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We All Live in America: Difference between revisions
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* In ''[[FAKE]]'', Ryo (who is [[But Not Too Foreign|half-Japanese, but was brought up in the USA]]) and Dee, two New York cops, celebrate Christmas the Japanese way, with a romantic date. This ''could'' happen in the USA as well, but it probably isn't popular.
* ''[[Death Note]]'' has some of the most Japanese "Americans" ever seen. At least once, a member of a crime family bows to another member - his subordinate, no less. It should also be noted that most of the Americans' names are completely fake-sounding (though a few do manage to at least be similar to actual American names).
** Not to mention that every mafia thug knows exactly what a [[Gratuitous Japanese|Shini]][[Hypocritical Humor|gami]] is. And half the FBI speaks Japanese.
* ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'', though it's set in Italy, had many of the adult handlers be quite reserved towards their charges, probably causing [[Values Dissonance]] for any Italian viewers. They even bow sometimes. The girls don't act much like typical Italian girls, either.
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* Frequently in U.S.-centred comics of ''[[The Beano]]'' and ''[[The Dandy (comics)|The Dandy]]''. For example, steering wheels are often portrayed on the right side of the car.
** The Mayor of Cactusville in ''Desperate Dan'' dresses like the Lord Mayor of London, complete with gold chain of office and tricorn hat. Even ''British'' mayors don't really dress like that, except on special occasions.
* ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' occasionally shows people driving on the left side of the road in America. Also, background text tends to use U.K. spellings.
* [[Swamp Thing]] supposedly lives in a "County". Unfortunately, it is also set in Louisiana, which has Parishes, but not counties.<ref>The purpose of parishes is to allow people who live in Louisiana to correct people who refer to counties. There's no legal difference.</ref>
* In the comics, [[Superman]], who ostensibly helps people all over the world and can fly anywhere on Earth with little trouble, is head of the ''[[Justice League of America]]''. Despite their title, they don't seem to have a "jurisdiction" limited to America or even the planet Earth. The "of America" part is jettisoned in the ''[[Justice League]]'' animated series.
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* In about every AU fanfiction where [[Everyone Went to School Together|the characters go to the same school]], the school is very American. They use lockers, which most countries only have for the gym class, they change classes and friends get to meet only in some subjects, in most countries all the students stay in the same class for all the time with the same people, they rarely carry books in their backpacks, they carry binders etc. It's not a big problem until it's mentioned that characters wear [[Sailor Fuku]]. Or they're students at [[Harry Potter|Hogwarts]].
* In ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' fanfiction, it is a very common mistake for personified nations to act like people from the nation the author is from. For example, Nordics having an Asian hot pot tradition in a Japanese doujinshi.
** A rarer version of this trope occurs with the naming of the British Isles- for example Englands brothers calling him 'Britain' or UK when in fact these are names for various roups of these countries- occasionally you get people refer to England as 'the United Kingdom of England' which causes a great deal of facepalming. More common is the miss use of British slang and accents (note the plural). I imagine that this also occurs a lot with other countries- and certainly isn't a one way thing...
* Most ''[[Degrassi]]'' fanfiction these days is written by American fans, whose grasp of Canadian geography and cities seems to be limited to [[Canada, Eh?|stereotypes]]. Two particularly [[Egregious]] examples included one which depicted [[Toronto]], Ontario as a small town of about 300 people only accessible by a long bridge over a lake from the United States, and a second which had a character drive from Edmonton, Alberta to Toronto in about eight hours, a trip which should take about a day and a half without stopping (as much time as a trip from New York to Salt Lake City) in real life.
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** We could say the same thing about the behaviour of the Lt. Sosa in the German part of ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a Team]]''.
** Such a policy was proposed in real life. See [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/nov/16/terrorism.usa here].
* ''[[Best Of The Best]]'': The South-Korean Taek Kwon Do team cheered for their country as "Korea, Korea!" while it should've been "Hanguk, Hanguk!" "Daehan Minguk," being another possibility.
* Despite being ostensibly an American film, [[Tim Burton]]'s ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'' (which was shot at London's Pinewood Studios) comes off as British. The Joker holds up a bottle of "moisturi''s''ing" shampoo in one scene, and at the end of the film Alfred can be seen driving an automobile whose steering wheel is on the right side.
* Ridiculously parodied in ''[[Bruno]],'' when the ''Austrian'' protagonist appears on a talk show and talks about African-Americans... from Africa.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Tom Clancy]]'s Op-Center: Balance of Power'': Aside of being actually [[Spexico]], the Spain of the book has a government just like the US one, only with a king replacing the president. Spanish ''provinces'' are apparently as powerful as US states and have their own National Guards, and congressmen (read: deputies) have their own limos and drivers (in [[Real Life]] they don't).
** No kidding. The Spanish translation is prefaced by a ''note from the translators'' basically saying "focus on the plot because if you look at the detail too much you'll go mad with rage", even taking to account that in the same note they ''confess they have made some changes to the text to make it readable''. (i.e. they were afraid that if you read the original, unchanged text, your brain would shut down while you were reduced to a [[Flat What]]).
* Japanocentric version: ''A Wind Named Amnesia'' takes place in the U.S., but in the novel Wataru refers to the fifteen-year-old Lisa as a junior high school student; fifteen is usually high school age under the American school system. (Wataru is speculated to be of Japanese origin, but that was before his memories were wiped -- everything he knows now was taught to him by an American boy, so there is no in-story justification for the mistake.)
** Bit of an border case - U.S. school structure is pretty consistent within a given state, but it is ultimately a decision made at the district level and there's a fair amount of variance state-to-state, plus a variety of experiments with different models. Until around the early 90's, junior high school ended at 9th grade (age 14) in quite a few places. So it was possible for someone to have a birthday during the school year and turn 15, though this may just be a case of [[Accidentally Accurate]].
* ''[[Artemis Fowl]] and the Eternity Code'' has Chicago Police Officers referring to an elevator as a "lift." And earlier in the novel, Foaly talks about "Chicago State Law," which is nonsensical in that Chicago is a city, not a State.
* The ''[[Alex Rider]]'' series of children's books subverts this this trope at one point. The British main character, who is undercover as an kid from the United States, uses language that is obviously not American and is chastised for breaking his cover. However, played straight for nearly every other scene set in the United States.
* [[Dan Brown]]'s ''[[Angels
** Not to mention her partner, who is allegedly British but seems to think and speak using an awful lot of American terminology. The whole thing is so dastardly pointless, because the characters would have made just as much sense being from CNN instead of the BBC.
* [[Older Than Steam]]: The Chinese Epic ''[[Journey to the West]]'' assumes that all countries have the same kind of governors and imperial courts as China and that all countries in the world recognise a monkey-faced being as looking like a thunder god (among many other We All Live In China examples).
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** Unless you are watching Arabic movie adaptations, which usually set the story in China, or, for the more conservative channels, in an Asian Muslim country. One of the most popular Aladdin adaptations in the Middle East, Allauddinum Albhutha Vilakkum (Malayalam title), was created in Malaysia.
* The British ''Saffy's Angel'' series has a recurring character who is a visiting American...and who speaks in distinctly British slang.
* It's a minor point, but the American character in Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down refers to his apartment as a "bedsit," a very British term.
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** Even worse are websites which allow you to change language... and illustrate 'English' with an American flag.
*** Many websites choose to use diagonally bisected combination of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes as if those were the only places where English was spoken. But attempts at being complete and inclusive lead to such things as combined German/Austrian/Swiss flags for the German language option (They forget Liechtenstein). Languages and Flags don't really map 1 to 1 very well.
*** Of course if the makers of these language selection interfaces were to be really strict they should use the 'English Flag' for the English Language option, unfortunately a lot of English speakers would not recognize the St George's Cross as their option. Using a US or combined US/UK Flag for English can thus perhaps be classified as a justified case of [[Viewers are Morons]] and a [[Viewers Are Geniuses]] for all the other English-speakers in the world who they deem smart enough to figure out the correct option despite it not being represented by their own flag.
** Similarly, if a site offers multiple languages and there's more than one variant of 'English', American English will usually be what's meant by the unmodified option. This is a bit like a Canadian site calling two variants of the same language French and French French, respectively.
* Similar to the GTA example, ''[[Jade Empire]]'' features the occasional very English phrase like "buggers" to refer to a group of panicking rats, but as everyone in the game sounds Canadian save for [[I Am Very British|Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fondlebottom The Magnificent Bastard]], it comes off very odd.
** "Buggers" isn't uncommon in [[Canada, Eh?|Canada]], or at least the easternnmost portions, so it doesn't come off very odd at all in reference to nasty little buggers like rats.
* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)]]'' and ''[[Heavy Rain]]'' are set in New York and Philadelphia, respectively, but were made by a French company, and there are a bunch of telling details -- for example, both games feature apartments with the bath/shower and toilet in separate rooms, which is not unheard of in Europe but is pretty much never seen in America.
* ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games are apparently set in Europe or America but the characters retain certain Japanese mannerisms such as bowing, a lot of the characters love Japanese foods, and some of the plants are native to Japan.
* ''[[Resident Evil 3 Nemesis]]'''s Raccoon City is a supposed to be a modern, Midwestern, American city, but the size of the streets and presence of extensive back-alleys and shopping arcades are clear evidence that Raccoon was based on a contemporary Japanese city. For reference, many of the streets are blocked by a single, longitudinal car across the road. When's the last time you [Americans] saw a road that narrow, especially in a city of over 100,000 residents? Further games in the series that revisit Raccoon, however, seem to retcon them to the proper width.
** Another example from the series. A memo in ''[[Resident Evil 2]]'' has the police weapons storage being broken up and scattered around the station to prevent terrorists from stealing it. A real US PD would find such an order highly suspicious, as US city police are not all that well armed outside of SWAT units, and firearms are quite easy to obtain (acknowledged by the large gun shop).
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' is pretty bad about this when it comes to articles, even though Alexa says that almost half of their readers aren't from the US.
** One memorable example comes from talking about the Australian Aboriginal concept of direction being in terms of compass points instead of relative directions, saying an Aboriginal would say something should go "two inches south". Australians wouldn't use the Imperial system.
** Especially noticeable in all articles that mention sports. The greatest moments in sports usually happen in sports that are mostly unknown outside America.
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** If you ever get involved in a lengthy Internet flame war, expect at least one person to defend their actions with, ''"It's a free country!"''. Bonus points if the nationalities of each person involved in the fight have not been established.
* If you come across an international forum where people celebrate the Fourth of July, expect someone to ask either whether [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=does+britain+celebrate+the+fourth+of+july Britain celebrates the fourth of July], or, if informed they don't, to ask [[The American Revolution|why]] [[Captain Obvious|they don't]].
* ''[[(The Customer is) Not Always Right]]'' shows that in the worst of [http://notalwaysright.com/racists-at-least-get-your-countries-straight worst] cases, the whole "[http://notalwaysright.com/imperialism-at-its-finest borders]" thing (or even those [http://notalwaysright.com/actually-were-saving-them-for-ww3 pesky] "[http://notalwaysright.com/out-of-state-out-of-mind continents]") becomes a bit vague -- [http://notalwaysright.com/why-our-contracts-are-a-gazillion-pages-long We All Call In America].
* If you used a spell-checking word processor in the late '90s and typed using a form of English other than American English, you can almost certainly recall an incident where the program flagged an acceptable word like ''colour'' or ''synchronise'' and questioned whether you meant the American spelling. Also know as [[wikipedia:PC LOAD LETTER|PC LOAD LETTER]]
** [[Microsoft Word]] seems to do this by default (in both Word 2003 and Word 2007). Despite Word being perfectly capable of checking the system language settings it will still default to 'English (US)', much to the annoyance of British users who will spell a word correctly and then have the spellchecker tell them it's wrong, and then suggest they miss-spell it. Particularly galling as the language will constantly revert to English (US) between documents until you get the settings right.
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* ''The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers'' by Michael Newton includes an entry about Łucjan Staniak, Polish serial killer allegedly arrested in 1967. He is, however, considered a fictional character as no other source supports Newton's entry. The book states that he was an interpreter and due to character of his job he travelled a lot, so the authorities had trouble linking the victims found in different cities to one perpetrator and when Staniak was finally apprehended, he was deemed insane and committed to the psychiatric hospital. The problem is that the latter procedure was almost unheard of in communist countries (at least not in common criminal cases) and someone who knew foreign languages and travelled around the country would have been put under close surveillance (i.e. followed) by [[State Sec|Security Service]] as a possible spy.
* This trope occurs in Canada as "We All Live in Ontario". Due to the concentration of media in Toronto in an otherwise enormous country, pretty much anything of a "national" nature in English Canada is "Ontario". This includes terminology, accents, products and stores, etc. [[CBC]] takes a lot of flak for this from non-Ontarians. There is even a degree of Canadian [[Eagleland Osmosis]] that goes with it, as many people from thousands of miles away in British Columbia, for instance, have internalized Canadian stereotypes as their own, even though they never were. Some examples from [[Stargate City|Vancouver]] in particular: ice hockey (not that common when you can't make outdoor rinks); anything wintery for that matter (hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics does not help that image, although as noted by many, it rained the whole time); Ontario pronunciation ("Canadian raising" is much less obvious in B.C.); Tim Hortons (almost entirely absent from the Vancouver area until the merger with Wendy's -- Vancouver is a first-rate coffee town with tons of local options).
* Same goes for Sweden, where We All Live in the three big cities, Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, and somtimes not even the last two are counted. The country has a population of 9 million, with around two milion living in these cities. For the rest of the country, a town of maybe a hundred thousand is considered very dense. Now, consider that most entertainment advertised, and lots of the brands as well can't be found in the smaller communities, and that going to a major city can take hours if not days...
* On Twitter, "Happy Fathers Day" trended on the first Sunday of September, as Father's day in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, & Papua New Guinea falls on that day. Cue many confused tweets asking "Happy Fathers Day? [[wikipedia:
* In the wake of the [[wikipedia:2011 Norway attacks|2011 terrorist attacks on Oslo and Utøya]] some pundits claimed that the death toll would have been much lower if the Norwegian government hadn't suppressed the people's right to bear arms. Two problems with that: one, there is no "Right to bear arms" in Norway<ref> It is legal to acquire arms in Norway, but it is subject to strict government regulations. In fact, the gunman's weapons were all acquired legally.</ref>, and two, Norway lacks much of the US self defense/gun culture. So even if someone on Utøya owned a gun, bringing one to a summer camp would be unthinkable.
* A common mistake, particularly on the Internet, is to assume that everywhere in the world runs on the same time, or at least to not include a reference to the time zone of the author.
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* For the Netherlands, it often becomes "We all live in Amsterdam". Especially common among tourists. Related to [[Freestate Amsterdam]].
** Or at least, "We all live in the [[wikipedia:Randstad|Randstad]]" even though about three fifths of the population lives in the remaining three quarters of the country. Even national politicians seem to frequently forget that things that work in the major cities, or requirements imposed on them, don't necessarily also apply to the rest of the country, especially the more rural areas.
* Some websites participating in the anti-SOPA campaigns often encourages "everyone" to contact their local representatives and urge them to vote against it, forgetting that not all of us have representatives who are voting on SOPA or PIPA, both of which are American.
** At least most have some sort of link for non-Americans to cast their opinion to their national representatives, since the American legislation threatens some worldwide online businesses, not just American ones, but the chances of non-American opinions getting widely listened in the matter are miniscule.
*** Similar approaches have been taken with British and EU bills similar in nature.
* For [[Denmark]], it's "We all live in Copenhagen or (maybe) Aarhus". Aalborg or Odense might be included, but it's rare. The rest is referred to as "Udkantsdanmark", meaning "outskirts of Denmark" - or what would be [[Flyover Country]] in the US.
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