History Main / LondonEnglandSyndrome

* Parodied in John Cleese's made-for-TV film ''The Strange Case of the End of Civilization As We Know It'', in which a dim-witted US President (a NoCelebritiesWereHarmed version of Gerald Ford) orders a secret service agent to catch "the first plane to London, France."

* ''[[Film/TenaciousDInThePickOfDestiny J.B.]]'' travels to Hollywoods all across America before he gets to Hollywood, California.

* Averted in ''TheManFromUNCLE'', which regularly used scene-setting "Somewhere In (Insert Place Here") captions.
* PicketFences had an episode that dealt with ThePope going to Rome. Not Rome in Italy but Rome, Wisconsin (the setting for the show).

* In one episode of ''TheLucyShow'', Lucy takes the trope even further by specifying that she's taking a trip to "London, England, In Europe."

* Los Angeles invokes this when it says that .la is the first top-level domain ever given to a city. It isn't--.la is the Country-Code Top-level domain for ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Laos}}]]''.

* Los Angeles invokes this when it says that .la is the first top-level domain ever given to a city. It isn't--.la is the Country-Code Top-level domain for ''[[UsefulNotes/Laos]]''.

** A similar, but more extreme, parody occurs in the Canadian radio series ''Radio/AsItHappens'' - something of a mixture of ''Series/SixtyMinutes'' and ''Series/TheDailyShow'', with a small bit of ''Radio/APrairieHomeCompanion'' thrown in - which, regardless of the context, when discussing locations in the British Isles will always give the name of the location, and its exact distance from Reading as a RunningGag.

-->'''Joe''': Cairo... [[CaptainObvious that's in Egypt]]."

* Pro wrestling announcers are really terrible about this. Regardless of how long they've been in the company, how often they've played the ForeignWrestlingHeel, or how obvious they are about it, the announcer always makes sure to mention they're from [[Wrestling/ChrisJericho "Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada"]] or "Swansea, Wales, UK." The most frustrating is Ezekiel Jackson, who is announced as being from "Guyana, South America." Weirdly, they never call it "Death Valley, California" when introducing TheUndertaker (likely to invoke the PartsUnknown vibe).

* Played with in an early Comicbook/{{Cable}} story where Cable goes on a date with [[ActionGirl Domino]]:

* An old ad for a credit card service (Capital One, if I remember correctly) featured a family complaining about their credit card service not offering them free airline miles for purchases, so the dad invented a machine to teleport them to their vacation destination. The father enters the destination as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg,_FL St. Petersburg, Florida,]] with the family dressed in beach attire. The machine teleports them to cold St. Petersburg, Russia.

* In the ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "The Lion and the Unicorn" (the last one before the transition to ''The New Batman Adventures''), Alfred travels to England to help an old friend of his. When he calls Bruce to tell him, Bruce asks "London, England?", and Alfred answers, "There is only one." Whether he meant "only one London" (which would be an odd CriticalResearchFailure on Alfred's part) or "only one ''London, England''" is up to debate.
* Notably, ''TotallySpies'' averts this: wherever the girls go, only the name of the city pops up at the bottom of the screen, without a state or country (i.e. you never, ''ever'', see "Beverly Hills, California" in these captions). They still use the EiffelTowerEffect whenever applicable, though.

In France, the tendency is to ram the identifier into the town name itself, so one gets places like Saint-Marie-Sur-Aube and Saint-Marie-Sur-Orne and Saint-Marie-En-Provence, etc. The American equivalent would be if towns were actually named "Springfield-in-Massachusetts" and "Springfield-in-Illinois."[[hottip:*: There is a Washington-On-The-Brazos in Texas though.]] Some British towns, such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Stratford-upon-Avon and Berwick-upon-Tweed, follow this scheme as well (though in that case the -upon- always comes before the name of a river that goes through the city), as well as Frankfurt am Main in Germany (which most people know only as Frankfurt, anyway, as Frankfurt (Oder) isn't nearly as important). The logical equivalent in America for this would be hypothetical city names such as "New-York-Upon-Hudson" and "Washington-Upon-Potomac."[[hottip:**:And again, some American cities do this, like Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio (the lake in this case being Erie), which distinguishes it from plain old Geneva, Ohio a few miles south, and by extension also the original Geneva (both the canton and the city) in UsefulNotes/Switzerland.]]

** There's also a Michigan City, Indiana, just 6 miles from the Michigan border (and also located along Lake Michigan). And there's also a Nevada City, California (in Nevada County), but it's much further from the Nevada state line. There's also the famous old silver mining town of Virginia City, Nevada (Virginia is on the other side of the country). Or Colorado City, Arizona, home of some Mormon polygamist sects. Then there's Iowa, Louisiana; Virginia, Minnesota; Oregon, Ohio; Delaware, Ohio...

Unfortunately, this results in some confusion and frustration for many Americans. Since the USA is big and absolutely full of cities, and many of these cities have similar if not identical names (for instance, there are nine states that have a city named "Dallas"), Americans often describe an American location as "''City Name'', ''State''", and describe a foreign location as "''City Name'', ''Country''" to parallel that. This works well in the USA, but becomes rather jarring and annoying for foreigners, who find it annoying that after being shown Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, and St Paul's Cathedral [[TheMummyTrilogy all in one shot]], they still need to say "UsefulNotes/{{London}}, England."

In France, the tendency is to ram the identifier into the town name itself, so one gets places like Saint-Marie-Sur-Aube and Saint-Marie-Sur-Orne and Saint-Marie-En-Provence, etc. The American equivalent would be if towns were actually named "Springfield-in-Massachusetts" and "Springfield-in-Illinois."[[hottip:*: There is a Washington-On-The-Brazos in Texas though.]] Some British towns, such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Stratford-upon-Avon and Berwick-upon-Tweed, follow this scheme as well (though in that case the -upon- always comes before the name of a river that goes through the city), as well as Frankfurt am Main in Germany (which most people know only as Frankfurt, anyway, as Frankfurt an der Oder isn't nearly as important). The logical equivalent in America for this would be hypothetical city names such as "New-York-Upon-Hudson" and "Washington-Upon-Potomac."[[hottip:**:And again, some American cities do this, like Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio (the lake in this case being Erie), which distinguishes it from plain old Geneva, Ohio a few miles south, and by extension also the original Geneva (both the canton and the city) in UsefulNotes/Switzerland.]]

* In one episode of ''WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego?'', the detectives figure out they need to head to a river that's between Cairo and Memphis. When they arrive at the Nile, they find out they should have gone to the Mississippi.

* Speaking of New Zealand, until 1871 there were two Palmerstons - one in South Island between Oamaru and Dunedin and one in North Island on the Manawatu River. The one in the North Island was renamed "Palmerston North" by the Post Office, despite being the larger of the two (Palmerston "South" has a population of 1500, while Palmerston North has a population 81,000)

** There are also numerous Māori place names that are doubled up or very similar. For example, there is Waitangi, Bay of Islands and Waitangi, Chatham Islands. And just to add to the confusion, Waitangi in the South Island Māori dialect is 'Waitaki', which is the name of a major river just north of Oamaru.

* In ''InTheHeatOfTheNight'', Sidney Poitier's character Virgil Tibbs is questioned as to where he resides:
-->'''Tibbs:''' ''Philadelphia.''\\
'''Police Chief Gillespie:''' ''Philadelphia, Mississippi?''\\
'''Tibbs:''' ''Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.''

* ''[[TenaciousDInThePickOfDestiny J.B.]]'' travels to Hollywoods all across America before he gets to Hollywood, California.

** There are also numerous Māori place names that are doubled up or very similar. For example, there are two places named Waitangi ("weeping waters") - the settlement in the Bay of Islands where the Treaty of Waitangi[[note]]Considered to be the founding document of modern-day New Zealand[[/note]] was signed, and the main town on the Chatham Islands. And just to add to the confusion, Waitangi in the South Island Māori dialect is 'Waitaki', which is also the name of a river just north of Oamaru responsible for generating 20% of New Zealand's electricity!

** There are also numerous Māori place names that are doubled up or very similar.