Artistic License Geography: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== General ==

 

== 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.

** 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.

 

== Comic Books ==

** 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!"

 

== Film ==

**** 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.''

 

== Literature ==

** 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.

* 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.

* ''[[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 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.

 

== 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 "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!

* 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".

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Hollywood Science]]