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Big Applesauce
Start spreadin' the news, I'm leavin' today...

"New York City! If aliens had to come to Earth... well, no wonder they came here."
- Doctor Who, "Evolution of the Daleks"

There is only one city in America.
There is only one city in the world.
- They Might Be Giants, "P.S.O.K."

Are aliens landing in UFOs? They'll land in Queens.

Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's in New York's Chinatown.

Is there a magical gateway between worlds? It's in the Queens Midtown Tunnel. (Or in Central Park, or maybe in the subway tunnels, depending on the cuteness-darkness factor of the story being told).

Is a giant alien monster attacking? It's attacking Manhattan.

Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the earth's surface, wherein aliens once upon a time created all life on earth? It's underneath the Battery.

Is there only one person with the special gifts needed to save a distant planet or alternate dimension? He lives in Tribeca; not the SUV, but the place that surely everyone has heard of, 'cause New York is just that famous.

Is a prominent figure from religion or myth manifest once more and living in the world of humans? He's in Central Park.

An Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny? Madison Square Garden's got front row seats.

Is your maternal grandmother visiting your home in Phoenix, Arizona? She's fluent only in Bronx-accented Yinglish.

Want to do a Reality Show focusing into the culinary field, or art, or dance or theatre? New York is the place to be, since people don't eat, paint, dance or act anywhere else.

What Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe is to Anime and Japanese TV, Big Applesauce seems to be to American TV: the clichéd idea that anything that occurs in, or references, New York is automatically more interesting to the average American viewer than anything elsewhere. At the very least, like Tokyo, New York is where more than half of television's writers are, which makes it more interesting to the writers than anything elsewhere.

The rule seems to be that if a series or movie proposal does not require another setting (Kirks Rock, for instance), it should be set in New York. If an original, successful series is set in Las Vegas, its Spin Off will be more successful if set in New York. If you can't possibly get the show to happen in New York, have at least one main character and as many minor ones as possible be from New York, and continually harp on about how much better New York is.

The bias is especially obvious when characters speak about specific parts of New York casually, while the entirety of Middle America usually consists of about ten distinct places.

Everything is better served with Big Applesauce.

There is a reason for this: the skyline is just so darn recognisable. In addition, New York City is the most populous metropolitan area in the United States (and the 4th most populous in the world), possibly justifying the frequency with which events of great significance occur there in fiction. In particular, many American writers, at least in the film and television industries, live or have lived in New York (or Los Angeles or both). Less justified is the commonality of the appearance of New Hampshire in literature, which is due to the fact that those authors not living in New York City live in New Hampshire.

Compare Fulton Street Folly, the localized version where everything inexplicably happens in Lower Manhattan because it's relatively easy to film there.

Examples

Anime
  • In The Big O, the very obvious ruins of New York City (now called Paradigm City) are not just the center but the practical extent of the universe.
  • The primary focal point for most of Baccano? New York. There is an exception in the Flying Pussyfoot story, which takes place on a transcontinental railroad...heading to New York.
  • In Hunter x Hunter there's York Shin City, where much of the second arc takes place. As soon as you see the city, it's rather obvious. Also, New Jersey seems to be several million large piles of trash.

Comic Books
  • Virtually all the heroes of the Marvel Universe set up shop in New York, as well as the major teams like The Avengers and the Fantastic Four. (The X-Men are usually in Westchester County.) Part of this was their distinction of living in a "real city" versus most of the fictional DC ones. Teams not set in New York are either the rare West Coast teams, the "international" teams that pop up every so often, or jokes (the Great Lakes Avengers). Naturally, all the bad stuff for them to save the world from occurs in New York as well.
  • In The DCU, by contrast, Metropolis and Gotham City are both the equivalent of New York in this role. (The darker the story, the more likely it is that it'll be Gotham.) Metropolis and Gotham are both old nicknames for New York (they were more common as such before the comics co-opted them), and used to be stand-ins for it in just about every way. Lately, however, the convention has been to place Gotham in New Jersey, Metropolis either in Delaware or as a stand-in for Chicago, and an actual, though smaller and somewhat more idealized, New York City in its usual place (referred to as "the Cinderella City," with Gotham and Metropolis serving as "the ugly stepsisters").
    • The Christopher Reeve Superman movies, on the other hand, blatantly use shots of the NYC skyline as establishing shots for Metropolis, and set several scenes around various NYC landmarks. The DVD release of Superman II even has the World Trade Center prominently displayed in the background.
    • Also notable in Justice League, where a good portion of the stuff that's not deliberately set somewhere else will usually happen in either Metropolis or Gotham. This was expanded more in the third, fourth, and fifth seasons, but the season and series finales still all managed to happen in those two locations.
    • Going back to "Gotham=New York", the opening of Batman Forever showed a landmark suspiciously similar to the Statue of Liberty—although much more "futuristic" in appearance, this being Joel Schumaker.
      • The Schumaker films have "Lady Gotham", an Art Deco version who holds a sword instead of a torch. This is located downtown; apparently, the equivalent island holds the power plant.
      • Like so much else, the Nolan films subvert this equation by filming in what is obviously Chicago.
    • Superheroes that have lived in The DCU's New York include the Green Lanterns Alan Scott (originally based in Gotham), Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner; Power Girl (when she's not living in Metropolis); the Manhattan Guardian; the Teen Titans before they removed to San Francisco; and the original Sandman. Though they originally met in Gotham, today the Justice Society Of America operates out of New York City, their headquarters located on the site of the Sandman's old brownstone.
  • Doc Savage had his headquarters in the Empire State Building, and most of his stories had a large section in NYC before heading off to more exotic locales.
  • The Marvel Transformers comics feature New York increasingly predominantly throughout their run, even though the crashed Autobot spaceship is located at Mt. St. Hilary in the Cascades in Oregon and the early comics tended to head over to Portland if they needed a metropolitan area to trash with giant robots. The switch to New York came after the anti-robot task force known as RAAT set up shop there, and several later Decepticon bases were set up in the region. In a nihilistic alternate future the shattered corpse of Rodimus Prime is even displayed as hanging between the partially collapsed Twin Towers.
  • Of course, there is one DC comic set in New York City—Watchmen. DC's seeming hatred of setting comics in NYC becomes obvious when Ozymandias blows it up.
  • Captain Carrot And His Amazing Zoo Crew started off with Superman accidentally crossing dimensional boundaries and winding up in "Gnu York City", Earth-C's version of NYC, and meeting the future team's leader there (working as a writer/artist for his world's DC Comics). Later issues often featured the team visiting Gnu York (despite being headquartered on the other side of the country in "Follywood, Califurnia").

Film
  • In what may be the archetypal example, the 1998 American remake of Godzilla drops the Big G into midtown Manhattan.
  • In Godspell (1973), the clown-Christ begins his ministry in the middle of Central Park, and wanders all over the (empty) city with his disciples.
  • Exception and Accidental Inversion: In Volcano (ad line: The Coast is Toast!), a volcanic eruption occurs in the middle of Los Angeles. One of the reasons movies and TV shows use New York is that it's recognizable by audiences. This recognition gives place and scale to the stories involved. Unfortunately, Los Angeles has no distinctive landmarks and almost no named features recognizable by anyone living outside the LA area. The producers of the movie compounded the problem by using almost no large-scale background shots or aerial views. The movie was competently made and an expensive bomb. Unlike most disaster flicks, its mediocre storytelling couldn't make up the dramatic deficit caused by good special effects wasted on the destruction of generic scenery. If only lava could flow uphill and get at that Hollywood sign...
  • Ever notice that in Ghostbusters, as well as its sequel and Animated Adaptation, that nearly everything paranorma—including the end of the world—tends to happen somewhere in or near New York City?
  • In the 1978 film adaptation of The Wiz, the role of Oz is played by a Fantasy Counterpart of New York City. For instance, Emerald City was the World Trade Center area; also note the five Empire State Buildings on the skyline.
    • Strange, because Seattle's nickname is the "Emerald City"
  • Highlander has Mentor Ramirez telling Connor that eventually the Immortals will meet in "a faraway land" to fight for the Prize. NEW YORK.
  • The fairy-tale characters from Enchanted end up in New York... because, naturally, New York is the opposite of a fairy-tale kingdom.
  • Enchanted was actually only the first in a string of three major movies that opened in about a six-week period in the winter of 2007-2008 to take place in New York. The other two? I Am Legend, which depicted the city abandoned after a plague decimated the human race, and Cloverfield, which featured a gigantic monster laying waste to the city. Additionally, the novel "I Am Legend" took place in Los Angeles.
  • Gangs Of New York, obviously. Portrays New York as the 1860s equivalent of Gangsterland.
  • Hercules in New York. Zeus blasts Hercules with a lightning bolt, casting him out of Olympus. After some strange encounters in the air and at sea, Hercules arrives in New York City.
    • Somewhat justified by the obvious lack of budget of that movie.
  • Another subversion was the film Collateral, which actually got moved from being set in New York city to LA. Strange, given one of the underlying points of the film and the ending.
  • Exception: The Italian Job remake takes place in Venice, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
  • How did Charlton Heston learn that the Planet of the Apes was actually Earth? Answer: He saw the Statue of Liberty, and realized he was once again in New York.
  • In Coming to America, Prince Akeem of Zamunda announces his determination to go to America to find a bride. His servant Semmi replies, "All right ... New York or Los Angeles?"
    • Lampshaded; to find his royal bride, he thinks Queens is the obvious place.
  • Live And Let Die. Mr. Big's operation is headquartered in New York.
    • There's also a James Bond short story simply titled "007 in New York".
  • Hancock. If an ancient curse forces you to leave Los Angeles, where would you move? Exactly.
    • Ancient Curse. Los Angeles. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
  • Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. The Elven King has his throne room in a NYC Railyard.
  • Men In Black. The organization for monitoring and enforcing alien activity on Earth is based in New York and most of the undercover aliens live there. Also the lead character is a former NYPD cop.
  • New York is the favorite target of disaster movies. See Armageddon, Independence Day, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, etc.
  • The hero of the Die Hard movies is a New York cop. The third movie is the only one that takes place there.
  • Hitch is about a New York love doctor.
  • The title character in A Troll In Central Park is banished to "a place of rock and steel, where nothing grows." Guess.
    • Of course, there is at least one place where things grow, as the title indicates.
  • Q The Winged Serpent shows that when an ancient Mesoamerican serpent-god is resurrected by a resumption of prayer and human sacrifice in his name, where else would he return than New York City?
  • Earlier Woody Allen movies, period. Nowadays he seems to shoot exclusively in Europe, but earlier on, shooting in New York was one of his trademarks.
  • The gateway thing is played with in Being John Malkovich: Those who enter the mind of John Malkovich find themselves teleported to the New Jersey Turnpike after ten minutes.
  • Two words, The Shadow.

Literature
  • Holly Black's Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside all take place in New Jersey, with several characters taking trains or driving up to New York. Additionally, New York City is where all exiled fae are sent, where the city and all its iron saps them of their powers.
  • In the Peter David novel Knight Life, King Arthur returns. In a clothing store in Queens. Oh, and his secret hiding place is in Belvedere Castle in Central Park.
  • The early urban fantasies by Mercedes Lackey were set on the West coast, mainly in LA, but she later moved the setting and focus to New York City. Elves bent on conquering the world and government conspiracies involving magic all seem to happen in New York.
  • In the Whateley Universe, New York City has its own major superhero group (the Empire City Guard), a "teenage sidekicks" group, a ton of "street heroes", and a couple main characters (like Phase, She-Beast and Techno-Devil, Kerry) and side characters (like Tempest) come from the New York area too.
  • Patrick Tilley's enjoyable samurai/Western/dystopian SF cross-breed series The Amtrak Wars subverts this trope slightly. Set a thousand years into the future after North America has been devastated by atomic war, the bulk of the action takes place in and below Texas and the Great Plains. When the characters do visit the vicinity of Manhattan Island in the third novel, there is absolutely nothing left of the city whatsoever as it has been turned into the Shogun's personal gardens. You only find out it's supposed to be New York by checking the glossary at the back, which converts the faux-Japanese location names into the traditional Western ones. This troper was impressed that Tilley resisted the urge to have the Statue of Liberty's head as a rusting ancient artefact in the gardens.
  • National Geographic magazine did a pictorial on the three most culturally significant cities at year 1, 1000 AD, and 2000 AD. New York was, naturally, their choice for the year 2000.
  • Many lesbian pulp fiction novels that this troper has read tend to have the character going to New York because of the fame of Greenwich Village.
  • The eponymous virus of the Wild Cards series falls over Broadway. Because of its nature, outbreaks occur all over, but New York is still the major locus of the action.
  • It's Kind of a Funny Story takes place smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan.
  • Border Town is a Shared Universe story about a portal to the Elflands opening in a city that is very heavily implied to be New York.

Live Action TV
  • The entire Law And Order franchise takes place in New York.
  • In the Food Network Challenge episode "Celebration Cakes", one of the teams presented a cake celebrating the grand re-opening of New York's Museum of Modern Art; the team's assumption seemed to be that this would be worth more points due to a theme other than a birthday or baby shower cake, such as presented by the competing teams.
  • A prime example of the Spin Off variety (in fact, the very one alluded to in the main text) is the expansion of the CSI franchise to include CSI New York.
  • Season one of Heroes has many of its superpowered heroes meet up in New York, seeking to prevent a nuclear explosion there. However, the series does also have many crucial scenes set in Las Vegas and Texas, and the occasional few in Japan or India. Also, the major arc of the second half of season two was going to center on Texas, though due to the writer's strike the arc was cut short before it could get off the ground.
    • As at least one critic pointed out, "Save the cheerleader, save New York" would have been a more accurate tagline for season one.
  • A list of US sitcoms not set in New York would probably be shorter than a list of ones that are:
  • Angel makes an exception, being set in and centering most key events around Los Angeles. Interestingly, apart from location change, the series even overemphasizes the trope, specifically embracing the role of LA as the Big City, using cyberpunk-like effects and showing the city's depersonalization - the role usually fulfilled by NY.
    • Only a partial exception, though. Before going to California to find Buffy, Angel was living in New York.
  • Even non-American productions are not quite immune to this trope - for example, whenever Doctor Who crosses the pond from Britain to America, he always seems to find himself in New York.
  • The original Time Travel episode of Star Trek, "City on the Edge of Forever," sent Kirk, Spock, and McCoy to Depression-era New York City. However, later time jaunts seem to focus on the West Coast, especially San Francisco. Non-Time Travel trips to Earth also focus on San Francisco, since Starfleet headquarters is there. Star Trek Deep Space Nine, spends about equal time in San Francisco and New Orleans (where Captain Sisko grew up and where his father still lives and owns a restaurant).
  • In an odd subversion, Alias was set in Los Angeles despite the fact that a great deal of the international action took place in Europe. New York would have made more sense.
  • The portal which opens between our world and the world where fairy tales are real in The Tenth Kingdom is, of course, located in New York's Central Park. What makes this miniseries a particularly striking example of the trope is how the opening titles quite conspicuously, and jaw-droppingly, magically morph the New York City skyline into a fantasy land to suggest the crossing over of magic into the real world. The sequence, quite justifiably, won an Emmy.
  • Although the jury is still out and the rumour-mill is now heavily suggesting otherwise, the tenth episode of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica indicated that after crossing tens of thousands of light-years across the entire Galaxy and spending three years on the run from homicidal robots who variously wanted to kill or have sex with them, the shattered remnants of an extra-solar human civilisation would inevitably make landfall in New York City, albeit a destroyed one. Even if the city turns out not to be New York itself, both producers Ronald D. Moore and Jane Espenson have confirmed that they wanted the city to have the recognizable feel of NYC so that shot would have maximum impact.
  • The main characters of Californication were originally from New York, and Hank often pontificates on its superiority.
  • Life averted this in the first season by taking place in Los Angeles, then uses the trope eith the new chief being from New York.
  • In Fringe, the heroes operate out of Boston, but the sinister-but-helpful Massive Dynamic is headquartered in New York City, and the series is filmed there.
  • Largely averted in Lost; though the show contains a huge cast of characters and tons of flashbacks, only a handful have taken place in and around the city.

Music
  • Billy Joel was born and raised on Long Island; as such, his more autobiographical songs (of which there are a lot) discuss New York City. "New York State of Mind" is the most blatant example; another one is "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," which is about the destruction of New York City and the survivors living in Miami in the year 2017—it was written during the 1975 bankruptcy of the city government.
    • Of course, his songs may possess a few subversions. "Leningrad," "Allentown," and "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" come to mind.
  • UK artist Estelle's popular song "American Boy" lists off all the places in the US she'd like to visit, with New York listed first and more often than any other place (5 times). It also mentions Broadway and Brooklyn.
  • Steely Dan throws around NYC-specific terms and locations so often that at least one website has been created specifically to explain these references to non-New Yorkers.
  • They Might Be Giants are New York-based, and apparently their songs are packed with obscure references, especially Village landmarks and personalities, or so I've heard—as an Australian, most references go over this troper's head.

Real Life
  • John Lennon famously gave this as a justification for why he abandoned his British roots to make his permanent home in NYC. "If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself."

Tabletop Games
  • The starter setting for Werewolf The Apocalypse (a game about monsters battling damage to the environment) is Central Park!

Theater Video Games
  • Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. The very introductory cutscene has the narrating character proclaim that such an epic event in the world's history could ONLY happen in New York City, "capital of the universe".
  • NYPD officer Aya Brea encounters the first wave of a neo-mitochondrial epidemic in Parasite Eve, which takes the player through the subways, Central Park Zoo, the Museum of Natural History, and the Statue of Liberty, all while fending off Body Horror at every turn. Why New York? Because it's fun to see it get trashed.
  • The Max Payne games feature New York predominantly during the worst winter in history and the noir-esque nature of the city is commented on by Max several times throughout the game.
  • Although it may not truly be New York, Empire City in Sonic Unleashed is modeled after the city.
  • The Mario Bros. are from Brooklyn, or at least, according to The Movie and the cartoons.
  • New Junk City from Earthworm Jim is obviously a parody of New York City, what with all of the garbage lying around.
  • Liberty City is the setting for many of the entries in the Grand Theft Auto series, and is clearly modeled on New York.
  • Guess where Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project takes place?
    Duke: New York... If I can kill them here, I can kill them anywhere!
    Duke: Time to de-worm the Big Apple!

Western Animation
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Definitely in the original comics and second animated series. Not sure about the first cartoon.)
  • Futurama. Period.
  • Although the Rescue Rangers' hometown remains unnamed and shows not little Geographic Flexibility, there are still landmarks from New York City to be seen and identified, namely the Chrysler Building ("The Carpetsnaggers") and the Twin Towers ("Robocat").
  • It's a good thing that the Ghostbusters decided to set up shop in New York, since the Big Apple is regularly invaded by all kinds of demons, ghosts, phantoms, goblins, and other assorted evil creatures. This trope is sometimes averted, however, when the Ghostbusters travel to other parts of the U.S. or even overseas to places like Scotland or France to deal with the hauntings going on there.
  • The second 1980's Strawberry Shortcake special takes place in "Big Apple City", a clear parallel to New York City. Additionally, there are various place names that are take offs on various locations in New York such as "Times Pear" (Times Square), "Sentimental Park" (Central Park), and "Spinach Village" (Greenwich Village).
  • Averted in Transformers Animated, where all the action takes place (appropriately enough), in Detroit, Michigan. Other cities are never mentioned, so it is technically possible that New York also has a supervillain problem.
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