History Main / GeographicFlexibility

** The upcoming video game ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' will finally set the town's geographical features in stone... [[DependingOnTheWriter unless the show's creators need it to change]] [[RuleOfFunny to make a gag work]].

* Pine Valley, PA, setting of ''AllMyChildren'', ostensibly a small town, has a university with every graduate program you may need, a television station where national network shows are shot, an international airport, a casino (which were ''illegal'' in Pennsylvania until very recently), and the headquarters of several major corporations. It also has a beach. In Pennsylvania. An ad for the show on Soapnet parodied all this.
** Let's not forget that there are several ''uncharted islands'' off this beach. In Pennsylvania.
*** Does Lake Erie not exist in this particular TV universe?
** Made even worse when you consider Llanview, PA - the setting of sister soap OneLifeToLive. Both shows establish that the towns are neighbors, located across the river from each other. Llanview also has an international airport, a major University, and several corporate headquarters.
** Pine Valley is supposed to be located near Philadelphia - itself a major city with all of these trappings!
*** Notice that this does in any notion that the beach and uncharted islands might be in Lake Erie. Philadelphia is in the opposite corner of the state.
* Craggy Island, in ''Series/FatherTed'' parodies this trope. Usually it seems there are only a handful of people living on the island, but in one episode there's an entire Chinatown district Ted never knew about. Even weirder, a hugely disproportionate number of those inhabitants are priests. (For reference, the island of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inishbofin,_Galway Inishbofin]], which is in roughly the same place has about 200 inhabitants. No word on how many of those are priests).
** There is one constant: it has no west side. "It just broke loose during some bad weather and floated off."
** It actually being an island seems to come and go depending on RuleOfFunny. Many times, there are improbably long car journeys for being on the Irish mainland, never mind a small island, with no indication of bridges or ferries.

** It's possible it was a fictional version of Oberlin or Kent, and that the decent sized city was nearby Akron.

** The upcoming video game ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' will finally set the town's geographical features in stone.

** The upcoming video game ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' will finally set the town's geographical features in stone. ...Until it needs to change again.

** The upcoming video game ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' will finally set the town's geographical features in stone.

** Made very well explicit in ''Franchise/TheDarkTower''. The geography and distances are stated in-story to actually change. This is probably our first clue that something is seriously wrong with the world.

* In the first ''Literature/HarryPotter'' book, it's stated that the geography of Hogwarts magically changes around from time to time - staircases move, steps vanish, doors don't always open and sometimes pretend to be solid walls. Creator/JKRowling has explained that she established this early on as a ready-to-fire [[JustifiedTrope justification]] in case this problem ever manifested itself, which, of course, it did.
** This is especially true in [[Film/HarryPotter the movies]]. Throughout the films, Hogwarts has changed in the following ways:
*** Second film: The sand pit around the Quidditch pitch is replaced with a trench. The hospital wing is changed.
*** Third film: The location of the Fat Lady's portrait is changed ([[TheOtherDarrin as is the Fat Lady]]). Hagrid's hut is moved next to a newly-added giant sundial, which is accessed across a newly-added bridge attached to a newly-added courtyard at the foot of a newly-added ClockTower. The hospital wing is moved to the top of this tower. The Whomping Willow position has changed: it's still very close to the woods, but now it's farther away from the main building and in a more mountainous area.
*** Fourth film: The entrance hall is replaced with an entrance courtyard.
*** Fifth film: The Potions classroom (unseen since the first film) uses the set built in the second film as Snape's office. The giant sundial introduced in the third film disappears, although the bridge, courtyard, and clock tower remain.
*** Sixth film: The Astronomy Tower is a new set after being represented in the third film as a redress of the Dumbledore's Office set.
*** Final film: The viaduct connecting the entrance courtyard to the other side of the castle is reangled so that it instead connects the entrance courtyard to a cliff in front of the school.

* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' can't seem to decide whether Hill Valley is a decent-sized city or a small town. It's small enough to have a tiny downtown area with no buildings higher than three stories, but it apparently has a large enough population to support at least one very large mall. And that's just in the first film. ''Part III'' adds an entire desert within walking distance of the city while stating that there's a lake which freezes over in winter. Still the series didn't really last long enough to produce anything ''too'' contradictory, though it likely would have if it'd been allowed to continue.
** Of course, the fact that you see the movies in four very separate time periods might have something to do with it.
** The development of Hill Valley over time seems pretty consistent with that of a small town (county seat in this case) enveloped by the suburban expansion of a nearby metropolis.
** Very big malls tend to locate quite far away from big cities due to land costs.
** The hills visible in the background of 20th-Century Hill Valley are completely absent back in the WildWest.
** There is a small city in UsefulNotes/{{California}} named Mill Valley, which is in Marin County, but there is no desert within walking distance of it.

* Downplayed in ''Super {{Metroid}}'', where the parts of the game that were featured in the NES prequel remain pretty much the same, but much of the geography had considerably changed. Also, while the entirety of the setting had an explosion in the first game, ''Zero Mission'' lets you return and continue exploring long after this event, to which nothing has changed (you can even go back and visit the final area in its entirety, though the last few rooms of it are a charred, blown-out wasteland).

* In the first ''Literature/HarryPotter'' book, it's stated that the geography of Hogwarts magically changes around from time to time - staircases move, steps vanish, doors don't always open and sometimes pretend to be solid walls. JKRowling has explained that she established this early on as a ready-to-fire [[JustifiedTrope justification]] in case this problem ever manifested itself, which, of course, it did.

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'''s Raccoon City is supposed to be a relatively small mountain town in the middle of "The Arklay Mountains", but over the course of the games gains a subway system, a university, all the way up to ''Outbreak: File #2'''s sudden addition of the Raccoon City Zoo. Complete with only that which could become extremely dangerous when zombified or pissed off. If the ending of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' is any indication, characters in the series travel far enough to reach an arid desert-like valley, among other places. At least with ''Code: Veronica'', the game tells you that you're traveling to Antarctica. In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'', it seems to be indicated that Chris and Sheva travel from South Africa to Kenya, though they do travel by boat, jeep, and plane along the way.

** I always thought it was Oberlin or Kent, and that the decent sized city was nearby Akron.

-->--'''Riley''', ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''

* ''{{Castlevania}}''. This was eventually lampshaded and explained in ''AriaOfSorrow''. Chaos, the true master of the castle (Bestiary be damned!), rebuilds the entirety of... [[RetCon whatever the castle is called at that particular time]] from scratch if for no other reason than aesthetics, like some otherworldly interior decorator run amok.
** In ''SymphonyOfTheNight'', Alucard says the castle is a creature of chaos itself, changing its shape every time it is rebuilt.
* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'''s Raccoon City is supposed to be a relatively small mountain town in the middle of "The Arklay Mountains", but over the course of the games gains a subway system, a university, all the way up to Outbreak: File #2's sudden addition of the Raccoon City Zoo. Complete with only that which could become extremely dangerous when zombified or pissed off. If the ending of ''Resident Evil 2'' is any indication, characters in the series travel far enough to reach an arid desert-like valley, among other places. At least with ''Code: Veronica'', the game tells you that you're traveling to Antarctica. In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'', it seems to be indicated that Chris and Sheva travel from South Africa to Kenya, though they do travel by boat, jeep, and plane along the way.

* The Mushroom Kingdom in the ''SuperMarioBros'' series. Yeah, totally different in layout, features and just about everything in literally every single game and adaption, has possibly a more flexible geography situation than even Springfield in ''The Simpsons'', and more... stuff than many series have in the entire universe. Heck, even the [[ChaosArchitecture interiors]] totally change per game.
** Of course, the Mushroom Kingdom is an entire country, so it is conceivable that it could include all of those different areas. That doesn't excuse the architecture of buildings changing from game to game, though.
*** That one is plausibly justified by Bowser tending to wreck the place in every game, so it's not improbable that they simply change the architecture as they rebuild.

** Hyrule is a less extreme version of this trope, as while Hyrule's topography is unmistakably different in each game, the major landmarks and their positions relative to each other remain fairly consistent from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' on (although Kakariko Village appears to have picked itself up and moved to the far end of the kingdom at some point, and in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', Hyrule Castle is to the north, when in all the others it's nearer to the centre).
** Oddly enough, the Wii version of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', which made Link right-handed and flipped the map over, has Lake Hylia (southeast of the castle) and Kakariko (southwest) roughly where it is in comparison to ''A Link to the Past'', while the [=GameCube=] version has the Lake and Gerudo Desert (southwest) and the Lost Woods [by a different name] (south-southeast) analogous to ''Ocarina of Time''.
* Partially averted in ''Super {{Metroid}}'', where the parts of the game that were featured in the NES prequel remain pretty much the same, but much of the geography had considerably changed. Although one can argue this is due in part to a large explosion at the end of the first game, said game's remake lets you return and continue exploring long after this event, to which nothing has changed (You can even go back and visit the final area in its entirety, though the last few rooms of it are a charred, blown-out wasteland.)

* This is a gameplay mechanic in ''LegendOfMana'': you get to place... ''places'' on the World Map. Each place emanates Mana of certain colors, which affects immediate previously placed places.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Quahog, Rhode Island is seemingly a suburb of Providence (with its skyline in the background), which has a modest metropolitan population of 1.6 million in real life, and a city proper of less than 200,000. Despite this, Quahog has an international airport, a subway system, and other "big city" features that even Providence lacks. Sometimes the small skyline resembles Providence well, other times it looks like a huge sprawling metropolis. Some could argue that some of the scenes take place in Boston, about 40-50 miles away, but most of these big-city scenes do not resemble Boston either. Earlier episodes resembled the real-life area more (Peter Griffin even jumps off a skyscraper resembling one in Providence), whereas later episodes drifted apart from the real-life counterpart, where Quahog has a split personality between small town and bustling metropolis depending on the nature of the plot.

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* Averted to the point of excessive detail in the ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series, about the small Appalachian town of Grantville transported back to the times of the ThirtyYearsWar. You would think, that the townspeople will start summoning every conceivable future technology needed for themselves, but actually the series takes itself very seriously as a realistic thought experiment about such a town's chances, and consistently keeps track of every person, weapon, computer, book, machine shop, farm, and raw material that is likely to be present in a town of similar properties. In fact, even when it seems like the writers are doing this trope, by surprisingly revealing useful materials such as a formerly hidden library in a mansion's basement, or a huge yacht in some dude's backyard years after the time travel, it's because at a closer inspection they just discovered equivalent anomalies in the real life town of Mannington that they used as a template, so they allowed them in Grantville as well.

** Made very well explicit in ''TheDarkTower''. The geography and distances are stated in-story to actually change. This is probably our first clue that something is seriously wrong with the world.

* Averted to the point of excessive detail in the SixteenThirtyTwo series, about the small Appalachian town of Grantville transported back to the times of the ThirtyYearsWar. You would think, that the townspeople will start summoning every concievable future technology needed for themselves, but actually the series takes itself very seriously as a realistic thought experiment about such a town's chances, and consistently keeps track of every person, weapon, computer, book, machine shop, farm, and raw material that is likely to be present in a town of similar properties.
** In fact, even when it seems like the writers are doing this trope, by surprisingly revealing useful materials such as a formerly hidden library in a mansion's basement, or a huge yacht in some dude's backyard years after the time travel, it's because at a closer inspection they just discovered equivalent anomalies in the real life town of Mannington that they used as a template, so they allowed them in Grantville as well.

* Bikini Bottom from ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' is shown to be this, as well. In most episodes it's a typical small town (small towns are '''usually''' underwater, right?), but other episodes have shown that it contains a mall, a racetrack, and an Olympic stadium, among other things.