The Mountains of Illinois: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"You guys, this is so ''NOT'' Illinois."
|'''''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''', The Beginning of the End''}}
▲{{quote|"You guys, this is so ''NOT'' Illinois."|'''''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''', The Beginning of the End''}}
▲Illinois doesn't have mountains.....[[Completely Missing the Point|Oh]]
Movies and TV shows, wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in [[California Doubling|Southern California]] or [[Stargate City|British Columbia]]. This leads to a common error where mountains show up in the background of settings which have no visible peaks in [[Real Life]], such as the US state of Illinois, which, if you haven't already realized it, is almost as flat as this joke (three buildings in [[The Windy City|Chicago]] are taller than the state's highest natural point).
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This becomes [[Critical Research Failure]] and/or [[They Just Didn't Care]]. Say a writer from California wants to base a story in [[Flyover Country]]. Even if they themselves visited Illinois and know what it looks like (and this is hardly guaranteed), they might still hope the viewers [[Viewers are Morons|won't know the difference]]. Obviously, it can be a sore point for people who actually live there.
A subtrope of [[Television Geography]]. See also [[Misplaced Vegetation]]. While examples of this trope need not actually take place in Illinois or the midwestern United States, they must indeed involve mountains or hills appearing where they should not be.
[[Here There Be Lions]] is a
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==▼
* Promotional material for ''[[World Masterpiece Theater|Rascal the Raccoon]]'' often featured mountains in the background. Wisconsin isn't as flat as Illinois, but it does not have that kind of mountains.▼
▲== Anime ==
* ''[[
▲* Promotional material for [[World Masterpiece Theater|Rascal the Raccoon]] often featured mountains in the background. Wisconsin isn't as flat as Illinois, but it does not have that kind of mountains.
▲* ''[[Miami Guns (Manga)|Miami Guns]]'' parodies Japanese cop show cliches, and is set in ostensibly-Miami. Various episodes have villains illegally drift racing through the mountains of Florida (max. elevation 346 feet).
* Volume 1 of ''[[Vinland Saga]]'' shows us the majestic mountains on the coast of the Jutland Peninsula. In reality, the Danish coast is as flat as the Netherlands.
* ''[http://digipedia.db-destiny.net/fanatics_guide/fanatics_movie.htm The Fanatic's Guide to Digimon: The Movie]'' has this tidbit:
{{quote|
== Comics ==▼
* During the ''[[X
* An early issue of ''[[Alpha Flight]]'' showed mountains in the distance in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is located in the Red River Valley, one of the flattest areas on Earth. The nearest mountains are nearly 900 miles (1400 km) west, in Alberta.
* The original headquarters of the [[Justice League of America]], the "Secret Sanctuary," is inside a mountain near Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. In [[Real Life]], the highest point in Rhode Island is a mere 812 feet above sea level.
* Geography is [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|a tricky subject at best]] in [[The DCU]], but various depictions of Central City and Smallville in particular include nearby mountains which would be at odds with the
== Film ==
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* Named for the opening scene of ''[[Beginning of the End]]'', as [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''.
** And the episode for the movie ''[[The Rebel Set]]'' features a car chase through the mountains we all know are right outside of Chicago.
* Exceptionally unacceptable since it's animation, ''[[Beowulf (
* Some of the early scenes of ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'' depict what seem to be mountains and cliffs in what is supposed to be Muncie, Indiana.
* In ''[[Cold Mountain]]'' (set in the Appalachian Mountains region of North Carolina), the Romanian location is mostly accurate....until giant craggy peaks appear towards the end.
* In the film ''[[Due Date]]'', the main characters are driving west across the country. A shot shows the car passing a sign that says "Dallas - 36 miles". Cut to Peter and Ethan talking in the car with mountains passing in the background. For those unfamiliar with the Dallas area: there aren't any mountains for hundreds of miles around.
* ''Elizabeth: The Golden Age''. Fotheringay Castle, in which [[Mary of Scotland|Mary, Queen of Scots]] is confined prior to her execution, is played by Eilean Donan castle in Scotland, complete with romantic mountains and loch. The real Fotheringay Castle is in Northamptonshire, which has a distinct dearth of either.
* The [[The Film of the Series|movie version]] of ''[[The Fugitive (
* The docu-drama ''Gacy'', about real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, is set in
* In John Carpenter's ''[[Halloween (
* The [[
* In ''[[Independence Day]]'', the first sighting of the alien ship takes place in Novosibirsk, Russia. A news reporter says the ship is "clearing the mountains." There are no mountains in
** Inverted in the same film: the landscape supposedly surrounding El Toro shows a desert. El Toro Marine Base is located in a hilly section of Orange County.
* Inverted in ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'', where Jerusalem is located in a flat desert. To clarify, [http://www.jewlicious.com/wp-content/uploads/TM/Jerusalem%20Hills_2.jpg this is what the outside of Jerusalem] looks like.
* Inverted in many Christmas specials and stories of Jesus: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140907092755/http://www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Bethlehem_536/Bethlehem-10563.jpg this is Bethlehem] in [[Real Life]].
* ''[[National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation]]'' takes place in suburban Chicago, but in the opening scene where the Griswolds are driving down the highway to look for the perfect Christmas tree, mountains can be seen very clearly in the background. Chicago does not have mountains anywhere near it.
** The first ''[[National Lampoon's Vacation|Vacation]]'' movie shows palm trees, and maybe some mountains as well, in the background of the car dealership scenes.
*** The first film also shows mountains visible from Cousin Eddie's farm outside Coolidge, Kansas. Coolidge is a real place and it's just six miles east of the Colorado state line. But even once you drive into Colorado, you'll still have to drive a few hours before you begin to see the mountains. The terrain of eastern Colorado makes ''Kansas'' look mountainous in comparison.
* Much snark has been made about [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney's]] ''[[Pocahontas]]'' filling the flat area around Jamestown, Virginia with mountains and cliffs. While there are some tall mountains in Virginia, there are none anywhere near Jamestown. Which is one of the reasons why the location was ''chosen'' for a settlement.
** Or Norfolk, despite the fact that in ''[[Down Periscope]]'' peaks are visible from the naval base.
* The [[Jackie Chan]] film ''[[Rumble in The Bronx]]'' is supposed to take place in [[Big Applesauce|the Bronx, New York City]]. Of course it was filmed nowhere ''near'' the Bronx, but rather in [[California Doubling|Vancouver, British Columbia]]. The only remotely mountain-like higher land within view of New York City are [
* ''[[The Rundown]]'' has some hills in [[The Amazon]]... considering the [
* The 1950s Hollywood Mountie movie ''Saskatchewan'' had the Mounties riding through the majestic snowcapped mountains of said province. A province which, in reality, is so stereotypically flat that Canadians make jokes about roof repair guys being treated in Saskatchewan like astronauts. (The pre-1905 District of Saskatchewan had considerably different boundaries, but still encompassed no mountain ranges.)
* ''[[Starman]]'' begins with the titular character crashing to earth in Wisconsin... with mountains clearly visible in the background. While the country is certainly hilly, there are no mountains in Wisconsin.
* ''[[
* ''[[Deep Impact]]'' shows a packed highway fleeing Virginia Beach from the impending titular impact. While the movie did film that scene in Virginia, they did so several hours northwest
* In ''[[Stick It]]'', neither Plano nor Houston has elevation changes large enough to help your bike downhill, much less to perform stunts. The film was so obviously made in Arizona and California that it isn't funny.
* Since ''[[The Lord of the Rings (
* ''[[Harold
** Especially considering ''there isn't a White Castle in Cherry Hill''. The nearest one is an hour and a half away, in Toms River.
* In the movie ''[[Swordfish]]'', the main character is shown at one point to be practicing his golf swing off the top of trailer house in Odessa, Texas with mountains picturesquely in the background sunset. Anyone who has been to Odessa falls over laughing at this.
* ''[[North
* ''[[Footloose]]'': The film takes place in the
* The [[Disney Channel]] Original Movie ''[[
* ''[[Braveheart]]'' opens with a sweeping vista of crags and mountains. William Wallace was born near the Ayrshire/Renfrewshire border, a region more noted for its lush fields and coastal plains than craggy mountains. (Ironically, the movie was shot in ''Ireland'', which doesn't exactly lack in green fields and coastline.)
* [[Dean Martin]]'s ''[[Matt Helm]]'' movie ''The Wrecking Crew'' may have been the direct inspiration for the ''Austin Powers'' gag that leads off this section. The movie takes place in Denmark. ''Some'' portions of the film, though perhaps only second-unit stuff, appear to have been shot in Denmark. The finale, however, with its exciting car chase along twisty mountain roads that ends with a confrontation on a cable car connecting two of the Danish Alps... wasn't. In reality, the highest point in Denmark, Møllehøj, is 170.86m high. The caption for Wikipedia's picture of [
* ''[[G.I. Joe:
* Parodied in a deleted scene from ''[[Airplane!]]'':
{{quote|
'''Ted:''' What mountains? We're over IOWA!
'''Elaine:''' The... THE CORNFIELDS, TED! THE CORNFIELDS! }}
* In Kenneth Branagh's version of ''[[Hamlet]]'', the eponymous protagonist delivers his famous "my thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth" speech on top of the great, snowy peaks that don't actually exist in Denmark.
* ''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]'' has a scene where police raid a house in Calumet City, Illinois that serial killer Buffalo Bill is thought to be hiding in. Although the real Calumet City is in flat-as-a-pancake Cook County, the movie scene (which was shot near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) shows large hills in the background.
* The ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' franchise is a particularly bad offender. While some of the islands of the Caribbean do share traits with Hawaii, there is no excuse for portraying South Florida and the Everglades as a mountainous region with waterfalls and cenotes among a lush tropical jungle. The Everglades is an open grass swamp with occasional hammocks (islands) of palm, cypress and live oak. You can see for miles in the open areas and there is not even a hill in sight. A hammock of
* While it doesn't appear in the actual movie itself, the poster for the movie ''[[All Dogs Go to Heaven]]'' features the main characters in front of a backdrop of what appears to be New Orleans, with mountains behind it.
* A particularly grievous example is shown in the [[Based on a Great Big Lie|alleged documentary]] ''[[The Fourth Kind]]'', which supposedly takes place in Nome, Alaska. Anyone who has been within ''several hundred miles'' of Nome can tell you that there are no mountains or lush evergreen forests anywhere near the city- [[Did Not Do the Research|it's surrounded on all sides by tundra or
* In ''[[The Birdcage]]'', mountains are visible outside Katherine's office window. Her office is in Florida.
* ''Pathfinder'' has Native Americans fighting Viking warriors in a version of New England that closely resembles a mashup of Switzerland's Alps and the Olympic Peninsula's temperate rain forest.
== Live
* ''[[Detroit
* One episode of ''[[Sister, Sister]]'' had the twins trapped in a mountain cabin by an avalanche while on a skiing trip to Mt. Brighton, Michigan. While Mt. Brighton certainly does exist, and it is a ski resort, it is merely a prominent hill with one side altered for skiing. There are no cabins, no avalanches, no forest rangers (also seen in the episode), and absolutely no way to get lost while on Mt. Brighton- you can see the whole thing from the parking lot. The only mountains in Michigan are in the ''Upper Peninsula,'' hundreds of miles away.▼
▲* ''[[Detroit One Eight Seven|Detroit 187]]'' is likely to have this, what with being filmed in Atlanta.
* The fourth season of ''[[
▲* One episode of ''[[Sister Sister]]'' had the twins trapped in a mountain cabin by an avalanche while on a skiing trip to Mt. Brighton, Michigan. While Mt. Brighton certainly does exist, and it is a ski resort, it is merely a prominent hill with one side altered for skiing. There are no cabins, no avalanches, no forest rangers (also seen in the episode), and absolutely no way to get lost while on Mt. Brighton- you can see the whole thing from the parking lot. The only mountains in Michigan are in the ''Upper Peninsula,'' hundreds of miles away.
▲* The fourth season of ''[[Twenty Four]]'' had terrorists hiding a nuclear missile in the mountains of Iowa, a state that, like Illinois, has no point higher than 1700 feet.
** This is doubly heinous when you factor in that all of this hiding in hills takes place ''offscreen''. They could've easily just had the theft take place somewhere where there are mountains (or at least steep foothills) to hide in. Either someone actually thought [[You Fail Geography Forever|there are mountains in Iowa]] [[They Just Didn't Care|or...]]
** While parts of the seventh season were filmed on-location in Washington DC, [[California Doubling]] was used in a large portion of the episode. Thus, you get palm trees and brown hills ... in DC.
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** It goes much further than an isolated incident in ''[[Smallville]]''. [http://www.supermanhomepage.com/tv/tv.php?topic=reviews/smallville-knockout This] site has an entertaining list of many unlikely elements of the show, but scroll down to about 2/3rds of the way down for a list of appearances of "Mountains in Kansas"
* The same Kansas Problems for Clark and the gang also apply to ''[[Jericho]]''.
* An episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' featured the
** ''The X-Files'' ran into this a few times. The first five seasons were shot in Vancouver, which helped mask some of the variances between places. However, it was noticeable a few times. The season 2 episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt" was set in New Hampshire forest, though the woods of Vancouver and the woods of New Hampshire contain noticeably different vegetation. For a straighter version of this trope, the season 6 episode "The Rain King" (filmed in California) featured the agents flying into a particularly mountainous region of Kansas farmland....
* ''[[The Commish]]'' was supposedly set on Long Island, but one [[Chase Scene]] showed the Rocky Mountains prominently in the background.
* The Minnesota farmland in ''[[Little House
* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Claire goes to an oil rig in her hometown of Odessa, Texas several times, and the background is quite mountainous. On the commentary for the episode "Godsend," Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder) said, "I'm from San Antonio, and I've been to Odessa, and there are no mountains in Odessa."
* The illegal road race in ''[[Drive]]'' begins in Key West and runs through South/Central Florida for several episodes, featuring the mountains of the Florida Keys and Everglades in many of the highway scenes.
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' is guilty of this all the time. A scene set outside Lincoln, Nebraska had pine-covered mountains in the distance, for example.
* Averted in ''[[Carnivale]]'' through the magic of CGI, as it was supposed to be taking place in the dustbowls of Depression USA, hence no mountains at all.
* The [[Made for TV Movie]] ''Spring Break Shark Attack'' was supposed to be set in Florida but was shot in South Africa... with lots of nice shots of the mountains near "Miami Beach".
* Inversion: The first episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' has a Klingon ship crash-land in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Since Oklahoma is right in the middle of [[Flyover Country]], the writers apparently assumed that it was nothing but a big, flat, cornfield. Except that Broken Bow is actually in a fairly mountainous and forested part of the state.
* Another inversion in ''[[Star Trek:
** Notably, Deadwood is surrounded by the Black Hills. The town did have most of the trappings of a Wild West Town, but the fights were over the area's gold and silver mining.
* The syndicated cop show ''[[Silk Stalkings]]'' was filmed in San Diego, but supposedly took place in Palm Beach, Florida. Of course, Mount Soledad, the Laguna mountains and many lesser hills were prominent in the backgrounds of many exterior shots. Several Floridian fans of the show joked that it was obviously Mount Dora we were seeing in the background.
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** The highest point in all of Palm Beach county (which is twice the size of Rhode Island) is a 20-foot high ridge east of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
* ''[[Point Pleasant]]'', which was set on [[Joisey|the Jersey Shore]], featured establishing shots of Plymouth, New Hampshire, a town hundreds of miles to the northeast in the mountains that looks nothing like anywhere in New Jersey.
* Averted and lampshaded in ''[[
{{quote|
* Inverted in the US version of ''[[Queer
** To elaborate, a standard joke told to out-of-towners is that if a marble were placed on top of Mt. Washington in the city, it would not stop rolling until it reached Ohio.
* There's at least one shot from ''[[
* The miniseries of ''[[The Stand]]'' had a case of The Mountains of Indiana, during the scene where Trash Can Man blows up the refinery that's supposedly in north central Indiana, yet there are tall mountains clearly visible in the background.
== Music ==
* [[Sufjan Stevens]]' ''The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the "Illinois" Album''. His press releases for the album joked about the Prairie State's lack of real avalanches, and said that the name was meant to suggest "musical debris". The title track from the album is apparently about a Chevy Avalanche.
* No less than Giacomo Puccini erred when he had his lovers dying in "the deserts of Louisiana" in his opera ''Manon Lescaut''. Admittedly he had meant it to be set near New Orleans, and justifiably was thinking of nearby Texas, but the name still doesn't quite work.
== Video Games ==
* In the first ''[[Call of Duty]]'' game there's a mission where you have to blow up the Eder Dam. The background is hilarious to any German; the Alpine peaks definitely don't look much like Hesse.
** In the expansion United Offensive, a mission takes place "somewhere in Holland" (presumably near Rotterdam, since that was what the plane you were in was bombing before it was shot down), yet features hills and even some rocky cliffs (there are no cliffs in the Netherlands, and the only hills are in the southeast, about 150 kilometers from Rotterdam).
* ''[[Command & Conquer|Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath]]'' has the Rivers of Johannesburg, which are an obstacle during the first half of the mission there; during the second half, there are cliffs in your way. Johannesburg is the largest city in the world to have no significant surface water. Also, there aren't any cliffs.
== Web Original ==
* According to [http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/highest-peaks.asp?s=IL Mountain Zone.com]: "Illinois features many high mountain peaks and summits, topped by the highpoints of Charles Mound, Benton Mound, and Mound Sumner." The entry for ''every'' state begins with "(State) features many high mountain peaks and summits..."
== Western Animation ==
* Several episodes of ''[[Family Guy]]'' (set in Rhode Island but, of course, written in L.A.) feature a rugged, mountainous landscape forested with pine trees. Rhode Island does have some hills, but not very large or jagged ones. Its highest point is 812 feet. Also, New England has many pine trees, but the native tree, the Eastern White Pine, looks rather distinct from the bushier Ponderosa of the West.
* In ''[[Asterix|Asterix Conquers America]]'', the Gauls climb a sheer cliff face on the east coast of North America. Good luck finding one in real life. Of course, the series has never made any pretense at being historically accurate, so why should it take geography any more seriously?
* Dubbing of series can cause this if in said dub the setting of the series is changed to the country in which the dub airs. For example; in the Dutch dubs of ''[[Rugrats]]'' and ''[[All Grown Up!]]'', both series are suddenly supposed to be set in The Netherlands rather than the US, despite landscapes like mountains and deserts being present in them.
== Real Life ==
* Surrounding the Mississippi River in Northeast Iowa, Southeastern Minnesota, Southwestern Wisconsin, and a tiny part of northwestern Illinois, is a region known as the Driftless Area, which is unusually rugged compared to the surrounding areas. This has the reputation of being very hilly and mountainous, but the primary geographic characteristics of the Driftless Area are Valleys and carved river beds. most roads that go through the Driftless Area slant way downhill upon entering it.
* Estonia's highest natural point, a large hill, is jokingly called "Big Egg Mountain" by its residents. The rest of the country is otherwise fairly flat.
* Most of the Great Plains states in the US have spots of high relief. Even [
* For some reason many people seem to think that Wyoming and Idaho are just big flat tracts of grass and desert. They would be wrong.
** And the opposite can be said for Texas, as it is mostly grasslands and forests with the [
* Inverted with Colorado, which is always depicted as mountainous despite half the state being in the high plains.
** Similarly inverted with Montana, which has two-thirds of its land area in the high plains.
* Southern Illinois has the [https://web.archive.org/web/20131126095735/http://www.backpackcamp.com/GardenOfTheGods.html Garden of the Gods] as one of the closest things to a mountain in the state. Mind you, they don't look like most mountains, so it's still a [[Critical Research Failure]].
* One of [[Billy Connolly]]'s stand-up routines in the 1980s was about folk songs that made no sense when analysed or were factually inaccurate, including one called "The Misty Blue Hills of Tiree" - "But if you have ever been in Tiree, it's like a bloody billard table!"
* There are tall mountains depicted in the background of the seal on the state [[w:flag of Nebraska|flag of Nebraska]]. The seal dates from before statehood, when the territory was larger than the state's current borders and did overlap with the Rockies ranges.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
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