Television Geography: Difference between revisions
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* In the beginning of [[The Wild Stallion]], Miranda Cosgrove's character narrates that she grew up in Cleveland, with an aerial view of a city that is obviously Boston, with shots of the Back Bay, the New England Aquarium, and the Tobin Bridge.
* By contrast, [[Cedar Rapids]] was filmed in Ann Arbor, Michigan instead of the titular city.
* ''[[Leap Year]]'', apart from its appalling [[Oireland]] setting, uses atrocious geography. Anna's flight from Boston to Dublin is diverted to Wales due to weather, although London is a major international hub and a much more obvious place in which to divert the plane. Then, she gets a ferry from Wales to
* The [[Chase Scene]] is especially prone to
** In ''Bullitt''s chase scene, it seems like ''every'' time they take a right turn onto a downhill street, there's a beige Volkswagen Beetle parked on the right with its back to the camera, in the same spot every time...
** An interview about the first Bourne movie had someone [[Lampshade Hanging|noting]] that the famous car [[Chase Scene]] took a very unconventional route through Paris.
** '' [[Mission: Impossible]] II:'' Ethan Hunt gets a car and chases the girl, leaving the Spanish city of Seville and suddenly reaching some cliffs that might be anywhere but near Seville. Not the movie's only example of [[Did Not Do the Research]] about Spain.
* Much of the film ''[[21 (2008 film)|21]]'', taking place at MIT in Cambridge, MA, was shot directly across the Charles River on Boston University's campus. In an interesting twist on the Television Geography trope, BU students enjoyed the movie more because of the familiar locales, despite its use as another university's campus.
** MIT's administration actually banned the filming of movies on campus after the crew of ''[[Good Will Hunting]]'' displayed an annoying tendency to randomly close important parts of the school. Given that most of the school didn't have a particularly good opinion of the quality of ''21'', it's probably best for the moviemakers that they didn't try it.
* ''[[The Perfect Storm]]'' is based on a true story of fisherman from Gloucester, MA. The bar they frequent, The Crow's Nest, is shown right next to the pier on Harbor Loop. The actual Crow's Nest is about a half mile away, across the street from a wharf for a whale watch business.
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* ''[[Alien vs. Predator]]: Requiem'' is set in Gunnison, Colorado, a small mountain town of about 5,500 people. The establishing shot of the town is much, much larger than that, as they shot it in Canada at a town with 15x its population.
** Furthermore, Gunnison, Colorado is a semi-arid climate with sagebrush as the predominate vegetation, but ''Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem'' shows massive temperate rainforest trees with moss hanging from the branches. And the storm sewer system is vastly oversized. Humans, aliens, and even a dog use the sewer system like an underground tunnel. Unless it's a CDOT box culvert bridging a creek, the largest possible sewer pipe is maybe 12 or 18 inches in Gunnison.
* In a rare example of a film actually being shot in the location it's set in, ''[[Almost Famous]]'' was filmed in San Diego, California, and several recognizable local landmarks and businesses are visible throughout the
* ''Annapolis'', set at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, was rather obviously not filmed there.
* Wherever the remake of ''[[Assault on Precinct 13]]'' was filmed, it sure wasn't Detroit! Can somebody show me which ghetto was grown over by that forest?
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* In ''[[No Way Out]]'', there's the (nonexistent) Georgetown Metro stop, with the DC Metro being portrayed by the Baltimore Metro.
* Exactly whose mega-mansion was depicted in ''[[Out of Sight]]''?
* As with the TV show ''Inspector Morse'', films set in Oxford (England) tend to frequently play fast and loose with
** Morse has, for instance, stepped from a cobbled street in the town centre to a park two miles away.
** The Isis (the Oxford stretch of the River Thames) gets similar treatment in the rowing film ''True Blue'', when the climactic race scene jumps randomly back and forward on the river, changing directions occasionally and at one point teleporting to Marlow, 25 miles away in a straight line and much further if you follow the river. Given they seem to have filmed (most of) the race on the fairly short stretch of river that it was supposed to be set on, it must be down to odd dramatic editing choices rather than any lack of care on the director's part.
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** Not to mention the fact that Tesla's Lab was in a very flat, comparably treeless portion of town as compared to the steep sloped, heavy woodlands depicted.
* The indie movie ''A Problem with Fear'' is supposedly set in the Calgary subway. Calgary doesn't have a subway, and if it did the ads in the subway would likely not be in French, as they were in the movie. One wonders why they didn't just set the damn thing in Montreal.
* It's terribly obvious they filmed ''[[Resident Evil: Apocalypse|Resident Evil Apocalypse]]'' in [[Toronto]]. An opening shot in the theatrical version shows the CN Tower, and the climax of the movie occurs at another famous
** [http://torontoist.com/2008/10/reel_toronto_resident_evil_apocalypse/ This]{{Dead link}} takes the entire thing apart.
{{quote|Despite the economic turmoil, Scotiabank's Racoon City expansion plans were unaffected.}}
** In one scene, ''Resident Evil 2'' seems to place Raccoon City in somewhat central New Jersey. Oddly enough, they realistically portrayed an evil pharmaceutical company having a research office, in the middle of nowhere NJ, yet relatively near a larger city. Johnson and Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth, Hoffman-LaRoche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Schering-Plough all have locations in NJ that somewhat parallel this. No zombies yet though...
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* ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home]]'' generally wreaks havoc with the geography of the San Francisco Bay Area. A particularly notable moment comes when Kirk and Spock have just left the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito (for which the Monterey Bay Aquarium, well to the south of the Bay Area, is obviously being used). Gillian Taylor pulls over to offer them a lift back into San Francisco. In the background is the Golden Gate Bridge in all its glory, and they are already unmistakably on the San Francisco side of the bridge.
* ''Taking Lives'' is set in Montreal, which you can tell from the establishing shot of... the [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_Frontenac Château Frontenac]. Oh, dear.
* The [[Tom Hanks]] vehicle ''Turner and Hooch'' includes a conversation scene that repeatedly switches back and forth between two camera
* ''[[You've Got Mail]]'' takes place in New York but the Golden Gate Bridge is visible when Tom Hanks is walking his dog, Brinkly.
* There is an [[Alfred Hitchcock]] thriller in which the American protagonist comes to Stockholm to receive a Nobel Prize. In one scene he falls off the Symphonic Hall into Lake Malaren, which in fact is about a kilometre away from that building. Also, the seasons are wrong: the Nobel Prizes are awarded in early December when Lake Malaren is about +4 degrees Celsius. If you fall into it, the cold will paralyze you in seconds.
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* ''[[Run Lola Run]]'' has the heroine run all over Berlin in the space of twenty (real time) minutes. For example her house is just north of the Spree and she starts running north, then moments later ends up south of the river, considerably further east, running north across the river. That section of the U-bahn does NOT come out of the ground as is shown. Definitely covered by [[Rule of Cool]].
* ''[[Trainspotting]]'' is the Scottish city of Edinburgh, right? Then what can explain the scene where Renton and Diane come out of the nightclub and it is revealed to be the very distinctive exterior of the Volcano... which is ''Glasgow,'' a good fifty miles from Edinburgh?
* People from Bayonne, New Jersey, had a lot of fun in the remake of ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' starring [[Tom Cruise]]. The house in the beginning of the movie is in downtown Bayonne, right underneath the Bayonne Bridge. However, during the alien landing, Tom Cruise walks over to a church that is actually in Newark in under a minute. Beyond the miles of distance required to walk there, Cruise would also have to either swim across Newark Bay or dodge highway traffic across the NJ Turnpike bridge.
** Also at the beginning, when the lightning strikes the ground to activate the tripods, it's seen hitting a spot that seems to be just off Route 440 in Jersey City (admittedly, not too far from Bayonne but definitely a few miles from where Tom Cruise's house and nowhere near quick walking distance)...and yet, Cruise and his neighbors are able to quickly walk out and observe the site, mere blocks away into downtown Bayonne.
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' was filmed, in part, at Yale University, including a chase scene. Indy and Mutt travel at about the speed of sound, judging from how fast they get from some points to others.
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* ''Wildflowers'' features a full, dense forest that characters run and hide in, in the heart of North Beach, which is one of the most urban neighborhoods in the city. The forest appears to be either Golden Gate Park or one of the other parks close to the beach, which are essentially on the opposite side of town.
* ''Sid And Nancy'' features the characters leaving San Francisco to go to the San Francisco International Airport (which is south of the city) by going across the San Mateo bridge, which is even further south of the airport and which leads to the other side of the Bay from where the airport is. If you are already in the city you don't cross any bridges to get to the airport.
* Averted in ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' as explained in [[James Rolfe]]'s [
* In the film ''Driving Lessons'', [[Rupert Grint]] and Julie Walters drive to Edinburgh, arriving on a scenic road down a hillside... which is in the centre of the city and can only be reached once you're already in the city. This is after they've driven ''south'' past a recognisable nuclear power station to get there, and following this, you see them going up alleyways and out of entirely different alleyways on the opposite side of the castle. It's a bit disorientating.
* Baltimore tourists are often told that the ''[[Step Up]]'' movies were filmed at the famous Baltimore School for the Arts, probably because the school in the film is based on that. In fact, they were filmed at a local middle school.
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* The ''[[King Kong]]'' rip-off A.P.E. was set in South Korea. For some reason, despite being filmed in Korea and being co-financed by a Korean film company, they did few establishing shots of Seoul. Instead, two characters simply sit in the backseat of a car and describe Seoul landmarks as they come (the main train/subway station, city hall, the capitol, etc.) In order to see all of these landmarks, they would spend a couple hours driving in different directions.
* The ''[[Green Lantern (film)|Green Lantern]]'' film takes place in fictional Coast City, but there are a lot of recognizable New Orleans landmarks in several scenes. Then again, almost every DC Universe city is a disguised version of a "real world" city. (Just ''which'' city, though, is sometimes [[Fan Wank|open to debate]]...)
* In ''[[The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension]]'' has a number of these scattered throughout. For instance, palm trees are visible in front of what is alleged to be the New Brunswick, NJ police headquarters. And Grovers Mills,
* ''[[The Descent (film)|The Descent]]'' is supposedly set in the American south, but the flora in the external shots is glaringly incorrect, especially the overhead shots of the pine trees. It was filmed in Scotland, which has a completely different conifer species predominating.
* ''[[Jingle All the Way]]'' is set in the [[Twin Cities]], but occasionally can't decide ''which'' of the two cities it's in. In one scene, the action jumps from Rice Park (in downtown St. Paul) to background shots of downtown Minneapolis (about 9 miles away).
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== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Left Behind]]'' describes Turkey as being in ''Western Europe''. [http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2008/05/09/lb-speakerphone/ Slacktivist's page] includes a handy map to demonstrate that is not, in fact, the case.
* Kafka's unfinished book "Amerika" features some serious geographical
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' suffers from this horribly. For instance, Forks is described as being a gloomy town. The real Forks is just as sunny as any other town.
** The story acts like Forks is every cliche about England having way to much rain and clouds in just one town all the time. Its more likely slightly overcast some of the time.
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* An episode of the new ''[[Bionic Woman]]'' had a meeting arranged to take place at a sulphur plant on the waterfront...which would be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever been in downtown Vancouver and looked across the harbour at North Vancouver.
* In one episode of the Rebus series, John Rebus's car stalls out and starts smoking on a hill overlooking central Edinburgh. One cut later, and he deposits it somewhere west of Forth Bridge, roughly in the area of East Shore Wood, having apparently limped bloody ''miles'' in a smoking car. If the shot hadn't blatantly included the Forth Bridge and the Forth Rail Bridge (the position of the former beyond the latter makes his location very clear) then the scene wouldn't be so ridiculous in hindsight.
* The frequent presence of lush greenery and vegetation, and moderately frequent rain, in desert Las Vegas on ''[[CSI]]'' ([[California Doubling|filming in LA]], also a desert but heavily watered) is often a source of amused derision by show fans. Also, Geoff Duncan has written two articles on the geographical inaccuracy of two outside jobs, one in [https://web.archive.org/web/20060511095241/http://www.teevee.org/archive/weblog/2003/11/10/102730.html "Jackpot"] and another in [https://web.archive.org/web/20060511183116/http://www.teevee.org/archive/weblog/2004/09/24/095909.html the 2004 season premiere].
** Actually, most of Los Angeles has Cool-summer Mediterranean climate, with some parts of the county(Pasadena, etc) getting well over 20 inches of rain per year due to the rain shadow.
** There's a third unlikely/impossible "outside job" where the team travel to the Nevada town of Sparks (which is, in reality, adjacent to Reno, not Las Vegas). Not only is it in a different county and therefore outside of their jurisdiction... it's also eight hours away.
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* ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' is nominally set in Seattle, but they never made any effort to disguise the fact that it was actually Vancouver. They often would do beautiful pans across the city and its landmarks.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Due South]]'', which is set in Chicago but filmed in Toronto. When they did an episode set in Toronto... they filmed it in Chicago. That's fair, isn't it?
* In an episode of ''[[The Facts of Life]]'', set in Peekskill, New York, Mrs. Garrett brings in the
* Averted in ''[[Forever Knight]]''. The [[Pilot Movie]] took place in the usual Unnamed American City, but the series, filmed in Toronto, was explicitly set in Toronto.
* The substitution of Vancouver for an unnamed city in the US Northwest (presumably Seattle) is so common that the term "Seacouver" is the setting's unofficial name. ''[[The Sentinel (TV series)|The Sentinel]]'' and ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' are examples.
* ''[[Frasier]]'' - No building in Seattle has the view seen from Frasier's window. The shot was taken from the top of a cliff and was chosen so the Space Needle could be prominently seen from the window.
* In the pre-air pilot of ''[[Fringe]]'', two characters visit a sprawling, isolated storage facility in "Back Bay, Massachusetts." Back Bay is actually a high-end neighborhood in Boston, mainly full of rich people and expensive shops, with a significant lack of storage facilities of any kind. The version of the pilot that eventually aired changed the title card to Chelsea, which is more believable, but the previous scene still has a character claiming that the "Back Bay police" reported suspicious activity in the area.
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** An early episode also has a prospective Pattern event ostensibly happen in South Station, but is filmed in a claustrophobic building that doesn't remotely resemble the high-vaulted and open South Station. On top of that "The Box" has a scene take place in Kent Street Station, underground. Except Kent Street is on the C line, ''above ground,'' and isn't a station so much as, well, a stop.
* ''[[Happy Days]]'' frequently displayed palm trees in what was supposed to be Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
** I think you're thinking of ''[[Laverne and Shirley]]'', which moved to California in its later seasons. And of course the iconic episode where Fonzie [[Jump the Shark|did something that changed everything]]. (He did end up moving to a "singles community" in the final episode with a vaguely Polynesian theme and ''fake'' palm
* The original ''[[Hawaii Five-O]]'' averts this (somewhat) by being mostly filmed in Hawaii. (Exception: "The Singapore File," where Hawaii played Singapore - although the two-part "Once Upon A Time" and the two-hour episodes "Nine Dragons" and "The Year Of The Horse," respectively set mainly in California, Hong Kong and Singapore, averted this trope.) The reboot not so much, despite also being filmed in Hawaii.
** Like rushing on to Ford Island to get to a ship docked in Honolulu Harbor.
** Someone in a SUV gets attacked near Hilton Hawaiian Village after passing Aloha Tower on the way to Hickam AFB.
** A chase sequence featuring an escaped convict shows him driving towards the airport, taking the airport exit off H-1 (which would put him about 2 minutes away from the check-in lobby, not including time to park the car), then turning around at a roadblock on a four-lane road that clearly isn't anywhere near the airport (probably in Leeward Oahu, along Kualakai Parkway), followed by him traveling along the H-3 freeway. The convict then somehow manages to exit the freeway in the middle of Halawa Valley (something impossible to do between Halawa Interchange and the Harano tunnels, short of pulling to the side of the road and jumping off the viaduct), and hijacks a Makani Kai tour helicopter even though said company is located [
** Two words: Waikiki Bay.
** [http://www.lexbrodies.com/ Lex Brodie] appears to have relocated their Honolulu store from Queen St. to Ala Wai Blvd.
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** To be fair, [[Rule of Cool|it's a much nicer train station]].
** Another episode referenced the San Bruno train station, which on screen was next to a hilly wooded area where they found a body. You probably couldn't really hide a body near the San Bruno train station, since there's a densely built neighborhood about 50 feet away from the train tracks... on flat ground... with no ''palm trees''.
* One episode of the US version of ''[[The Office]]'' had the cast visit Lake Scranton for a beach party. There is no beach or sandy shore at Lake Scranton, which is [
* Spoofed in ''[[Police Squad!]]'', where the Roman Colosseum and Leaning Tower of Pisa are back-projected during a trip to "Little Italy."
* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' has been filmed for the last several years in [[New Zealand]], with geography that is obviously not North American. And the seasons reversed. Some [[Lampshade Hanging]] has been employed with minor characters being "sent to New Zealand" to get rid of them. Of course, through the show's entire history, [[Stock Footage]] obviously shot in Japan has been commonplace, leading to the overwhelming prevalence of Japanese cars (not [[Everybody Owns a Ford]] in this universe), Japanese signage, a usually large number of HOV and bicycle lanes, and extras who spontaneously become Asian.
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* In the first episode of ''[[Shoebox Zoo]]'' (little-known BBC kids' programme), the protagonist and her father leave a small independent cinema (The Dominion, a real cinema in Edinburgh, Scotland) and in the very next shot are walking down Cockburn Street two and a half miles away.
* ''[[Simon and Simon]]'', set in San Diego, but mostly filmed in Los Angeles, aside from a few inserts here and there. And they did things like taking Balboa Avenue (which does exist in S.D.) to reach Balboa Park (which also exists, but Balboa Avenue does not go to it, or past it, or anywhere near it). Oops.
* ''[[Sliders]]''
** In the premiere, Quinn leaves his Midwestern-looking neighborhood (you don't see many brick houses in California, for a reason) and jogs across Golden Gate Park to the Berkeley campus. Meanwhile Rembrandt, needing to get to Candlestick
*** In fairness to the show, however, production was shifted to Hollywood from season three onwards. Cue [[California Doubling]] (though most of the show still had them basically in California).
* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' (filmed in Vancouver) episode "Memento Mori", Cameron Mitchell is on a highway presumably in Colorado (as that's where Cheyenne Mountain is). The roadsign says "Surrey", and there's no Surrey in Colorado.
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* The first 5 seasons of ''[[The X-Files]]'' were filmed in Vancouver. On David Duchovny's insistence, they relocated to Los Angeles. At least a few fans complained that the new, sunny location didn't have the same gloomy atmosphere as its more northern predecessor.
** One episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' features a train rolling through an area of jagged hills, scrub brush, and very little green vegetation of any sort. In Iowa, of all places, where basically the entire state is green because if there's available land, somebody's planted corn or soybeans on top of it.
** The episode "Chimera" is set in Vermont in early April. The establishing shot opens onto an Easter picnic. The grass is a vivid bright green, and the children are running around in short-sleeved shirts and jeans or shorts, as are their parents. This is hilarious for any Vermont native (any New England native) because the temperature in Vermont in early April hovers in the mid-30's and there is usually still a good amount of snow on the ground. And even if there isn't snow, the grass is certainly not green. It's called "mud season" for a reason. This seems so ironic, too, for the episode, since other
** The season 2 episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt" is set in New Hampshire, with many shots filmed in the woods. There is only one problem. Seasons 1-5 were filmed in Vancouver, which has a temperate rainforest feel, while New England has a temperate broadleaf/mixed forest. In other words, those who live in New England can easily spot that most of the trees and ferns simply do not grow in New Hampshire.
* The ''McCloud'' episode "Night of the Shark" was set (and filmed) in Sydney, Australia (unlike the later "London Bridges," which despite involving London wasn't shot there). One scene shows McCloud dashing across the Sydney Harbour Bridge into the city centre. Except that he is going across the bridge in the wrong direction and would actually be heading away from the city.
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* ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' episode "Exit Wounds" supposedly takes place in Franklin, Alaska. The fishing ships in the opening would imply that Franklin is on the ocean. However, Franklin is on a creek, '''hundreds''' of miles away from the ocean, and more importantly, is [[Ghost Town|uninhabited]]. The closest town, Chicken, had a grand total population of 17 in the year 2000. They also mention a Lake Lafayette, and in a state with over three million lakes, there are none named Lafayette. Most TV shows and movies [[Did Not Do the Research|do not to do research]] when it comes to Alaska, much less do they ever film there.
** Taking place all over the US but being filmed in LA gives Criminal Minds this problem quite often. In ''Roadkill'' they even invented a whole highway.
* ''
* Even live sporting events aren't immune from
** What made it even funnier is that it wasn't the first time that Minneapolis substituted for
* ''[[The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries]]'': the episode "Voodoo Doll" is just ''painful''. Despite having a stock footage opening shot of the real Bourbon Street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras...the Hollywood backlot not only didn't bother to make buildings that looked like New Orleans, but the ep also refers to addresses that don't exist and has the Hardys wandering through a wide, spacious, bury-them-below-ground cemetery...never mind that cemeteries in NOLA in the Quarter are all bury-them-above-ground due to the high water table and jammed-packed.
* ''[[Dog the Bounty Hunter]]'' seems to have suffered as of late this trope. For example, during Baby Lyssa's arrest episode, it appears that Leland and Beth are going in opposite directions from where they're intending to go on the H-1 Freeway via the dialogue. And when they went to Maui to apprehend a fugitive, they seem to be on streets that are blocks away from their intended locations.
* ''[[Arrow]]'': "Starling City" is portrayed using [[Stock Footage]] of upwards of half a dozen different real cities, with occasional digital manipulation for things like putting the Queen Industries logo on a building. This makes it possible to go from, for example, Center City Philadelphia to a Baltimore slum in a matter of blocks.
== Music ==
* Canadian folk song "This Land of Ours" contains the line: "I have walked on the sand of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland." The Grand Banks are a site where ocean currents converge and are especially good for ''fishing''; you may well have walked on the sand there, but it would have required SCUBA gear and significant weights.
* [[Billy Joel]]'s song "The Ballad of Billy The Kid" includes the lines "And his daring life of crime/Made him a legend in his time/East and west of the Rio Grande." Years later, Joel shamefacedly admitted bungling his
* The first verse of "Don't Stop Believin'" by [[Journey (band)|Journey]] includes the line "Born and raised in south Detroit". Thanks to a bend in the Detroit River, there is no south Detroit - that land area is called Windsor, and it's in [[Canada]].
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The ''[[Twilight 2000]]'' adventure module "The Black Madonna" is supposedly set in Czestochowa in Poland.
** Though, to be fair, apparently some writers did ''go'' to Krakow. In the middle of Cold War. To write a gamebook. Twenty years of post-Communist development and a conspicuous lack of [[World War III]] later, [[Shown Their Work|the geography and some of the descriptions are still recognisable.]]
* The ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' module "Rite of Passage" appears to be set in some scrunched-up alternate version of Canada that is barely the size of Mexico and bears little resemblance to the real one. Among other things, it describes a village in northern Saskatchewan as being "nestled in the fog-shrouded mountains"<ref>there are no mountains in Saskatchewan</ref> and "mere 150 miles from Toronto".<ref>1,500 miles would have been more believable</ref>
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** Chinatown doesn't look anything at all like Manhattan's Chinatown, or any other in NYC. Then there's the three East River crossings all looking like copypasted Brooklyn Bridges. For added hilarity, there's subway trains running across them, when in reality the Brooklyn Bridge is the only one of the three which ''doesn't'' have subway tracks, due to the bridge's age.
* In ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', Manhattan is located in the middle of what appears to be a large bay instead of between 3 rivers, so that [[Gravity Barrier|all other landmasses are too far to reach]] despite the [[Player Character]]'s quite significant aerial movement capabilities.
* There is an arcade game showing a scene of a helicopter flying through massive skyscrapers and listing the location as "Green Bay, Wisconsin". The tallest building in Green Bay is the 10-story St. Vincent's Hospital, as seen in this picture of the [
* Beautifully averted in ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', which managed to capture the essence of New York City and most of its neighborhoods perfectly, to the point that some New Yorkers, when traveling around the city, will recognize areas from rampaging through them in ''GTAIV''.
** The trope's played straight in the stand-ins for the outer boroughs. While the landmarks themselves are portrayed accurately, and the look and feel of the neighborhoods is correct (enough that it made this NYC native troper homesick), there's a ''lot'' of almost ''[[24]]''-esque condensed geographical weirdness going on. Grand Army Plaza is not, in fact, a stone's throw from Coney Island. Then there's the complete absence of Staten Island, but most New Yorkers [[Old Shame|are cool]] with that.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* [[Lampshade
* Not exactly geography, but in one episode of ''[[Gargoyles]]'', King Arthur enters Westminster Abbey...by a door that does not exist. The Chapel of Henry the VII is recognisable enough, but the rather significant King Edward's Chair is on the wrong side, against a wall that also does not exist (the chair, at least, did still contain the Stone of Scone at the time the episode would've been written, however).
* Averted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'', which takes great care to get geography down accurately when they visit a major city and to include proper landmarks; for instance, having been released from prison in Tokyo, they are seen to walk away from the Tokyo Police Headquarters (a very distinctive building).
** [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|Of course, the layout of Springfield itself changes so much the place can't ''possibly'' have a definite map at this point.]]
** And Springfield is somehow in a state that borders on Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky, all at once.
*** All at one point too with
*** Which was a [[Shout-Out]] [[Brick Joke]] to an earlier episode ([[wikipedia:Itchy
{{quote|'''Lisa''': "Aw, haven't we stood in five different states long enough?"
'''Homer''': ''[[Man Child|(petulantly)]]'' "No." }}
** It appears to be in eastern North America, since the log went through Yellowstone to get to San Francisco. (How this would happen with the Continental Divide is beyond the reach of this wiki.) And it's on a coast. We also know that it has both 636 (an area code for Missouri) and 939 (an area code for Puerto Rico) area codes.
* Danville on ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' is within driving distance of Mt. Rushmore for a day trip, yet is also on the ocean.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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