History Main / GeographicFlexibility

[[folder:Comics]]

** For a "one Starbucks town", there's a ''lot'' of local hot spots, even though it was also stated in the pilot that the Bronze was the only hot spot in town; Buffy's mom moved to Sunnydale to work at an ''art gallery'', and a zoo, an ice rink, and an indoor mall all appeared in the first two seasons. In Season 7 there are now several more nightclubs, once a SerialKiller starts stalking them.

** The PoliceAreUseless, of course, but most small towns don't have a police ''department'', just a sheriff. Sunnydale not only has enough [=LEOs=] to have multiple detectives, but also a fire department.
** The high school was described as typical of a small town, but turned out to have football and baseball fields, as well as an Olympic-size ''indoor'' swimming pool. It's also within walking distance of a community college ''and'' a [[CaliforniaUniversity campus of the University of California]].

** It has a bus station, a train station, an airport, and not just a beach but an entire waterfront district. It also ''lost'' the entire beach/waterfront portions when the finale needed it to be landlocked.
** It was also stated in the pilot that the Bronze was the only hot spot in town, but a zoo, an ice rink, and an indoor mall all appeared in the first two seasons. In Season 7 there are now several more nightclubs, once a SerialKiller starts stalking them.

** Just in passing, a reservoir and dam were shown, justifying how Buffy never complained about water shortages.

* Ponyville in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' seems to acquire a system of gem-loaded caves, a really big mountain, a large cliff, and who knows how much other stuff when the episode calls for it.

* The Candy Kingdom in the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' was contained entirely within its city walls, and had a population small enough to be protected by [[ActionDuo Finn and Jake]] and fit inside the castle's main hall. At the end of season five, there are subway trains with ads in multiple languages, a police force complete with helicopters and a jail, and has expanded outside the walls to the extent that the government collects taxes from Finn and Jake themselves.

* ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated'' is set in Crystal Cove, which actually exists in southern California. It's on Pacific Coast Highway (state highway 1) south-southeast of Los Angeles proper.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' didn't do too badly; the titular town's geography remained stable, as did Metropolis. But it still cropped up from time to time; the Smallville Luthorcorp plant seemed to grow an entire research wing (on a waste treatment plant) and Metropolis was sometimes so close to Smallville you could see it from a not very tall windmill and sometimes far enough away even SuperSpeed took a while to get you there.

* ''ParksAndRecreation'': The Parks building seems to have more murals than could possibly fit in the building. Justified due to the show's RunningGag of having a mural for pretty much every situation that comes up.

* Angel Grove for the first six seasons of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'', largely due to the mix of varying StockFootage from ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' and on-location footage from LA. There's the city proper, the beach, the adjacent vast desert, a large forested nature preserve, the park (which got bigger as time went on, eventually developing a massive lake that wasn't there before), snow-capped mountains not too far away, and, of course, innumerable suspiciously similar quarries scattered throughout all of the above for convenient fight-sceneing.

* The fictional Lanford, Illinois in ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'' wasn't as bad as most. However, it started as a small rural backwater with one single factory supplying jobs for the majority of the town (the collapse of Wellman Plastics had a strong ripple during the show.) As the series went on, it became large enough to support a mall that should have provided just as many jobs as the factory, and such niche stores such as a motorcycle shop (temporarily,) a rare book store, a community theater, a sleazy massage parlor, a Hooters-knockoff called "Bunz."

* Pine Valley, PA, setting of ''Series/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 much later), and the headquarters of several major corporations. It also has a beach. In Pennsylvania. An ad for the show on Soapnet parodied all this. And there are several ''uncharted islands'' off this beach. In Pennsylvania. 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. You can substitute nearly every American Soap Opera town: Salem on ''Series/DaysOfOurLives'', Port Charles on ''Series/GeneralHospital''. Not only do these towns acquire new neighborhoods as the plot demands, they are also hotbeds of international crime and espionage.

%%* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' openly embraces this problem. See JustForFun/SeparateSimpsonsGeographyThing.

* The main town of the ''{{Franchise/Buildingverse}}'' is prone to this (it grew several restaurants, a university, a [[VanishingVillage river that later couldn't be found]], or [[Webcomic/MeanwhileUpstairs a hill]] just to make a heroic DivingSave possible, amongst other things), as are magical kingdoms where ''[[Webcomic/GirlsNextDoor Sudden Geography]]'', for example [[{{Webcomic/Roommates}} a sea appearing from nowhere]] to [[TravellingAtTheSpeedOfPlot slow down an attacking army]], is totally normal. All this in universe is explained by... [[AWizardDidIt magic]] or flat out ''[[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative Convenience]]''.

* The [[TheTownWithNoName main town]] of the ''{{Franchise/Buildingverse}}'' is prone to this (it grew several restaurants, a university, a [[VanishingVillage river that later couldn't be found]], or [[Webcomic/MeanwhileUpstairs a hill]] just to make a heroic DivingSave possible, amongst other things), as are magical kingdoms where ''[[Webcomic/GirlsNextDoor Sudden Geography]]'', for example [[{{Webcomic/Roommates}} a sea appearing from nowhere]] to [[TravellingAtTheSpeedOfPlot slow down an attacking army]], is totally normal. All this in universe is explained by... [[AWizardDidIt magic]] or flat out ''[[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative Convenience]]''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' openly embraces this problem. See JustForFun/SeparateSimpsonsGeographyThing.

* Hilariously [[AvertedTrope averted]] in one episode of ''{{Glee}}''. Some students plan to steal a tiger from Lima's zoo to use in a Katy Perry-themed performance, but there's a problem:

* Hilariously [[AvertedTrope averted]] in one episode of ''[[Series/Glee]]. Some students plan to steal a tiger from Lima's zoo to use in a Katy Perry-themed performance, but there's a problem:

** It has a bus station, a train station, an airport, and not just a beach but an entire waterfront district.
** It also ''lost'' the entire beach/waterfront portions when the finale needed it to be landlocked.

** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the episode "Buffy vs Dracula" when Riley wondered how he'd never noticed Sunnydale had its own gothic castle. In that case it's presumed that either Dracula teleported his own castle to Sunnydale, assuming residents wouldn't [[ExtraStrengthMasquerade notice or care]], or that the entire episode was caused by reality alteration due to [[spoiler:the retroactive creation of Buffy's sister Dawn]].
** Also all {{justified|Trope}} by [[spoiler:the Mayor of Sunnydale being a BigBad who built the town specifically to draw humans to the Hellmouth as [[AFeteWorseThanDeath food for demons]]]]. Another theory is that the Hellmouth makes it an EldritchLocation.

** It was also stated in the pilot that the Bronze was the only hot spot in town, but a zoo, an ice rink, and an indoor mall all appeared in the first two seasons.

** Also all {{justified|Trope}} by [[spoiler:the Mayor of Sunnydale being a BigBad who built the town specifically to draw humans to the Hellmouth as [[AFeteWorseThanDeath food for demons]]]].

* Parodied in the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/ClerksTheAnimatedSeries''; when Leonardo Leonardo is opening his new convenience store-slash-shopping mall only a few doors down from the Quick Stop AND his new skyscraper, both Dante and Randall point out how unlikely it is that they wouldn't have noticed such large buildings constructed around them; especially as Leonardo's skyscraper is the ''only skyscraper in the entire town''.

** Actually, the official map of Equestria has now been leaked, view it [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120811193360/mlp/images/1/12/Map_of_Equestria_online_version_2012-08.jpg here.]]

** The high school was described as typical of a small town, but turned out to have football and baseball fields, as well as an Olympic-size swimming pool. It's also within walking distance of a community college ''and'' a [[CaliforniaUniversity campus of the University of California]].

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* Residents of Dog River, Saskatchewan on ''Series/CornerGas'' often refer to (and drive to) "the city" but it's unclear whether it's Saskatoon or Regina they're going to. In some cases Regina is implied, but in one case Saskatoon is mentioned explicitly, i.e., "You went to Saskatoon for a morning swim?" The show also subverts the trope, often having a character declare emphatically that Dog River doesn't have an item that many sitcom towns tend to have for story convenience. For example, the above-mentioned "morning swim" comment was the result of Brent pretending that his case of pink eye was the result of taking a dip in an over-chlorinated pool, but Hank and Wanda point out that there's not a swimming pool anywhere in Dog River.

* The hills visible in the background of 20th-Century Hill Valley in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' are completely absent in the WildWest milieu of the [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII third]], which is ostensibly set in the same town some hundred-odd years in the past.

** {{Lampshaded}} in the episode "Buffy vs Dracula" when Riley wondered how he'd never noticed Sunnydale had its own gothic castle. In that case it's presumed that either Dracula teleported his own castle to Sunnydale, assuming residents wouldn't [[ExtraStrengthMasquerade notice or care]], or that the entire episode was caused by reality alteration due to [[spoiler:the retroactive creation of Buffy's sister Dawn]].
** Also all {{Justified}} by [[spoiler:the Mayor of Sunnydale being a BigBad who built the town specifically to draw humans to the Hellmouth as [[AFeteWorseThanDeath food for demons]].]]

* The size of Rutherford in ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'' seemed to change between episodes. Sometimes it was implied to be a tiny {{college}} town and other times it seemed to be a decent-sized city.

* 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.

** The most egregrious example would have to be the sudden [[SchizoTech hydroelectric dam]], skyscraper construction site and deadly unguarded cliffs in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well".

* ''ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated'' is set in Crystal Cove, which actually exists in southern California. It's on Pacific Coast Highway (state highway 1) south-southeast of Los Angeles proper.

** It was also stated in the pilot that the Bronze was pretty much the only hot spot in town, but a zoo, an ice rink, and an indoor mall all appeared in the first two seasons.

* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'', 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, ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'' 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).

* [[http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Sunnydale Sunnydale]] in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' was described in the pilot as a "one Starbucks town" and turned out to have pretty much ''everything'' a Californian could possibly want;

*** It also ''lost'' the entire beach/waterfront portions when the finale needed it to be landlocked.

** It has a bus station, a train station, an airport, and an entire waterfront district.

* [[http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Sunnydale Sunnydale]] in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer' was described in the pilot as a "one Starbucks town" and turned out to have pretty much ''everything'' a Californian could possibly want;