Africa" as a whole. Later, when he did start doing research before drawing an album, Hergé felt regret for "Tintin in the Congo", even though it was drawn in a time when European colonialism was still vivid and many Europeans shared the same stereotypically ideas about Africa.

 

 

* In a case of failing canonical geography, ''[[Legolas By Laura|legolas by laura]]'' has Mirkwood, Mordor, and Rivendell about five minutes' walk away from each other, as opposed to the hundreds of miles separating all three in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' canon. Then again, [[Rouge Angles of Satin|Mirkwood and Mordor are persistently called "Milkwood" and "Mondor"]], which may be entirely different places that are closer together.

* A lot of fanfic writers think that California is sunny all year long, when the weather from September to mid/late May is completely unpredictable. Winters on the coast are also extremely rainy, windy, and cold.

* It's not uncommon to run across ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' fanfic which misunderstands where Hogwarts is portraying it as being "just outside London" (the city is big, but not so big it takes best part of a day to travel across via train) instead of in Scotland.

** [[My Immortal|"...and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I'm in the seventh year (I'm seventeen). I'm a goth (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black...."]], to give but one ([[Mind Rape|horrific]]) example.

* ''[[Hogwarts Exposed]]'' has one scene in which Hermione watches the Sun set at 4 pm on the 1st September. If there's ''anywhere'' in the northern hemisphere where this is possible, it certainly isn't in Scotland. For the record, it's ''over four hours'' too early. An earlier scene had it still dark at 5:50 am in August.

** 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.

 

== Film ==

** Also done in [[Kenneth Branagh]]'s version of ''Hamlet'' (though it is not like the bard's was good with geography itself, see down).

* A crass mistake is present in the 2007 film version of ''Hitman'', which has the main character driving through the "Russian - Turkish border". Actually, Russia has no land borders with Turkey.

** She was probably lying. {{spoiler|She was one of the werewolves after all.}} Alternatively, it's simply a case of ''[[Wild Wilderness]]'', using that setting in Western Europe always requires some fantasy.

* ''Bird on a Wire'' (1990) has the main characters taking a ferry from Detroit to Racine, Wisconsin, on a ferry explicitly labeled "DETROIT TO RACINE". The trip would be roughly 500 miles by water, as one would have to travel around most of Michigan's Lower Peninsula to reach Racine from Detroit. In [[Real Life]], two ferries connect Michigan to Wisconsin across Lake Michigan: the S.S. Badger, which connects U.S. 10 from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Ludington, Michigan, and the Lake Express, connecting Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan. The latter (which only opened in 2004) is as close to a Detroit-to-Racine connection as you can get... ''if'' you consider three hours on westbound Interstate 96 and about 45 minutes on southbound SR-32 "close".

*** They may have, but ''not from Salzburg''. Salzburg is on the German border, not on the Swiss border.

**** So they'd take a detour. It is possible to go from Salzburg to Switzerland without ever leaving the mountains.

* 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.

* In [[Tim Burton]]'s ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'', Düsseldorf is depicted as [[Yodel Land|a quaint little Alpine town with half-timbered houses and tall mountains in the background]] instead of the modern industrial city on the Rhine, not in plain view of any mountains.

* In the opening of ''[[Left Behind]]'', a shot labeled "Israeli-Syrian Border" shows tanks driving over desert. The border of Israel and Syria, which is called the Golan Heights, is actually green and mountainous (and is a subject of dispute partially for this very reason).

*** Not to mention that Iraq is an hour ahead of Israel and Syria.

* Parodied repeatedly in the ''[[Austin Powers]]'' movies. In the second, Austin and Felicity are driving through "[[California Doubling|the English countryside]]", and Austin remarks how "[[Lampshade Hanging|the English countryside looks nothing like southern California]]". In the third, special effects were purposely used to put Mount Fuji in the background of every single exterior shot in Japan.

* In ''[[Mean Girls]]'' the students go to "Old Orchard" mall, a well known mall near Chicago. The mall shown in the movie is '''indoors''', whereas Old Orchard is an outdoor mall.

* North Texas is essentially a prairie with hills to the south and woods to the east. Yet according to the first ''[[X Files]]'' movie, there is a ''desert'' just outside of Dallas where the government sets up camp to research an alien creature found there.

* [[Jackie Chan]]'s ''[[Rumble in The Bronx]]'' features shots of the lovely snow capped mountains for which the Bronx is known far and wide. [[The Mountains of Illinois|Oh, wait]]...

** This is likely a reference to the short lived tv show Police Squad (for which Naked Gun was based on). Even though the show took place in New York, you would frequently have backgrounds that clearly did not belong to New York City (i.e. when they are driving through "Little Italy" the background depicts the Roman Coliseum).

* In the [[Johnny Cash]] biopic ''[[Walk the Line]]'', one of the last scenes is Cash's 1968 onstage marriage proposal to June Carter, which according to the labeling took place in "Ontario, Canada". While that's technically correct, Ontario is a ''huge'' province, with an area four times greater than that of the UK, and one and a half times greater than Texas.. (In reality, it happened in ''London'', Ontario.)

* Two otherwise good war movies betray their locations: ''Dawn Patrol'' was set in Belgium but obviously filmed in Southern California (like every movie was at the time); ''Dark Blue World'' mostly takes place in southern England, but there are some conspicuous Eastern European mountains in the background of many scenes.

* Fictional example of a Geography error: in ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' live-action film adaptation, Legolas proclaims "the Uruks turn northeast. They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!" If the Uruks were taking the hobbits to Isengard, they would be going ''west'' (as shown in [http://www.strefarpg.pl/gfx/tworcy/middle-earth.jpg this Middle Earth Map]).

* In ''[[10,000 BC]]'' the protagonist lives in a massive Ice Age mountain range, filled with tundra, glaciers, and mammoths. He then treks down from those mountains, almost immediately entering a verdant jungle with a transitional climate about ten yards across. On exiting said jungle and crossing another ten yard transition, he's in an arid desert.

* In ''[[Speed]]'', the freeway depicted as I-10 is actually I-105, which was already complete in real life, and the I-105 sequence was filmed on I-110, which actually was unfinished at the time.

** The bus also exits the east I-10 freeway onto Western (south) using a cloverleaf ramp that doesn't exist in [[Real Life]], then goes from there to the I-105 in El Segundo (around 18 miles away) in ''under a minute.''

* In ''[[Independence Day]]'', a British commander sends a message to the Americans, telling them that Israel and Syria have prepared air-strike wings to take out one of the alien spaceships. He says the aircraft are being prepared in the ''Golan Straits''. Of course, the straits nearest to the Golan ''Heights'' are about a thousand miles south, in the Indian Ocean.

** It also features an impossible road sign. The University Of Houston and North Houston are a good thirty miles away from each other.

* The 2010 [[Amy Adams]] film ''[[Leap Year]]'' is all over the place regarding Irish geography. The heroine's plane, traveling from Boston to Dublin is forced to land in Cardiff, Wales due to terrible weather. She ends up hiring a boat to go to Cork for some reason; now even if we are to assume the storm blocks off Dublin Port there are plenty of harbours closer to the city than Cork. Not that it matters, since bad weather forces the boat to put ashore in Dingle... which is north of Cork and yet further away from Cardiff. Further, as in about adding about a third again onto her trip.

* In the movie ''Life-Size'', Casey Stuart tries to convince her father that Eve is a plastic doll come to life. Part of her argument is that Eve says she's from Sunnyvale, which is an obviously fake place that does not exist. Except that... yes, [[wikipedia:Sunnyvale|Sunnyvale is a very real location in California]].

* The Jean-[[Claude Van Damme]] film "Double Team" shows how Van Damme visits a huge bordello in Antwerp, which can not be found there in real life. What makes this mistake even more perplexing is that Van Damme is actually a Belgian himself!

* In ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'', at the start of the film, [[Brad Pitt]] and [[Angelina Jolie]]'s characters claim that they met in Bogota, Colombia. Flashback to said moment, and they show Bogota, a real-life big metropoly city with a very cold climate, portrayed as a small river-side town where sun always shine, people listen to flamenco music and there's no need for clothes. To make things worse, a soldier speaks with a heavy Mexican accent. Even the actors said that they've never been to Bogota, or Colombia, for that matter. Colombians were ''so'' not happy.

* In ''[[X-Men: First Class]]'' there's a scene where Magneto kills some bad guys that supposedly takes place in the Argentinian city of Villa Gesell. The establishing shot shows snowy mountains and a beautiful lake surrounded by hills, the only problem is, although you can find a lot of cities that look like that in the southern part of the country, the real Villa Gesell is a beach city located nowhere near that area.

* In ''[[All the President's Men]]'', Woodward and Bernstein's car seems to teleport around [[Washington DC]], from shot to shot, at random.

** To be fair, a large part of Australia is devoid of snow, and discernable seasons. Anything towards the north of the country has only 2 seasons - Wet and Dry. Then again, most films are set in or near the cities in the south. So perhaps the most realistic depiction of the country comes from ''[[The Matrix]]'', which uses Sydney as a random city somewhere in the world.

** The parts of DC with skyscrapers could theoretically be Arlington, Virginia, right across the river, which does have a [[wikipedia:Rosslyn, VA|traditional (if smallish) skyline]].

* In ''[[Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back]]'', the duo steal a monkey from an animal testing lab in Boulder, Colorado and run off with it on foot. The next scene they are out in the wilderness, and the scene after that they are in a diner in Utah. Boulder to Utah would be a 300+ mile hike, over the Rocky Mountains, and would take weeks even for seasoned backpackers.

* In The Graffiti Artist, one of the first scenes in the film is supposed to be set in Portland, OR has the main character getting on what is clearly a Seattle Metro bus at what is clearly 3rd and Pine, in the middle of downtown Seattle, as identifiable by the businesses around it and the appearence of the bus shelter. The disregard for the differences in geography between the two cities is in some cases justified because Seattle has better graffiti art (thanks to much more permissive laws), but there is no need for it in this scene.

* In the first [[National Treasure]], there is a chase scene on foot in Philadelphia. Everything is fine until the characters run the wrong way to get where they wind up.

* Near the beginning of [[The Rescuers (Disney film)|''The Rescuers Down Under'']], when we see the [[Travel Montage]] following the telegraph signal from Australia to the United States, Australia for some reason is unusually small and the United States is unusually big. In real life, both countries are approximately the same size. Also, Papua New Guinea is shown being the same size as Australia, the Marshall Islands the size of New Zealand, and Hawaii the size of Indonesia.

* The globe seen in various promotional media for [[Cars|''Cars 2'']] for some reason showed some continents as being either much larger or smaller than they are in real life. Justified, since the ''Cars'' series films all take place in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic vehicles, and therefore everything in their world down to the rocks, trees, clouds, and "animals" (they are also shown as vehicles) is given a car motif, and the same is for countries and continents.

* 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]].

 

== Literature ==

** She also seems to have forgotten that, yes, the Pacific Northwest does have a summer. A very sunny summer. It could go all of July and August, and sometimes September, without being completely overcast. Do the Cullens go on a three month camping trip every year? Not to mention that most areas in the Pacific Northwest aren't under complete cloud cover all day.

** Meyer was working from a grain of truth. Thanks to the Olympic Mountains blocking clouds coming in off the Pacific, Forks is beside a [[The Other Rainforest|literal rainforest]]. Forks really does get a lot of rain, even compared to the rest of Western Washington State. Grain of truth or not, however, it's still a nasty stereotype about a geographic location that came from inadequate research. Simply googling "Rainiest Town in America", which is more or less all Meyer did by her own admission in the introduction, does not adequate geographic research make.

** Also referring to Lake Union as "Union Lake", not unreasonable...if you're only ever seen a map of Seattle. Actually there are multiple problems with Seattle geography. The shady part of town that Bella visits in the last book is vaguely reminiscent of some parts of Aurora Ave. but doesn't come close enough to any real part of the city to be believable.

* In ''The Terror of Blue John Gap'', the narrator at one point travels from the eponymous cave (which of course is a source of the semi-precious stone Blue John) to Castleton in Derbyshire, some 14 miles away. In reality, Blue John is found only in the vicinity of Castleton, a roughly 3-mile radius. Maybe this one is also [[You Fail Geology Forever]].

* ''[[The Guns of the South]]'' has a scene where Robert E. Lee and his staff survey the heart of Washington D.C. from a nearby hill; in the author's notes, [[Harry Turtledove]] admits that this is impossible, remarking "Sometimes geography has to bend to suit the author's wishes."

** Of course, there's also the fact that he invents a South Carolina town out of the blue for the time-travelers to come from; it could have been [[Handwaved]] if it was just them, but the fact that one of the main characters is also from the town becomes an important plot point.

* [[Stephen King]] did this on purpose in ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' series. In the foreword for ''[[The Dark Tower/The Waste Lands|The Dark Tower]]'', he notes that his New York readers will notice that he has taken "certain geographical liberties" with the city. In the later books, when he writers himself into the story, he distorts the geography of Maine (where he lives) because he doesn't want people harassing him in his home.

** The former becomes a plot point later on, when Eddie finds out that Co-op City, where he's from, is in a different part of New York City on Keystone Earth than it is in the version of Earth he's from.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** 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?

* 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.

** ''[[24]]'''s real-time gimmick gets it into a lot of trouble geographically. Just one example: in the final season, set in NYC, Jack is in Middle Village, Queens and tells Chloe he's 10 minutes away from Houston Street. Maybe if he traveled by helicopter. Trying to decipher the geography of 24 is a foolish proposition.

* There was once a special episode of ''[[CSI]]'' that took place in Detroit, but was quite obviously filmed in Los Angeles. For one thing, Detroit doesn't have palm-trees lining the streets. For another thing, there are no mountains on Detroit's horizon.

** In another, the crime lab has to send some people up to Carson City to secure some evidence. They arrive in the middle of a blinding sandstorm, something that any person who lives in Carson City would tell you doesn't happen.

* Carly's grandfather in ''[[iCarly]]'' lives in Yakima and commented on why he can't drive a hour-and-a-half to Seattle to see his grandchildren. Driving from Seattle to Yakima takes about two more hours than he claims.

* 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.

*** 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.

* Kenneth from ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'' is said to be from Stone Mountain, Georgia. On the show, it is portrayed as being [[Deep South|a rural area]], when in fact it is a rather industrial suburb of Atlanta.

** To be fair, Kenneth has been implied several times to be [[Immortality|immortal]], so it likely ''was'' rural when he was growing up.

* It happens from time to time on ''[[The Amazing Race]]'', what with teams traveling all over the world and all, but never so gloriously as in the Season 16 premiere, when Jordan, despite constantly being reminded that they were going to Chile, proceeds to request tickets to Santiago, ''China''.

* In British magician Derren Brown's one-off show ''The Gathering'' he performed a trick whereby he predicted which country somebody would think of out of all of the countries in the world. The "country" he predicted? ''Africa''. He was correct. (Is this a failure on the part of him, or the audience member?)

* ''[[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

* 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.

* In ''90210'', Oscar figures out that there is something suspicious about rapist Mr. Cannon when he claims to be from Chelsea but clearly has a Dagenham accent. Now, while Chelsea has many upper-class parts to it, there are also several working class areas as well. There is ''no way'' that anybody could identify a "Dagenham accent" as opposed to any other working-class area of London.

** But just try convincing Henry Higgins of that.

* On one of the early episodes of ''[[Go Go Sentai Boukenger]]'' has the team traveling to Canada looking for the Power Item of the week. The Area that they head to is located in south-eastern Saskatchewan (known for being mostly flatland with some hills), yet features a huge Mountain range and obviously Japanese Flora. South-western Alberta might have been a better call on that one, what with the Rockies in all.

* In ''[[The Event]]'' Vicky describes Murmansk as being in "Western Siberia." This could be a in-show mistake, but Murmansk is near the Finnish border in the most northwestern part of Russia, further west than Moscow (Similar to saying Maine is in the Eastern part of the Old West).

* In Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw, Michigan", the narrator claims that he lived in a house on Saginaw Bay. Saginaw, Michigan is about 20 miles inland from the bay, so it would be physically impossible to be in both Saginaw and on Saginaw Bay.

* And then there's Lead Belly's "Cotton Fields" song which mentions a place "in Louisiana, just about a mile from Texarkana". Texarkana is sitting on top of the Arkansas/Texas border, but it's nowhere within one mile from Louisiana's borders.

** Similarly, The Feeling's "Without You" (its lyrics referring to the Virginia Tech spree shooting) mentions "North Virginia", a term that is not used by locals and in no way describes the location of Virginia Tech within the state of Virginia.

* Averted/parodied by [[The Beatles (band)|The Beatles]]' "Back in the USSR"; the lyric "and Georgia's always on my mind" refers both to the song ''Georgia on my Mind'' (about the US Georgia and/or a woman named Georgia) and the Georgia in the Caucasus.

** Very, Very strong diving suit?

** Actually at low tide there are areas you can wade on (or if you're trying to actually fish, avoid like crazy.) That's justification after the fact though: it was probably originally just put in to sound good.

* Sade's "Smooth Operator": "Coast to coast, LA to Chicago", though you can argue that they're supposed to be two unconnected phrases.

* "Sausalito Summernight" by Diesel (from The Netherlands) is about a road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but the actual verse about Sausalito implies that it's south of San Francisco, when it's actually north. Also, the notion of a "hot summer night in Sausalito" is pretty laughable, because Sausalito is right on the SF Bay and is very breezy. The average overnight low temperature during summer is about 55(F)/13(C).

* Music video for "Pipppero" by Elio e le Storie Tese takes place on the italian-bulgarian border. Needless to say that the italian-bulgarian border ''doesn't exists''.

* [[Lemon Demon]]'s ''[[Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (song)|Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny]]'' has [[Abraham Lincoln]] [[Our Zombies Are Different|came out of his grave]], in [[Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe|Tokyo]]...

* Parodied in [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s "Canadian Idiot", where the singer mentions "driving a Zamboni all over [[Accent On the Wrong Syllable|Saskatchewan]]". In real life, Saskatchewan is considered a prairie province, and definitely isn't covered in ice. This however, is making fun of people who think that all of Canada is a frozen wasteland, as if the Great Plains stopped at the US-Canadian border or something...

 

== New Media ==

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** 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.

** White Wolf has admitted that since this is set in an [[Alternate Universe]], they take liberties with the geography [[Artistic License|to fit the mood of each game]].

* [[New World of Darkness]] somewhat esoterically treats Europe (and the American seaboards) this way in its Vampire installment. It's explained that Vampires don't want to risk driving even to the nearest city from their own, because it might end up with them stranded with not enough time to make it back to their own city. This makes sense in the middle of the US or Canada, where it can take hours to drive to the city limits of the nearest city and more to drive to the centre and the same amount of time back. In Europe and along the coast, few cities outside Scandinavia are more than an hour from their nearest neighbours.

* ''The Lexicon'', the geography volume of Bard Games' Atlantean Trilogy, can be forgiven for re-drawing the map of Earth to make their ancient civilizations more interesting. However, referring to salt-water straits as "rivers", merely because they're wet and narrow, would surely have been a boo-boo even in the Second Age of Atlantis!

 

== Theater ==

*** King Rudolf II (r. 1552-1612), in a reverse fashion to King Ottokar II, became king of Croatia and Hungary in 1572, then became king of Bohemia in 1575, effectively creating a common country with an Adriatic Sea coastline and Bohemia combined. This was a contemporary "Bohemian coastline" to Shakespeare himself, requiring little embellishment to give Bohemia a coastline in ''[[The Winter's Tale|The Winters Tale]]''.

** ''[[Measure for Measure]]'' is a play with a Duke named Vincentio, his deputy Angelo, a nun named Isabella, her brother Claudio, his lover Juliet, and their friend Lucio... set in ''Vienna''.

** In ''[[Timon of Athens]]'', his description of the Athenian countryside sounds nothing like Greece, but like so many of his other plays depicting foreign parts more like a generic culture with a generic wealthy society.

*** Especially bad because in act 1, everyone seems to fully expect Othello to arrive in Cyprus before the Turks do, despite having to travel a much longer distance. Luckily a storm manages to sink all the Turks' ships anyway so it doesn't matter.

*** While the events of the play span three days, they occur in two periods: a time period of one day in Venice leading up to the departure in Act I Scene 3, and then the arrival in Cyprus in Act II Scene 1 starting another time period of two days in Cyprus, with [[Traveling At the Speed of Plot|an unspecified period of time]] between the two periods. Thus the actual length of the journey between Venice and Cyprus is never specified in the play itself.

 

... the desert right outside New Orleans.

 

== Video Games ==

 

== Webcomics ==

** 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.

* In the ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'' episode "The Mummies of Malenque," the Quest team goes on a trip to Columbia. Luckily they specified it was the Col'''''u'''''mbia that is ''in South America'', else the kiddies might've gotten confused.

* In [[Total Drama Island]]'s "Celebrity Manhunt Special" the gang travels from Ontario to New York, and somehow get lost in a desert with a nuclear testing site (Trinity Site is in New Mexico if you are wondering.)

* In the ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'' episode "Wambini Predicts", Gadget goes to "[[Qurac|Alpakistan]]", where there are diamond-spitting llamas. Llamas and alpacas are from South America, only camels are found in the Middle East.

* The song [[List Song|"Yakko's World"]] from ''[[Animaniacs]]'', ostensibly listing all of the countries in the world, left out several countries, such as South Africa and Burkina Faso.

** In "Simpson Safari" they travel to Africa where a lot of local fauna are intentionally inaccurately depicted: giraffes live under ground, rhinoceroses lay eggs, hippo's are afraid of water and giant spiders live in jungles.

*** The Masai tribes are depicted as if they practice lip plates and neck rings, while in reality they don't.

** In "30 Minutes Over Tokyo" several Japanese landmarks are depicted being within short distance of one another.

** Krusty visits The Hague in "Elementary School Musical" and arrives at the local airport. Despite the fact that The Hague has no airport in real life!

* Whenever the Earth is shown in ''[[Homestar Runner]]'', the United States is actually drawn as a single landmass surrounded by oceans, with Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America nowhere to be seen!

* [[Dino Squad]] tends to set itself in location that actually exist, but at the same time tends to ignore the actual travel times. The episode "Easy Riders and Raging Dinos" has the kids driving to places in excess of 400 miles away from their hometown (Kittery Point, Maine to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Niagra Falls) like they're going to the next town over.

 

== Real Life ==

* Quite a few people refer to Europe as if it were one country. When talking about album sales, box office, or TV ratings, many people mention that something was "successful in Europe" without differentiating specific countries, turning Europe into one large foreign market like Australia or Japan. Europe can be treated as a single economic territory, and the EU is a polity in its own right, but neither of these things makes Europe a country.

* [[Dan Quayle]] is notable for his geography blunders. Examples: "It's wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago." and "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."

** This is the reason that at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the country that got the most applause other than the United States, was Georgia.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws "I've now been in fifty.... seven states?"] - President Barack Obama.

** To be fair, that incident sounds more like he started to claim that he'd been in every state, realized that he hadn't, and fumbled the correction.

* Some Americans apparently like to visit Hawai'i [http://notalwaysright.com/first-ocean-to-the-right-then-straight-on-til-drowning in a car]. Or [http://notalwaysright.com/here-today-gone-to-maui-2 on a train].

** [http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Seattle,+WA&daddr=Honolulu,+HI&hl=en&ll=34.885931,-140.185547&spn=38.168439,86.572266&sll=32.10799,-140.67501&sspn=39.323102,86.572266&geocode=FcJp1gIdWVy1-ClVM-iTLBCQVDGa1URpRmUlEA%3BFUAeRQEd40WX9ilNRsOMOxgAfDFsl6fzX_UoSw&vpsrc=0&mra=ls&t=m&z=4 Step # 10:] apparently the best way to get to Honolulu, Hawaii is to kayak. (found by searching [http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Seattle,+WA&daddr=Tokyo,+Japan&hl=en&sll=34.885931,-140.185547&sspn=38.168439,86.572266&geocode=FcJp1gIdWVy1-ClVM-iTLBCQVDGa1URpRmUlEA%3BFRCUIAIduoZTCCnnVy7whxtdYDGJG1cii2EBLg&vpsrc=0&mra=ls&t=m&z=3 this])

* Apparently invoked by Opera Software in their [http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/05/05/fastmail-fm-faq FastMail.FM Acquisition FAQ]; it's headed by a picture of Sydney Opera House and then goes on to say that <s>FastMail.FM</s> <s>The Messaging Engine Pty. Ltd.</s> Opera Software Australia Pty. Ltd. is in Melbourne, hundreds of miles from Sydney. However, more careful reading of the FAQ reveals that their use of the well-known '''Opera''' House image is a pun, so this is actually an [[Averted Trope|aversion]].

* John F Kennedy once said: "The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe--Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East--the lands of the rising peoples." One glance at an actual map (or [http://www.xkcd.com/753/ this] xkcd strip) shows us that the majority of Asia, over half of Africa, central America and the entire Middle East are in fact Northern hemisphere. And Australia is on the Southern hemisphere despite not being on the list.

** On a similar note, for a long time, Cincinnati and Atlanta were in the National League West division, while St. Louis and Chicago were in the NL East.

** The NFL, up until the 2002 re-alignment, was an exercise in geographical insanity. Of the five teams in the NFC West division in 2001, three of them (New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers) were ''Southern cities'' while the Arizona Cardinals of the NFC ''East'' was the westernmost city in the NFC after the San Francisco 49ers. There are still a few oddities present today (the NFC West's Rams are still farther east than the NFC East's Cowboys; the Indianapolis Colts of the AFC South are farther north than the Baltimore Ravens of the AFC North), but for the most part, the current partitioning makes a lot more sense.

* A certain postcard of Seattle has the level of Puget Sound much higher than in real life, with a band of green spliced in along the waterfront.

* According to CNN, [http://twitpic.com/3w989u Queensland is actually a city in Tasmania]. (They had to have meant Queens''town'', since Queens''land'' is the state where the other cities on the map are located). CNN also once stated that Edinburgh is in England. Try telling a [[Berserk Button|native that]].

* Two countries, one whose name is part of the other's. Congo and The Democratic Republic Of The Congo (formerly Zaire). It's the latter that's always in the news, yet the former's name is used a vast majority of the time to refer to it. Worse, they're neighboring countries...

** The former's official name is ''Republic of the Congo'', and the demonym for both nationalities is the same: Congolese.

* US Representative Michele Bachmann (Tea Party - Minnesota District 6) proudly told people in New Hampshire that the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord happened right there. [[Internet Backlash]] naturally followed from irate Massachusetts (and other knowledgeable) citizens.

** She pulled off another one kicking off her presidential nominee campaign when she said that John Wayne, born in the city she was currently visiting, was an American hero. Marion Michael Morrison, later known as John Wayne, was born in another city 140 miles away. The John Wayne born where she was at the time was [[Serial Killer|John]] [[Monster Clown|Wayne]] [[Complete Monster|Gacy]].

** Zig-zagged by the Cleveland Cavaliers. They originally played in the Cleveland Arena until it was torn down in 1974, then they played in Richfield, almost an hour south, for over twenty years. However, Gund Arena (now Quicken Loans Arena or "The Q") was built in downtown Cleveland in 1994, and the Cavs have been playing in Cleveland proper ever since.

* Many people seem to forget that Canada is part of America. The (possibly ex-)top comment of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeonqv_c4o0&feature=relmfu this] [[YouTube]] video, for example, is/was "what I've learned from JFL is that Canadians are much kinder than Americans".

 

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[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Hollywood Science]]