History Main / TheMountainsOfIllinois

* Inverted in the US version of ''Series/QueerAsFolk''. It takes place in UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, which is located within the Appalachian Mountains. As a result, the city has a distinctive, hilly terrain. [[note]]A standard joke told to out-of-towners is that if a marble were placed on top of Mt. Washington in the city, it would not stop rolling until it reached Ohio.[[/note]] You wouldn't know this from watching the show, however, since it was filmed in the much flatter UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} (where any marble would roll down the nearest ravine into a creek).

* The "Driftless Area" of Southwestern Wisconsin, Southeastern Minnesota, Northeastern Iowa, and the extreme Northwest of Illinois. While most of these states are relatively flat, the Driftless is very hilly (though not truly mountainous), because it never got covered by ice during the last Ice Age (and therefore doesn't have ''drift'', or glacial deposits).

Movies and TV shows created in the U.S. and Canada, regardless of wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in [[CaliforniaDoubling Southern California]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} British Columbia]], or UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}. This leads to a common error where geographic features such as mountains show up in the background of settings which lack them in RealLife.

* [[Creator/MarvelComics Marvel]]'s ''Franchise/TheTransformers'' comics had the Autobot base theoretically located in UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}}, but featured dry, rocky terrain that resembled that of UsefulNotes/NewMexico or southern UsefulNotes/{{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.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'' takes place in Florida, yet the Casey Junior train sure has to travel up, down and around a lot of mountains...

* The 1941 film serial ''Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainMarvel'' was filmed in the deserts of [[CaliforniaDoubling Southern California]], despite the fact that the first episode supposedly takes place in the jungles of Siam. In fact there seems to be some confusion between Thailand and the Middle East.

* Inverted by ''Film/AliensVsPredatorRequiem'', which lacks the mountains one would find in Gunnison, UsefulNotes/{{Colorado}}, which in real life is up on the Rockies. Along with smaller hills, the town itself is much larger (Gunnison's population doesn't even reach 6,000; along with the area and buildings, the AbsurdlySpaciousSewer is illogical given such excavation is never done in a mountainous, unstable terrain).

* Invoked case: In ''Film/AustinPowersTheSpyWhoShaggedMe'', the Hollywood hills are clearly visible in the background to the "UsefulNotes/{{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 film opens with a sweeping vista of crags and mountains. William Wallace was born near the Ayrshire/Renfrewshire border, a region more noted for its lush fields and coastal plains than craggy mountains. Ironically, the movie was shot in UsefulNotes/{{Ireland}}, which doesn't exactly lack in green fields and coastline.

* ''Film/DeepImpact'' shows a packed highway fleeing Virginia Beach from the impending titular impact. While the movie did film that scene in Virginia, they did so several hours northwest [[note]]specifically on what is now the VA-234 bypass west of Manassas, which was nearing completion at the time filming was done; the mountains in this case are the Bull Run Mountains, an outpost of the Blue Ridge not far from there[[/note]], and thus, has mountains visible that should be well over the horizon. Earlier in the movie Leo finds Sarah on a tall hill outside of the town which is presumably near the coast.
* Early on, ''Film/TheDeerHunter'' has scenes set on a hunting trip in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania—mountains that are clearly shown as having rocky, snowcapped peaks. In reality Pennsylvania's highest mountain is around 3,200 feet high, covered in woods, and you can quite easily drive to the summit.

** This example also ends up being extra egregious when one considers how much the movie and its advertising tried to sell itself as a docudrama that incorporated "real footage" alongside the filmed dramatization.[[labelnote:*]] To wit, they even took the effort of crafting fake news stories for their web advertising campaign that were attributed to the Nome Nugget, a move that actually ended in a lawsuit from said newspaper they then had to settle out of court. [[/labelnote]] If the filmmakers were so dedicated with making the movie's story as convincing as possible, it begs the question why they didn't even attempt to match the geography of the town it was set in.

* The [[TheFilmOfTheSeries movie version]] of ''Film/TheFugitive'' has plenty of this when Kimble steals the ambulance and gets chased to the dam. Most of the film's location shooting that was outside Chicago was done in the Great Smoky Mountains, although the action is nominally confined to Illinois...which is ironic, seeing as how the original show sent Kimble running all over America! Some of the real life filming locations are even referred to by those names. On the other hand, all of the scenes in the Chicago portions of the movie were shot on-location and accurate.

** The town of Haddonfield is supposed to be in Illinois, but a sharp-eyed viewer can not only see mountains in the background of some scenes, but palm trees as well. A sharp-eyed viewer probably already had their suspension of disbelief broken by the ''weather'' in the film, which, in the Midwest, is considerably less green and summery by that point in the year. It doesn't help that all the cars have California plates, or that schools are built with classrooms opening directly into the courtyard, something that's rare in the Midwest.
** A literal example of the trope name happens in ''Film/Halloween4TheReturnOfMichaelMyers'', which was filmed in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Rocky Mountains can be seen in the opening.

* ''Film/KingdomOfHeaven'' fell into the same trap as many depictions of biblical tales and of the crusades. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are usually shown as being in the middle of a flat desert with rolling dunes for miles all around. [[http://www.jewlicious.com/wp-content/uploads/TM/Jerusalem%20Hills_2.jpg This]] is what the [[http://www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Bethlehem_536/Bethlehem-10563.jpg region]] actually looks like.[[note]]Prior to massive planting of woods in the area since 1948 and 1967, it was significantly less wooded - but certainly not a desert as often depicted, and certainly not flat - the two cities sit on top of a 2000ft mountain range. The closest desert is not far off, being the Judean Desert a few miles eastwards, and it looks like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marsava.jpg this]].[[/note]]
* ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'' has a big chase scene in which Bond tries to escape from Bratislava in UsefulNotes/{{Slovakia}} to Vienna in UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} by going over snow covered mountains. The scene was filmed in the Austrian Alps, some 400 kilometers west-southwest of Vienna. Bratislava is actually about 60 km east of Vienna in the same Danube plain, and the surrounding regions in Slovakia and Czech Moravia are mostly rolling hills, not snowbound Alpine mountains. And [[ArtisticLicenseGeography to make matters worse]], Bond supposedly uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline as part of his escape; said pipeline's westernmost end is inside the westernmost border of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}, some 500km ''in the wrong direction''. Even if he made that circuitous of a route, the Carpathian mountains in that area are volcanic, and nothing like the Alps.
** Bratislava and the surrounding area are actually the Illinois of Slovakia when it comes to elevation. And it's certainly possible he ran into alpine peaks on his way... If he turned much further north than necessary. Northern Slovakia (slightly to the east) is the most mountainous region in Slovakia, with Tatras, a southwestern corner of Carpathian mountains, being a typical natural landmark of the country.

** The films are a particularly bad offenders. While some of the islands of the Caribbean do share traits with UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}}, there is no excuse for portraying South Florida and the Everglades as a mountainous region with waterfalls and cenotes among a lush tropical jungle. The Everglades is an open grass swamp with occasional hammocks (islands) of palm, cypress and live oak. You can see for miles in the open areas and there is not even a hill in sight. A hammock of 2-5 feet above the water level is considered a significant rise.

* ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' has a scene where police raid a house in Calumet City, Illinois that serial killer Buffalo Bill is thought to be hiding in. Although the real Calumet City is in flat-as-a-pancake Cook County, the movie scene (which was shot near UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}) shows large hills in the background.

* One of the most pervasive examples is the 1969 Oscar-winning version of ''Film/TrueGrit''. The production was clearly filmed in Colorado and California with numerous shots featuring snow capped mountains in the distance. But these peaks are intended as stand-ins for the Ouachita, Boston and Arbuckle Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma, which are highly weathered mountains and more usually large hills that rarely exceed 2000 feet above sea level, seldom project more than 500 feet above the surrounding terrain, and look nothing like the Rockies or the High Sierras - much to the amusement of anyone familiar with the actual geography so prominently a part of the Portis novel and surprisingly the adapted movie script. The 2010 remake, though shot in New Mexico and Texas, more accurately represents the real terrain of the stated setting, although still was not shot on location.

* ''Series/{{Fargo}}'': Season 2 is set in Luverne, which is in southwest UsefulNotes/{{Minnesota}}. In RealLife it's a prairie town. The show, however, regularly portrays Luverne with lots of pine forests -- a feature of the northeastern part of the state.

** Played hilariously straight with the depiction of Cheyenne, UsefulNotes/{{Wyoming}}. In the show, Cheyenne is surrounded by green rolling hills, verdant forests and is at the base of a snow-covered peak. None of this is true. While there are nice areas of the state, including Yellowstone, Wyoming itself is mostly arid wasteland. To get a mental picture of what it looks like, consider ''Film/StarshipTroopers''. The scenes on "Planet Klandathu" are all shot in Casper, about 80 miles north. That's right, the second-largest city in Wyoming is the ''bug planet''. Also, the show lists Cheyenne's population as soaring as high as [[spoiler: one million residents]]. Currently, the population of Cheyenne is about 67,000 residents, and the ''entire state'' has fewer than 600,000. How on earth could that current infrastructure support an additional [[spoiler: ''933,000 people?!?'' The show certainly did not depict this as a gigantic tent city, which would be the only way this could happen.]]

* ''Series/MissionImpossible'': In "Lover's Knot", the BigBad lives outside London. Fair enough, except that there are mountains in the background - so either he lives ''way'' outside London (like, Wales or Yorkshire outside) or...

* The syndicated cop show ''Series/SilkStalkings'' was filmed in San Diego, but supposedly took place in Palm Beach, Florida. Mount Soledad, the Laguna Mountains and many lesser hills were prominent in the backgrounds of many exterior shots. Several Floridian fans of the show joked that it was obviously Mount Dora we were seeing in the background. [[note]]For the record, Mount Dora, Florida is a small town that sits at an elevation of 144 feet. In Florida, 144 feet puts Mount Dora at one of the higher elevations in the state.[[/note]] While not famous for hills the way, say, San Francisco is, San Diego does have a few streets that climb 144 feet over a few blocks. The highest point in all of Palm Beach County (which is twice the size of Rhode Island) is a 20-foot high ridge east of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

* ''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 has a subtropical climate and is quite humid and green).

* One of the episodes of the first season of ''Series/WonderWoman'' (during WWII) shows a plane carrying Diana Prince and Steve Trevor landing at an airport surrounded by mountains, supposedly Ezeiza, at Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires Province is mainly flat, with two low mountain ranges, Sierra de la Ventana (near Bahía Blanca) and Sierra de Tandil (Tandil); none is even close to Ezeiza.

** For a straighter version of this trope, the season 6 episode "The Rain King" (filmed in California) featured the agents flying into a particularly mountainous region of Kansas farmland....

* The Dutch band Nits made a song named "In the Dutch Mountains". Now, the Netherlands are a country that's about as flat as they come. Large parts lie below sea level. If anything, there are foot hills. The preferred personal vehicle is the bicycle. However, being Dutch, the band was fully aware of all this when they made the song, and [[InvokedTrope the title is just as absurd as the rest of the song]].

* ''VideoGame/{{RUSE}}'' features a single player map that's a homage to the Netherlands in [=WW2=]. There are many little villages carrying the names of famous Dutch ''cities'' who are dozens (or even hundreds) of kilometres apart, located between large tulip fields and occasional ''hill and mountain ranges''.

* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' in the earlier versions would show the Dutch capitol with a background containing hills. This was later fixed because Holland is flat and below sea level.

* Raccoon City in the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games is described as being located in the Midwest... right next to Arklay ''Mountain''. This trope is the reason why {{fanon}} generally [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield places the city]] in either Pennsylvania (where S. D. Perry's novelizations put it, even though very few people consider it Midwestern) or Missouri (which has the Ozarks, and is considered to be on the border between the Midwest and the South).

** In "The Bart Wants What It Wants", Toronto is shown as mountainous and countryside can be seen right outside the CN Tower, where in real life, the CN Tower is located in the heart of the central business district and is surrounded by skyline. Although Toronto does have an extensive ravine system (a relic of the last glacial period) and there ''are'' some hills, true mountains are nowhere to be seen.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Brickleberry}}'' National Park is in Illinois, and features several mountains. In particular is Mount Brickleberry, which is [[BlatantLies said to be]] the highest point on Earth.

* Inverted when Eddie Rabbitt had a 1970's hit with "Rocky Mountain Music". He probably should have consulted with Music/JohnDenver before writing those lyrics, as he himself later admitted he knew nothing about the Rockies.[[note]]At least at the time; he would record his 1980 album ''Horizon'' at the Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado.[[/note]] "Back upon an old dirt road/Next to a swamp full of toads..." A swamp? In the mountains?

* Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation of ''[[Film/WhistleDownTheWind]]'' moves the setting to Louisiana, but includes a scene set in a train tunnel, not a common feature of the state.

* One of the most pervasive examples is the 1969 Oscar winning version of ''Film/TrueGrit''. The production was clearly filmed in Colorado and California with numerous shots featuring snow capped mountains in the distance. But these peaks are intended as stand-ins for the Ouachita, Boston and Arbuckle Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma, which are highly weathered mountains and more usually large hills that rarely exceed 2000 feet above sea level, seldom project more than 500 feet above the surrounding terrain, and look nothing like the Rockies or the High Sierras - much to the amusement of anyone familiar with the actual geography so prominently a part of the Portis novel and surprisingly the adapted movie script. The 2010 remake, though shot in New Mexico and Texas, more accurately represents the real terrain of the stated setting, although still was not shot on location.

* The setting of the Season 6 ''Series/CriminalMinds'' episode "Out Of The Light" is Nash County, UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina, and there are plenty of mountains around (and a woman dies by falling off a cliff not far from the town). However, Nash County is barely in the North Carolina Piedmont and on the eastern side of Raleigh, and thus a sizable distance from any sort of mountains like the nearby Appalachians. There are small hills at the most.

* ''Series/FrontierCircus'': "Journey From Hannibal" is set partially in Hannibal, Missouri. When Casey steps off the train, mountains are visible in the background. And the Mississipi River is curiously absent.

** Played hilariously straight with the depiction of Cheyenne, UsefulNotes/{{Wyoming}}. In the show, Cheyenne is surrounded by green rolling hills, verdant forests and is at the base of a snow-covered peak. None of this is true. While there are nice areas of the state, including Yellowstone, Wyoming itself is mostly arid wasteland. To get a mental picture of what it looks like, consider ''Film/StarshipTroopers''. The scenes on "Planet Klandathu" are all shot in Casper, Wyoming about 80 miles north. That's right, one of the larger cities in Wyoming is the ''bug planet.'' Also, the show lists Cheyenne's population as soaring as high as [[spoiler: one million residents]]. Currently, the population of Cheyenne is about 60,000 residents. How on earth could that current infrastructure support an additional [[spoiler: ''994,000 people?!?'' The show certainly did not depict this as a gigantic tent city, which would be the only way this could happen.]]
* Appears repeatedly in the first two seasons of ''Series/TheLastShip'', with mountains from around UsefulNotes/SanDiego visible in an establishing shot of Norfolk, VA (the nearest mountains are several hundred miles west) and the Coast Range being visible behind an oil platform supposedly off of Louisiana (which has the third-lowest high point of any US state).

** Captain Archer and T'pol are sent to {{UsefulNotes/Detroit}} to foil a Xindi plot. For some reason, there are mountains.

* ''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 subtropical climate, and is quite humid and green).

** Inverted in "Nisei", in which scenes allegedly from Allentown, Pennsylvania, show a completely vacant skyline in multiple directions. Either downtown buildings or mountains should've been in view ''somewhere''.

* Inverted when Eddie Rabbitt had a 1970's hit with "Rocky Mountain Music." He probably should have consulted with Music/JohnDenver before writing those lyrics, as he himself later admitted he knew nothing about the Rockies.[[note]]At least at the time; he would record his 1980 album ''Horizon'' at the Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado.[[/note]] "Back upon an old dirt road/Next to a swamp full of toads..." A swamp? In the mountains?

* The Dutch band Nits made a song named "In The Dutch Mountains". Now, the Netherlands are a country that's about as flat as they come. Large parts lie below sea level. If anything, there are foot hills. The preferred personal vehicle is the bicycle. However, being Dutch, the band was fully aware of all this when they made the song, and [[InvokedTrope the title is just as absurd as the rest of the song]].

* A Website/{{Cracked}} article (can't remember which) once made a throwaway joke about UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}, Ohio, but the writer included a picture of the welcome sign for Cleveland...Georgia. Since neither city's welcome sign mentions the state they're in, the writer ''could'' have been forgiven if the sign's slogan wasn't "Gateway to the Mountains". The closest mountains to Cleveland, Ohio are two hours away in western Pennsylvania.

* The "Driftless Area" of Southwestern Wisconsin, Southeastern Minnesota, Northeastern Iowa, and the extreme Northwest of Illinois. While most of these state are relatively flat, the Driftless is hilly and mountainous, because it never got covered by ice during the last Ice Age (and therefore doesn't have ''drift'', or glacial deposits).

* ''Film/HaroldAndKumarGoToWhiteCastle'': In the climatic scene, the heroes [[spoiler:hang glide off a massive cliff to reach the White Castle in Cherry Hill, NJ. While UsefulNotes/NewJersey does have scenic cliffs, they're nowhere near Cherry Hill. The cliffs are the Hudson River Palisades near New York City; Cherry Hill is a suburb of Philly.]]

* ''Film/AtlasShrugged'', Part II, shows [[InvertedTrope a distinct lack of mountains]] around UswfulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} Municipal Airport, the city is located in the foothills of the Appalachians.

* Named for the opening scene of ''Film/BeginningOfTheEnd'', as {{lampshaded}} in ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''.

* The final scenes of both the anime and manga versions of ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean
]]'' show prominent hills around Port St. Lucie, Florida. Oddly enough, most of the previous landscape shots in ''Stone Ocean'' have been relatively accurate to Florida's actual topography, raising the question of why they chose to go with this inaccuracy for the final scene.

* The final scenes of both the anime and manga versions of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean'' show prominent hills around Port St. Lucie, Florida. Oddly enough, most of the previous landscape shots in ''Stone Ocean'' have been relatively accurate to Florida's actual topography, raising the question of why they chose to go with this inaccuracy for the final scene.

Movies and TV shows created in the U.S. and Canada, refardless of wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in [[CaliforniaDoubling Southern California]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} British Columbia]], or UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}. This leads to a common error where geographic features such as mountains show up in the background of settings which lack them in RealLife.

->''"You guys, this is so '''NOT''' Illinois."''
-->-- '''''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''''', ''Film/BeginningOfTheEnd''

* ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'' has a big chase scene in which Bond tries to escape from Bratislava in Slovakia to Vienna in Austria by going over snow covered mountains. The scene was filmed in the Austrian Alps, some 400 kilometers west-southwest of Vienna. Bratislava is actually about 60 km east of Vienna in the same Danube plain, and the surrounding regions in Slovakia and Czech Moravia are mostly rolling hills, not snowbound Alpine mountains. And [[ArtisticLicenseGeography to make matters worse]], Bond supposedly uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline as part of his escape; said pipeline's westernmost end is inside the westernmost border of Ukraine, some 500km ''in the wrong direction''. Even if he made that circuitous of a route, the Carpathian mountains in that area are volcanic, and nothing like the Alps.

* It even can apply to fantasy worlds. Since ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' trilogy was filmed in New Zealand, there are mountains in most of the scenes. Which is fine, when they are traveling through the Middle-Earth countries that are supposed to be mountainous. Except Rohan is supposed to be a huge grassland for as long as the eye can see. In the DVDCommentary, director Creator/PeterJackson admits that New Zealand simply didn't have any suitable location for that description, so instead they went to show off the most interesting rock formations they could find to produce a cool look, if not a very faithful one.

** The films are a particularly bad offenders. While some of the islands of the Caribbean do share traits with Hawaii, there is no excuse for portraying South Florida and the Everglades as a mountainous region with waterfalls and cenotes among a lush tropical jungle. The Everglades is an open grass swamp with occasional hammocks (islands) of palm, cypress and live oak. You can see for miles in the open areas and there is not even a hill in sight. A hammock of 2-5 feet above the water level is considered a significant rise.
** Singapore is depicted as a port town surrounded by hills and a handful of mountain peaks. Singapore has NO MOUNTAINS. The highest point is a hill that's barely 165 m (538 feet). Also, at the time the film takes place, it was a small fishing village, not the bustling town we see in the movie. The Singapore scenes were shot at a studio lot and modeled after multiple unrelated contemporary Chinese cities of the era.
* The Asylum film ''Aztec Rex'' is supposed to take place in southern Mexico, but was filmed at Kualoa Ranch. IN HAWAII. (Same location for the "Florida" in ''Pirates of the Caribbean''...)
* The famous ending of ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'' reveals that despite the distinctive West Coast desert locations (filmed in Utah, Arizona and California), this was actually [[http://www.potamediaarchive.com/EastCoast.htm New York/Jersey]].
* The Creator/DisneyChannel Original Movie ''Film/PrincessProtectionProgram'' takes place on the Louisiana bayou. Since the movie was filmed in Puerto Rico, it's a good deal more mountainous than Louisiana, where any hills in proximity to a bayou rise no higher than about 10 feet (3 meters).
* A more noticeable example is the 2006 American remake of the Japanese horror film ''Pulse'', which takes place in the US despite ''very clearly'' being shot in Bulgaria.

* Though set in Detroit, the climactic fight in the first ''Film/RoboCop1987'' film takes place at an abandoned industrial complex that's sufficiently generic to be believable, until a rather obvious tree-covered Appalachian foothill sneaks into the background of one shot (that part was shot in Pittsburgh).
** The first chase scene of the movie is clearly filmed along Industrial Boulevard in Dallas, Texas - multiple buildings unique to the Dallas skyline - most notably and frequently, Reunion Tower - are clearly visible in the background. (And for some reason, the shots alternate between driving away from Reunion and then towards it.) The final climactic scene at OCP headquarters is also filmed in Dallas, with the outside of the building actually being Dallas City Hall and the Fountain Place Tower being seen from outside the company board room.

* ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' has a scene where police raid a house in Calumet City, Illinois that serial killer Buffalo Bill is thought to be hiding in. Although the real Calumet City is in flat-as-a-pancake Cook County, the movie scene (which was shot near UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, Pennsylvania) shows large hills in the background.

* ''Film/SpringBreakSharkAttack'' is supposedly set in Florida, but it was filmed in South Africa...with lots of nice shots of the mountains near '''Miami Beach.'''

* In ''Film/StickIt'', neither Plano nor Houston has elevation changes large enough to help your bike downhill, much less to perform stunts. The film was so obviously made in Arizona and California that it isn't funny.

* ''Film/TheThiefOfBagdad1940'' depicts the city of Baghdad as surrounded by craggy peaks. The real city stands in a perfectly flat plain.

* Inverted in-universe in ''Film/ToWongFooThanksForEverythingJulieNewmar''. When the {{drag queen}}s' car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Noxeema assumes they're in West Virginia, even though the flat landscape looks nothing like a state that's within the Appalachian Mountains (or at least the Appalachian Plateau). We never find out the location of Snydersville, but Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle are most likely.

* The Lifetime TV movie ''William & Kate'' tells the story of well, the romance between Prince William and Kate Middleton. The film features a painfully Americanized view of their romance, including a karaoke serenade, and tops it off with mountains in London just like the Austin Powers example stated above. It was filmed in Southern California.

* ''Series/{{Fargo}}'': Season 2 is set in Luverne, which is in southwest Minnesota. In RealLife it's a prairie town. The show, however, regularly portrays Luverne with lots of pine forests -- a feature of the northeastern part of the state.

** Played hilariously straight with the depiction of Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the show, Cheyenne is surrounded by green rolling hills, verdant forests and is at the base of a snow-covered peak. None of this is true. While there are nice areas of the state, including Yellowstone, Wyoming itself is mostly arid wasteland. To get a mental picture of what it looks like, consider ''Film/StarshipTroopers''. The scenes on "Planet Klandathu" are all shot in Casper, Wyoming about 80 miles north. That's right, one of the larger cities in Wyoming is the ''bug planet.'' Also, the show lists Cheyenne's population as soaring as high as [[spoiler: one million residents]]. Currently, the population of Cheyenne is about 60,000 residents. How on earth could that current infrastructure support an additional [[spoiler: ''994,000 people?!?'' The show certainly did not depict this as a gigantic tent city, which would be the only way this could happen.]]
* Appears repeatedly in the first two seasons of ''Series/TheLastShip'', with mountains from around San Diego visible in an establishing shot of Norfolk, VA (the nearest mountains are several hundred miles west) and the Coast Range being visible behind an oil platform supposedly off of Louisiana (which has the third-lowest high point of any US state).

* One episode of ''Series/SisterSister'' had the twins trapped in a mountain cabin by an avalanche while on a skiing trip to Mt. Brighton, Michigan. While Mt. Brighton certainly does exist, and it is a ski resort, it is merely a prominent hill with one side altered for skiing. There are no cabins, no avalanches, no forest rangers (also seen in the episode), and absolutely no way to get lost while on Mt. Brighton- you can see the whole thing from the parking lot. The only mountains in Michigan are in the ''Upper Peninsula'', hundreds of miles away.

* Music/{{Journey|Band}}'s song "Don't Stop Believin'" claims one character was "born and raised in south Detroit"...which would be Windsor, Ontario (unless you consider south''west'' Detroit, which includes the Mexicantown, Springwells, Delray, and Boynton neighborhoods). Steve Perry later [[http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/index.ssf/2012/01/steve_perry_finally_answers_th.html admitted to taking artistic license]], simply because he liked how it sounded.

Movies and TV shows created in the U.S. and Canada, wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in [[CaliforniaDoubling Southern California]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} British Columbia]], or UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}. This leads to a common error where geographic features such as mountains show up in the background of settings which lack them in RealLife.

The trope was named for the US state of Illinois, which, if you haven't already realized it, is almost as flat as this joke. For instance, there are two buildings in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}[[note]] The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower at 1451 ft, and the [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Trump]] International Tower, at 1389 feet)[[/note]] that are taller than the state's highest natural point[[note]]Charles Mound in the Driftless area of Jo Daviess County in the northwest corner of the state, at 1236 feet.[[/note]], and as many as ''40'' buildings in the city that top out at a higher total altitude, since Chi-Town already sits at about 600 feet above sea level. For those reading from Europe, Denmark is a suitable substitute.[[note]]A country whose highest point is 171 metres/561 feet above sea level, and the average elevation is only 31 metres above sea level.[[/note]] British readers: think UsefulNotes/EastAnglia. [[note]]Norfolk and Cambridgeshire are not famed for their spectacular hills either.[[/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.

* Promotional material for ''[[Anime/WorldMasterpieceTheater Rascal the Raccoon]]'' often featured mountains in the background. Wisconsin isn't as flat as Illinois, but it does not have that kind of mountains.
* ''Manga/MiamiGuns'' parodies Japanese cop show cliches, and is set in ostensibly-UsefulNotes/{{Miami}}. Various episodes have villains illegally drift racing through the mountains of Florida (max. elevation 346 feet).

* The original headquarters of the ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica, the "Secret Sanctuary", is inside a mountain near Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. In RealLife, the highest point in Rhode Island is a mere 812 feet above sea level.
* [[Creator/MarvelComics 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.

* [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon Disney's]] ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' has the flat area around Jamestown, Virginia filled with mountains and cliffs. While there are some tall mountains in Virginia, they're on the other side of the state.

* Inverted by ''Film/AliensVsPredatorRequiem'', which lacks the mountains one would find in Gunnison, Colorado, which in real life is up on the Rockies. Along with smaller hills, the town itself is much larger (Gunnison's population doesn't even reach 6,000; along with the area and buildings, the AbsurdlySpaciousSewer is illogical given such excavation is never done in a mountainous, unstable terrain).
* ''Film/AtlasShrugged'', Part II, shows [[InvertedTrope a distinct lack of mountains]] around Pittsburgh Municipal Airport, although the city is located in the foothills of the Appalachians.

** The film opens with a sweeping vista of crags and mountains. William Wallace was born near the Ayrshire/Renfrewshire border, a region more noted for its lush fields and coastal plains than craggy mountains. Ironically, the movie was shot in Ireland, which doesn't exactly lack in green fields and coastline.

* The first part of ''The Music/BuddyHolly Story'' is set in Holly's hometown, Lubbock, Texas, in the middle of the Great Plains, yet there are mountains in many exterior scenes.

* In ''Film/ColdMountain'' (set in the Appalachian Mountains region of North Carolina), the Romanian location is mostly accurate... until giant craggy peaks appear towards the end.

* ''Film/ElizabethTheGoldenAge''. Fotheringay Castle, in which [[UsefulNotes/MaryOfScotland Mary, Queen of Scots]] is confined prior to her execution, is played by Eilean Donan castle in Scotland, complete with romantic mountains and loch. The real [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotheringhay_Castle Fotheringay Castle]] is[[note]]or rather ''was'', as it fell into disrepair and was eventually knocked down in the 1630s[[/note]] in Northamptonshire, which has a distinct dearth of either.
* ''Film/FailSafe''. In this film, characters visit the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha is shown to be completely flat, which is completely wrong. Although the state of Nebraska is mostly flat, Omaha sits on the bluffs of the Missouri River, which makes it a hilly city.
* 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—or any fan of ''Series/BeringSeaGold'', set in the Nome area—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.''

* ''Film/HaroldAndKumarGoToWhiteCastle'': In the climatic scene, the heroes [[spoiler:hang glide off a massive cliff to reach the White Castle in Cherry Hill, NJ. While New Jersey does have scenic cliffs, they're nowhere near Cherry Hill. The cliffs are the Hudson River Palisades near New York City; Cherry Hill is a suburb of Philly.]]

* In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', the first sighting of the alien ship takes place in Novosibirsk, Russia. A news reporter says the ship is "clearing the mountains." There are no mountains in Novosibirsk -- it is located on the West Siberian Plain, surrounded by swamps and pine forests in all directions. Later, the landscape supposedly surrounding El Toro shows a desert. El Toro Marine Base is located in a hilly section of Orange County.
* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' starts in the Peruvian Amazon jungle and eventually reaches Brazil, with cliffs and mountains that have no reason AT ALL to be there.

* The ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms series ''Figment 2'' shows mountains in UsefulNotes/{{Florida}} when the highest point in Florida is Britton Hill at only 345 ft above sea level.

* ''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/TheBahamas which is indeed lacking mountainscapes.[[/note]]

* There's a Website/{{Twitter}} account called [[https://twitter.com/IllinoisViews Illinois Views]] that embodies that trope. It posts nothing but beautiful images of tropical beaches, snow-capped mountains, castles, and other landscapes that are not at all present in Illinois, while [[BlatantLies attributing them to specific towns]].

* A Website/{{Cracked}} article (can't remember which) once made a throwaway joke about UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}, and the writer included a picture of the welcome sign for Cleveland...Georgia. Since neither city's welcome sign mentions the state they're in, the writer ''would'' have been forgiven if the sign's slogan wasn't "Gateway to the Mountains". The closest mountains to Cleveland, Ohio are two hours away in western Pennsylvania.

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

* The opening chapter of ''Manga/GunBlazeWest'' features river canyons and a butte -- literally in Illinois.

* Since the Hans Christian Andersen version takes place in Denmark, ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' is often speculated to take place on the same coast. Except when you see the surface there are sea cliffs, mountains, palm trees, and other features found on the more southern coast of Europe. Alternatively of course, the location is an AdaptationDeviation. Given that the architecture is more South European inspired, it is not unlikely that the film takes place in South Europe.

* UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC has several odd features that make screwing it up a popular subtrope of this. From ''Film/DieHard2'' revolving around planes desperately needing to land at Dulles International as if the DC area alone didn't have '''two''' other commercial airports (not to mention it being part of the Eastern Seaboard), to too many chase scenes to count across the rooftops of the skyscrapers it doesn't have, to the fact that characters never seem to need to cross bridges to get between downtown DC and the Pentagon... It's understandable that most productions don't want to film there, considering that another one of its most noticeable features in real life is how badly thought out the grid is, but pop culture tends to be so unrealistic that ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' made instant waves in the city just by featuring somewhat plausible local geography. See the TV folder for more.

* ''Film/TheBabysitterKillerQueen'', like [[Film/TheBabysitter2017 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.

** The town of Haddonfield is supposed to be in Illinois, but a sharp-eyed viewer can not only see mountains in the background of some scenes, but palm trees as well. Of course, a sharp-eyed viewer probably already had their suspension of disbelief broken by the ''weather'' in the film, which, in the Midwest, is considerably less green and summery by that point in the year. It doesn't help that all the cars have California plates, or that schools are built with classrooms opening directly into the courtyard, something that's rare in the Midwest.

* ''Film/KingdomOfHeaven'' fell into the same trap as many depictions of biblical tales and of the crusades. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are usually shown as being in the middle of a flat desert with rolling dunes for miles all around. [[http://www.jewlicious.com/wp-content/uploads/TM/Jerusalem%20Hills_2.jpg This]] is what the [[http://www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Bethlehem_536/Bethlehem-10563.jpg region]] actually looks like.[[note]]It should be noted that prior to massive planting of woods in the area since 1948 and 1967, it was significantly less wooded - but certainly not a desert as often depicted, and certainly not flat - the two cities sit on top of a 2000ft mountain range. The closest desert is not far off, being the Judean Desert a few miles eastwards, and it looks like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marsava.jpg this]].[[/note]]
* ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'' has a big chase scene in which Bond tries to escape from Bratislava in Slovakia to Vienna in Austria by going over snow covered mountains. The scene was filmed in the Austrian Alps, some 400 kilometers west-southwest of Vienna. Bratislava is actually about 60 km east of Vienna in the same Danube plain, and the surrounding regions in Slovakia and Czech Moravia are mostly rolling hills, not snowbound Alpine mountains. And [[ArtisticLicenseGeography to make matters worse]], Bond supposedly uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline as part of his escape; said pipeline's westernmost end is inside the westernmost border of Ukraine, some 500km ''in the wrong direction''. And even if he made that circuitous of a route, the Carpathian mountains in that area are volcanic, and nothing like the Alps.

* Inverted in-universe in ''Film/ToWongFooThanksForEverythingJulieNewmar''. When the {{drag queen}}s' car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Noxeema assumes they're in West Virginia, even though the flat landscape looks nothing like a state that's entirely within the Appalachian Mountains (or at least the Appalachian Plateau). We never find out the location of Snydersville, but Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle are most likely.
* One of the most pervasive examples is the 1969 Oscar winning version of ''Film/TrueGrit''. The entire production was clearly filmed in Colorado and California with numerous shots featuring snow capped mountains in the distance. But these peaks are intended as stand-ins for the Ouachita, Boston and Arbuckle Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma, which are highly weathered mountains and more usually large hills that rarely exceed 2000 feet above sea level, seldom project more than 500 feet above the surrounding terrain, and look nothing like the Rockies or the High Sierras - much to the amusement of anyone familiar with the actual geography so prominently a part of the Portis novel and surprisingly the adapted movie script. The 2010 remake, though shot in New Mexico and Texas, more accurately represents the real terrain of the stated setting, although still was not shot on location.

%%* The same Kansas Problems for Clark and the gang also apply to ''Series/Jericho2006''.

* The Minnesota farmland in ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'' was peppered with suspiciously Californian mountains and hills. (Not to mention that it rarely ever snowed there, except [[DreamingOfAWhiteChristmas during Christmas episodes]].) Though the state of Minnesota does have both prairies and mountains (not particularly tall ones, though), they are nowhere near each other.

* Inverted in the US version of ''Series/QueerAsFolk''. It takes place in UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, which is located entirely within the Appalachian Mountains. As a result, the city has a distinctive, hilly terrain. [[note]]A standard joke told to out-of-towners is that if a marble were placed on top of Mt. Washington in the city, it would not stop rolling until it reached Ohio.[[/note]] You wouldn't know this from watching the show, however, since it was filmed in the much flatter UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} (where any marble would roll down the nearest ravine into a creek).
* The syndicated cop show ''Series/SilkStalkings'' was filmed in San Diego, but supposedly took place in Palm Beach, Florida. Of course, Mount Soledad, the Laguna Mountains and many lesser hills were prominent in the backgrounds of many exterior shots. Several Floridian fans of the show joked that it was obviously Mount Dora we were seeing in the background. [[note]]For the record, Mount Dora, Florida is a small town that sits at an elevation of 144 feet. In Florida, 144 feet puts Mount Dora at one of the higher elevations in the state.[[/note]] While not famous for hills the way, say, San Francisco is, San Diego does have a few streets that climb 144 feet over a few blocks. The highest point in all of Palm Beach County (which is twice the size of Rhode Island) is a 20-foot high ridge east of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

** A third-season episode features a scene on the shores of one of Kansas' picturesque mountain lakes. For those of you in other countries, the terrain of Kansas is just like a billiards table, except for just enough ripples to mess up your shot. (According to research published in the ''Annals of Improbable Research'', the state is literally flatter than a pancake, relatively speaking.) To add insult to injury, Kansas has no natural lakes. That being said, the lake part can be excused, since that particular lake--Crater Lake--was literally created by the meteor shower that rained down on Smallville in the pilot episode, making it an acceptable break from reality.

** In the expansion United Offensive, a mission takes place "somewhere in Holland" (presumably near Rotterdam, since that was what the plane you were in was bombing before it was shot down), yet features hills and even some rocky cliffs (there are no cliffs in the Netherlands, and the only hills are in the southeast, about 150 kilometers from Rotterdam).

* Several episodes of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' (set in Rhode Island but, of course, written in L.A.) feature a rugged, mountainous landscape forested with pine trees. Rhode Island does have some hills, but not very large or jagged ones. Its highest point is 812 feet. Also, New England has many pine trees, but the native tree, the Eastern White Pine, looks rather distinct from the bushier Ponderosa of the West.

** "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" had the family visiting Homer's long-lost brother in Detroit. They're driving through mountains as they leave the state. They would have to drive north from Detroit, through the entire Lower Peninsula, across the Mackinac Bridge, through most of the Upper Peninsula, and cross the Wisconsin border at Iron Mountain to even come close to what's shown on the screen. That's around an 8-hour drive, although they're implied to be much closer to Detroit. But then, ''The Simpsons'' [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield named a trope]] with how inconsistent it is...

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Brickleberry}}'' National Park is literally in Illinois, and features several mountains. Of particular note is Mount Brickleberry, which is [[BlatantLies said to be]] the highest point on Earth.

* ''Film/NationalLampoonsChristmasVacation'': At the beginning of the movie Clark is driving his family out into the country to a Christmas tree farm, with mountains clearly visible during the drive. This farm is implied to be somewhere in northern Illinois, however the opening scenes were actually filmed in Summit County, Colorado.

This becomes CriticalResearchFailure. Say a writer from UsefulNotes/{{California}} wants to base a story in FlyoverCountry. Even if they themselves visited Illinois and know what it looks like (and this is hardly guaranteed), they might still hope the viewers won't know the difference. Obviously, it can be a sore point for people who actually live there.

* Inverted when Eddie Rabbitt had a 1970's hit with "Rocky Mountain Music." He probably should have consulted with Music/JohnDenver before writing those lyrics, as he himself later admitted he knew nothing about the Rockies. "Back upon an old dirt road/Next to a swamp full of toads..." A swamp? In the mountains?

* Music/{{Journey}}'s song "Don't Stop Believin'" claims one character was "born and raised in south Detroit"...which would be Windsor, Ontario (unless you consider south''west'' Detroit, which includes the Mexicantown, Springwells, Delray, and Boynton neighborhoods). Steve Perry later [[http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/index.ssf/2012/01/steve_perry_finally_answers_th.html admitted to taking artistic license]], simply because he liked how it sounded.

[[caption-width-right:250:[[Advertising/TheManYourManCouldSmellLike Look at the legend. Now back at the map.]][[note]]By the way, 300 ft = 91.44 m, 600 ft = 182.88 m, and 1200 ft = 365.76 m.[[/note]]]]