Artistic License Geography: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Blood Plus]]'' went for the climate. At one point in the series, when Red Shield ship came to Vladivostok, the heroes transfered to a train. Among them only [[Token Minority|Lewis]] wore a hat. In the middle of the winter. Apparently, nobody told the authors that the winds at the time could lift an adult man off the ground, and temperatures routinely reached -25C (-13F) with precipitation of 400mm or 32 inches. You'd be lucky if you end up with ''only'' frostbitten ears in such conditions.

** 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.

** 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.

 

 

* Exaggerated in the ''[[Sam and Max|Sam and Max: Freelance Police]]'' debut issue, in "Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple", when Sam and Max take a trip to the Philippines. Max lampshades the fact that the background behind him is drawn without reference material.

* The ''[[Asterix]]'' series also enjoy to feature travel episodes, where the characters visit a country and are confronted with many references to their modern day equivalents. Since the comic strip is humoristic and anachronistic itself many stereotypical jokes should not be taken that seriously. However, sometimes there are literal mistakes:

* ''[[Jet Dream (Comic Book)|Jet Dream]]'': In "The Powder Puff Derby Caper," Jet is shot down over a "South Pacific island" somewhere between Honolulu and San Francisco.

 

** [[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.

 

 

* In the 2010 film ''[[The Tourist]]'', Frank Tupelo walks out of the Santa Lucia train station in Venice, and is immediately invited aboard Elise's boat. The shot then pans out as the boat speeds off, showing them to be moving north on the grand canal from Piazza San Marco, actually heading towards Santa Lucia from the opposite end of the island.

* In Bill Friedkin's film ''The Guardian'' the protagonist family lives in Los Angeles, amidst enormous lush green forests.

* The 2007 ''[[Beowulf (film)|Beowulf]]'' movie is set in Denmark. The highest above-sea level point in Denmark is a television tower. The highest natural point weighs in at a whopping 170 meters above sea level. But in the film it is full of [[Norse by Norsewest|huge cliffs, rivers and mountains]].

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

* ''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".

** Not to mention Racine doesn't even have a dock that can handle a vessel of the size a ferry like that would be likely to be.

* The 2008 ''[[Get Smart (film)|Get Smart]]'' movie has a long sequence taking place in Los Angeles, in which the characters drive among the core downtown area, the Port of Los Angeles and Van Nuys Airport within the span of about 10 minutes. The thing is, the Port of Los Angeles is actually in Long Beach, some 20 miles away, and Van Nuys Airport is in the San Fernando Valley, not much closer. You'd think L.A. would be the one town Hollywood filmmakers could get right.

** And the tracks where the cars crash for the explosive finale are in [[Montreal]]...

*** 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.

** Given how it heavily implied that it was ''supposed'' to be a bridge that once spanned Lake Michigan, it woud make it fictional, thus rendering any discussion of its location somewhat moot?

* In the movie version of ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'', the scenes supposedly taking place in Arizona are completely inaccurate. It is clear in the book that Bella's house is in Paradise Valley, a highly populated suburb of Phoenix known for its large houses and for being a valley. However, her house in the movie is clearly not in Paradise Valley, especially because it is ''on a mountain''.

** Also, the scene when the Cullens and Bella are playing baseball there is a view of a tall waterfall. That falls is called Multnomah Falls on the Columbia Gorge. And where Forks is 30 miles south of the Canadian border, Multnomah Falls is all the way in Oregon. However, this might simply be [[California Doubling|Oregon Doubling]], since Oregon is cheaper to film in than Washington, and filmmakers figured most viewers wouldn't know the difference.

* 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]]...

* ''[[The Covenant]]'' is particularly bad at this, if you know anything at all about the geography of Essex County, Massachusetts. Spencer Academy supposedly is in Ipswich, which is also the town where the party takes place near the beginning of the film. One of the characters mentions cutting across Marblehead to get away from the cops, which happens to be 20 miles away, down on the other side of Salem.

** Also, there are absolutely no cliffs along the coasts of Essex County. They are all either sandy or rocky, depending on how sheltered the coastline is, and how close it is to the mouth of the Merrimac River.

* The opening freeway chase in ''[[Hancock]]'' is clearly filmed on a short one-mile stretch of the I-105 freeway in El Segundo, California (watch the buildings in the background). After the car is stopped on the I-105/I-405 transition, when Hancock carries it off, downtown Los Angeles is clearly shown in the background, even though it's 25 miles away.

* 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.

* ''[[Cannonball Run]] II'' is about a cross-country race from the West Coast to the East Coast of the United States. However, the entire movie was filmed in the outskirts of Tucson, AZ--even the finish line, which is said to be in Vermont, but there is a large saguaro cactus visible on the screen.

* 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 film ''Joy Ride'' the boys drive through Wyoming, stopping to sleep at a hotel in Rawlins. When the sheriff shows up the next day to investigate a murder, his car identifies him as the Rawlins County sheriff. Problem is, there isn't a Rawlins County in Wyoming. There is a Carbon County, where Rawlins is.

* ''[[Taking Lives]]'', somewhat unusually, rather than having [[Montreal]] stand in for some random American city, set the action in Montreal. Which they indicated with a big establishing shot of the Château Frontenac, the most famous landmark in Quebec City. (It's a little like establishing a scene in L.A. using a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.)

* ''[[Intersection]]'' is one of the few Hollywood movies not only [[Stargate City|filmed in Vancouver]], but actually set there too. As long as they are keeping it real, one wonders why they felt compelled to move the University of British Columbia to the North Shore of Burrard Inlet rather than keeping it in its real location at the edge of the peninsula that forms the city of Vancouver. Perhaps [[Rule of Cool|for the very nice views]] crossing the bridge.

* In ''Paycheck'' (set in Seattle, Washington), John Wolfe shouts their location as 6th Avenue and Pine Street, which in real life is smack-dab in the middle of Downtown and has a number of buildings surrounding it.

* In ''Monsters'' the characters encounter a Mayan pyramid in the middle of the jungle... within sight of the Texas-Mexico border. Which jungle this is supposed to be or what a Mayan pyramid is going several hundred miles too far north are not addressed.

* The 1954 movie ''Drum Beat'' about the Modoc Indian War, shows beautiful scenery better placed in the southwest. The real Captain Jack's Stronghold was a rocky outcropping of jagged lava flows.

* In action in ''Pathfinder'' takes place between Vikings and natives in the new world. This means either the rocky coastal meadows of Newfoundland or the rocky coastal forests of Maine. Instead, it appears to be a Pacific Northwest-ish rainforest tucked away in the Alps, if not the Andes.

* ''[[Scary Movie]] 4'' shows the characters watching news footage of the city of Detroit before and after the aliens attack (the joke being that Detroit was already so bad that the aliens didn't have any effect whatsoever). But the city in the footage is actually San Diego.

** Perhaps he shared his father's oddly-specific racism?

* 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!

* ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s [http://www.cracked.com/article_19168_6-myths-about-famous-places-you-believe-thanks-to-movies.html 6 Myths About Famous Places You Believe (Thanks to Movies)] points out several common artistic licenses shown in film, such as stereotypically, Australia being shown as being unmercifully hot all year round, or anything taking place in Australia usually taking place in the summer, despite Australia getting its fair share of snow (and more), or Russia being depicted as being constantly snowy, usually having at least a somewhat thick coating of snow on the ground, no matter when the story is taking place, although usually being shown in the winter. Also, Washington D.C. will often be depicted as a colossal metropolis with as many skyscrapers as many other very large cities, despite the fact that Washington has no true buildings taller than sixteen stories.

** 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 Devil's Advocate]]'': The movie opens in "Gainesville, Florida". Or rather, a small rural town that looks nothing like the actual, modern, skyscraper-encrusted college-town that is the real Gainesville, Florida, but does look like a one-horse hick town in the middle of nowhere, which was probably the point.

** Apparently the producers wanted Reeves' character to be from a small rural town and picked Gainesville, Florida off of a map at random, not realizing that "small rural town" does ''not'' describe Gainesville, Florida, and hasn't for about a hundred years. The Civil War-era "courthouse" where the trial was taking place is actually in a one-stoplight town some thirty-two miles east of Gainesville, for example; the courthouses in Gainesville proper are all modern, multistory buildings

* 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 Joe Dante's film ''[[Matinee]]'' the action takes place in Key West during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in the final shot there's a great view of the Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad in the background -- 400 miles to the north and 20 years in the future.

* 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.

** Teabing parks on the House Guard Parade, so he can see the Parliament and Temple Church. In reality, from that position, he would be able to see neither. Several buildings block the view, and there are no parks to look across, as claimed in the book.

* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' early books were pretty bad on Chicago geography. Particularly notable was when Harry had a meeting in the massive parking lot outside Wrigley Field (in reality, it has about twenty spaces). Later on, after author Jim Butcher actually visited Chicago, he got better about it.

* In the first ''[[Left Behind]]'' novel, Buck is forced to make his way from Chicago to New York after the Rapture causes all manner of destruction. The timeline described is ridiculous, with Buck taking far longer using chartered planes and such to travel the distance than he would have simply by driving back roads. It culminates in a 20 mile bike ride along 13 mile long Manhattan.

** One of the later books describes huge ships on the river Jordan. Said river is actually very shallow and could not accommodate ships of any kind.

** And I know it was a "Plot Point", but there are not enough- or any- eucalyptus trees surrounding the mountain, certainly not enough to be overpowering. AND in the early morning in the middle of winter, Walnut Creek is not " oh, it could be summer" It might not be freezing, but it's cold. and the Golden Brown Berkeley hills are just that, golden brown...in the Summer. They do, in fact, get green(ish) in the winter.

* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' is ''terrible'' about this. [[Stephenie Meyer]] seems to have confused the Olympic Peninsula with northern Alaska, since she represents Forks as almost consistently overcast and, well, twilit, yet at the same time underestimates how cold it can get at night, even in summer.

** At one point "the west coast of Brazil" is mentioned. West is probably the only cardinal direction you couldn't really say that Brazil has a coast on.

* 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]].

* [[Rudyard Kipling|"On the road to Mandalay where the flying fishes play, and the sun comes up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay."]] The poem is set in Burma, as various references make clear. Burma has ''no'' sea coast of any kind facing China, and what coast it has is all west-facing, so don't expect the sun to come up out of it any time soon.

* [[Damon Knight]]'s novella ''[[Rule Golden]]'' contains the line "England is only about 400 miles long, from Land's End to John O'Groats." While the first half of this sentence is roughly true, John O'Groats (as the name implies) is not in England. '''''Scotland''''' adds another 4–500 miles to the length of Britain.

* The hero of a Heian Japanese tale somehow manages to be shipwrecked on the Persian coast while traveling from Japan to China.

* [[John Steinbeck]]'s ''[[The Grapes of Wrath]]'' has a particularly egregious example of this in the form of the main character's home town of Sallisaw, Oklahoma. In the book, the Joads are driven from Sallisaw due to the Dust Bowl ruining the land. The problem? Sallisaw is located in the eastern half of Oklahoma, commonly referred to as ''green country''. It never experienced the Dust Bowl.

* ''[[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."

 

== 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?

** 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 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.

* ''[[Lost]]'' claimed that the discovery of the missing Oceanic airliner in the waters off Bali would allay suspicion. Bali is so utterly off course from the plane's planned flight path (several thousand miles in a completely wrong direction) that even in the weird universe of ''Lost'' it would raise alarms with even the most incompetent, lazy, or corrupt accident investigator. Or anyone with a map of the Pacific Ocean. In case you don't have one handy, imagine a flight from Miami to Boston crashing in Seattle and no one finding anything about that suspicious.

** One of the extras on the series 4 DVD box set is a "conspiracy theory" video about the crash survivors, making that point among others. It's quite amusing, as they can take all the plot holes that viewers have already thought of, and flag them up mercilessly as part of the conspiracy. But it doesn't explain why it's not taken seriously in the world of the series.

*** The flawed [[California Doubling|Hawaiian Doubling]] is [http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Bloopers_and_continuity_errors kinda] [http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Flashes_Before_Your_Eyes#Bloopers_and_continuity_errors common], actually.

* The [[Anvilicious]] [[Very Special Episode|9/11 episode]] of ''[[The West Wing]]'' refers to a terrorism suspect entering the United States via the "Ontario/Vermont border." It is Quebec, not Ontario, that borders Vermont.

** In the first episode of the first season, there's a scene with Mandy driving fast in her convertible around the National Mall while having an argument on her cell phone. To the show's credit, this was filmed on location. However, anyone familiar with the layout of the National Mall quickly realizes that Mandy's car either magically flew backwards between cuts or she for some reason made a full circuit of the Mall (which would probably take at least five minutes, even going 60 or so in Bizzaro!land where there is apparently no other traffic). Also unrealistic is the fact that she was going about 60 miles per hour on Jefferson Drive, and yet does not appear to have bits of jaywalking tourists and school groups in the grille of her cute convertible.

* Drew Carey once said that "Africa is a big country" on ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]''. The rest of the cast mercilessly ragged on him about it for the rest of the episode.

* 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 ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'', when Robin speaks of how she met her Argentinean boyfriend Gael, it shows how they first got involved in a secluded little beach-side cabin surrounded by palm trees, a beach that looks oddly Caribbean. Argentina's beaches are all on the Atlantic, and you're more likely to find ''pine'' trees than anything even slightly resembling Robin's flashback.

** [[Unreliable Narrator|Remember what kind of show this is.]]

* 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).

* 1967 western ''[[Cimarron Strip]]'' was filmed in a variety of places, including Utah and Southern California - both of which look nothing like the Oklahoma panhandle, where it purportedly took place; where the real "cimarron strip" is flat and covered in prairie grass, the show's version is mountainous and sandy.

* ''[[Torchwood: Miracle Day]]'' has the main characters arrive in Venice, California on their way to a location in Los Angeles. When asked by the Gwen, the Welsh character where their final destination is, the American character Esther answers that it's technically in another city: Los Angeles while they're in Venice. Venice is part of the City of Los Angeles.

* Viewers who are familiar with Kansas can never watch ''[[Smallville]]'' without smirking at how much greener, hillier, and wetter the in-show Kansas is compared to the real-world Kansas, and how much the in-show Kansas looks like the Vancouver area.

* On one episode of ''[[JAG]]'', Harm's partner is kidnapped by gangbangers in South Central L.A. They tell Harm to drive back to Camp Pendleton, grab one of their members who has joined the Marines, and bring him back in one hour. Camp Pendleton is 90 miles from Los Angeles - even with no traffic it would be extremely difficult to make the drive down there in one hour, let alone back.

 

== Music ==

** Frankie Valli didn't actually write the song, so it's unlikely to be autobiographical. The writers were Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan, who sold the song to Valli for $4,000. (Incidentally, although Nolan is from Los Angeles, Crewe was born and raised in Newark.)

** Mind you, of the four bridges that span Barnegat Bay, none are actually called "Barnegat Bridge" (they are: the Mantoloking Bridge; the Mathis and Tunney Bridges to Seaside Heights; and the Causeway Bridge to Long Beach Island). There is no bridge located at the town of Barnegat. It is just possible, however, that the older bridge that the Mathis Bridge replaced in 1950 was called that, and that Crewe, who was born in 1931, might have known it by that name.

* 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.

*** In ''[[Two Gentlemen of Verona]]'', the character of Valentine takes a ship to go to Milan from Verona. In the sixteenth century, Verona and Milan were connected by a canal, allowing Valentine to make his trip by boat to Milan from Verona.

*** In ''[[The Tempest]]'', Prospero, Duke of Milan, and Miranda, are put forth from Milan on a "bark", or boat, and are taken "some leagues to sea" to "a rotten carcass of a boat" (Act I, Scene 2). Milan's Grand Canal (Naviglio Grande), still around today, linked Milan to the Ticino river, which in turn empties into the Mediterranean Sea, some leagues away from Milan.

*** In ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'', Romeo is exiled and goes to Mantua - Mantua is within reasonable distance of Verona.

** The Bohemian Errors - They depend on what is meant by "Bohemia": is it the original country itself, or the entire kingdom of Bohemia? Also, what exactly is a "desert" to an Elizabethan man?

*** In ''[[The Winter's Tale|The Winters Tale]]'', Shakespeare gives Bohemia both a coastline and a vast desert.

*** Note that originally "desert" simply refered to wilderness rather than the more specific modern definition of a very dry region (usually hot and sandy/rocky), so Bohemia having a "desert" might not be as bad as it sounds.

*** King Ottokar II (r. 1253-78), King of Bohemia, extended his kingdom to the Adriatic Sea by conquering Hungary in 1260. As Shakespeare's King Polixenes of Bohemia in ''[[The Winter's Tale|The Winters Tale]]'' closely parallels the life of King Ottokar II, it appears Shakespeare's use of a Bohemian coastline is not the only thing he drew from a history of the region.

** ''[[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.

* In ''Rad Racer'', you're racing in the "Trans America'' competition, but one of the tracks is set in ancient Greek ruins.

* Similarly in ''Radmobile'', when you arrive in Chicago you'll see palm trees and a gigantic cruise ship on what is presumably Lake Michigan.

** However, the game ''is'' set in an [[Alternate Universe]]...

* There's also [[Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater]]'s Russian ''jungle.''

* In ''[[Daytona USA]]'', a racing game on the Sega Saturn, there are mountains in the background in Daytona. There are no mountains anywhere in Florida. In fact, most of Daytona has water surrounding it on 3 sides thanks to an inlet.

** And the second game takes place in or near a city resembling Chicago.

* ''[[Age of Empires III]]'' has the Netherlands as one of its playable countries. The capital, Amsterdam, is depicted with a mountain-range in the background. It isn't called the Low Countries for nothing.

* ''[[Let's Go Find El Dorado]]'' features great mountain peaks separating cities and rivers with random names on them. As such, you can go from Santa Fe, New Mexico, fly over the mountains, and end up in Panama City. Yep.

** ''[[Need for Speed]] III'' has a track set in a Grand Canyon-type area, with an underground Greek temple.

* Averted in ''[[Dragon Quest III]]''. The [[World Map]] in that game is a very good representation of Earth.

*** Actually ''Australia'', but that still doesn't excuse the complete lack of desert, the voluminous amounts of forest and plains, and the sprawling ''mountain ranges''.

* ''[[Prince of Persia]]: The Two Thrones'' starts with the Hero on a boat, sailing to Babylon. He sails past a couple of huge rocks and spots his besieged and burning city. The problem is that Babylon was in what is now Iraq, which is a fairly flat country, so there are no huge rocks in the river.

* While mostly faithful to actual geography, ''[[Empire Earth]]'' at times goes happy-go-lucky on perspectives. Examples include cities changing locations from a mission to another, Alexandria spreading over the whole Nile delta, or Brittany being completely obliterated from the map of France in the Roman campaign.

* In ''[[Soldier of Fortune]] II'', there's a [[Mayincatec|Mayan pyramid]] in the Colombian jungle.

* Several episodes of ''CNNNN'' and ''[[The Chaser's War on Everything]]'' have featured Julian or Firth talking with Americans on the street and exposing poor general knowledge about the world. One memorable segment had people being asked which country the US should attack next in the War on Terror. Thanks to deliberately mislabelled maps, at least three people thought the country they'd chosen was located in AUSTRALIA (specifically, Iran, France and North Korea (with Tasmania representing South Korea).

** Another segment featured someone who also thought that there were about ten Eiffel Towers in Paris.

** [[Britain Versus the UK|As is traditional]], the song messes up the UK completely by listing England, Scotland and Ireland. It should either list England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, or just the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. And possibly adding Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, depending on definition of 'country'.

** The 50 states and capitals song is great, but the animation that goes with it is really screwed up. Many of the states are the wrong shapes in some shots (but correct in others), such as the ones bordered by the Missouri River, which are shown as having a straight north-south border. Iowa in particular is unrecognizable, with the eastern "nose" and southeastern "arm" missing.

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

* 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 ==

* [[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."

* There is a US state called Georgia [[Name's the Same|and]] [[Why We're Bummed Communism Fell|ex-"republic" in USSR]], now the nation called Georgia. Naturally, a few citizens from the former expressed confusion when they heard about the Russian invasion of the latter. Google didn't help any, when their automatic Google Maps integration on Google News was helpfully showing a map of the former. [[Troll|Trolls]] even supplied a few "panicked logs of the invasion". At least, by [http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100907134922AACWd2q the next time] enough people learned that it wasn't repeated even despite early [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/russia-georgia-fake-invasion-report overblown rumors].

** [[Sarah Palin]] had some fun with the incident: [http://www.therightscoop.com/sarah-palin-a-thanksgiving-message-to-all-57-states/ A Thanksgiving messsage to 57 states]. Palin also included about a dozen other gaffes from other political figures in her message, to make the point that everyone makes mistakes when they're tired and stressed.

* John McCain's infamous [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0Y7zMcn_4 Iraq-Pakistan border.]

* 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.

** South America and Africa, at least, are now often referred to as the Global South, but the term was coined long after JFK died.

* President Ronald Reagan went to Brazil and, with a grin on his face, said to be [[The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires|"Happy to visit the capital of Brazil, Buenos Aires"]]

** A South African newspaper once did the same, and got several interesting results. One respondent asked, "Angola ... isn't that in Egypt?" This, despite the fact that South Africa was fighting in Angola at the time.

** A Dutch TV reporter went out on the streets asking random people for their opinion on the closure of Guantanamo Bay. "Shame, it was such a nice place when I went there last summer".

* In his first press conference after being drafted by the Utah Jazz, Karl Malone told the Salt Lake City media how happy he was to be in "the city of Utah".

* Dallas' sports teams have it crazy. The Cowboys are in a division with all Northeast teams (see above) while the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars are in divisions with all West Coast teams. Only the Mavericks get to be in a division with two other Texas teams and one in New Orleans.

** Speaking of Dallas (well, the Metroplex, at any rate), Texas Christian University's sports teams nearly joined the ''Big East'' conference (which itself consists of mostly Northeast teams [[My Friends and Zoidberg|except DePaul]], which is in [[Chicago]]) before accepting an invitation from the Texas-dominated Big 12 instead.

** 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.

*** ''Somewhat'' justified, as the Cardinals had moved from St. Louis in the late 80's, and when the Panthers came into existence in 1995, the NFC West had an open spot, having only four teams to the other divisions' five. And when the AFL and NFL merged, the new NFC alignment [[wikipedia:AFL%E2%80%93NFL merger#The merger agreement|was literally drawn out of a hat.]]

* 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.