No Communities Were Harmed: Difference between revisions
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** This is something of a [[Truth in Television]], as in its modern history Tokyo was completely rebuilt no less than ''four'' times. The first time was in the 1870s, when it went from the seat of Bakufu to the imperial capital (and ''started'' being called Tokyo, for that matter), then it was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1923, after [[wikipedia:Great Kanto Earthquake|Great Kanto Earthquake]], then again it was [[World War II|firebombed almost into oblivion in 1945 by the US]], and in the early 1960s much of the city was remodeled in preparation to the Olympic Games, creating modern street plan in the central districts. They just didn't stick any fancy prefixes/suffixes on its name.
* In the ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' anime, the [[City of Adventure]], F City in F Prefecture, is a thinly veiled stand-in for the real-life Fukuoka City in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan. [[Excel Saga (manga)|The original manga]] actually calls the city its proper name, and even in the anime, the map of F City is that of Fukuoka.
* The ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' series is set in the author's hometown of Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, with the serial numbers filed off: Kanji in actual place names (or their readings) are
** What really takes the cake is a scene in the anime version of "Endless Eight", which shows a photorealistic establishing shot of the Kobe waterfront. Sure, they don't come out and say it, but they're getting really, really obvious.
* The unnamed towns in ''[[Kanon]]'' and ''[[AIR]]'' are exact copies of real towns (although Kami, home of AIR, has been absorbed into a larger city since the game's release). The train station in ''Kanon'' is based on Moniguchi station in Osaka.
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== Comics -- Books ==
* There is dispute over which is [[The DCU]]'s [[New York City]] -- [[Superman|Metropolis]] or [[Batman|Gotham City]]. Both are named after NY nicknames. [[Frank Miller]] said that Metropolis is NYC in the daytime, and Gotham is NYC at night; Denny O'Neil said that Metropolis is New York above 14th Street, and that Gotham City is New York below 14th Street. It should be noted that [[The DCU]] also has an ''actual'' New York City, although it is reportedly a much smaller, less (ahem) metropolitan burg than its real-world counterpart (and, for that matter, than Metropolis and Gotham, leading to its nickname "the Cinderella City" in ''[[Seven Soldiers|Seven Soldiers of Victory]]''). Right now, the [[Justice Society of America]] forms much of NYC's superhero community, and the city was the target area for the Anti-Monitor's bid to destroy the Multiverse (again) during the [[Green Lantern|Sinestro Corps War]] arc.
** In the sourcebook for the Mayfair Games' [[DC Heroes RPG]], Metropolis is set in Delaware and Gotham City in New Jersey. For a while, that sourcebook was treated as official canon, and even today, a comic page will occasionally include a peak at a map showing Gotham City clearly located in what would be New
*** The same sourcebook gives the Metropolis area code as 123. It also says that Gotham was originally a Swedish colony, obviously a reference to New York once being Dutch.
*** Actually, at one point, completely separate from the Dutch colonization of New York, what we now now as Delaware was called Nya Sverige, and was a Swedish colony. If Gotham is in Delaware, this makes perfect sense.
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*** The 60s ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' TV series took Gotham-as-New York to a ridiculous extent; at one point Catwoman escapes across the state line to "New Guernsey" (Guernsey and Jersey are both [[Four Little Tax Havens|Channel Islands]]).
*** ''[[Batman Forever]]'' managed to outdo even that by having a [[Monumental Battle|Statue of Liberty]] [[Expy]] in Gotham for unexplained reasons.
** Metropolis is occasionally referred to as "the Big Apricot" in the comic
*** This is also enhanced by the producers of each movie: ''[[Batman Begins]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight]]'' both were filmed in Chicago, while Events in the older [[Superman]] series looked to be shot in New York.
** The [[Superman (film)|Superman]] movies, on the other hand, go whole-hog and present Metropolis as being [[New York City]]
* Basin City from the ''[[Sin City]]'' comics and films, while supposedly located in western Washington, east of [[Seattle]], is more an amalgam of [[Los Angeles]] and Las Vegas.
* ''Zein'' takes place in Origin City, which is based on Cairo.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* For most of the film ''Speed Dating'' the city, or even the ''country'' it is set in is
* ''[[The Matrix]]'' was filmed in Australia, and the cars all drive on the left, but every street name is from the Wachowski Brother's home town of [[Chicago]]. To add to the [[Mind Screw]], the sequels threw in California highway numbers and signage.
** This was deliberate, trying to make the city look like a generic representation of every city. The view out of the office tower in the first film did use real world landmarks, but modified in such a way that it would be impossible to see them all in the same vista without computer assistance.
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* Likewise, [[Stephen King]] makes it clear that Derry is Bangor, Castle rock is a mix of Durham, Maine and Lisbon Falls, Maine, and Jerusalem’s Lot is probably a mix of Falmouth, Windham, and Cumberland, Maine.
* Thomas Hardy's "Wessex" is the south of England, with ''every single town and city'' given a fictional name.
* The town sent through time in the ''[[1632]]'' series was nominally Grantville, West
* [[Robert Westall]]'s work is full of this trope; ''[[The Machine Gunners]]'' is set in [[Fictional Counterpart|Garmouth]] as a version of the author's home town of Tynemouth and ''[[Urn Burial]]'' is set in the fictional village of Unthank near the real town of Penrith in Cumbria. So much so in ''The Machine Gunners'' that there's a Westall Walk around the area.
* Alan Garner's ''[[The Weirdstone of Brisingamen]]'' is set on and around Alderly Edge, a real location near Macclesfield in Cheshire. Many of the buildings, caves and natural landmarks mentioned in the novel exist and can be visited by walking along the Edge.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' has Sunnydale, California, a large town or small city (it's never really clear, but "Chosen" shows it as a city for sure). Sunnydale is never stable for long enough to stand in for a real city. Unless there really is a landlocked city with a bustling seaport. The occasional map or bird's eye view of Sunnydale uses Santa Barbara, which at least is in appropriate relation to Los Angeles. (But it's doubtful there are any big caves in California.)
* ''Flashpoint'' doesn't have the city named, but is clearly Toronto, Canada. Season 2 on they stopped
** In what appears to be a trend, ''Rookie Blue'' is also filmed in Toronto, with scenes of the skyline, icluding the CN tower, signs for well-known streets, badges with crowns on them, mentions of landmarks, neighborhoods and even the climate in the dialogue.
* ''[[Cybergirl]]'' is set in the fictional River City, but doesn't bother covering up the fact that it was filmed in Brisbane (popularly nicknamed the River City, due to being named after the Brisbane River). There were a few obvious inaccuracies: the River City Museum is in fact the Brisbane Powerhouse in New Farm (itself a mini-cultural centre), although the geography of the place is itself accurate. The Top Dog building, however, was invented for the series.
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* ''[[Corner Gas]]'' takes place in Dog River, Saskatchewan, which does not exist. Rouleau, Saskatchewan, where the show is filmed, ''does'', while the whole thing may well just be a stand in for writer and star Brent Butt's hometown of Tisdale.
* ''[[The Red Green Show]]'': Possum Lake does not actually exist, serving mainly to represent the stereotypes of small-town Canada. [[Word of God|Steve Smith]] once noted how far too many of the show's viewers thought Possum Lake was actually a real place. He described how people would try and book their vacations there, and one couple even asked if they could be married in Possum Lodge.
* Most [[Soap Opera
** Pine Valley, Pennsylvania in ''[[All My Children]]'' and Llanview, Pennsylvania from ''[[One Life to Live]]'' (both Philadelphia suburbs)
** Port Charles, New York in ''[[General Hospital]]'' (on Lake Ontario between Buffalo and Rochester)
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* Played with in the MMO [[Champions Online]] . The primary city for mid-level adventurers is Millennium City - but rather than being a completely fictional city, it's the name of a rebuilt Detroit, Michigan, after having rebuilt following a massively devastating battle between the superheroes and the lead supervillain of the millieu, Doctor Destroyer.
* The city in which the City Escape and Radical Highway levels of ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]'' takes place is somewhat San Francisco-esque... except, of course, for the [[Chaos Architecture|Chaos City Planning]].
** ''[[Sonic Unleashed]]'' uses this trope for all of its [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture
* ''Skate'' and its sequel ''Skate 2'' take place in San Vanelona, named after the cities that inspired the setting ([[San Francisco]], Vancover, and Barcelona).
* ''Terranigma'' is full of these. It even includes a version of Chicago, complete with the Great Fire and following reconstruction as an industrial center.
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== Western Animation ==
* [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|Springfield]] from ''[[The Simpsons]]'' is largely based on creator Matt Groening's home town of Portland, Oregon, with elements of Olympia, WA, where he attended college. (The city square with its statue of Jebediah Springfield, to cite one example, is highly reminiscent of Olympia's Sylvester Park.)<br />Its location is a running gag in the series, with writers finding obvious delight in [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|throwing in more and more conflicting hints on it]]. Fans even started a whole game of trying to strong-arm all these references together, to find [[Separate Simpsons Geography Thing|where the hell is that town]] ''[[Separate Simpsons Geography Thing|for real]]''? Semi-officially, though, Springfield is located in a fictional state of North Tacoma.<br />To make matters more interesting, West Springfield is the size of Texas and Oklahoma ''put together''
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' [[City with No Name|never names the city]] (according to [[All There in the Manual|supplementary material somewhere]] it's Jump City) but considering the its west coast location and the great big bridge, it's probably San Francisco (which it is, for the comics' counterpart). The [[West Coast Team|Titans East]] take up shop in Steel City, which seems to be [[Motor City|Detroit]].
* Arguably ''[[Code Lyoko]]''. The school and the factory are precisely modeled after real school and factory in Paris suburbs. But too far away from each other for the show.
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