History Main / GeographicFlexibility

** 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 [[AWizardDidIt magical]] [[MagneticPlotDevice shenanigans]] of a [[{{Hellgate}} Hellmouth]] make it an EldritchLocation.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' , Kansas, 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. Also, Metropolis had a waterfront, even though Kansas is completely landlocked.

** Ankh-Morpork is concisely plotted, but everywhere else can be pretty vague. Fortunately, any possible continuity errors were explained away in ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'' as alternate pasts from the badly-repaired fabric of history.

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

The most common way this occurs is when the story is set in an ostensibly [[SmallTowns small town]]. Small towns [[QuirkyTown have]] [[NothingExcitingEverHappensHere their]] [[SmallTownBoredom advantages]] [[EverytownAmerica for]] [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield fiction]], but they may not have every location the plot requires. The plot calls for a dock, so the town has one. The plot calls for a university, and it's there. The plot calls for an industrial district, and it's there. None of this is inherently unreasonable, since many small towns do have those, or are even built around them. But having ''all of them''? Suddenly the town's not looking so small anymore.

* [[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:

* The Mushroom Kingdom in the ''Franchise/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.

* [[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 ''everything'' a Californian could possibly want:

%%[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse''' Duckburg is surrounded by desert, prairie, mountains, forest and ocean. It has a spaceport, a cathedral and several other unique buildings, most of which are only seen once.

[[folder:Films]]

* Ditto for ''Literature/TheHardyBoys'' and their hometown of Bayport, they've done a little better in more recent stories, ever since they [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield pinned down where the two towns actually are.]] Now, they've made the two towns suburbs within one-day's driving distance from Chicago (River Heights) and New York (Bayport.) Nowadays they just go visit, call, or e-mail when they need help.

** 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. Oh, and there's also a warehouse district. Not just a couple of warehouses, but an entire ''district'' that the functions as a de facto community for the town's nonhuman population.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales''' Duckburg is surrounded by desert, prairie, mountains, forest and ocean. It has a spaceport, a cathedral and several other unique buildings, most of which are only seen once.

* The animated show ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'' suffers from this slightly. Most clues to the location of the show put it in France (satellite photos), despite a few episodes contradicting this (such as the visit of a French foreign exchange student). This however, is an artifact of [[DubInducedPlotHole the dubbing and localization process]]. [[{{Fanon}} The town would be]] specifically [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulogne-Billancourt Boulogne-Billancourt]], in the suburbs of Paris. However, the French version does obfuscate a bit the exact location too, never mentioning any place name (or that the river is the Seine).

* Dimmsdale of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' could be its own country for all that happens there, even ''without'' Timmy's interference.
** ''Fairy Idol'' reveals Dimmsdale to be located in southern California, in an area east of Burbank but west of Death Valley. However, there is the fictional snow covered mountainous country of "Tibecuador" that exists in Central America.
** Dimmsdale is in Imperial County, California, which is at the southeast corner of the state (east of San Diego County and south of Riverside County). Dimmsdale also seems big enough to have a population in the millions, whereas the real Imperial County has a population of slightly over 100,000.
** Although the show was usually unambiguous about Dimmsdale being out west, there was the episode that flashed back to the founder, "Dale Dimm," who lived in what appeared to be a knockoff of colonial Salem (or about as far away in America as you're going to get).
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' which is located in Park County Colorado (nearby Middle Park and North Park are rarely mentioned) and is nearby Fairplay, Fort Collins, Greeley, and seems to be a suburb of Denver. While we often hear it described as a "small redneck town". While the first few seasons stuck to a fairly limited set of in-town locations and were somewhat consistent (Stan lived directly across the tracks from Kenny, for example, and Chef nearby) as the animation improved, the town's layout became increasingly inconsistent, with new locations often appearing for single episodes, familiar ones being shifted around for episodic convenience, and even locations originally implied to be outside town (Hell's Pass Hospital, the larger Park County Police Station) gradually appearing within it. Nowadays, it has malls, supermarkets, baseball parks, television studios, a "little future" time-travellers' district and several fast food chains, both fictional and real, not to mention a plastic surgeon (Tom's Rhinoplasty has been on Main Street since the Pilot) - all in addition to the more eccentric Stark's Pond, the Cattle Ranch, and Dr. Mephesto's Genetic Engineering Ranch from the beginning, which are rarely seen today.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeamoSupremo'' was constantly summoned by The Governor to save the state, but exactly which state the series takes place in is never revealed/stated.

* According to [[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} The Other Wiki]], X Middle School from ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'' is located in the suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, though based on the characters' nationalities, interests, and accents (although many of the parents have [[MinnesotaNice stereotypical Midwestern accents]]) it could be located almost anywhere.

* Bikini Bottom from ''WesternAnimation/{{SpongeBob SquarePants}}'' 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.

* ''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. It does not have monsters or a talking dog. Probably.

* ''VideoGame/RealityOnTheNorm''. It is a SharedUniverse based around the eponymous city. The first game featured a handful of very basically drawn locations. With each new game, these same locations have been considerably expanded, with different versions of the same places used interchangably. It's only been in recent years that any real attempt has been made to bring some coherence to their respective locations.

* ACDC Town in ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' got a radical overhaul starting with the fourth game, which led to a weird geographic example of FlashbackWithTheOtherDarrin in the fifth. (Where ACDC Town is seen decades in the past, with its BN4 layout)

* In ''Franchise/WildArms'', the planet of Filgaia is explicitly the same place over all five games, but so long and so many catastrophes happen between them that it's almost a completely different place each time, including one version that lacks ''oceans''.

* The [[CityWithNoName 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]]''.

** Unseen University has this in spades, thanks to high levels of magic. Got worse when the Wizards started doing it deliberately.

* 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, so live out in the plains.

* In the author's notes for ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth'', Creator/HarryTurtledove admits that he took a degree of ArtisticLicense for a scene where the Confederates look into Washington D.C. from atop a nearby hill and see buildings like the War Department and the White House.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is in Colorado. We hear it's a small redneck town, and it did show it more than ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' that it seemed to be so, but, nowadays, it has malls, supermarkets, baseball parks, TV studios, a "little future" time-travellers' district and several fast food chains, both fictional and real, not to mention a plastic surgeon (Tom's Rhinoplasty appears in a lot of background shots). Strangely enough, some locations, such as Stark's pond and Doctor Mephesto's lab, still exist. {{Fanon}} states that the South Park docks were built hastily over Stark's pond for the Halloween party.
** It was also usually portrayed as having only one police officer, Barbrady, early in the show. Later, when the plot required, they started using a police department of slightly less-inept cops in a nearby, apparently larger, city.
** Some things like the Wal-Mart are shown to be new additions - it could be [[FanWank thought that the town is expanding as time goes on in the show]] ([[StatusQuoIsGod while the kids have only advanced one grade in a decade, of course]]).