Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

The city and/or state (and in extreme cases the ''country'') the series takes place in [[The Un-Reveal|is never revealed]], or is intentionally hidden.

It can make it easier to build a [[City of Adventure]], since [[Series Continuity Error|nobody can point out]] that the city doesn't have an airport, casino, opera house, Gothic cathedral, etc, but can lead to [[Geographic Flexibility|blatant contradictions in geography]] if the writers aren't careful. Many examples inspire [[Fan Wank|extensive fan effort]] to piece together clues and pin down the location. Unsurprisingly, many of these turn out to just be where the show was filmed. For extra fun, this trope can be combined with [[Retro Universe]].

 

 

Contrast with [[No Communities Were Harmed]] and [[Canada Does Not Exist]], where the setting is based on a real-life location but never outright identified.

{{examples}}

== The Simpsons ==

* Springfield, of course. We don't know where it is, but we have a pretty good sense of [https://web.archive.org/web/20071030082208/http://www.snpp.com/guides/springfield.list.html where it isn't].

** When the creator of the cartoon ''Danger Dog'' visits Springfield Elementary, the children are given the chance to ask questions. Hundreds of hands go up. The first question is "What state is ''Danger Dog'' set in?" "Michigan." All but one hand immediately goes down again.

*** [[Truth in Television]]; children treat all their favorite cartoons that way.

{{quote|'''Alec Baldwin:''' Most people don't even know where Springfield is.

'''Homer:''' Heh, yeah. To tell you the truth, ''I'm'' not even sure! }}

{{quote|'''Congressman #1:''' Then it is unanimous. We are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of....

'''Congressman #2:''' Wait a second, I want to tack on a rider to that bill. }}

{{quote|'''Marge''': "742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, <s>Ohio</s> oh, hiya, Maude! Come on in!"}}

{{quote|'''Larry:''' ''(to the conductor)'' Hey, Casey Jones, where's this train headed?

'''Conductor:''' Springfield.

'''Reporter 2:''' Which one?

'''Reporter 1:''' The one the Simpsons live in! }}

 

* ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure]]'' is set in Wakabadai, an amalgam of various suburbs surrounding Tokyo on different sides. (There ''is'' a real town by that name, but it's in the wrong area).

* ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'' is set in a city that is supposedly somewhere in Japan. It's full of French signs, and some fans have noted that it looks like [[The Theme Park Version]] of London.

* The town in ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' has a vague location, made only worse in that the town changes names depending on what language you're watching it in. It's Kinkan in the Japanese, and Gold Crown (the translation of "Kinkan" in the English dub. However, the last episode has a map of the town clearly labeled "Goldkrone," German for Gold Crown—so it's likely that the town is located in Germany, or a fantasy-world equivalent. Nearly all of the text in the series is in German, too, which helps to back up this idea. The town is based on the real-life German town Nördlingen, so it may be an alternate version of that town.

* The town that ''[[D.N.Angel]]'' is set in is a strange case - all the characters have Japanese names and they seem to follow Japanese customs, but the town's architecture looks like a seaside European villa. The anime added a character that claimed to be an exchange student from America, but otherwise countries aren't really mentioned. In fact, the audio commentary for the English dub has two actors from it asking "Where is this set, anyway? France?"

* ''[[Prétear]]'' is set in the fictional Awayuki Town, somewhere in Japan. We're shown that the town appears to be on a small island connected to the main part of Japan by a bridge, but it's hard to tell much else.

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' features [[Academy of Adventure|Mahora Academy]]. All that can be determined of its location is that it's likely somewhere in the Kantou region of Japan (the same area that Tokyo resides in).

* [[Umi no Misaki]] is set on what is for all intents and purposes, a fictional small island in the vicinity of Okinawa.

* "Cape Mery" in ''[[Kaleido Star]]'' is allegedly in California, but it can't seem to make up its mind whether it's Los Angeles or San Francisco—it's got LA's shoreline and palm trees but also San Francisco's hills, vintage streetcars, and a dead-on markup toward the Ferry Building and nearby Amtrak terminal in the second season's opening. At the same time, it also has the concrete canyons of New York City. And just to confuse the issue even further, the rising sun over the ocean horizon when Sora performs the Angel Maneuver in the final episode makes it clear that the open sea is to the ''east'' of the city—pretty hard to do anywhere in California. Some viewers suspect that it's actually in Hawaii, not California, which would solve most of these problems (and explain some otherwise extremely fast travel times from Japan).

 

* Riverdale in ''[[Archie Comics]]''.

** In very early ''Archie'' stories, Riverdale is explicitly situated somewhere in Massachusetts, the home state of creator Bob Montana. For example, Mr. Lodge first appears as a Massachusetts senator. (Indeed, at the time the character was introduced, Massachusetts had a real-life senator named Lodge). This location has long since ceased to be canon.

** This was used in the "There's No Place Like Springfield" episode of the TV series. After Shipwreck is attacked by Cobra, he wakes up several years later with no memory of anything that happened since the accident. Cobra was destroyed and the Joes disbanded, and Shipwreck himself got married and had a kid. And they live in a town called Springfield. {{spoiler|It was all just a set on Cobra island.}}

* ''[[Dykes to Watch Out For]]'': The city is never named, but depicted as a medium-sized American Midwest town with snowy winters, a university, and a large and diverse LGBT community. Maps included as title pages in some of the collections show a surprising number of streets named after famous lesbians. Author Alison Bechdel has said that the look and character of the city is very loosely based on Minneapolis.

* Two British comics ''[[The Beano]]'' and ''[[The Dandy]]'' (made by the same company) are contained within their own fictional towns that are meant to be somewhere in the UK, called Beanotown and Dandytown respectively (it's assumed that the two towns are close to each other, as they are rivals). Not only that, but the geography within the towns changes according to where a character is and where they are trying to get to. So that wherever you are now is always relatively close to where you want to be.

* Where is [[Astro City]]? [[Kurt Busiek]] has been asked numerous times by fans on the Internet, but refuses to tell, only confiding that its real-life location contains a small town rather than a city. Context (e.g., KBAC as the local station's call letters, which isn't ''just'' an [[In-Joke]]) puts it in the Western United States, in a location consistent with having at least one large mountain (Mount Kirby).

* The geography of [[The DC Universe]] and its fictional cities is vague and inconsistent at best, but some facts have been "officially" or quasi-officially established from time to time. DC's "house fanzine" from the '70s, ''Amazing World of DC Comics'', established some city locations, which were mostly followed in ''The Atlas of the DC Universe'', a supplement for the DC Heroes Roleplaying Game. As an aside, the ''JLA/Avengers'' miniseries established a reason ''why'' DC's Earth seems to have so many large cities with no analogues on Marvel's Earth (which generally speaking conforms much more closely to [[Real Life]] Earth). The reason? DC's Earth is ''physically larger''. Not by a lot, but by enough to have a bit more room for extra cities.

*** Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster grew up in [[Cleveland]]. Shuster lived in [[Toronto]], [[Canada]] until age 10. Both cities have been suggested as inspirations for Superman's Metropolis.

*** New York is another obvious inspiration (made explicit in the 1978 movie and its sequels). It should be noted that the city of New York ''also'' has an independent existence in [[The DCU]].

*** Chicago is sometimes mentioned as an analogue for Metropolis. This notion tends to be more plausible in Super''boy''-related series, which sometimes portray Metropolis as "the nearest big city" to Clark Kent's hometown of Smallville (but see below for more about Smallville).

** Happy Harbor, Rhode Island was home to the original [[JLA|Justice League of America's]] "Secret Sanctuary," right? Well, later stories established this as a fact, but [http://absorbascon.blogspot.com/2011/12/jla-hq-origin-of-happy-harbor.html as one blogger notes], this isn't really supported by the original stories. The Secret Sanctuary is also in a mountain cave, [[The Mountains of Illinois|a feature Rhode Island is not known for]].

** Behold! A website which catalogs some of the information found in [http://www.karridian.net/dcatlas.html the Atlas of the DC Universe!]

* ''[[Tintin]]'', though a Belgian creation originally intended to be a reporter for a Brussels newspaper, essentially became of undetermined nationality and hometown once the comic went international. Though the drawings incorporate features of Brussels, he is never stated to be from anywhere more specific than Europe in the comics, nor does he ever acknowledge being in Brussels when he is in the city. The English translation at one point puts Captain Haddock's estate of Marlinspike in England (based on the address on a letter), but this is never acknowledged elsewhere in the series and the French original does not specify Belgium.

** The last album even makes all the press write that Marlinspike is in Western Europe.

* [[In-Universe]] example in ''[[Miracleman]]'': The [[City of Spies]] in ''Spy Story'' is just called 'the City', and when the main character starts asking questions like what country it's in, people look at her as if she's mad. It turns out that the City was built to house all the spies in the world, who couldn't deal with the utopia the world had become and were instead given a fictional war of intrigue to carry out among themselves.

* ''[[W.I.T.C.H.]]'' has Heatherfield. Here's all the data we have: the location is easily recognizable as a generic big European city on the sea with a Los Angeles-style bridge; the names of the vast majority of the residents are of British origin (Hay Lin's family doesn't count because they're Chinese, with her mother being explicitly a native of Hong Kong); football (soccer for the Americans) is apparently the most popular sport; Halloween is a popular celebration; language in signs and insignias switches between English (most used) and Italian (rarer); the Sheffield Institute was build on a former pumpkin patch due an Italian-language pun (pumpkin being sometimes used as synonym for 'head' and 'brain' in Italian); France and Italy are explicitly shown as foreign countries (and French is often treated as a foreign language that Will and Irma have problems with); the school sometimes flies the Stars and Stripes; currency has been alternatively shown being the American dollar (early on) and the euro; the police has called the Interpol for an apparent case of illegal aliens. Many people tried to narrow that location down to at least a country, everyone failed.

 

* ''[[Wallace and Gromit]]'' takes place in a generic [[Oop North|Northern England town]], though when Wallace gets post, the address can be briefly seen as "62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan."

* The ''[[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]]'' movies are set in "the Tri-County area," as seen on newspaper vending machines, TV ads for Al's Toy Barn, the local airport, and [[Brand X|WebTuraMaps]].

* And in a third Pixar film, ''[[Cars]]'', Radiator Springs is clearly located in the southwestern US, but is located near I-40 and US Route 66, yet it is never explained which state it's in.

** Nor is Carburetor County.

* ''[[Se7en]]'' takes place in an unnamed American city. Some take it to be Seattle (due to much of the film taking place on rainy days), but there's also a nearby desert.

* ''[[American Beauty]]'' takes place in a generic [[Stepford Suburbia]], location unspecified.

* The opening voiceover of [[Danny Boyle]]'s ''[[Shallow Grave]]'' states that "this could be any city."

* The city of Springwood in ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]'' wanders all over the country as the series goes on. The first movie is set in an unnamed Los Angeles suburb, but as [[Continuity Creep]] sets in with each sequel, the setting picks up the name Springwood and enough backstory to turn into a [[Town with a Dark Secret]]. The fifth sequel's opening finally puts Springwood squarely on a U.S. map... in Ohio.

** Actually Crystal Lake is in northern New Jersey, and ''[[Freddy vs. Jason]]'' just failed to show the amount of time it would take to get there from Ohio. The problem is addressed in the ''[[Friday the 13th]]'' documentary ''His Name Was Jason'', and by the screenwriters, no less.

* ''[[The Dark Knight Trilogy]]'' never hides the fact that the films were shot in Chicago, with prominent landmarks like the Wrigley Building visible, but there the location of its Gotham City is apparently fantasy, given that its license plates state that it's located in Gotham State.

* ''[[Office Space]]'' had cars with generic "USA" license plates.

* ''[[Incendies]]'' is set in an unnamed [[The Middle East|Middle Eastern]] state in a state of unrest and rebellion.

 

== Literature ==

* In the endless ''[[Nancy Drew]]'' and ''[[Hardy Boys]]'' stories, they've always had trouble pinning down their hometowns:

** Nancy's hometown of River Heights was originally placed in Iowa, but in the following years, it drifted as far east as New Jersey. In the most recent series, it's implied to be in Illinois, within driving distance of Chicago.

 

* Most US soap opera primary setting locations (e.g. Port Charles in ''[[General Hospital]]'')

** "Salem" in ''[[Days of Our Lives]]'' is pretty explicitly set in or near a heavily Catholic part of Chicagoland (albeit some distance outside the city itself), though with ''extreme'' [[Geographic Flexibility]].

* The city and state where ''[[Hill Street Blues]]'' took place were never mentioned, though it clearly resembled Chicago.

** So much so that shots of Chicago were used in the series as background and transition shots, and the police uniforms and police cruiser livery strongly resembled that used by the Chicago Police Department at the time.

* ''[[Oz]]'' takes place in an unnamed state, likely in the Northeast.

** The creators specifically state its in New Jersey in the commentaries. They even point out in the pilot that Alvarez is wearing the wrong gang colors for a NE hispanic gangster (IE wearing LA colors).

* ''[[Mission: Impossible]]'': in the series the team was often sent to the vaguely named [[People's Republic of Tyranny]]. Other locations included the nation of "San X" in South America or the Caribbean. Whenever the mission was in the [[United States]], the city or state was rarely named beyond "Western" or "Central". Any named nation, used for a mission in Africa, was never a real nation. Finally, Western Europe was referred to as a friendly or neutral nation.

* ''[[La Femme Nikita]]'': the location of Section One's command center is only revealed to be in {{spoiler|Paris}} when the center is destroyed to prevent the enemy from gaining control. The other command centers and Section One sub-centers are never revealed unless they are destroyed or are temporary installations.

** There are [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GBp_qRk9GA several] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5admHkzsA episodes] where the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEgARMSVrCU location] is given as "Building X, Eastern Europe" or "this information came from Northern Europe", but generally the viewer knows where the operation is taking place.

* ''[[The Prisoner]]'': we never learn the location of The Village.

** Early episodes were shot in various cities in northwest Georgia, so that is usually taken as the home state. The ''General Lee'' has Georgia plates, and Daisy is once said to have "the best legs in all of Georgia." This has not stopped Hazzard, Kentucky from taking credit though.

** Occasional mentions of day trips to Macon and day-long drives to Atlanta would suggest southeast Georgia, but many other hints suggest northwest Georgia. There are mountains, the town is said to be in a place where several states come together, and there was a reference to "the tornado of '74" possibly referencing the Super Outbreak of 1974 that hit that area.

* [[Nick at Nite]]'s almost entirely forgettable ''[[Hi Honey, I'm Home!]]'' was the story of two families: The Duffs, a normal suburban family with modern concerns, and the Nielsens, a '50s-era sitcom family, sort of a ''[[Donna Reed Show]]/[[Leave It to Beaver]]/[[Make Room For Daddy]]'' [[Expy]], who move into the real-world house next door as part of the Sitcom Relocation Program. When greeting the new neighbors, the "real" family politely asks where the Nielsens came from. "Springfield." "Which one?" "... Springfield." The issue is immediately dropped.

* ''[[The Sentinel (TV series)|The Sentinel]]'' takes place in the fictional city of Cascade, WA, the exact location of which is never disclosed. Jim Ellison also has the non-existent ZIP code 98765. If you follow the clues, Cascade is easy to locate... it's actually Vancouver.

** Bizarrely, at least one episode implied that the town is alone in the middle of a wasteland full of nothing but dirt and periodic telephone poles.

* Where is Gotham City in ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'', the 1966 series? It was rather obviously ''filmed'' in [[California Doubling|Southern California]], but:

** Other evidence is more ambiguous, such as the call letters for Gotham City TV stations KGC and KGOM, which imply that Gotham is located somewhere west of the Mississippi.

** On the other hand, cowboy villain Shame states that they need ''not'' follow a [[Showdown At High Noon]] rule requiring that both participants be armed, because the rule doesn't count ''east'' of the Mississippi.

** Occasionally, the series seemed to embrace its actual California filming location. For example, "Gotham Point" is a beach and surfing haven that seems far more like California than anything on the east coast.

** In one episode, a fortuitous blackout leads the Joker to remark "Gotham City is having a power failure -- just like New York!" It's both a topical reference to the blackout of 1965, and evidence that New York has a separate existence in the show's continuity.

** In the same episode, we learn that (according to clocks in the Batcave showing the time in Gotham, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities) Gotham City is in the Eastern time zone.

** Some more attentive viewers have figured out that the flagship Sanctuary is in the Vancouver, BC/Seattle, WA area, however.

* Sunnydale in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. We do know it's in California, and it's explicitly described in one episode as being about 2 hours' drive north of L.A. It's also on the coast (sometimes). Most evidence points to it being an [[Expy]] of Santa Barbara, but there are a few bits of contradictory information which belie that identification.

 

 

== Theater ==

"BOMONT!"

''"Bomont? Where the hell is Bomont?"'' }}

 

== Video Games ==

* Where does ''[[Nanashi no Game]]'' take place? Well, the fictional university is called "Nanto," as is the subway line on which the second chapter is set, and Nanto is another name for Nara, so maybe it's there. But wait, the name of the protagonist's friend's apartment building is shared by a real building in Fukuoka—so is this supposed to be Fukuoka, or is that a coincidence? And then the protagonist goes to Nakano Broadway, which is the name of a real shopping mall in Tokyo...

* ''[[Final Fight]]'''s Metro City (as seen in the intro of the first game) is somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. Seeing as its port leads directly to the Atlantic Ocean, fan speculation either places it as [[New York City]] or close to it (NYC explicitly exists in the ''[[Street Fighter|SF]]'' [[Shared Universe|verse]], as seen with ''[[Street Fighter III]]'' and the Brooklyn-born Alex and ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]'' shows Haggar running for mayor of New York).

* Most of the action in the ''[[F.E.A.R.]]'' games takes place in an American city called Fairport, but the precise location of the city is unclear. It is implied in ''FEAR 3'' that the city is somewhere in the southern parts of the United States, as the Point Man is able to fly a high-tech and apparently very long-ranged Armacham helicopter there from an unspecified South/Central American city.

* Played straight in ''[[Metal Gear (video game)|Metal Gear]]'' game, where the only specifics of Outer Heaven's location was 200 miles north of the Galzburg region of South Africa (which likewise also doesn't have its location specified). It's averted in most future installments, where the game/cinematics at least shows a map showing the specific location of the main location of the game (or in the case of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty|Metal Gear Solid 2]]'' and ''[[Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker]]'', take place in actual real life locations (New York City and Costa Rica/Nicaragua, respectively) rendering the trope pointless anyway.).

 

== [[Visual Novels]] ==

* It is unclear if Kadath in ''[[Shikkoku no Sharnoth]]'' is either north of Britain somewhere or in an alternate dimension. Evidence all points to the latter apart from the fact that to get to Kadath you have to ''go'' north.

 

== Web Comics ==

** The main reason Dave's location isn't set in stone is because [[Andrew Hussie]] is savvy enough to realize that Houston doesn't look how it is portrayed in the comic (being much closer to New York or Boston) but wanted to have someone living in a big city, so it remains only hinted.

*** {{spoiler|Dirk and Roxy live in the same ''approximate locations'' as Dave and Rose, though they live [[After the End]]}}.

 

== Web Original ==

* In ''[[Legion of Net.Heroes]]'', Net.ropolis floats from state to state. It has its own senator for this reason.

* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'': WHERE THE FRACK IS FREE COUNTRY, USA??

** This applies to individual locations in Free Country USA, as well. The geography is so flexible that ''[[Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'' lets you create your map of the place any way you want.

* ''[[Trinton Chronicles]]'' takes place in a fictionalized version of Virgina, USA where the Chesapeake Bay is actually a mountain range, the land mass is extended out a few miles, and its somewhere plopped between real life towns of Nassawadox and Eastville. The only major changes are that the areas are widened on the map for the city and the Campell Airport doesn't exist nor does the town of Birdsnest, replaced by the city.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Similarly, much of the action in ''[[The Year Without a Santa Claus]]'' takes place in "Southtown, U.S.A.", about whose location we know only that it is [[Captain Obvious|in the South]]. Of the U.S.A. Far enough so that it never has snow. (The show has some odd ideas about geography in general... it strongly implies that the Earth is a hemisphere and that nothing exists below the equator, despite at least one Sub-Saharan African child appearing in the "gift" sequence.)

* ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'' has [[Everytown, America|Dimmsdale]]. There's a Dimsdale... it's in Canada. The Christmas Special, on one hand, places it in Southern California.

*** There are multiple other episodes which place it in southern California; the founding episode is the only exception. For example, the Old West episode, in which Timmy's family reaches the desert in their car in just a few hours, and the another episode states it's in a time zone three hours behind the East coast.

* Where is [[Doug]]'s hometown of Bluffington? It's near Bloatsburg.

** There's a real-life neighborhood of Greater Vancouver called Metrotown. However, it's a ''neighborhood'', not a town in its own right; it's part of southern Burnaby.

* It's hard to tell where ''[[Dora the Explorer]]'' is set. The spinoff series, ''[[Go, Diego, Go!]]'', seems to be somewhere set in Latin America though.

 

== Real Life ==

* Not quite the same, but the person on the receiving end of [http://notalwaysright.com/location-is-clearly-not-your-vocation/3361 this call] was probably asking this in their head.

 

{{reflist}}