History Main / TelevisionGeography

* Though ''Disney/{{Bolt}}'' does play part of it correctly, a specific moment in the [[BigApplesauce New York]] part makes it obvious the creators haven't been there. The location is established via a shot of the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street at Times Square, a nondescript intersection with a generic deli in the background and a sign letting you know it's Times Square. In real life, this sign doesn't exist, because it's difficult to miss the riot of huge lighted billboards and neon advertisements, and currently in the background at the time of this writing and when the film was made is the distinctive swooping facade of a clothing store.

* ''Anime/{{Beyblade}}'' had a tournament in Sydney, Australia. Some characters decide that they want to have private conversation, so they meet ''five minutes later'' on top of Uluru. To those outside Australia, to get from Sydney to Uluru they would have to go over 2000 km (or over 1200 miles).

* ''Anime/{{Beyblade}}'' had a tournament in Sydney, Australia. Some characters decide that they want to have private conversation, so they meet ''five minutes later'' on top of Uluru. To those outside Australia, to get from Sydney to Uluru they would have to go over 2000 km.

* ''X'', a vigilante super hero from Creator/DarkHorseComics. A scene taking place at the Vietnam Memorial shows office-building skyscrapers in the background. Naturally, no such buildings are anywhere near the place, much less all the more important locales in D.C.

* In Alan Moore's ''American Gothic'' run, Swampthing chases La Brujeria to Chiloe, Chile, and we see him appearing from The Green in the middle of an amazonian rainforest, with aborigins and all. Actually, Chiloe is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivian_temperate_rainforest Valdivian temperate rainforest]]. Maybe it was pre-crisis Earth-1 Chiloe.
* During the original ''ComicBook/SecretWars'', one of the chunks that made up the Beyonder's artificial world was a “suburb of Denver.” Not only did the writer not even bother to name that suburb, but the artist gave it brownstones and standard Eastern seaboard apartment buildings, generic city streets, etc.--and even Denver doesn't look like that, let alone any of the suburbs. Needless to say, Colorado readers rolled their eyes.

* Kafka's unfinished book ''Amerika'' features some serious geographical anomalies -- like the city of Boston being located "just across the Hudson River" from New York City, or having a character try to travel from New York to San Francisco by heading EAST. Scholars are divided as to whether this was intentional surrealism or Kafka just not doing his homework.

** Not to mention that apparently you can get from Forks [[ArtisticLicenseGeography to Alaska]] in sixteen hours. On (apparently) one tank of gas. That's almost two and a half thousand miles—Edward would have had to be travelling at supersonic speeds. The Al-Can highway is so long and so remote that they have (or used to have) checkpoints; when you leave one, they radio ahead to the next to tell them you're coming. If you don't show up in a certain amount of time, they go looking for you to make sure you're not dead. This simply cannot be done in sixteen hours.
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' is a regular offender. Conan Doyle was a Scot with little knowledge of London, and it shows; it's quite impossible to establish the location of 221b Baker Street because Conan Doyle had no accurate knowledge of the area and simply made it up, and many of Holmes' journeys around London are no better. The "opium den" in Limehouse is clearly taken from generic period fiction.

* RosemaryEdgehill is atrocious on New York layout. In one of her "Twelve Treasures" fantasies, she puts the Arms & Armor collection in the basement (?) of the "Museum of Natural History", and moves THAT to Museum Mile on the East Side, when the AMNH is on the West Side. Granted, the Museum of Natural History has some examples of non-European arms and armor as part of the Ethnographic exhibits. In reality the most prominent Arms and Armor collection in New York is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 1000 Fifth Ave, and that gallery is on the first floor, although the department offices and storerooms are indeed in the basement.

* "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver starts out with the lyric "Almost heaven/West Virginia/Blue Ridge Mountains/Shenandoah River". The Shenandoah River barely nicks West Virginia, and the same is true of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

* Along those same lines, "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace features the lyric, "Daddy was a cop on the east[[note]]though in fairness, this could be a reference to the downtown and adjacent rough areas of the city, which lie just west of Lake Michigan and thus east of the rest of the city[[/note]] side of Chicago." In the words of one respondent to Creator/DaveBarry's Bad Songs survey, "There IS no east side of Chicago; just an awfully, awfully big lake. Daddy would've needed scuba gear to walk the beat."
* Billy Joel's song "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" includes the lines "And his daring life of crime/Made him a legend in his time/East and west of the Rio Grande." Years later, Joel shamefacedly admitted bungling his geography -- the Rio Grande flows west to east, and you can only be north or south of it. Actually averted since it flows North-South inside New Mexico.
* "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey tells a tale of a "city boy, born and raised in South Detroit." Depending on where you are in Detroit, "South Detroit" is either in Canada or in the area on the U.S. side of the Detroit River known locally as "Downriver". Either way, it's probably not what the San Francisco-based band was going for.

** Not to mention that apparently you can get from Forks [[YouFailGeographyForever to Alaska]] in sixteen hours. On (apparently) one tank of gas. That's almost two and a half thousand miles—Edward would have had to be travelling at supersonic speeds. The Al-Can highway is so long and so remote that they have (or used to have) checkpoints; when you leave one, they radio ahead to the next to tell them you're coming. If you don't show up in a certain amount of time, they go looking for you to make sure you're not dead. This simply cannot be done in sixteen hours.

Not to be confused with HollywoodAtlas.

[[folder:Theater]]

** For that matter, it's never clear just [[WhereTheHeckIsSpringfield where]] their American desert with a volcano in it is. By contrast, in the comic book, Mt. St. Hillary is clearly a stand-in for Mt. St. Helens in Washington state, and the surrounding territory is appropriately green, not a desert.

** For that matter, it's never clear just [[WhereTheHeckIsSpringfield where]] their American desert with a volcano in it is. By contrast, in the comic book, Mt. St. Hillary is clearly a stand-in for Mt. St. Helens in Washington, and the surrounding territory is appropriately green, not a desert.

* In ''[[Franchise/TransformersGeneration1 The Transformers,]]'' it was a plot point that (EarlyInstallmentWeirdness aside) most of the Autobots could not fly. They didn't gain any flying team members capable of carrying the others until Skyfire joined late in the first season, and he rarely appeared in the second season. None the less, whenever the Autobots had to get to Africa or South America or Asia in a big hurry, they would all drive dramatically out of their H.Q., we'd cut to the next scene... and there they would be at their destination! Did they ''drive'' there? Nobody knows.

* The opening cutscene for ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' shows a sign for "Grady's Inn" with a 212 area code, which is exclusive to Manhattan.

* In a mild subversion, the Shibuya featured in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' is mostly identical to the real Shibuya, but with the names of many stores and buildings changed due to copyright issues (e.g. "Towa Records" instead of Tower Records).

* There is an arcade game showing a scene of a helicopter flying through massive skyscrapers and listing the location as "Green Bay, Wisconsin". The tallest building in Green Bay is the 10-story St. Vincent's Hospital, as seen in this picture of the [[http://www.olej.com/community.asp skyline]].
* ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'''s map based on New York. The {{mons}}...not so much. These include bison and a weird thing that is supposed to be based on the Nazca lines but looks like a mobile.
** Bouffalant might be inspired by the city of Buffalo, which would still be an example of this trope since the animal doesn't actually live anywhere near New York State.
** Similarly, the original games had a map based on Tokyo and the {{mons}} included the platypus-like Psyduck and the Rafflesia-like Vileplume, among other not-Japanese natives.

*** This is HilariousInHindsight, because jobs have been steadily flowing ''north'' [[DyingTown out of Niagara]] for decades.

* ''Anime/{{Beyblade}}'' had a tournament in Sydney, Australia. Some characters decide that they want to have private conversation, so they meet ''five minutes later'' on top of Uluru. To those outside Australia, to get from Sydney to Uluru they would have to go over 2000km.

* RosemaryEdgehill is atrocious on New York layout. In one of her "Twelve Treasures" fantasies, she puts the Arms & Armor collection in the basement (?) of the "Museum of Natural History", and moves THAT to Museum Mile on the East Side, when the AMNH is on the West Side. Granted, the Museum of Natural History has some examples of arms and armor as part of the Ethnographic exhibits. In reality the most prominent Arms and Armor collection in New York is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 1000 Fifth Ave, and that gallery is on the first floor, although the department offices and storerooms are indeed in the basement.

* RosemaryEdgehill is atrocious on New York layout. In one of her "Twelve Treasures" fantasies, she puts the Arms & Armor collection in the basement (?) of the "Museum of Natural History"... and moves THAT to Museum Mile, when it is on the West Side.

* Dan Fogelberg's "Run for the Roses", about the [[UsefulNotes/HorseRacing Kentucky Derby]], opens with "Born in the valleys/and raised in the trees/of Western Kentucky." The state is indeed the epicenter of the American Thoroughbred breeding industry, but the horse farms are generally within a 30-mile radius of Lexington, which is locally considered to be in ''Central'' Kentucky. For most Kentuckians, "Western" Kentucky doesn't begin until you're at least a 90-minute drive from Lexington.[[note]]And this troper, who grew up in the state's far west, doesn't consider Western Kentucky to begin until nearly three hours out from Lexington.[[/note]]

* Billy Joel's song "The Ballad of Billy The Kid" includes the lines "And his daring life of crime/Made him a legend in his time/East and west of the Rio Grande." Years later, Joel shamefacedly admitted bungling his geography -- the Rio Grande flows west to east, and you can only be north or south of it. Actually averted since it flows North-South inside New Mexico.
* "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey tells a tale of a "city boy, born and raised in South Detroit." "South Detroit" is more commonly known as Canada, which is probably not what the San Francisco based band was going for.

* In Citroën's "Unmistakably German - Made in France" ad, the final insult on its {{Prussia}} take on Germany is getting Berlin's geography wrong. The car pulls up outside the Brandenburg Gate. The guy gets out, the camera switches to show the other side - which clearly shows the Olympic Stadium, which is quite a way away from the Gate.

* Along those same lines, "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace features the lyric, "Daddy was a cop on the east[[note]]though in fairness, this could be a reference to the downtown and adjacent rough areas of the city, which lie just west of Lake Michigan and thus east of the rest of the city[[/note]] side of Chicago." In the words of one respondent to DaveBarry's Bad Songs survey, "There IS no east side of Chicago; just an awfully, awfully big lake. Daddy would've needed scuba gear to walk the beat."

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Resistance}} Resistance 2]]'' has a secret military bunker on [[SanFrancisco Angel Island]]. When you exit the bunker, the Bay Bridge has suspiciously been painted red.

* ''Film/{{Rio}}'' averts with its depiction of Rio de Janeiro. The sequel, however, meshes many distant parts of TheAmazon at walking distance (which the director admits was intentional).

* ''Anime/{{Beyblade}}'' had a tournament in Sydney, Australia. Some characters decide that they want to have private conversation, so they meet ''five minutes later'' on top of Ayers Rock. To those outside Australia, to get from Sydney to Ayers Rock they would have to cross half the country.

[[folder:General]]
* Brazilians speaking Spanish. This has appeared on ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' as a trick question from time to time.
* Referring to Iranians as "Arabs"; according to TheOtherWiki, Persians constitute 61% of the country's population, Azerbaijanis 16%, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, Arabs 2%, Balochs 2%, Turkmens and Turkic tribes 2%, and others 1%. Similar circumstances exist for other non-Arab majority Central Asian countries (such as Turkey and Afghanistan).
* TipisAndTotemPoles
* Watching a ChaseScene filmed in a city you are familiar with? Be ready for FridgeLogic:
** "You can't get to X boulevard from Y street!"
** "How did they get from X boulevard to Z street without passing through B drive?"
** "They just backtracked several miles..."
** "Wow, Route X is surprisingly gridlock free for rush hour..."
[[/folder]]

** Many people, most notably former governor general Michaëlle Jean, have mistakenly referred to the view of the Rocky Mountains from Vancouver. Those would be on the other side of the province, actually. The mountains around Vancouver are the North Shore Mountains, part of the Pacific Ranges.

Scenes set in a city, including the EstablishingShot can be enormously fun for people who actually live there if they can nitpick details.