History Main / TheMountainsOfIllinois

* ''Film/TheBabysitterKillerQueen'', like [[Film/TheBabysitter its predecessor]], is set in Illinois. Unlike its predecessor, which took place entirely in {{suburbia}} that easily passed for Midwestern, this film makes no effort to hide the fact that it was shot in California, with much of the film taking place on and around a lake in the desert (the real-life Lake Piru near Santa Clarita, with some establishing shots filmed at Lake Powell in Utah) that's just a short drive away from Cole's house.

* ''Film/TheRundown'' has some hills in TheAmazon... considering the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brazil_topo.jpg highest places in the forest]] are nowhere near the Amazon river...

[[folder:Real Life]]

* While not quite mountains, the southern third of Illinois is indeed part of the Ozark Region, and full of hills and rock formations, though it's in the least populous segment of the state, and the vast majority lives in the much flatter northern third of the state, either in Chicago, or the Driftless Region.

* DownplayedTrope in ''Series/StrangerThings'', which takes place in rural Indiana but was shot in the suburbs of {{Atlanta}}, Georgia. Whether this trope is in effect depends on where in the state the fictional town of Hawkins is supposed to be. Southern Indiana can be VERY hilly and has landscapes much like what we see in the show, whereas the state's reputational flatness is more true in the central and northern parts of the state.

* ''Series/TexasRising'' used Mexico to represent all of Texas, leading to glaring errors that would make any Texan roll their eyes. The worst offenders included the Cliffs of San Antonio (the city is rolling hills), the caves of San Jacinto (Houston is built on swampland) and the deserts of Victoria (which is in a subtropic climate, and is quite humid and green)

* ''Film/HaroldAndKumarGoToWhiteCastle'': In the climatic scene, the heroes [[spoiler:hang glide off a massive cliff to reach the White Castle in Cherry Hill, NJ. Sadly, there are no such cliffs.]]

* A particularly grievous example is shown in the alleged documentary ''Film/TheFourthKind'', which supposedly takes place in a version of Nome, Alaska that's somehow nestled between towering mountains and lush evergreen forests. Anyone who has been within ''several hundred miles'' of Nome can tell you there are no mountains or forests anywhere near the city and that it's actually surrounded on all sides by tundra and ''the ocean.''

* In JohnCarpenter's ''Film/{{Halloween|1978}}'':

* A particularly grievous example is shown in the alleged documentary ''Film/TheFourthKind'', which supposedly takes place in Nome, Alaska. Anyone who has been within ''several hundred miles'' of Nome can tell you that there are no mountains or lush evergreen forests anywhere near the city--it's surrounded on all sides by tundra or ''the ocean.''

* Inverted in most outlets with the depiction of Colombian cities. ''Film/MrAndMrsSmith2005'', ''Film/{{Colombiana}}'', and a bunch of other movies depict Bogotá as an arid or tropical, generally hot place. In reality, while Bogotá is less than 5 degrees of latitude north of the equator, it's shoehorned into a valley in the middle of the Andes (8000+ feet above sea level) and it's a rather cold city.[[note]]Bogotá has never recorded a temperature higher than 30 °C (86 °F), typical highs throughout the year are a hair below 20 °C, and lows are routinely in the single digits Celsius and once in a great while drop below freezing.[[/note]] Other Andean cities like Santiago and Lima tend to have the same problem if depicted.

* ''[[Film/Dhoom3]]'', set mostly in Chicago, has an actual example at the end involving a dam in a deep river gorge among tall mountains... in southern Illinois, in a clear case of [[HollywoodGeography Bollywood Geography]]. (The scenes in question were filmed in India, and the film was made for an Indian audience not expected to be familiar with the American Midwest.)

* ''Film/{{Pathfinder}}'' has Native Americans fighting Viking warriors in a version of New England that closely resembles a mashup of Switzerland's Alps and the Olympic Peninsula's temperate rain forest.

Movies and TV shows, wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in [[CaliforniaDoubling Southern California]] or [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} British Columbia]]. This leads to a common error where mountains show up in the background of settings which have no visible peaks in RealLife.

!!!'''Series:'''

* Invoked case: In ''Film/AustinPowersTheSpyWhoShaggedMe'', the Hollywood hills are clearly visible in the background to the "London" scenes. According to the commentary, the hills can't be seen from the set but were deliberately added in in post-production to make the scene [[StylisticSuck look even more fake]]. Austin lampshades it by saying, "You know what's remarkable? Is how much England looks in no way like Southern California."

%%* The same Kansas Problems for Clark and the gang also apply to ''Series/{{Jericho}}''.

* ''Film/IStillKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer'' takes place in the Caribbean, but obviously was not filmed there, due to the presence of mountainscapes.[[note]]This could have been avoided if the film had been set in UsefulNotes/{{Jamaica}} or the ''other'' Caribbean territories have mountains instead of UsefulNotes/UsefulNotes/TheBahamas which is indeed lacking mountainscapes.[[/note]]

* The ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms series ''Figment 2'' shows mountains in UsefulNotes/{{Florida}} when there are none in that state in reality [[note]]aside from artificial ones in Ride/WaltDisneyWorld of course[[/note]].

A subtrope of TelevisionGeography. See also MisplacedVegetation. While examples of this trope need not actually take place in Illinois or the midwestern United States, they must indeed involve mountains or hills appearing where they should not be. Inversions — when mountains ''don't'' appear where they should — are okay, but all non-mountain-related tropes belong on TelevisionGeography.

* ''Manga/MiamiGuns'' parodies Japanese cop show cliches, and is set in ostensibly-Miami. Various episodes have villains illegally drift racing through the mountains of Florida (max. elevation 346 feet).

* One of Billy Connolly's stand-up routines in the 1980s was about folk songs that made no sense when analysed or were factually inaccurate, including one called "The Misty Blue Hills of Tiree" - "But if you have ever been in Tiree, it's like a bloody billiard table!"

* The ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms series ''Figment 2'' shows mountains in Florida when there are none in that state in reality [[note]]aside from artificial ones in Ride/WaltDisneyWorld of course[[/note]].

* Marvel's ''Franchise/TheTransformers'' comics had the Autobot base theoretically located in Oregon, but featured dry, rocky terrain that resembled that of New Mexico or southern Utah. While eastern Oregon is dry and rocky, it still has plenty of trees and shrubs and doesn't feature the weird rock formations that the comic typically had.

* In John Carpenter's ''Film/{{Halloween|1978}}'':

* ''Film/IStillKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer'' takes place in the Caribbean, but obviously was not filmed there, due to the presence of mountainscapes.

*** Co-showrunner Brannon Braga actually grew up in "Flyover Country"...in Bozeman, Montana. Maybe he was overcompensating?
** Captain Archer and T'pol are sent to {{UsefulNotes/Detroit}} to foil a Xindi plot. As the end credits play, as {{Website/SFDebris}} puts it, the sun rises on the "beautiful mountains of Detroit".
* Another inversion in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': Worf and Alexander get stuck in Alexander's Ancient West holodeck program set in Deadwood. The real Deadwood is at the bottom of a deep gulch in the middle of the Black ''Hills'' of South Dakota, yet there is not a mountain in sight. Deadwood is ALWAYS depicted on a prairie somewhere!

* The illegal road race in ''Series/{{Drive}}'' begins in Key West and runs through South/Central Florida for several episodes, featuring the mountains of the Florida Keys and Everglades in many of the highway scenes.