Geographic Flexibility: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

The geography of a fictional location becomes extremely flexible as more and more is added to it.

{{examples}}

* Riverdale from ''[[Archie]]'' comics sometimes spawns a beach or a mountain, and occasionally gives a hint of where it could be located, just to be able to contradict it later.

** Its size also seems to fluctuate. Depending on the story, Riverdale's a hick town in the middle of nowhere, or is big enough to support an airport and an international stock exchange.

* ''[[Back to The Future]]'' can't seem to decide whether Hill Valley is a decent-sized city or a small town. It's small enough to have a tiny downtown area with no buildings higher than three stories, but it apparently has a large enough population to support at least one very large mall. And that's just in the first film. ''Part III'' adds an entire desert within walking distance of the city while stating that there's a lake which freezes over in winter. Still the series didn't really last long enough to produce anything ''too'' contradictory, though it likely would have if it'd been allowed to continue.

** Of course, the fact that you see the movies in four very separate time periods might have something to do with it.

** There is a small city in [[California]] named Mill Valley, which is in Marin County, but there is no desert within walking distance of it.

** Ditto for the [[Hardy Boys]] and their hometown of Bayport, they've done a little better in more recent stories, ever since they [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|pinned down where the two towns actually are.]] Now, they've made the two towns suburbs withing one-day's driving distance from Chicago (River Heights) and New York (Bayport.) Nowadays they just go visit, call, or e-mail when they need help.

* In the first ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' book, it's stated that the geography of Hogwarts magically changes around from time to time - staircases move, steps vanish, doors don't always open and sometimes pretend to be solid walls. [[J. K. Rowling]] has explained that she established this early on as a ready-to-fire [[Justified Trope|justification]] in case this problem ever manifested itself, which, of course, it did.

* In the author's notes for ''[[The Guns of the South]]'', [[Harry Turtledove]] admits that he took a degree of [[Artistic License]] for a scene where the Confederates look into Washington D.C. from atop a nearby hill and see buildings like the War Department and the White House.

* Sunnydale in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''

** It also ''lost'' the entire beach/waterfront portions when the finale needed it to be landlocked.

** Lampshaded in the episode "Buffy vs Dracula" when Riley wondered how he'd never noticed Sunnydale had its own gothic castle. In that case it's presumed that either Dracula teleported his own castle to Sunnydale, assuming residents wouldn't [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|notice or care]], or that the entire episode was caused by reality alteration due to {{spoiler|the retroactive creation of Buffy's sister Dawn}}.

** Common theory is that the fact that Sunnydale is directly on top of a Hellmouth does all sorts of screwy things with the geography.

** Let's not forget that there are several ''uncharted islands'' off this beach. In Pennsylvania.

*** Does Lake Erie not exist in this particular TV universe?

** I always thought it was Oberlin or Kent, and that the decent sized city was nearby Akron.

* Residents of Dog River, Saskatchewan on ''[[Corner Gas]]'' often refer to (and drive to) "the city" but it's unclear whether it's Saskatoon or Regina they're going to. In some cases Regina is implied, but in one case Saskatoon is mentioned explicitly, i.e., "You went to Saskatoon for a morning swim?" The show also subverts the trope, often having a character declare emphatically that Dog River doesn't have an item that many sitcom towns tend to have for story convenience. For example, the above-mentioned "morning swim" comment was the result of Brent pretending that his case of pink eye was the result of taking a dip in an over-chlorinated pool, but Hank and Wanda point out that there's not a swimming pool anywhere in Dog River.

** The Losties not finding these things is at least moderately plausible, but Rousseau had been on the Island for ''16 years'' and claimed never to see a lot of the stuff she came across when with the Losties. Granted, she was mad, but hadn't she supposedly been obsessed with finding her daughter? And she never came across the death pylons set in the incredible obvious grassy plain area near the centre?

** Season six has the gigantic Temple be practically next to the barracks, judging by how quickly Kate and Sawyer can go from it to the latter.

** Lampshaded in season six when Jack wonders how they had never managed to discover a giant stone lighthouse before.

** It also has ''historical'' flexibility, with matching scenery. It was settled by the British in the early 1700s (''despite being in California''), and was mostly grassy fields. In the late 1800s, it was full of prospectors, cowboys, and other [[Wild West]] stereotypes, and was mostly barren desert.

** This has led to an interesting (if wrong) assumption by fans that the town ''is'' Los Angeles. ''Power Rangers'' takes place in an alternate universe, and since the British found California before the Spanish, the town was given an English name instead of a Spanish one.

* ''[[Smallville]]'' didn't do too badly, the titular town's geography remain stable, as did Metropolis. But it still cropped up from time to time; the Smallville Luthorcorp plant seemed to grow an entire research wing (on a waste treatment plant) and Metropolis was sometimes so close to Smallville you could see it from a not very tall windmill and sometimes far enough away even [[Super Speed]] took a while to get you there.

** On the other hand, the geography was not at all plausible for central Kansas, both for plot reasons and because [[California Doubling|they were actually in British Columbia]]. Metropolis acquired a harbor at some point (in Kansas!), and Smallville was full of whatever cliffs, valleys and rivers were required by this week's adventure. Also, the size of the town seemed to fluctuate to suit the plot—sometimes it was Dogpatch, and sometimes it was a fairly vibrant town. (Indeed, in season 5 it was explicitly a ''university'' town.) A road sign in the pilot episode lists a population of 45,001. That's not very big, but it's not tiny.

* Simply because the sheer length of the ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'' (thirty years and they're still making new episodes), the town of Odyssey has gone from a small quaint Midwestern town to a place complete with a full scale downtown (with skyscrapers), its own suburb, an international airport, multiple malls, a community college, at least one full-scale amusement park, and a zoo. (And everything still seems to be within walking distance.)

* In ''[[Diablo]] II's'' multiplayer, the wilderness areas outside of towns change shape everytime one plays.

* The American localization of ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'' apparently takes place in Los Angeles, California (Pacific time zone, near a movie studio). The sequel introduces the extremely Japanese Kurain Village, which is two hours away by train. The 3rd game introduces a snow covered mountain expanse with another extremely Japanese Kurain Temple located not much further beyond that. The reason, of course, is that it was an extremely Japanese game series before being localized. [[Fan Wank]] would indicate that there was simply a lot more cultural exchange between Japan and California in the series' [[Alternate Universe]], which is why no one bats an eye at people in Japanese clothing walking around in LA.

* This is a gameplay mechanic in ''[[Legend of Mana]]'': you get to place... ''places'' on the World Map. Each place emanates Mana of certain colors, which affects immediate previously placed places.

* Free Country USA in ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' is whatever size and sophistication level it needs to be for the current cartoon.

** This is even parodied in ''Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People'', where Strong Bad can put other Free Country USA landmarks anywhere he wants on the map, and even rearrange them as he sees fit. His own house starts in the middle, but it's just as mobile. In the second game, he makes a new map by drawing on a Risk-like game map.

** Free Country USA usually appears to be about half a dozen buildings (three houses, the King of Town's castle, the Concession Stand, Coach Z's locker room) in the middle of nowhere, explicitly told not to have roads (or functioning cars), and yet the houses are decently sized, there's utilities, a postal service (and presumably a zip code), Internet access, a few in-story television shows and commercials filmed there, and so forth. [[Rule of Funny|Best not to think too hard about it]].

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' openly embraces this problem. See [[Separate Simpsons Geography Thing]].

* The animated show ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' suffers from this slightly. Most clues to the location of the show put it in France (satellite photos), despite a few episodes contradicting this (such as the visit of a French foreign exchange student). This however, is an artifact of [[Dub-Induced Plot Hole|the dubbing and localization process]]. [[Fanon|The town would be]] specifically [[wikipedia:Boulogne-Billancourt|Boulogne-Billancourt]], in the suburbs of Paris. However, the French version does obfuscate a bit the exact location too, never mentioning any place name (or that the river is the Seine).

* ''[[Teamo Supremo]]'' was constantly summoned by The Governor to save the state, but exactly which state the series takes place in is never revealed/stated.

* ''[[Family Guy]]'': Quahog, Rhode Island is seemingly a suburb of Providence (with its skyline in the background), which has a modest metropolitan population of 1.6 million in real life, and a city proper of less than 200,000. Despite this, Quahog has an international airport, a subway system, and other "big city" features that even Providence lacks. Sometimes the small skyline resembles Providence well, other times it looks like a huge sprawling metropolis. Some could argue that some of the scenes take place in Boston, about 40–50 miles away, but most of these big-city scenes do not resemble Boston either. Earlier episodes resembled the real-life area more (Peter Griffin even jumps off a skyscraper resembling one in Providence), whereas later episodes drifted apart from the real-life counterpart, where Quahog has a split personality between small town and bustling metropolis depending on the nature of the plot.

** The most egregrious example would have to be the sudden [[Schizo-Tech|hydroelectric dam]], skyscraper construction site and deadly unguarded cliffs in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well".

* Bikini Bottom from ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' is shown to be this, as well. In most episodes it's a typical small town (small towns are '''usually''' underwater, right?), but other episodes have shown that it contains a mall, a racetrack, and an Olympic stadium, among other things.