Fantasy Landmark Equivalent

Un jour je serai le meilleur dresseur, Je me battrai sans répit^Translation One day, I will be the best trainer, I will fight without rest

In Real Life, landmarks and monuments contain many things of cultural and symbolic value. When an author wants to include a landmark or monument in their work, but that work takes place in a completely fictitious setting, an alternate universe, or a highly fictionalized version of a real-life location, or if their intended reference to the aforementioned landmark got Screwed by the Lawyers, what should they do? They can create an equivalent of that landmark/monument that is appropriate for their setting. One common method is to replace the iconic face of the human in a landmark with the face of the important characters or change the letters in the landmark to important phrases or locations in the setting. Mount Rushmore and the Hollywood sign are especially prone to this method, as the faces of former presidents are easily changed to those of important characters within the setting while the latter are letters that can spell out a fantasy location while still retaining the Hollywood parody that the work wants to depict. The Hollywood sign version of this trope is so common that it has its own subtrope and any examples of that landmark should go on that page.

Note: This trope does NOT cover straight-up depictions of the monument/landmark in question in the work. If the landmark isn't significantly altered in name, appearance, history, and/or symbolic value in accordance to the setting, it doesn't fit this trope.

One of the reasons this trope comes into play is the culture and communities the story depicts is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture or No Communities Were Harmed. The monument and landmark in question will always be given an Alternate Landmark History because of the difference in setting. The landmark would very likely suffer from Monumental Damage, Rushmore Refacement, or become a Weaponized Landmark during the course of the story. Expect a lot of shots depicting the landmark in order to remind the audience this is an important location within the story.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Naruto has the Hokage Rock, a mountain with the heads of the previous Hokages, a title given to the leader of the Leaf ninja village. This is an obvious homage to Mount Rushmore. This seems to be a unique Leaf village tradition, as the other villages' Kages do not have their own Rock.

Comic Books

• In the Superman canon, the Daily Planet building draws inspiration from the Toronto Star Building; Metropolis was meant to be an amalgam of Cleveland and Toronto, so it fits.

Fan Works

• In A Thing of Vikings, the Hooligan tribe starts constructing a colossal statue of Freyja at their new settlement on Eigg. Her pose, holding a torch with her right hand, is clearly referencing the Statue of Liberty.

Films — Animation

• Asterix Conquers America has an equivalent to Mount Rushmore in North America... in 50 BC, far from South Dakota, with the faces of four natives carved in the mountain, including those of the chief and the medicine man Asterix and Obelix stumble upon.
• In Pixar's film Cars, Radiator Springs and the desert scenery around it are based on real landmarks, including:
  • Ornament Valley is inspired by the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley in northeastern Arizona.
  • The Cadillac Range is inspired by Arizona’s Black Mountains and the Cadillac Ranch sculpture in Amarillo, Texas.
  • Willy's Butte is inspired by the landmark of Mexican Hat, Utah.
  • Radiator Cap is inspired by Tucumcari Mountain in New Mexico.
  • The Cozy Cone Motel is inspired by the actual Wigwam Motels in Holbrook, Arizona and in San Bernardino, California.
• The Triplets of Belleville: A parody of the Statue of Liberty is depicted as an obese woman holding a hamburger on top of her tablet and an ice cream cone instead of a torch.

Films — Live-Action

• At the beginning of Barbie, there's a cutaway gag where Stereotypical Barbie drives through an equivalent of Mount Rushmore in Barbieland that depicts the very first Barbie, Christie, Kira, and Teresa dolls. When Beach Ken brings the patriarchy ideology to Barbieland, prompting the Kens to take over and rename the world to "Kendom", the dolls' faces are replaced by that of horses, due to Beach Ken thinking horses are a defining symbol of masculinity.
• Batman Forever ups Gotham City's Big Applesauce aesthetic by giving it Lady Gotham, its very own Statue of Liberty. There's pretty much no difference apart from the Lady having "GOTHAM" across her crown, though the statue's since migrated into other pieces of Bat-media with more creative designs.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers explicitly shows that Tony Stark bought the MetLife Tower and converted it into Stark Tower, which turns into the Avengers Tower for the rest of the MCU's runtime.
  • Avengers: Endgame shows a memorial to victims of the Snap has been set up in what seems to be Golden Gate Park.
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming shows a memorial to the first responders of the Battle of New York atop the reconstructed Grand Central Terminal, replacing the statue of Hermes from real life.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home shows a renovation to the Statue of Liberty, where its patina has seemingly vanished and it's being converted to hold Captain America's shield in order to memorialize Cap after the events of Avengers: Endgame.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Counter-Earth, the High Evolutionary's replica of Earth created in his own image, features a statue of himself and a monkey modeled after the Statue of Liberty.
• Played for Drama at the end of 2001's Planet of the Apes, where the protagonist Leo encounters ape police at the foot of what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial, but is in fact a memorial to Thade, the ape main villain of the movie.
• Richie Rich has Mount Richmore, a look-alike of Mount Rushmore that has the faces of the Rich family carved into it.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • Havelock Vetenari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, takes people in the Oblong Office, an allusion to the U.S. President's Oval Office.
  • The Kingdom of Djelibeybi in Pyramids is in the midst of constructing the titular structures as an allusion to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
  • Pyramids also has the Lighthouse of Ephebe, an allusion to the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. (The Ephebian version was built in the wrong place because it was felt that was more aesthetically satisfying, and most sailors agree it is indeed a very nice thing to look at while they're run aground.)
  • In The Last Continent, the city of Bugarup has an opera house that "looks like an open box of tissues", or "is about to set sail"; given that the work is a commentary on the country of Australia, this is clearly meant to be a pastiche of the Sydney Opera House.
  • The Collapsed Tower of Quirm is what happens when the equivalent to Leaning Tower of Pisa is built by Bloody Stupid Johnson.
  • Mentioned in Men at Arms are Ankh-Morpork's Triumphant Arch (Paris's Arc de Triomphe) and the Colossus of Morpork (the Colossus of Rhodes), although whether they count as "landmarks" is debatable, since Bloody Stupid Johnson made them pocket-sized by mistake.
  • Small Gods has the Library of Ephebe, a collection of all the works by the great Ephebian philosophers, as a version of the Library of Alexandria.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The harbor of Braavos is guarded by the Titan of Braavos, a towering statue of a hoplite that straddles the inlet. It was almost certainly inspired by the Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic idol of the god Helios built at the entrance to the city harbor to commemorate their defensive victory against Demetrius of Macedon (destroyed by an earthquake in antiquity and never rebuilt on advice of the Oracle of Delphi).
• In the Timeline-191 universe, the Statue of Liberty does not exist due to poor relations between France and the United States. Standing in its place is the German-influenced Statue of Remembrance, carrying a sword in its right hand and a shield in its left.

Live-Action TV

• Bones has Temperence Brennan working in the "Jeffersonian Institute", an obvious expy of the Smithsonian; the museum itself is the setting for quite a few cases over the course of the series.
• The Boys parodies Avengers Tower from the MCU by having Vought Tower be in roughly the same location as the MetLife building.
• Doctor Who: The Statue of Liberty in this universe is a giant Weeping Angel, an alien species that turn into stone whenever anyone is looking at them and have the power to zap people back in time in order to eat the years they would have lived.
• Fringe has two key differences with the Statue of Liberty in the Alternate Universe visited from the Season 1 Finale onward. Firstly: it's still shiny and coppery, having never developed the patina that it did in our timeline. Secondly: the island apparently serves as the headquarters of the Department of Defense in the Alternate Universe.
• Marketing for The Man in the High Castle shows the Statue of Liberty wearing a Nazi armband and doing a Roman Salute; in the show itself, Lady Liberty is destroyed as part of the "Jahr Null" (Year Zero) initiative following Nazi victory, in order to make way for a new monument ironically titled the New Colossus.

Music

• The cover of Deep Purple album Deep Purple in Rock depicts Mount Rushmore, with the faces of the presidents being replaced by the face of the members of the band.

Theme Parks

• The Disney Theme Parks Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty Castles were modeled after Neuschwanstein, the famous Big Fancy Castle of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
• Efteling has Symbolica, its own equivalent to the Disney Theme Parks' castles. It's smaller and the towers are square-shaped, however.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed uses some delicately placed servings of Anachronism Stew to show famous landmarks in a sort of "hybrid" state if they would lack features that would make them recognizable to modern audiences; for instance, in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vaticano District bears its iconic dome underneath a series of scaffolds circa 1499, despite the fact that construction on the dome didn't start until 1506.
• Brütal Legend is set in a world that's based on heavy metal album covers and features such landmarks as Bladehenge as a stand-in for Stonehenge and Mount Rockmore, which is not just a stand-in for Mount Rushmore, it can be customized by Eddie purchasing effigies of various characters in the game from the Guardian of Metal.
• Captain America and the Avengers: In the location "Avengers' Park" there is a mountain with faces of four Avengers, an imitation of Mount Rushmore.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 fictionalizes the names of some real life monuments and landmarks:
  • In the Paris levels, The Louvre Museum is rendered simply as "Generic World Famous Museum" while the nearby Eiffel Tower is rendered as the "Paris Tower" with three pillars and a round base instead of the four pillars and a rectangular as it exists in our world. This actually creates a mild Continuity Snarl with Command & Conquer: Red Alert, as a cutscene there displayed the real-life Eiffel Tower. Beta screenshots show the tower was supposed to look much closer to the real-life version before being altered.
  • Other real life monuments mostly avert this, but their presence is heavily downplayed. The Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, the British Houses of Parliament, Golden Gate Bridge and others all appear but are not mission critical unlike the Paris Tower. The Twin Towers do appear in a Soviet mission and do have some mission relevance, but their destruction is optional and they lack any identifying label in-game, as they are simply marked as "Building".
• Control has the Oldest House manifest as a brutalist skyscraper in the middle of New York City; it's all but stated to be 33 Thomas Street, a building that was once used for telephone transfers, but nowadays may act as an NSA listening post.
• Fallout 3:
  • There are generic museums in place of the Smithsonian Institute, as the Smithsonian is very protective of their copyright; for instance, the Museum of Technology lines up with the real-life Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
  • While the National Mall is largely accurate to the way it's depicted in Real Life, the Jefferson Memorial is much further south than it is in reality.
• Golden Sun: Air's Rock, a wind-themed dungeon that lies in the middle of a desert and gives the heroes the Reveal ability is heavily based on Ayers Rock / Uluru, a big sandstone formation in the middle of the Australian desert.
• The Grand Theft Auto franchise has a parody of the Statue of Liberty called the Statue of Happiness that holds a coffee cup instead of a torch, and in Grand Theft Auto IV, the face appears to be modeled after Hillary Clinton.
• LEGO City Undercover: LEGO City has several real-life landmark equivalents. For example, Mount Cashmore is similar to Mount Rushmore but it features the heads of a pirate, his parrot, a knight, and a cowboy, Auburn Bay Bridge is modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge, and Lady Liberty Island features its own Statue of Liberty.
• LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2: The setting's version of the Statue of Liberty is depicted to be inside the Lemuria area with the Big Bad Kang's face on it.
• Moshi Monsters had a parody of the Thinker called the Stinker, which was a statue depicting a monster sitting on a block of smelly cheese and holding its nose.'
• Pokémon: Given the real-life inspiration of the series, many of the landmarks within the various regions have a counterpart in real life. For example, Prism Tower in Lumiose City is the local equivalent of the Eiffel Tower.
• Red Dead Redemption II (like its Rockstar Games sister series Grand Theft Auto) takes place in a fictionalized version of the United States. The state of New Austin, which covers the southwest from Texas to Arizona, includes the massive canyon Pike's Basin, clearly based on the Grand Canyon (located in Arizona in real life).
• Runescape has the Everlight dig site, visited as part of the Archaeology skill; while other dig sites have inspiration from real-life cultures (the Kharid-Et is based on a Roman fort, for instance) the Everlight is basically a Runescape take on the Lighthouse of Alexandria, being a massive lighthouse that once sank into the sea, with elements of Atlantis and the Olympic Games mixed in.
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter has Crollywood movie studios, using large white letters. It's a secret.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: There are two Golden Gate Bridge counterparts in the series, one in Sonic Adventure 2 and another, called Red Gate Bridge, in Sonic Forces.
• Spider-Man (PS4) draws inspiration from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in that it makes the Avengers tower replace the MetLife building in Midtown Manhattan. Furthermore, Fisk Tower, where the opening of the game takes place, is a stand-in for Trump Tower, fitting Fisk's Trumplica status in this game.
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales contains a generic skyscraper in place of the Chrysler Building; it's been speculated that Insomniac got Screwed by the Lawyers on this, as in between the development of Spider-Man (PS4) and this, the Chrysler Building changed owners, and it's likely more payment was demanded in order to use the Chrysler's likeness.

Websites

• Neopets: With some lands being based on real-world cultures or locations, there are some famous landmarks inserted and changed to be Neopian-based:
  • In the Egyptian-inspired Lost Desert, landmarks include pyramids, the tomb of King Sutek which resembles the Sphinx, and Coltan's Shrine which resembles the obelisk.
  • The prehistoric world of Tyrannia is known for its Concert Hall, which takes place in a circle of stones that look like Stonehenge.
  • The Greco-Roman city of Altador contains its own version of the Colosseum, where an Olympic games / World Cup equivalent known as The Altador Cup takes place each year.

Web Videos

• In THE MONUMENT MYTHOS, there are dozens of national landmarks in the USA and abroad that are home to some form of Eldritch Abomination; the first episode, "LIBERTYLURKER", details an alternate version of the Statue of Liberty which eats immigrants on Ellis Island and has a massive waste containment tank. Later episodes imply that the titular Liberty Lurker is none other than George Washington, twisted due to his time in Wonderland.

Western Animation

• A special episode of The Fairly Oddparents, "Abra-Catastrophe", involves Timmy gaining a wish-granting muffin that allows anyone who bites it to have a single wish of theirs granted. When his elementary class' pet monkey, Bippy bites into it thinking it's food, he apparently makes a wish that changes the entire world to an Expy of Planet of the Apes complete with such as an Ape-ified Mount Rushmore, an Ape-fied Abraham Lincoln Memorial, an Ape-ified Statue of Liberty, and the Ape-fied Sphinx. In addition, this also turns landmarks into banana versions such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and the Elizabeth Tower.^note Later in the special, Crocker captures Wanda and uses her powers to rule the world and transform all the landmarks into his own version such as Mount Crocker, the Statue of Crocker, the Crocker Memorial, and the Eiffel Crocker.
• In the intro to Futurama, New New York has the Statue of Liberty holding a Ray Gun.
• Republic City in The Legend of Korra is based on a mash-up of various cities as they were in roughly the 1920-30s including Shanghai, New York, Vancouver, and Chicago. The statue of Aang in Yue Bay is inspired by the Statue of Liberty, the Silk Road Bridge is based on the Brooklyn Bridge, and Republic City Park that later gets renamed Avatar Korra Park is based on Central Park with some elements from London's Hyde Park (particularly Speakers' Corner) mixed in.
• Max and Ruby: In one episode, the titular rabbit siblings go with their grandma to London on vacation, with one location they see being a Big Ben counterpart called "Big Bun".
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Statue of Liberty is depicted as a pony in this universe's New York equivalent Manehatten.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Flip Side", the Ghostbusters arrive in a ghostly Bizarro Universe, where the counterpart of New York is called Boo York. There, the Statue of Liberty is replaced with a giant statue of a witch.
• Steven Universe plays with this; one episode has Steven and Lapis Lazuli fly to Empire City (Steven's Alternate Universe version of New York City) and we see the Empire State Building there... but the second-tallest structure we see seems to be The Eiffel Tower. Given that Empire City also seems to draw from Las Vegas (Steven says "What happens in Empire City never sleeps", a portmanteau of "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" and "New York is the City that Never Sleeps") it's possible that it's a replica.

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