Creator's Culture Carryover

"Every country in the world belongs to America!"

— Bandit Keith, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Episode 37

Every country in the world has a unique series of cultures and traditions, and even the smallest ones in the world (e.g. Singapore) have numerous diverse cultures and traditions. However, National Stereotypes and personal experience aside, you probably couldn't tell that just from consuming entertainment media. There are times when writers project their own cultural mores, vernacular, and sense of geography onto countries other than their own without realizing how widely these things differ across cultures. In more obvious examples, a writer basically takes their own country or culture thereof and substitutes in some foreign (or 'foreign') names, and might refer to a famous local festival or two if you're lucky. If you're not, it will be the writers' own culture half-dressed-up as a Land of Hats in "the local style". And then, there are works that barely try at even that.

Super-Trope of Hollywood Provincialism, when American media, most of which is produced in or around Los Angeles, wrongly assumes that aspects of life in L.A. are the same at a national level.

Compare with Creator Provincialism (where nothing important happens outside the writer's home country), Politically Correct History (the temporal version of this), and Canada Does Not Exist (a weird mutation of this trope that Canadian TV producers often impose upon themselves in order to sell their shows in America).

Contrast with Eagleland Osmosis, where the influence of another country's media (chiefly that of the United States) causes people to do this to their own society. See also Values Dissonance, which is perhaps the most compelling reason why this trope doesn't work.

Related to Culture Chop Suey, which is about fictional locations that are based on cultures of several different real-life locales, often accidentally including the author's own. When a dub attempts to make it seems like the series takes place elsewhere, but the numerous set pieces make it apparent that's not the case, see Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change.

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Example subpages:

• The Amazing World of Gumball
• Fan Works

Other examples:

Advertising

• In 2005, 4Kids Entertainment aired a promo of characters from the shows it owns singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", when most of the characters in the video are from non-American properties.
• The American broadcaster of Bluey, Disney Junior, is prone to doing this in their promotions for the show:
  • In one promo for the "Red, White and Bluey" Independence Day marathon, the voiceover said "Grab your sunscreen" as a clip of Bluey and Bingo getting colored zinc applied to them played.
  • The Summer ABC Song uses "Hot dogs in a bun" for the letter H, when the clip in question shows sausages being prepared.
  • One post on their social media discussed what the characters of the show would bring to Thanksgiving dinner. The problem here is that the show is an Australian import, and Thanksgiving is not celebrated there. Similarly, an event at Walt Disney World's Fort Wilderness resort revolved around the characters celebrating Thanksgiving.

Anime & Manga

• Akage No Anne: Despite being set in Canada (the anime is an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables) we see Cherry Blossoms in the background, even though those are native to Japan.
• In the Chri-, er, Heaven's Day episode of The Big O, despite Paradigm City clearly being future New York, the celebrations do seem to emphasize romance more than family.
• The Opening Monologue of Code Geass makes a big deal about how the Britannian Empire has suppressed Japanese culture. However, the school system we see has almost nothing in common with the British or American systems; it's really just the Japanese system with funny uniforms.
• Death Note has some of the most Japanese "Americans" ever seen. At least once, a member of a crime family bows to another member — his subordinate, no less. Every mafia thug also knows exactly what a Shinigami is, although this one can be attributed to translation issues as Near's (also a non-Japanese himself) imagery of a Shinigami is more akin to the usual Western characterization of The Grim Reaper.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975): This is possibly why the titular dog, Patrasche, looks like an Akita/Shiba Inu despite being from Belgium — it's commonly believed that his breed is a Bouviers des Flanders. On the other hand, he's mentioned to have "wolf-like ears", "a big head" and "sturdy legs", so the anime portrayal isn't exactly inaccurate.
• In FAKE, Ryo (who is half-Japanese, but was brought up in the USA) and Dee, two New York cops, celebrate Christmas the Japanese way, with a romantic date. This could happen in the USA as well, but it probably isn't popular.
• Gintama:
  • When it comes to the Earth dealing with the Amanto, it's more like Japan dealing with the Amanto. When talking about "international relations" with the Earth, the Amanto exclusively bring up people from Japan and things happening in Japan, as if it was the world stage.
  • This quote from Bansai summarizes the goal of Takasugi's faction to a tee, and delightfully highlights how it's slightly nonsensical precisely because it plays this trope completely straight:
    Bansai: We will defeat the Bakufu and rebuild the world.
• Gunslinger Girl, though it's set in Italy, had many of the adult handlers be quite reserved towards their charges, probably causing Values Dissonance for any Italian viewers (though it can be justified as the handlers aren't comfortable around Child Soldiers and they all have troubled backgrounds). They even bow sometimes. The girls don't act much like typical Italian girls, either.
• One Idol Angel Yokoso Yoko episode centers World War II being told from the Japanese point of view. The term "Great Tokyo Air Raid" is used to describe the events of 9-10 March 1945, when in the US, it's called "Operation Meetinghouse".
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has characters from all around the world, but many still use expressions or have norms that are rather specifically Japanese.
  • Polnareff of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders is French, but tells a villain that he will be judged in hell by Yama and mentions the Red String of Fate when hoping to find a girlfriend. While there was ample opportunity for Polnareff to have learned of Asian tropes like the Red String off-panel (either in causal conversation with his Japanese friends Jotaro and Kakyoin or during his travels through China prior to meeting them), it would be rather rare indeed for a Frenchman to actually believe in East Asian mythology's judge of the dead to the point of using judgement by Yama as a threat against a villain, unless he has converted to Buddhism while in China.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind:
    • The main characters are Italian gangsters who despise the drug trade. Such beliefs are commonly attributed to Yakuza, but aren't generally associated with organized crimes much of anywhere else (although the most famous Mafia film example, Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, also refused to deal in drugs).
    • While doing math, Narancia draws a henohenomoheji on the side of his paper (which is made of Japanese characters).
    • Guido Mista has a deep superstitious fear of number four, as if he were Japanese. Italians actually fear seventeen the most.^note The reason for tetraphobia in Japan is that "four" and "death" are both said as shi. In Italy, on the other hand the number 17 is feared due to its Latin reading, XVII, being an anagram of VIXI, meaning "I have lived", and thus "I died". Friday 17th is especially disliked in Italy due to Friday representing Jesus' death. The In-Universe explanation is that his tetraphobia originates from his neighbor being attacked by a kitten who was born in a litter of four, which is a rather weak justification. In Neapolitan Smorfia, however, the numbers 47 and 48 (both of which start with 4) are associated with "the dead" (O'Muorto) and "the dead that speaks" (O'Muorto che Pparla) respectively.
    • When commenting on the synergy between Secco and Cioccolata's Stand abilities, Mista jokingly suggests they must be connected by the "red string of fate", an East Asian spiritual concept unlikely to be invoked in Europe.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, Sandman's Stand involves materializing Written Sound Effects in the form of Japanese characters. It's not explained why a Native American in the 19th century would know Japanese well enough to have it be an integral part of his ability.
• Hello! Sandybell averts this, being set in the United Kingdom and different places in Europe, and being very accurate without being stereotypical.
• Kaleido Star does this a couple times. It takes place in America, but the characters who are supposed to be non-Japanese occasionally do Japanese things, like bowing. One of Sora's friends, Mia, uses the Japanese gesture for "come here" (the maneki neko paw gesture), in an episode of Kaleido Star New Wings, but it may not count since she was signalling Sora.
• Lady!! is set in Britain, but has Thomas Waverly bowing to his senior grandfather upon greeting him. Keep in mind, Thomas is the same xenophobic jerk who hates Lynn and aims to get her to go back to Japan....
• Little Witch Academia (2017) is set in the United Kingdom and for the most part, the writers did do their research. However, the lone episode set abroad (in Finland, home to Lotte's parents) shows Lotte's family have very typical Japanese traits, such as bowing and saying "Itadakimasu" before the meal. In what may or may not be a parody of this kind of thing, the same episode shows that the lone Japanese character (Akko, the protagonist) strongly dislikes the typical Japanese tradition of having long, hot baths.
• In the Marvel Anime: Iron Man manga, Tony Stark works hard to curtail his American sensibilities (especially his womanizing) while in Japan, knowing it won't win him any points with the locals. His behavior, however, more closely resembles what a Japanese writer would guess an American hotshot would act like. For example, at one point, he is sparring with a Japanese fighter and compliments the man on his Japanese Spirit… before cheating and then proclaiming that as an American, he instead has "Pioneer Spirit". Not only is Japanese Spirit something most Americans have vaguely heard of, at best, but no American would ever use the term "Pioneer Spirit". The "American Way" maybe, but in this context, even that's a stretch.
• The gods in Oh, Suddenly Egyptian God despite being Egyptian gods do a lot, if not mostly, normal Japanese activities.
• Red Garden is set in New York and does a good job of reflecting that, but a few bits of Japanese society leak through: people bow to each other, students have access to the roof of their school, the metric system gets used casually, etc.
• Studio Ghibli's anime adaptation of Ronja the Robber's Daughter is set in medieval Sweden. And yet Mattis and his crew can sometimes be seen wearing what looks like Japanese "Oni" type masks.◊
• Shootfighter Tekken has a Tournament Arc set in the US and falls into this trope hard, with the announcer denouncing modern problems such as high-school girls going out with older men for money. Not exactly as common in the US as it is in Japan.
• In Soul Eater, it's implied that the school is located in Nevada in the US, since Spirit is the local Death Scythe of North America, and there aren't many other deserts that fit the bill (why the author didn't go with Death Valley, in California, is anyone's guess). Yet there are certainly a lot of Japanese cultural tropes at work, such as the bento lunches, students can go anywhere in the school (barring the underground Sealed Evil in a Can), group baths, etc. Soul Eater Not! states that Death City has its own culture independent of its surrounding, but Japanese culture is still represented disproportionately both with locals (like Maka) and characters from other countries.
• Spy X Family is normally pretty good at avoiding Japanese cultural traits where they would differ in what appears to be central Europe, but they do show up occasionally:
  • One of Anya's favorite dishes is omurice, an omelet with fried rice inside. While a variation of a more western dish, you would be hard pressed to find the rice version commonly served outside of Japan.
  • The beginning of Chapter 26 shows test papers look exactly like Japanese ones, only in English, with a series of pre-printed multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions with a score out of 100 written on a space on the upper-right corner. In particular, Anya gets a score of 13 on a history test with the reader expected to understand this is a failing grade; tests done in western schools are not necessarily out of 100 (unless of course it's graded in percentage), and a score of 13 may be a passing grade (such as if it's out of 15). In addition, wrong answers are marked with a check; teachers in western schools instead most often use an "X" for a wrong answer while a check mark, if used at all, is for correct answers.
• Superman Vs. Meshi: When Superman is at the convenience store, he apologizes to the napolitan for pouring eggs over it by calling it "Mr. Napolitan". Referring to inanimate objects as "Mr. [object]" (and being overly apologetic to them) is something unheard of in Western culture, but common for Japanese speakers.
• Transformers: Cybertron primarily takes place in a fictional town within Colorado, USA. Yet, one episode has the Tagalong Kid characters bowing deferentially to a senior figure, a specifically Japanese custom. The dub unintentionally adds another one, with a scene of a man pulling up in a car and getting out adds him saying "Stop here" to an off-screen chauffeur… before climbing out what would be the driver's seat in an American car.
• World Masterpiece Theater:
  • If you pay attention to many WMT shows closely, you'll notice that there some Japanese quirks included, such as bowing to somebody else in apology, spelling errors and characters reading books from right to left. For a series set in foreign countries, it feels strange and out-of-place.
  • In Japanese dub, hearing some characters speak in any foreign language caused criticisms among some native speakers. Go on, try listening to the main character speak Engrish in Episode 34 of The Story of Perrine - or Sarah Crewe speak French in Princess Sarah - for proof.

Comic Books

• Frequently in U.S.-set comics of The Beano and The Dandy. For example, steering wheels are often portrayed on the right side of the car. The Mayor of Cactusville in Desperate Dan dresses like the Lord Mayor of London, complete with gold chain of office and tricorn hat. Even British mayors don't really dress like that, except on special occasions.
  • Lampshaded in Nemo: River of Ghosts in which Hugo Hercules, implied to be Dan's father, claims that Cactusville is a corner of the Wild West that is still part of the British Empire, and has cowboys on double-decker buses.
• In an issue of Grant Morrison's JLA (1997), a hallucinatory future Joker makes reference to Batman using a "Zimmer frame"—or, as an American would call it, a walker.
• Judge Dredd occasionally shows people driving on the left side of the road in America^*There is one part of America that drives on the left: The U.S. Virgin Islands, which drove that way before America bought them in 1917 and just never bothered switching. Background text tends to use U.K. spellings as well.
• The Muppet Show Comic Book: On The Road has a brief reference to replacement comedian Mitch Wacky getting his gags from Christmas crackers; a UK and Commonwealth tradition that barely exist in the US, where the Muppets live. (Writer/artist Roger Langridge is a New Zealander living in the UK.)
• El Libro Vaquero is an erotic Mexican graphic anthology of stories that take place in the American Wild West, and most of the characters are Americans. The problem is, most of the American characters act and behave like Mexicans and this was completely deliberate, according to the creators, as they didn't like the way how American creators of Wild West stories write them. The Wild West depicted in El Libro Vaquero is essentially Mexico from the same time period, with more romance and soft-core eroticism.
• An American general in one issue of Garth Ennis's The Punisher MAX tells Frank Castle, "You've a plane waiting," when virtually any American speaker would say "You've got a plane waiting" or "There's a plane waiting."
• Neil Gaiman briefly but memorably flirts with this in The Sandman (1989). In #7, the American John Dee calls Morpheus "a spittle-arsed, poxy pale wanker", which is a string of British-specific oaths. Dee's mother was English, but it's unlikely that any American-raised person would say this in the heat of passion.
• There's a number of instances of British terms and phrases used in Top 10 despite the American setting of Neopolis. For instance, Neural 'Nette compares the Libra killer's Razor Floss to "candy floss", which any American would call "cotton candy." Oddly, this seems fairly unique to Top Ten — Alan Moore has written dozens of comics set in the US without running into this problem.
• The Ultimates: In an issue, War Machine tells the second Black Widow not to refer to their teammate Tyrone (the original Hulk) as an "African-American" since he comes from England. Widow responds by saying she's still not comfortable saying "black", and asks if she can just call him "African-English".
• W.I.T.C.H. tends to hint it's set in America (currency, American flags, law enforcement with US-like uniforms and cars and, in one vacation town, being led by a sheriff). The problem is the human members of the cast act as generic Europeans (with a light leaning on how Italians act), and the traffic signs are obviously European.
• In Wonder Woman Vol 4 #50, a young boy in England whose father died of cancer is worried about how his mum would pay the medical bills. Nobody in the UK actually has this worry thanks to the NHS, which (usually) covers stuff like this. Britain does have private healthcare with higher out-of-pocket cost, but it's a choice rather than the default.
• In Werewolf by Night Volume 2, Jack is shown to have a bidet in the bathroom of his small New York apartment. The issues were penciled by Leonardo Manco, an Argentine artist. In Argentina, bidets are a standard feature of homes but they are rare in North America.

Films — Animation

• In Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster, The Mystery Machine drives past a road sign for the A83 towards Loch Ness. The road number is right — but the sign is an American-style shield, not the road signs used in the UK.
• While Belleville from The Triplets of Belleville isn't explicitly referred to as being in America, it's an ocean away from France and clearly modeled after New York City. But it's a very French version of New York City. Aside from the name:
  • The chase scene at the climax of the film takes the characters through the kind of narrow, steep, cobblestone-paved streets you'd find all over old-world cities but never in America. (And the streets are nearly deserted at night. New York is called the "city that never sleeps" for a reason.)
  • The opening scene depicts a broadcast from Belleville, including a fully-topless Josephine Baker in her famous banana skirt. While Baker was born in America, she had moved to France decades before the era of television and had dropped that persona by the time she (very briefly) returned to the States. And having a topless dancer on live television would be controversial in the US today, and most likely illegal in the black-and-white era.
  • The whole business with the frogs. It's probably not inconceivable that ponds with a healthy frog population exist somewhere near New York City, or that someone sufficiently poor might try to catch them for dinner, but... well, you'd never expect to see it in a movie that wasn't made in France.
• Overlapping with Misplaced Wildlife, Disney in general had a habit of sticking New World animals in their adaptations of European fairytales, starting with the raccoons and California quails in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. See that trope page for more.
• A mild, dub-induced version of this happens in The Incredibles' Hebrew dub, where during the chase behind Syndrome's robot in the city, Elastigirl tells her husband to turn into "President Ford Avenue". The fact the movie's vague setting might be before the Ford Administration aside, American cities do not have major streets named after national leaders from the 1960s/1970s^note The 1770s and the 1860s, on the other hand..., whereas Israeli cities do — mostly as commemoration for the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars.

Films — Live-Action

• Aquaman (2018): One of the water-breathing Atlanteans plunges his head into a toilet bowl to avoid asphyxiating. Toilet bowls in Europe aren't filled with as much water as in America, so he would likely not be able to completely submerge his head as shown.
• The Avengers (2012): The German company being guarded by security officers complete with SMGs may be somewhat believable in an American setting, but in Germany, most private security firms would get into trouble issuing as much as tasers to their personnel.
• Best of the Best: The South Korean Tae-Kwon-Do team cheered for their country as "Korea, Korea!", but "Korea" is an exonym. It should've been "Hanguk, Hanguk!" (Korea) or "Daehan Minguk!" (South Korea).
• Black Christmas (1974) was filmed in Canada, but features several strategically placed American flags in the police station to suggest it takes place in Everytown, America. However, the presence of the University of Toronto in one scene, the police using snowmobiles to search for Clare, a can of beer Barb drinks when reporting the disappearance, and Chris being an ice hockey player betray the Canadian setting.
• In the first Bridget Jones adaptation, American actress Renée Zellweger absolutely nails playing the very British lead character and does this so convincingly she could pass for a native. However, whenever she is getting angsty about her weight and panics that everyone is aware she's putting a little on, she inexplicably states her weight in the American measuring system (she starts off at 136 pounds). A Brit would never give her weight as a hundred and six pounds; this means bugger all if you're British. Nine stone two, on the other hand, does.
• Deadpool (2016): After being diagnosed with cancer, Wade says that Vanessa is working on Plan A, Plan B and all the way to Plan Z, pronounced "zee". Being Canadian, he should have pronounced it "plan zed." However, Deadpool may have spent enough time in America to adapt his expressions, and many Canadians already pronounce it "zee", partially due to Eagleland Osmosis. What makes this doubly odd is that Ryan Reynolds, like Deadpool, is originally from Canada.
• Geostorm shows a Chinese car with a thermometer showing temperature in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius.
• The film adaptation of The Girl on the Train moved the setting from the suburbs of London to the suburbs of New York City, and changed little else. At least one critic noted that the very English names of some characters (like "Hipwell"), while not particularly unusual to the ears of British readers, can sound like Preppy Names to Americans even though the characters aren't supposed to be upper-class.
• Gladiator:
  • Most characters have an anachronistic desire for democracy and speak of a return to Republican rule as a realistic alternative to the Empire, which is in turn painted as a purely monarchical institution. Neither of these things are true; the Republic had been mostly dead for centuries, while the position of Emperor was handed to the man the current Emperor believed to be best for the job (his closest male relative wasn't off-limits, but it was far from required or even expected). The Roman Senate is portrayed, likewise, as a much more powerful institution than it was and is free to take over after Commodus is killed, something that obviously didn't happen in reality.
  • Maximus's full name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, which is consistent with modern American (or generically Anglo-Saxon) naming conventions. However, in the ancient Roman system "Maximus" was a cognomen, which was said last. So his name should be Decimus Meridius Maximus.
• Godzilla (1998): Jean Reno's French secret service agent character travels to Tahiti to investigate Godzilla's recent attack on a freighter. Upon arrival he is hounded by members of the US Navy who demand to know who he is and what he is doing there, apparently unaware that Tahiti is an island in French Polynesia and that it should be him asking them those questions, not the other way around.
• The Muppets:
  • The Great Muppet Caper is pretty good about this. Yes, the take on London is a bit touristy, and all the Muppets who supposedly live there still have the same accents as they did on The Muppet Show. And then Beauregard shows up driving the only yellow cab in the city.
  • The accents issue also happens in The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. It's particularly confusing and distressing for Sam the Eagle, an in-universe moral guardian who is deeply patriotic... toward America.
    Sam the Eagle: Mm, you will love business. It is the AMERICAN WAY!
    Gonzo: (whispers) Sam...
    (whispers in Sam's ear)
    Sam the Eagle: Oh... It is the BRITISH WAY!
• In Mortdecai, the flashback scene showing Charlie, Johanna, and Alister at university clearly shows them in an American-style college dormitory of a type not really present in the UK, despite the fact that all three characters are British and therefore are (presumably) being educated at a UK institution.
• Oscar Pistorius Blade Runner Killer, the Lifetime Movie of the Week about the Reeva Steenkamp murder, has the trial lawyers pacing around the courtroom and talking to other people besides the judge. They didn't in real life, because South African trials have no jury.
• Sliding Doors is set in Britain and features an American actress playing the London-based female lead. At one point when bickering with Anna, Helen says "they don't ask this many questions on Jeopardy". While said game show has been shown in the UK in the past, it was never anywhere close to as popular as in America, making it unlikely two British women would reference it so casually.
• Titanic (1997): When Rose asks Thomas Andrews where she may find Jack, he tells her to take the elevator, despite being an Irishman who would say lift. The next scene does feature a crewman correctly using "lifts." Then again, Andrews may have said "elevator" for Rose's benefit, since she's American.
• Vantage Point:
  • It's set in Spain, yet the Secret Service (the U.S. President's bodyguards) are seen seizing cars from the locals, as well as chasing, arresting, and shooting them, even cops. Plenty of wars have started over much less. Such a policy was proposed in real life when the USSS asked Britain to allow its agents to shoot to kill when protecting the US president in the UK. The British said no.
  • The film's setting is an international summit, but it is presided over by the city's mayor (with no member of the Spanish national government apparently present), the President of the United States is the absolute star, and the public waves a zillion Spanish flags at him — but only Spanish flags, something much more reminiscent of Eagleland. This level of flag waving is generally looked down upon in Europe, unless it's the national football team playing. Plus, if they want to honor the POTUS and Spanish-American relations, they should at least have Spanish and American flags (and likely flags for the other foreign representatives as well).

Literature

• There is an arcade in one scene of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway (set in an unspecified Latin American country) that is depicted as having retro arcade games from the 2nd to 6th generation and redemption games such as basketball hoops. While this is pretty accurate to arcades in the United States that don't upgrade their video games and put emphasis on ticket games, most arcades in Latin America put emphasis on newer cabinets from the 7th and 8th generation that put emphasis on fighting games (though they are unoffical cabinets that run on Xbox hardware).
• Proving that this trope is older than dirt, The Aeneid is set centuries before the Roman Empire, in places that are definitely not Rome, but at times you wouldn't know it. Carthage has pretty much the exact same kind of buildings as a Roman city, and Aeneas's customs, values and funeral practices are all very Roman. (This one is especially egregious, since Jupiter says outright that he'll satisfy Juno's hatred of the Trojans by having them assimilate culturally with the Italian locals, thus "destroying" Troy. Apparently they assimilated so hard it went back in time.)
• The original Aladdin is often said to be set in China, as this was the most distant and magical land that most Arabs had heard of. The character's names, the genies, and so forth all seem Arabian, however. Almost every single character is a Muslim (except for one Jew), even though Muslims in general then — as now — made up a phenomenally small minority in China, and Arabs specifically are all but nonexistent.^note An argument can be made that Aladdin takes place in East Turkestan, a Muslim area which is today mostly in China (the famously restive Xinjiang province), or possibly somewhere a little farther west on the Silk Road, like Afghanistan or Samarkand, but none of the three is part of the Arab world either.
• The Alex Rider series at one point has the British main character, who is undercover as a kid from the United States, use language that is obviously not American. This is then averted and lampshaded as he is chastised for breaking his cover. However, played straight for nearly every other scene set in the United States.
• It's a minor point, but the American character in Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down refers to his apartment as a "bedsit", a very British term. It is set in England, so it's possible he just picked up the term, from his real estate agent or neighbours, perhaps.
• Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code has Chicago Police Officers referring to an elevator as a "lift".^note The term "lift" most definitely exists in America, but it tends to be used for simpler "open" or portable systems (not enclosed cars), like for moving equipment or the disabled a small amount.
• Dan Brown's rulebook for writing foreign locales usually boils down to "America, but everything sucks and is deadly", when not pulling from the drawer of Dark Ages stereotypes.
  • Angels & Demons has a British camerawoman for the British Broadcasting Corporation referred to as "African American". Her partner is also allegedly British, but seems to think and speak using an awful lot of American terminology and in an Imagine Spot he likens himself to Dan Rather — who is almost unknown in Britain. Even if the reporter has heard of Rather, if he were really British he would have likened himself to Trevor McDonald.
  • Perhaps the most ridiculous, out-of-left-field claim about Spain in Digital Fortress's many misrepresentations of Spain, is that cranberry juice is a very popular drink in the country. Not only is cranberry a crop mainly grown and consumed in the United States, but apparently Dan Brown's idea of a disgusting cranberry drink to attribute to the Spaniards is cranberry juice with vodka, an actual cocktail invented in Cape Cod.
• The Asterisk War: Volume 7 has the Girl Group Rusalka try to exploit Contractual Purity to ruin their rival Sylvia Lyynneheym's career by starting a scandal with the rumor that she has a boyfriend. While this might work in Japan due to the culture surrounding Idol Singers in the region, Sylvia explicitly has a worldwide fanbase and Western audiences would overall be at worst apathetic towards the news.
• Fifty Shades of Grey is written by an English author but allegedly set in America. Despite this, there is no concession to the setting whatsoever.
  • People refer to "exams" (not "mid-terms" or "finals").
  • The very British "do go through" shows up.
  • Fifty Shades Freed:
    • It gets a bit funny in Chapter Nine, when one of Ana's bodyguards, realizing that someone has smashed a lot of furniture and knick-knacks in the hall outside the penthouse elevator, yells, "Code Blue!" In the UK, that's a common general code for "Emergency!" In America, that's a common hospital code for "cardiopulmonary arrest".
    • Chapter Ten talks about the villain being "released from hospital". An American would be more likely to say "released from the hospital". This mistake recurs throughout the book, too. Earlier in that chapter, a bodyguard says the villain will "have an aching skull when he wakes" instead of "...when he wakes up."
    • In Chapter Thirteen, Ana refers to Grey leading her from the ground floor of his Aspen mansion to the first floor. In the U.K., that would be correct. However, in America, the ground floor IS the first floor. Ana and Grey would be headed up to the second floor.
    • In Chapter Fourteen, Ana, her friend Kate Kavanagh, and Ana's sister-in-law Mia all refer to dancing as "throwing some shapes" — which is Irish slang that has penetrated Britain but is virtually unknown in America.
• For Want of a Nail is an Alternate History by American author Robert Sobel that depicts the world after a failed American Revolution. The British government sets up their colonies as the Confederacy of North America, which possesses a parliamentary government. Nonetheless, later on in the book, articles of impeachment are drawn up against this system's equivalent of a Prime Minister despite the earlier confirmed existence of a vote of no confidence.^note Could technically still work, as these are two distinct things –- a no-confidence vote merely forces a PM to step down; an impeachment, by contrast, is a legal trial presided over by a judge where conviction typically results in the accused being banned from ever holding public office again.
• Hannibal by Thomas Harris has an offhand reference to "an Australian quarter" — there's no 25-cent coin in Australian currency.
• A minor example from the Iron Druid Chronicles: In Trapped, Atticus and Granuaile raid a sporting goods store for all manner of equipment, including guns and ammo. These are only sold in gun stores in Greece.
• Older Than Steam: The Chinese Epic Journey to the West assumes that all countries have the same kind of governors and imperial courts as China and that all countries in the world recognize a monkey-faced being as looking like a thunder god (among many other examples).
• Somewhat justified in KonoSuba: any (usually corrupted) fragments Japanese culture seen in the otherwise medieval European fantasy world can be Hand Waved as a result of centuries of Aqua sending over transplants from modern Japan who attain wealth and status thanks to their "cheat" abilities.
• Left Behind has references to "Captains" and "Lieutenants" at Scotland Yard — in the British police they would be "Chief Inspectors" and "Inspectors".
• Moonrise by Sarah Crossan has the narrator, who lives in the U.S., spell the word "curb" with a K and an E- - "kerb."
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Fortune Lover is set in a Medieval European Fantasy universe, but its Japanese roots can be seen from the fact that Keith is adopted as heir — a very common Japanese practice, but virtually unheard of in post-Roman Europe. There are, of course, also things like tools, architectural details (despite ostensibly having "European" aesthetics) or even such silly things like desserts — all of which quite blatantly show its Japanese origin.
• The Night's Dawn Trilogy had a character who had served in the Australian Marines in The Vietnam War. Australia does not have a dedicated marine unit, just army and navy units trained in amphibious warfare.
• Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden, a short story by Wen Spencer set in the same world as her Tinker series, featured a Scottish naturalist reminiscing about how the platypus family in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood inspired him to become a biologist. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was never broadcast in the United Kingdom.
• "Rule Golden" by Damon Knight has a BBC news reporter say "In Commons today..." But omitting the article like that is an Americanism; any real Brit would at least say "in the Commons", and a BBC announcer would more likely say "in the House of Commons", which after all takes only about half a second longer.
• The British Saffy's Angel series has a recurring character who is a visiting American...and who speaks in distinctly British slang.
• The Saga of Darren Shan was written by the Irish author of the same name and the setting is deliberately left vague in the hopes of making it more appealing to British and American readers. However, Darren's father is called Dermot, and when he fakes his death at the end of the first book, the funeral bears more resemblance to an Irish one; Darren is implied to be buried only two or three days later, whereas a British funeral is more likely to take place a week or two later.
• The Sum of All Fears mentions that the Super Bowl will be broadcast in Spain "in five different dialects" — implying that the event has a following there far larger than it actually does. In reality, American football is so small in Spain that when mainstream news covers the event, they only talk about the musical numbers during the halftime show. That's right, the sport part of the sporting event goes unmentioned.
• Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Balance of Power:
  • Aside from being actually Spexico, the Spain of the book has a government just like the US one, only with a king replacing the president. Spanish provinces^note Not even autonomous communities, the real life highest ranking subdivisions which go unmentioned are apparently as powerful as US states and have their own National Guards, and congressmen (read: deputies) have their own limos and drivers (in Real Life they don't).
  • Even though the book is supposedly about an ethnic war, there are actually no separate ethnicities in the world of the book: everyone speaks Castillian Spanish, has "generically" Hispanic names, lives more or less mixed together all over the country, has the same religion, and identifies with the same historical figures. The only basis for the groups and the reason they hate each other is skin color and social class, which sounds rather like...
  • In the opening, an African American agent poses as a born and bred Spaniard and nobody finds it unusual. In 90s Spain, black people were either a phenomenally small minority with recent origins in former colonies like Cuba and Equatorial Guinea, or new immigrants from Latin America and Africa.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of Alias, Sydney and Vaughn waterboard an enemy in the toilet of an Ibiza nightclub's restroom. There is no way they could do this in a European toilet, as they use less water than American ones.
• The Agency: During a mission in Spain, the field agents buy tapas in a brown paper bag, rather than white plastic with handles. There is also an Adalia Cansino Montes who is married to an Efron Montes, implying she added her husband's name to her own, but this isn't customary in Spain.
• The A-Team also had a brown paper bag in Spain.
• In the Bones episode "Mayhem on a Cross", Norwegian police are depicted as wearing what appears to be riot gear and guns, violently kicking in the door spurring a fight between policemen and musicians and concert goers. In reality, Norwegian police are typically unarmed and many policemen may only arm themselves in extreme situations, such as when approaching a suspect they know to be armed.
• In Chernobyl, Craig Mazin wrote a scene where a Kind Hearted Cat Lover left extra pet food for his cat before committing suicide. The Russian consultant pointed that there was no market pet food in the Soviet Union, so it was changed to the character leaving extra plates with scraps.
• Criminal Minds:
  • In Season 1's "Machismo", where the BAU helps the police of a small Mexican town find a serial killer targeting elderly women, the BAU realizes that the victims are the mothers of young women attacked by an unreported serial rapist when they notice that the surnames of the younger victims match the elderly women's maiden names. Problem: Maiden names don't exist in Mexico. Mexican women keep the same name until they die. Latino people usually have both their parents' last names (father's, then mother's) so it could still be recognized that way.
  • An important childhood event for Dr. Tara Lewis is that, while at a school in Germany, she had to correct everybody's pronunciation of her name since they automatically pronounced it wrong ("Terra"). In real life, the pronunciation she insists on is the one that would come natural to native German speakers. A German boy teased her by repeating the "wrong" pronunciation over and over, escalating to that boy beating up Tara's brother and painting a swastika onto her locker. The swastika would get a student onto the short list for being expelled, given that the symbol is outlawed and so much as scribbling it into one's own papers would get a student into trouble. German schools also don't have lockers, making the whole event appear to be scripted for a US school and then moved to Germany.
• The international sequel, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, often got criticism from applying the original formula to foreign locales and appearing to give FBI agents an authority (or entitlement...) in places they shouldn't have any. Foreigners also tended to follow American naming conventions, like Spaniards with a single surname and women who adopted their husband's name, or Russian women without the '-a' added after a surname ending in '-ov'.
• CSI: NY: In "Unfriendly Chat," Adam slacks at work by chatting with a French girl who is promptly murdered on camera. The only clue about where the murder took place is a TV in the background noting the temperature outside, so the team checks climate reports from all over the world to know what place had that temperature at the time. At no point do they notice that the temperature is in Fahrenheit, which is only used in the United States and four small island countries (the murder turns out to have happened in their own Manhattan).^note Some American news sources geared towards jet-setters give weather reports for various world cities using Fahrenheit; they may or may not also give the metric equivalent that would actually be used in those places.
• In the Doctor Who fiftieth anniversary special, the War Doctor sarcastically refers to his successors as "Sandshoes and Dicky-Bow", referring to Tenth's trainers and Eleventh's bow-tie. Steven Moffat was embarrassed to later learn that "sandshoes" for rubber soled shoes worn in primary school is a specifically Scottish thing — in England, they're "plimsolls".^note Sandshoes is a common (if slightly old-fashioned) term in Australia, so it passed completely unnoticed there.
• Heroes: A major element of the Irish arc in S2 involves gangsters robbing what is referred to repeatedly by Irish characters as a "sports book". This is an exclusively American phrase that is not used in any other form of English. Irish people would refer to such an establishment as a "betting shop" or "bookies". Also it is implied that it is a "dodgy" establishment that would be unwilling to seek police help, when in Ireland sports betting is a legal and entirely respectable business.
• Lost:
  • In one particular episode, a woman is on life support and her doctor says that she will be well looked after, the which the patient's sister comments that they can't pay for that. The issue: The hospital is in New South Wales, Australia, where Medicare (or the SIRA, given that it was the result of a car accident) would take care of the bills.
  • In a flashback, Claire uses the term "drapes" to refer to what Australians call curtains.
  • In another flashback, a policeman visiting a character refers to himself as "officer". The correct term in Australia is "constable".
  • In Desmond's first flashback in "Live Together, Die Alone", he is given a bunch of envelopes which feature a return address on the front. This is not required in the United Kingdom (although the Royal Mail recommend its inclusion), but if it is included, it would be put on the reverse on the envelope.
• Played for comedy in The Office (US) when Andy refers to the South African singing group Ladysmith Black Mambazo as "Ladysmith African American Mambazo". The "black" in the group's name doesn't even refer to the race. It's a reference to the black ox, the "strongest farm animal" according to the group's founder.
• Pipo De Clown: Klukkluk comes from a tribe that has a Dutch-style name, despite being Native American. And that's not even the iceberg when it comes to the issues with his portrayal.
• Discussed on RuPaul's Drag Race UK. Vivienne was initially concerned that the other contestants would put on a show for the cameras and spout American drag slang ("Yaasss hunty!") that British queens don't actually say. To her relief, that didn't happen nearly as much as she feared.
• Ted Lasso is generally good about having the British characters use proper British English vocabulary, but there are a few exceptions since the show is headed by Americans. Most obvious are that "tie" and "game" are often said by the Brits instead of "draw" or "match".
• In The West Wing, Will Bailey, first introduced as the Deputy White House communications director, a somewhat nerdy character who spent his childhood and youth in the UK as the son as a career military diplomat, is said to have been an "Eton valedictorian" (clearly as a way to establish his prodigious brilliance even at a young age), despite the fact that there are no valedictory speeches and consequently no valedictorians in British secondary schools.
• USA High is about a school for Americans in Paris, but even the non-American characters speak American English (in silly versions of their own accents). They also refer to paying for things with dollars rather than francs. They do at least refer to 'Headmaster' Elliott, who is British, rather than the more American 'principal'.
• On World's Craziest Fools, a British show hosted by the American Mr. T, Mr. T is made to use British terms for things.

Magazines

• In the days when Cracked was a MAD knockoff, it ran a parody comic strip of Star Trek: Generations, including a take on the scene where Picard reminisces about his ancestors, where the joke is that the Discard family were all responsible for famous military defeats. However, they're all American military defeats. The Picards (and presumably the Discards) are French.

Music

• Genesis: In the music video for "Land of Confusion", made by the staff of Spitting Image, Ronald Reagan's alarm clock is a 24-hour clock. Such things are common in the UK, where Genesis and Spitting Image were based, but in America are only seen in the military (and sometimes in aviation). In fact, American English generally calls the 24-hour clock "military time". Granted, the President is the highest-ranking member of the American military, but the US civilian sphere almost exclusively opts for 12-hour clocks.
• In the song "San Jacinto" from the fourth self-titled album by former Genesis member Peter Gabriel, he has the Native American narrator "watch Scouts and Guides make pow-wow signs". The phrase would make perfect sense in Gabriel's native UK as references to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. To Americans, it's confusing since both organizations are known there as Scouts, with the full names of "Boy Scouts" and "Girl Scouts" used when needed to distinguish between the two.^note The US branch of the world Girl Guide movement is indeed known as "Girl Scouts", a title also used in a few East Asian countries (but notably not in Canada). In the US, the term "guides" can also refer to what was known at the time of the album as "Indian Guides" and now "YMCA Y-Guides", which taught children to imitate Native American traditions. However, they're very obscure compared to the Scouts.
• Done intentionally in the title track to the album Breakfast in America by the British band Supertramp to show the narrow worldview of the singer, who thinks people in Texas are so rich they probably have kippers for breakfast all the time.

Theatre

• The Mikado intentionally invokes this, as the Japan of the setting is meant as a satire of Victorian English society, separated by a thin layer of "exotic" Japanese paint over it.
• Very likely even William Shakespeare would've been prone to this; it's particularly noticable in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is supposed to be set in Ancient Greece, but has The Fair Folk straight out of English folklore.

Theme Parks

• Parodied in this exchange in Muppet*Vision 3D:
  Kermit the Frog: And we've also got a big musical finale from Sam the Eagle. Sam, what's it about?
  Sam the Eagle: It's called "A Salute to All Nations, but Mostly America".

Video Games

• Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War is set in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of America, the Osean Federation, but its military structure and the attitudes of most people who staff it are much more in line with Japan than America: it's explicitly referred to as a Self-Defense Force and mostly consists of people who dislike war and start chafing when they're forced to invade another country that attacked them, a far cry from the typical stereotype of America's military (especially when the game released) of being filled with violent fratboys who joined up specifically to go kill people on foreign soil. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War retroactively addressed this; fifteen years prior, they were a much more American-style military who more or less jumped at the chance to fight against Belka when it began invading its neighbors, but after seeing just how much Belka was willing to sacrifice to keep invaders out of the North, they were collectively shocked into pacifism.
• Alan Wake 2 is set in Washington State, but has a great deal of Finnish influence, due to Remedy being based in Finland. Justified by Watery being an area highly populated by Finnish residents (which is Truth in Television: Washington does, in fact, have a long history of Nordic immigration and cultural influence).
• Black Mesa, which takes place in New Mexico, clearly employed a Brit as one of their asset creators:
  • The vending machines are stocked with Brand X versions of brand-name snacks... specifically, British and European brands like Walker's, Maltesers, and (the British version of) Smarties. Even John "Totalbiscuit" Bain, a Brit himself, knew this was wrong and called it out when he recorded a playthrough of the game in its beta form. The digital readout on the machine itself says "Feeling peckish?" which is not an expression Americans use.
  • There's also a Chuckle Brothers mug in some of the offices.
  • Some of the facility's signage uses British terms and spelling, such as "authorised" instead of "authorized".
• The Crash Bandicoot series is ostensibly set in an Australian archipelago, but since the series was made by American company Naughty Dog, most of the characters speak with American accents and the locations are quite unusual for the setting.
• In the Crazy Cars games, developed in France by Titus Software, all the races take place on American roads, but speeds are only given in kilometers per hour.
• While Fate/Grand Order's home base Chaldea has employees and summoned heroes from all over the globe, they only ever celebrate Japanese holidays.
• Granblue Fantasy takes place in a vaguely European setting, with many of its places and characters given western names. While there is a Japan-like country among the floating islands, and the vast amount of trading done implies some of the cast should be familiar with some concepts, there's still a few times when their knowledge is well over what one might expect. Everyone participates in White Day in March, two of the Dragon Knights go off to a hanami event in spring, New Years tends to follow Japanese customs (the main cast even gets special kimonos as an alternate skin), and the few private schools we've seen all match up to Japanese high school stereotypes.
• The Grand Theft Auto series of games is, in theory, set in America, but their developer Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) is based out of Edinburgh and Dundee in Scotland, and they evidently like their Creator Provincialism in-jokes. As such, Americans who play the games can tell this is neither real America nor quite Hollywood America.
  • The games frequently use the term "car park", which is commonly used in Britain but not in America, where "parking lot" or "parking garage" are much more likely to be heard. As of V, however, they seem to have caught on.
  • A lot of place-names in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are thinly-disguised ones from Scottish cities, and there's even an exact replica of the Forth Rail Bridge.
  • One of the trailers for Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony is done in the style of a celebrity news program. The (American) announcer refers to television as "the telly".
  • At certain points, the words "pedophile" and "pedo" can be heard pronounced with a long "e". The pun in the name of the Speedophile jet ski only works with the British pronunciation.
  • The name of the trucking company RS Haul plays off of the British term "arsehole" as opposed to the American "asshole". Likewise, in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, Johnny Klebitz's brother refers to Billy Grey in an e-mail as an "arsehole".
  • In Grand Theft Auto V, set in a pastiche of Los Angeles, the pop music station Non-Stop-Pop FM features tracks by Mis-Teeq, N-Joi, Modjo, and All Saints, with the Updated Re-release including songs by Bronski Beat, the Blow Monkeys, Moloko, Morcheeba, Simply Red, Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams, and Kylie Minogue. All of these musicians were huge in the UK, or at least recognizable names, but in the US, bringing them up will likely get you blank stares unless you're talking to Anglophile pop music nerds or fans of dance music. It's also hosted by the thickly-accented English model/actress Cara Delevingne, though her case is admittedly justified; she came to America to pick up the new Righteous Slaughter game early. (It might also explain the large number of British pop stars on the station.)
  • This also explains the presence in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City of Scottish singer Aneka's "Japanese Boy", a huge success in the UK but barely known at all in the US. (It also alludes to the 1980s fascination with all things Japanese.)
  • In Grand Theft Auto III and Liberty City Stories, The Yardies exist in the New York pastiche of Liberty City, despite being a primarily British criminal trope.
  • The Grand Theft Auto Online cars that the first Updated Re-release of V added to the single player game's traffic include cars that are extremely rare in the US and would be more appropriate on European roads. The most egregious is the Pigalle, which can't have an American license plate and is based on the Citroën SM, and yet became an extremely common car to find in-game.
  • The stock exchange in V is named "BAWSAQ", a pun on the Scottish slang "baw sack".
• Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain are set in New York and Philadelphia, respectively, but were made by a French company, and there are a bunch of telling details — for example, both games feature apartments with the bath/shower and toilet in separate rooms, which is not unheard of in Europe but is never seen in America.
• Heavy Rain has some additional slip-ups:
  • The power outlets in buildings and some of the building architecture (particularly in Madison's apartment) are of distinctly European style instead of American.
  • The supermarket chase that Norman gets involved in has, at one point, live chickens present, something that is not allowed in real U.S. supermarkets.
  • There's some instances early in the game of characters referring to empty areas as "wasteland", when Americans would be calling these areas empty fields or vacant lots.
  • A number of minor characters are voiced by French actors who don't even try American accents, which may raise an eyebrow for some American players.
  • The license plates on all the cars are modeled after French license plates.
  • The apartment complex that Lauren lives in has a receptionist at the lobby. While there are apartment complexes with receptionists in the United States, they are usually limited to luxury or high-scale apartment buildings and you wouldn't exactly see one in a run-down complex that has shady characters living in it.
• The House of the Dead 2 is set in Italy, with Caucasian-looking characters and all, but its spinoff The Typing of the Dead has a tutorial where James explains that one of the benefits of proficient touch-typing is that you can leave work early and enjoy some karaoke. Post-work karaoke is a common pastime in Japan, less so in Western countries.
• The humans from Mass Effect despite coming from a diverse range of nationalities, ethnicities, and culture, act more in-line with how Americans^*Although it is made by a Canadian studio would behave (only Matsuo act distinctly Japanese); they can be dismissive of cultures of other races, can act boorish at all times, individualistic, and (specific to the Alliance) utilize peace-through-firepower doctrine.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has the memetic line "Played College Ball you know, could've gone pro if I hadn't joined the navy" meant to explain Senator Armstrong's ludicrous physical strength that allows him to fight on par with a cyborg who can throw tanks with ease despite having minimal cybernetic enhancements of his own (other than nanomachines that give him indestructible skin). It's implied that he's talking about American Football, but no one in America would refer to Football as "College Ball" (or any other sport for that matter). He also states that he played football at the University of Texas, which is meant to play on the stereotypes associated with Texas make his former football player status sound more impressive, but University of Texas isn't known for having a top-of-the-line football team (UT Arlington in particular discontinued its football team outright in 1985).
• The arcade version of Ninja Gaiden, a Japanese game where you play as a ninja in the United States. Signs with Engrish aside, some levels have random oil drums labeled "Esso Gus (sic)". While Esso is still a brand of gasoline around many parts of the world (including Japan), in America, it was replaced with Exxon in 1973, a full 15 years before the game came out. Also in Stage 2, where you are in New York City, the cars are driving on the left, as if in Japan.
• While the ObsCure games are set in the United States, they were made by a French developer, and it shows.
  • Metric measurements are frequently used in place of American Customary Measurements, the parking lot has a large bike shed (most American schools have, at most, a small rack to park bicycles), dates are rendered in the form of "DD/MM" rather than the "MM/DD" format used in the U.S., British spellings are employed frequently, and a notice makes reference to the "Ministry of Health" (the U.S. equivalent is the Department of Health and Human Services). On top of that, one of the calendars still has the French names for the months of the year (octobre, janvier, avril), though that could just be something that the translators overlooked. If it weren't for the American flag in the gymnasium in the first game and the brief reference to Principal Friedman being born in Iowa, one might guess that the games took place in Quebec rather than the US.
  • Likewise, with the exception of the Friedmans (whose last name implies a German background), every single character who's not explicitly specified as being non-white (Mei and Jun) or otherwise foreign (Sven) has a last name from Britain, like Matthews, Thompson, Jones, Carter, Brookes, or Wilde. No corner of the US was exclusively settled by people from Britain; even those parts of the country with substantial levels of British heritage (like New England, Utah, and the Southeast) tend to have plenty of German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Italian, Polish, and other mainland European ancestry mixed in as well, especially in more recent years as people have moved across the US, and that's just the people who are visibly white. To British ears it probably wouldn't be out of the ordinary, but it certainly stands out to Americans.
  • One of the weapons available in the second game is a flashball gun, a less-lethal riot control weapon (though for the game's light-intolerant monsters, it is far deadlier) designed by a French company that is widely used by law enforcement and gendarmes in France and the rest of Europe, but is virtually unheard of with American law enforcement, who are more likely to carry tasers.
• Onmyōji (2016) has Christmas and Thanksgiving events despite their being Western holidays with the latter not celebrated anywhere outside America. The fact the game is set in Japan in the Heian period just makes it weirder, and the developers not being Westerners makes it even more so.
• Pokémon:
  • Characters from Unova (based on New York), Kalos (France), Alola (Hawaii), and Galar (Great Britain) sometimes bow, most commonly the Pokémon Center nurses.
  • Bede from Pokémon Sword and Shield grew up in an orphanage. Unlike Japan, modern Britain doesn't have orphanages anymore. In addition, curry in these games is curry rice which is frequently eaten on camping trips in Japan whereas curry everywhere else refers to either curry powder or a meat dish.
• Raccoon City in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is a supposed to be a modern Midwestern American city, but the size of the streets and presence of extensive alleys and shopping arcades are clear evidence that Raccoon was based on a contemporary Japanese city. For reference, many of the streets are blocked by a single longitudinal car across the road. In America, the only roads that narrow are called "back alleys", and you're not likely to see them outside of the downtown cores of larger older cities. Further games in the series that revisit Raccoon City, however, seem to retcon it to a more American layout.
  • Installments in the series with in-game stores make it clear that the developers based all prices on Japanese Yen and simply replaced the name of the currency to the local equivalent. While you might be able to get away with this with weaker currencies like Spanish Pesetas, stronger ones like USD or even Romanian leu make it look like the protagonists are constantly getting price gouged.
• While the The Sims series is generally good at avoiding this trope due to intentionally creating its own rules to apply within its universe and localized versions correcting slang terms to aptly fit their countries' own, there are occasional slip-ups that can stick out to non-American audiences:
  • Your sims can get fired one day without warning, often due to a bad work performance. In many places in Europe, firing doesn't happen that quickly, as there are many procedures to be made beforehand that ensures the firing is made for a legitimate reason, in neutral favor of both the employer and the employee.
  • Maternity leave is only for about an in-game week. This is alleviated a bit by a Sim's lifespan being much shorter than a real life person's, but even then it's considered outrageous in many other places in the world wherein paid maternity leave can be up to 4 months.
• Sonic and the Black Knight has Sir Gawain, a knight, try to kill himself after being defeated by the lower-ranked Sonic. While Seppuku was common amongst samurai, honor suicides were something a European knight was unlikely to do for various cultural and religious reasons.
• The Story of Seasons games are apparently set in Europe or America, but the characters retain certain Japanese mannerisms such as bowing, a lot of the characters love Japanese foods, and some of the plants and animals are native to Japan. Characters also celebrate Japanese holidays like White Day and Japanese-style New Years. The fact Muffy from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is having severe difficulties keeping a man due to being 30 is confusing in a western setting. While some games like Tale of Two Towns and Trio of Towns handwave it by having a Wutai themed town with Japanese crops, customs, food, and wildlife, it actually leads to further confusion in some ways. For instance, you can only learn yoshoku dishes from the western-themed towns.
• Having been made in the UK, all the cars in TimeSplitters Future Perfect have their steering wheels on the right side. However, one of the missions takes place in Russia, where cars should have their steering wheels on the left side.^note It's actually fairly common to see right-hand-drive cars in the Russian Far East due to its proximity to Japan. Japanese import vehicles are easier to obtain (thus cheaper) and more reliable than domestic models. A move by Moscow to ban them led to protests.
• In the PAL English version of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Wailord's trophy mentions that it can dive down a distance over twice the height of Ben Nevis. Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Britain and well known there, but almost unknown outside of it. The NTSC English release uses general terms for this trophy, which makes you wonder why the PAL writers didn't do the same.
• X Com Enemy Unknown: No matter which country you deploy in, the buildings and cars (especially the yellow cabs) will often look like American cities or towns, not to mention the complete lack of accents for your soldiers prior to Enemy Within. And while EW does offer a new language customization options, all troops start out with English as their default language, and the language of many nations, such as Japan and Egypt, are not available. Occasionally, you'll also find maps which are inexplicably European or Chinese urban areas. Since each map is hand-crafted, however, this is understandable.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X takes place in a human settlement on an alien planet. Despite the fact it is New Los Angeles and most characters are American, you can see weather in Celsius and characters bow to each other.
• Yandere Simulator, a game developed by an American but set in The Theme Park Version of Japan, uses dollar signs as the indication for currency instead of yen.

Visual Novels

• The developers of Double Homework are American, and it shows. The story takes place in a small European country which is definitely not English-speaking, and yet, not only do the characters speak English and use English figures of speech, but they all have typical names for an English-speaking country that would either be nonexistent or in different forms in other languages.

Webcomics

• In one Cyanide and Happiness strip (written by Dave Mc Elfatrick, who is Irish), a kid asks the jock pestering him about who his favorite "footballer" is. Nothing wrong so far...but the next panel makes it clear they're talking about American football. In real life, American people talking about football players would just say "football players".
• In one baseline arc Arthur, King of Time and Space strip, Lot of Orkney decides it's time to attack Arthur when he sees the first robin of spring. While some European robins (a completely different species to American robins) are known to spend the summer in Scandinavia and the winter in North Africa, across most of Europe, including the British Isles, they're non-migratory, and are a popular symbol of winter in the UK. The bird that heralds spring in Britain is the cuckoo.
• Leftover Soup is officially stated to take place in a town nowhere in particular in North America (as in, the writer went out of his way never to specify even what country they're in). But one place it probably isn't is Ohio, because Max opens her awesome RPG session at the "Ohio DMV". Ohio has a ''Bureau" of Motor Vehicles, not a Department like most states.

Web Original

• Parodied in Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls. It supposedly takes place in Japan but the characters seem more like Japan-obsessed Americans. One character even almost accidentally refers to their country as America before doing a Last-Second Word Swap.
• Carmilla the Series takes place at a fictional "Silas University" in Styria, Austria, which is portrayed as being exactly like Canada (the show's country of origin), only with more Überwald tropes and Magic Realism laid on.
• Dark Secrets of Garry's Mod: Downplayed in the Halloween episodes. The series is created by Hungarians and it takes place in Hungary but Halloween is actually not celebrated there.
  • Lampshaded in Egy nagyon ijesztő halloweeni epizód (A really scary Halloween episode).
    Medievil: I love Halloween! And I do not give a shit if we do not celebrate it in Hungary.
• Sailor Nothing is supposedly set in Japan, but the characters constantly refer to American media and pop culture. Some of this is understandable, such as namedropping popular writers like Hunter S. Thompson. Others decidedly aren't, such as a character describing something as being the "NBC Mystery Movie of the Week". This may have been intentional, as the story is largely a parody of the DIC dub of Sailor Moon, which itself went out of its way to "Westernize" various Japanese aspects of the setting.
• In the Strong Bad Email "more armies", Strong Bad takes offence at the email sender leaving out the full stop in "Mr.", believing he is calling him "mere Strong Bad". However, this particular email sender is from Australia, where it is perfectly acceptable to leave out the full stop. (And by "full stop", we mean what Strong Bad would call a "period".)
• The Key of Awesome parody of "That's What Makes You Beautiful" makes fun of One Direction's clean-cut image by having them sing "We don't kno-o-ow, we don't know what boners are". Since this is American slang and 1D are British/Irish, it wouldn't be that surprising if they really didn't. It also makes fun of them being "on the beach, playing a sport/We've got no beach stuff, not even shorts", which isn't that uncommon in the UK — the rolled-up trousers seen at one point are a classic British seaside trope.
• SPARKLE ON RAVEN takes place in a deliberately vague mish-mash of Japanese and American culture, with a Japanese-style high school — featuring sailor uniforms and elaborate clubs — coexisting with the creators' North American pop culture and fashion sensibilities. One episode revolves around saving a real-life restaurant called Cooters, which was located in Florida. At the end of the episode, one character asks Raven if she's ever actually been to Cooters.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball is made in Europe, mostly London, but set in the United States — Elmore is eventually shown to occupy the space that is taken up in real life by Vallejo, California (the place where most of the show's photographic backgrounds come from). It's convincing enough that the majority of American viewers don't notice this, but several things slip by, mostly background details like cars sometimes driving on the left or signs using British word spellings. There are so many examples for this show that it actually has its own page.
• In an episode of American Dad!, Klaus starts to talk about how he was once cheated on.
  Klaus: Elsa was my first love. We met at university.
  Roger: You mean you met in college. You're in the states now. Say it the right way.
  Klaus: (sigh) So, Elsa and I met at university.
  Roger: OHHH! I hate it!!
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Christmas Episode had the Kanker sisters play with Christmas crackers, a tradition common in Canada (where the show is made) but mostly unheard of in the U.S. (where the show is set).
• Inverted for comedic effect in Drawn Together with "The King Of Mexico" and "The King Of India". In real life, both countries are actually republics and have presidents, just like the United States Of America. India did have a monarchy at one point, but the monarch was an Emperor, not a King. Plus, the official name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos, or the United Mexican States and like the USA, has an eagle as its national animal.
• Right near the beginning of A Goofy Movie, Max turns off the alarm on his clock. Though the movie is set in the United States, the clock uses a split-flap display popular in central Europe at the time rather than the strictly digital display on a screen that's the standard in the US. (The film was animated in Paris.)
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi is about a real Japanese pop duo. Or so we're led to believe. The characters themselves say and do things easily identifiable with American culture as all the writers and animators are from North America. They attempt to remind the viewers that Ami and Yumi are from Japan by having them speak in Gratuitous Japanese, use chopsticks to eat, obsess over sushi, and spend yen (even though there doesn't seem to be any rate of conversion...), but it doesn't go much deeper than that veneer.
• A minor example happens in Justice League Unlimited: the Injustice League tries to rob a trainload of euros, but when we see some notes, they look more like American dollars.
• Kaeloo: The English dub is made in Paris, France using British voice actors, and the characters are supposed to act like Americans. However, they do screw up at times, like saying "rubbish" instead of "trash".
• Other than cultural references, Kappa Mikey falls into this headfirst with people getting fired and rehired constantly. In Japan, a job in a company is considered a lifetime occupation. Instead of being fired, you're usually just demoted, with further failure resulting in getting demoted even further in a manner that all but says "we'd like you to resign".
• Kim Possible: In A Sitch in Time, Ron moves to Norway. While we don't really see much of his life in Norway, we do get to see the very American style cafeteria at his school, complete with grouchy lunch ladies who serve lamb and cabbage stew. Except in Norway, hot lunches isn't really a thing — it's not even a given that a high school cafeteria will have hot food. For lunch you generally eat sandwiches, and it's far more common for students to bring their lunches from home. And while lamb and cabbage stew is a genuine Norwegian dish, it's strictly a dinner type meal and nobody would eat it for lunch.
• The Simpsons:
  • During a trip to the UK, Bart and Lisa visit a Candy Store, rather than a Sweet Shop.
  • When the Simpsons go to Ireland, they are arrested by the "police" instead of the Gardaí. While the American characters calling them "the police" out loud is acceptable (and not uncommon in Ireland anyway), the vehicles having POLICE written across them in big friendly letters is completely wrong.
• An episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries set in Australia featured a sign in miles rather than kilometres^* (Australia metricated in the late-70s, and usage of Imperial measurements is banned there), and a character with a thick "Australian" accent talking about putting something up in aluminum (not aluminium as any Australian would say).
• Tarzan and Jane's London ^note  the one in England, not the one in Ontario, Canada is mostly okay, but there's a few oddities like cars sometimes driving on the right, a low bridge which has a yellow-diamond warning sign on the lead up (but a British red-triangle sign on the bridge itself), and a poster saying "Visit the London Zoo" (a real poster might say "London Zoo◊" or just "the Zoo◊", but never both.)

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