History TelevisionGeography / Film

* In ''Film/RideAlong'', Philips Arena, home of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks, doubles as the fictional Highlands High School. What makes this more {{egregious}}: another scene has James showing up at the CNN Center, which abuts Philips Arena.

* ''SleeplessInSeattle'' showed everyone, including Seattlites, that Seattle has a subway. Underground bus tunnels, yes. Subway, no. Although as of 2009, Link Light Rail trains share the bus tunnels.

* Parts of the SyFyChannelOriginalMovie ''Locust'' take place in Southern Indiana/Kentucky, and one scene features the main characters driving from Kentucky to Indiana. They pass a "Welcome to Indiana!" sign by the side of the road with trees and dirt and such. Go check out a map of the Indiana/Kentucky border to see why that wouldn't work. (Hint: the Ohio River defines the entire Indiana/Kentucky border). That's not even mentioning the scenes taking place in southern Indiana showing perfectly flat, level ground despite the huge number of thousand-foot hills in that area.

* Another Creator/NicolasCage example, from ''Film/NationalTreasure 2: Book of Secrets''. In the car chase in LondonTown, the cars cross Westminster Bridge north to south, engage in a chase in what is clearly the City of London, which is north of the Thames - you can see the street signs, then cross Southwark Bridge ''again north to south''.

* A rare example of the deliberate use of this trope is the 1971 film ''Film/{{Walkabout}}'', in which the main characters travel on foot, as the title would suggest, across areas of the Australian outback radically different from each other in climate and terrain ... and very distant from each other in real life. Director Nicolas Roeg did this on purpose as he didn't want the journey in the film to be possible in real life.

* In ''Film/KnightAndDay'', Tom Cruise's character seems to hop around different places in [[https://maps.google.at/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=47.800559,13.046283&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x47769063cca7009b:0x6770528c7143e4d3,47.800559,13.046283&gl=at&ei=DLuSUvPyEaW9ygOB2ILwAg&ved=0CCoQ8gEwAA Salzburg]] during his stay there. This is especially apparent in the roof chase sequence, where he starts off in ''Altstadt'' centre on on the roof of the ''Residenz''[[labelnote:*]](with several faculty buildings of Salzburg University seemingly standing in as his hotel building)[[/labelnote]] to the south of the river Salzach, and ends up on the ''northern'' bank near the foot of the ''Kapuzinerberg'' mountain before falling off and plunging into the aforementioned river (and ''not'' smashing head-first into the two-lane street, promenade and gravel bank that are ''actually'' there).

* In the beginning of ''The Wild Stallion'', Miranda Cosgrove's character narrates that she grew up in Cleveland, with an aerial view of a city that is obviously Boston, with shots of the Back Bay, the New England Aquarium, and the Tobin Bridge.

** An interview about [[Film/TheBourneSeries the first Bourne]] movie had someone [[LampshadeHanging noting]] that the famous car ChaseScene took a very unconventional route through Paris.
** Ethan Hunt in 'Film/MissionImpossibleII'' gets a car and chases the girl, leaving the Spanish city of Seville and suddenly reaching some cliffs that might be anywhere but near Seville. Not the movie's only mistake about Spain.

* ''Before Sunrise'': Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke manage to get ''everywhere'' in Vienna, despite only spending only one night there. Pretty amazing, if you consider that the location are spread out over the city and are visited in random order. It's even more amazing if you consider that all of this time they never get on a bus or take a taxi (except once - during the day).
* ''[[Film/BillAndTed Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure]]'' was nominally set in San Dimas, California, but the school identified as San Dimas High School was actually Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

* As with the TV show ''Inspector Morse'', films set in Oxford (England) tend to frequently play fast and loose with geography -- characters in ''The Oxford Murders'', for instance, step out of a pub onto the sidewalk in front of a lingerie store on the other side of the road.

* The 1976 RobinHood film ''Film/RobinAndMarian'' was filmed in Pamplona, Spain, which, needless to say, looks nothing at all like Nottinghamshire.

** While this may be, the scenes aren't set at Yale University but at the (seems to be) fictional Marshall College, so they are completely incorrect anyway.

* People from Bayonne, New Jersey, had a lot of fun in the remake of ''Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' starring TomCruise. The house in the beginning of the movie is in downtown Bayonne, right underneath the Bayonne Bridge. However, during the alien landing, Tom Cruise walks over to a church that is actually in Newark in under a minute. Beyond the miles of distance required to walk there, Cruise would also have to either swim across Newark Bay or dodge highway traffic across the NJ Turnpike bridge.

* Another NicolasCage example, from ''Film/NationalTreasure 2: Book of Secrets''. In the car chase in LondonTown, the cars cross Westminster Bridge north to south, engage in a chase in what is clearly the City of London, which is north of the Thames - you can see the street signs, then cross Southwark Bridge ''again north to south''.

* NicolasCage's ''Film/{{Knowing}}'', set in Boston and New York, was filmed in Melbourne, Australia. One of the scenes was filmed on the steps of the state Parliament House. Imagine, Americans, a film set halfway around the world with a scene taking place outside your State Capitol.

* ''HighSchoolMusical'' takes place at East High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was actually filmed at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. However, East High School's auditorium isn't that impressive, so to film the stage scenes they had to go to Murray High School, about fifteen or so minutes away.

* In the film ''Driving Lessons'', Creator/RupertGrint and Julie Walters drive to Edinburgh, arriving on a scenic road down a hillside... which is in the centre of the city and can only be reached once you're already in the city. This is after they've driven ''south'' past a recognisable nuclear power station to get there, and following this, you see them going up alleyways and out of entirely different alleyways on the opposite side of the castle. It's a bit disorientating.
* Baltimore tourists are often told that the ''StepUp'' movies were filmed at the famous Baltimore School for the Arts, probably because the school in the film is based on that. In fact, they were filmed at a local middle school.

** MIT's administration actually banned the filming of movies on campus after the crew of ''GoodWillHunting'' displayed an annoying tendency to randomly close important parts of the school. Given that most of the school didn't have a particularly good opinion of the quality of ''21'', it's probably best for the moviemakers that they didn't try it.

* The JackieChan movie ''Film/RumbleInTheBronx'', filmed in Vancouver, makes little attempt to hide that fact. [[TheMountainsOfIllinois The snow-capped coast mountains]] are visible in many scenes, as are various Vancouver landmarks.

* Possible aversion: the Chicago-area [=McAllister=] house in the ''HomeAlone'' movies is an actual suburban house in Winnetka (a Chicago suburb).

* The [=VH1=] MadeForTVMovie ''Hysteria: The DefLeppard Story'' tried to double Sheffield with Canada. So drummer Rick Allen's famous car crash, which happened on the A57 in the Derbyshire Peak District, looks like it happened on the Icefields parkway. The very North-American yellow centre lines on the road are also a bit of a giveaway.

* ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'': Metropolis and Gotham are visible from each other, separated by a bay, when they are supposed to be several states apart.

* In ''TheDeparted'', TheMole texts the police to go to Sheffield, and they're shown choosing an exit off an elevated highway accordingly. Sheffield is ''a hundred and forty miles'' from Boston, in New England, where that still counts for a lot; to get there you go through ''two other metropolitan areas'' and then a good thirty miles out into the country.

* Averted in ''Film/{{Ghostbusters}}'' as explained in JamesRolfe's [[http://www.cinemassacre.com/2010/04/26/follow-that-marshmallow-a-ghostbusters-tour/ tour of New York following the movie.]]

* In ''Film/RideAlong'', Philips Arena, UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}'s main indoor sports arena, doubles as the fictional Highlands High School. What makes this more {{egregious}}: another scene has James showing up at the CNN Center, which is ''directly connected'' to Philips Arena.

* Parodied in ''TeamAmericaWorldPolice'': all the sets (Paris, Panama, etc.) feature the landmarks of known locations within immediately visible range. For example, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are on the same city block.

* A rare example of the deliberate use of this trope is the 1971 film ''{{Walkabout}}'', in which the main characters travel on foot, as the title would suggest, across areas of the Australian outback radically different from each other in climate and terrain ... and very distant from each other in real life. Director Nicolas Roeg did this on purpose as he didn't want the journey in the film to be possible in real life.

* ''CoronationStreet'' featured a ChaseScene showing a car turning a corner in Salford and crashing into a canal in Ashton (about 8 miles or so apart).

* ''YouveGotMail'' takes place in New York but the Golden Gate Bridge is visible when Tom Hanks is walking his dog Brinkly.

* In ''Film/PlanesTrainsAndAutomobiles'', SteveMartin and John Candy are taking a bus from Kansas to St. Louis... cue iconic shot of The Gateway Arch as the bus they are traveling on crosses the Mississippi River. Problem is, the bus is now traveling west from Illinois instead of east from Kansas.

* ''Film/LegallyBlonde 2'' takes place in Washington, D.C. Not a single scene was filmed there. Luckily for the filmmakers, plenty of states have state capitols that look very similar to the US capitol. They chose [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_State_Capitol Illinois']] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Capitol Utah's,]] then hung around Salt Lake City to film other scenes in the Energy Solutions Arena's offices.