This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW:
Andrew Leprich: Guys, is there an entry that covers TV shows in which the city and/or state it takes place in is never revealed (The Brady Bunch, The Simpsons, Malcolm In The Middle, etc.)? Could have swore I read this before, but now I can't find it.
Janitor: Middle-of-Nowhere Street is related, but not directly on point. There is no entry for an anonymous town as a persistent setting.
Seth: Geographic Flexibility also touches on this. As well as the simpsons geography thing trope it links to.
Andrew Leprich: Do you guys feel its worth creating a new page for this?
Kendra Kirai: I suggested one a bit ago that's related...though it was a rename of the 'Separate Simpsons Geography Thing' into "Where the Hell Is Springfield?". I still think that name would work great. :)
Seth: From a splitter perspective an entry like Where the Hell Is Springfield?? has a place featuring places where the exact geographical location isn't known. The other tropes deal with flexible geography, expanding geography and totally Dis Continuity style geography but not the one brought up here. I say pull the trigger.
Andrew Leprich: Will do. I'm a splitter myself, and I'd have to agree that those other entries are related, but they don't really cover this extensively. I was thinking about Unnamed Location as a name, but Where the Hell Is Springfield? sounds a lot better. I'll be sure to put this in discussion so Kendra receives credit for the name.
Kendra Kirai: Thanks! :) And I fixed my "separate" problem up there, in case anyone wonders why it suddenly started working. I used to be so good at spelling...
Qit el-Remel: There's been speculation that Springfield is in Oregon (there is such a town, and certain details apparently point to it). And there is town called Eureka in Northern California...but Eureka is certainly not set there. (Apart from a fairly high crime rate, it's nearly the definitive "poky little town.")
arromdee: Cut:
- (To say nothing of the noticeable lack of Latino characters in what is supposedly a Southern California setting, in an otherwise painstakingly multiracial show.)
http://henshingrid.blogspot.com/2008/04/latino-power-rangers.html
has a list of Latino rangers. (However, searching elsewhere shows that the pink ranger in Mystic Force and the white ranger in Dino Thunder were played by actors of Filipino descent.)
Great Pikmin Fan: Why is King Of The Hill in here? Does every show in a made up town have to have it's exact location revealed to not be in here?
Nano Moose: Er...given the veritable snarl of time periods visible in Thief's technological development, that the City just seems to called the City, that they apparently accept zombies, ghosts, independently mobile trees, sentient asylums, actual physical gods, squid people, steam-powered robots and giant anthropomorphic rats as (while not a matter of course) something only slightly strange, that they have different languages to us, and that I know of no actual major religion that worships a Builder and wields hammers as weapons while retaining the power to arrest, convict, imprison and execute suspected criminals with no overseeing from the state...what the hell is Thief doing here? Wherever it is set, it isn't Earth. The country Zaya comes from is never named; it's like looking at Discworld and declaring it set on Earth because XXXX is sort of like Australia.
Strong Rad: Homer Simpson thought that south of the border was Tenessee, suggesting that Springfield is in Kentucky.
BritBllt: In the same spirt as the King Of The Hill entry, I'm nuking the Buffy one...
- Sunnydale is somewhere in California, where in California is never made clear. It doesn't help that the town's size and geography tends to change from one episode to another.
- The best guess is that Sunnydale is only a few hours drive from Los Angeles (assuming traffic isn't a factor). Both Angel and Buffy would make the trip with relative frequency and ease, whereas Giles has to fly to Oakland at the beginning of Season 3.
- And Word of God says it's "near Santa Barbara," which fits.
- Lots of in-show evidence places it near Santa Barbara, including seeing its location of a TV weather map in Amends, multiple references to it being close to Oxnard, and they used maps of Santa Barbara, with the name changed, as maps of Sunnydale.
- The best guess is that Sunnydale is only a few hours drive from Los Angeles (assuming traffic isn't a factor). Both Angel and Buffy would make the trip with relative frequency and ease, whereas Giles has to fly to Oakland at the beginning of Season 3.
Where the hell is Sunnydale? Well, it's in California a few hours away from Los Angeles. There's always going to be some ambiguity about any fictional town's location, since the town doesn't really exist, but we know Sunnydale's in southern California, and that's about as reasonably specific a location as can be expected.
Also moved this to No Communities Were Harmed...
- The setting for The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya is never stated but the anime uses almost photo-accurate depictions of places in Nishinomiya, Japan. Which just happens to be the author's hometown.
- 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.
And deleting this one, since Excel's already on that page...
- Subverted in Excel Saga: although Ilpalazzo insists that everything takes place in "F City, F Prefecture", the city is obviously Fukuoka, Japan.
- In the manga, the city is indeed called by it's real name quite often.
Annnnnnd, removing this...
- It takes until the third game, but the Ace Attorney series, localized, eventually reveals that it (probably) takes place in and around Los Angeles; in addition to the strong Japanese influence, which would put it on the West Coast, Dick Gumshoe mentions that he lives in "Compton Castles". It fits with the nine-hour time difference from Paris as seen in the first game, as well.
Because if they said it's in Los Angeles, then we know where it is. And...
- This was due to Sega deciding to force everyone to one game canon rather than stick with the localised stories. However, even the planet ever being called Mobius in games is contested, as there is very little evidence from source (namely games themselves and instruction manuals), that it was ever Mobius, and almost all evidence comes from alternate universe cartoons, which ultimately got the name Mobius from a translation error in a game magazine interview.
Because, for God's sake, how can people POTHOLE to Justifying Edit and not read the page and realize it's BAD?!? Lampshading it does not make it okay! I'd work some of this stuff into the main example, but all of it translates to "blah blah stupid Sega I prefer my fanon" to me.
And... killing all these entries...
Because not being an example of a trope isn't anything worth noting as an example, especially when all it takes to be an aversion to this one is for the story to take place in a real town. Imagine if we had to list every single story that takes place in New York City as a Where the Hell Is Springfield? aversion...
BritBllt: Removing, again...
- It's unknown where Sunnydale of the Buffyverse is supposed to be, aside from the fact that it's in California somewhere. To make it more confusing, earlier seasons have it with near the ocean. In season seven, we see it or rather, the huge crater where it used to be in the middle of a desert.
Sunnydale's in southern California. This trope's about locations that remain stubbornly impossible to pin down; the confusing landscape is better described by Geographic Flexibility.
