Fictional Country

Totally not Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.

A fictional country in an otherwise real-world setting. May be a Fictional Counterpart to a Real Life country, or may be created whole-cloth as a example of a generic political/religious ideology (e.g. a Commie Land that is not readily identifiable with any of the various, often mutually-exclusive forms of Communism or any specific Communist/Socialist state), and/or with no direct resemblence to any specific Real Life country.

Sub Tropes:

• Banana Republic: Central and South America
• Bulungi: Sub-Saharan Africa
• Countrystan: Usually Central Asia, but sometimes also South Asia, the Middle East or Eastern Europe.
• The Good Kingdom/Micro Monarchy: Theoretically anywhere in the Old World, but usually Western or Southern Europe. (Depictions in the Americas are very rare.)
• The Old Country: A fictional European country from which major characters emigrated.
• Qurac: North Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia
• Ruritania: Southern, Central and Eastern Europe
  • Überwald: Eastern Europe as a sinister Gothic Horror setting
• Tropical Island Adventure: Caribbean, Oceania and Southeast Asia
• Wutai: East Asia

May overlap with Commie Land, Darkest Africa, Divided States of America (if [some of] the seceding states unite into a new one that is separate from the others and is not a successor to the original United States), United Europe, Lady Land (if set in a real-world setting, and especially if it's founded by the Amazons of Greek Mythology), One Nation Under Copyright (in MegaCorp–dominated settings). A Fictional Flag will usually be present.

See also Fictional Province and Fictional Earth. Compare with No Communities Were Harmed. See also City with No Name when the setting is not named at all.

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Examples

Fictional Counterpart countries

Anime & Manga

• Attack on Titan: All nations:
  • Eldia, on Paradis Island, in which the bulk of the story takes place, where all the main cast lives. Most characters have names that sound German (Yaeger, Ackermann, Erwin, Kruger, Reiner, Bertholdt, etc.), English (Levi) or French (Jean). Its citizens are known as the Subjects of Ymir, known for their ability to turn into giant man-eating monsters (the Titans) which were very useful for raging war against the world. The part of the population isolated on the island are doomed to unknowingly being imprisoned and isolated forever while still desperately yearning for freedom, while the part that are "free" are treated like second-class citizens and have to atone for their ancestors' abuse of the seemingly magical Titan powers.
  • Marley, the most powerful nation of the world apart from the now subdued Eldia, known, through their military prowess, for having conquered other nations, many of whom are happy to form alliances with the suppressed Eldians to rage war against them.
  • Hyizuru (ヒィズル国 Hyizuru-koku) is the fictional counterpart of Japan. It is headed by the House of Azumabito (アズマビト家 Azumabito-ke, literally "the family of Easterners" or "the Oriental family"), from whom Mikasa is descended, apart from her Eldian heritage. Unlike real life Japanese people, the people of Hyizuru seem to have their family names come last, such as Kiyomi Azumabito (キヨミ・アズマビト).
• Academy City and the Elizarina Alliance of Independent Nations in A Certain Magical Index. The former is an independent state in Japan and is the forefront of all science and technology in the Toaruverse, while the latter is an alliance of nations which split themselves from Russia.
• The Gundam metaverse is all over this trope. Gundam Wing has the Sanc Kingdom,^note Denmark according to the sourcebooks Gundam SEED has the United Emirates of Orb^note somewhere in the neighborhood of Samoa and Gundam 00 has several, most prominently Azadistan.^note somewhere in the Middle East The kings, however, are Gundam X and ∀ Gundam, which both take place After the End and thus have new names for a whole bunch of real-world places (X has San Angelino in California, Turn A has Inglessia, AKA New England).
• Madlax has a Nafrece (France/Britain hybrid) and Gazth-Sonika (a mixture of Vietnam and the Middle-East) but it's implied to be set in the real world (Japan is mentioned in the early episodes).
• Michiko & Hatchin takes place in a country inspired by Brazil. Its map is apparently a mix of Brazil and Mexico.
• Ulgia for Lebanon in the fourth episode of Noir, as well as the unnamed Middle-Eastern nation in episode 7. The rest of the series takes place in real-world locations like Paris, Spain, and Russia.
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: Ameris, Ameria, and Amerishima (all modeled after the United States), the Shosken Kingdom (which looks like a version of Egypt), Asham (looks like India — even had a Taj Mahal-like building in one shot), and Indelhia (YMMV: it's supposed to be a sort of India/Western Asia place). There was also the fictional Central European-esque country of Hontwal (a pun off of "honto wa aru", meaning "It exists"). In the third iteration, Gatchaman Fighter, versions of names of existing countries are used, completely forgetting the names used in the original.

Comic Books

• DC Comics:
  • Qurac, the Trope Namer for its particular type, home of Cheshire, and a rather unsubtle Fictional Counterpart to Iraq (pre-Iraq War, obviously), right down to its leader, President Marlo, who is an obvious expy of Saddam Hussein.
  • Batman: The Ultimate Evil by Andrew Vachss gives us Udon Khai, an obvious parallel for Thailand at the height of its child sex slavery.
  • Zigzagged in the case of The Joker, and his short-lived ambassadorship in A Death in the Family. In the miniseries itself, Joker is hired by the real-world Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeni to become Iran's ambassador to the UN. However, the Joker's ranting about how similar he and Iran were (as well as the series touching obliquely, but noticeably, on the then-current Iran-Contra Scandal) obviously left a bad taste in DC's editors' mouths. While never changed in reprints itself, any references in later books were quietly retconned to establish Joker was the UN Ambassador for Qurac.
• There's a lot of fictional countries in Disney comics. Most of them are generic Banana Republics, Ruritanias, etc., but one of the most notable is Brutopia, a stand-in for the Soviet Union that even appears in Don Rosa's stories, which otherwise usually stick to real world countries and locations.
  • Carl Barks also created the violent and dangerous country of Unsteadystan, blatantly based on Vietnam. It was engulfed on a civil war after a civil war and one of the first things we get to see is a rebel soldier blowing up America's embassy with grenades.
  • Duckburg, meanwhile, is located in the fictional American state of Calisota, which corresponds with northern California.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel) had a story arc taking place in a fictional Middle Eastern country called Benzeen which had been taken over by the neighboring country of Trucial Abysmia with Cobra's help. The whole arc was based on Operation: Desert Storm.
• Marvel Comics:
  • The South-East Asian country of Sin-Cong or Siancong. It was relatively obscure until The History of the Marvel Universe by Mark Waid retconned in a decades-long war in the country over magical Phlebotinum reserves, mainly so that characters with backstories involving the Korean and Vietnam Wars could continue to have backstories related to conflict in Southeast Asia without running into Comic-Book Time problems. Even In-Universe, it's a case of this as it's revealed in The Marvels that "Singcong" is really Shan-K'ang, formed by an alien Mother Nature Genius Loci Backstory Invader that copied its history from the nations around it.
• Spirou & Fantasio: Spirou and Fantasio have a tendency to visit fictional countries (and towns) rather than real places. It includes Palombie and Guaracha, Bretzelburg and Maquebasta, Tora Torapa, Çatung, Touboutt-Chan, Marmelade islands, Urugondolo and Aswana. The movie has added Gantagwa to the list (an obvious stand-in for Morocco).
• Tintin visited a lot of these as well as real-world locations. Borduria is a pretty obvious Nazi Germany counterpart, while its neighbor Syldavia is a particularly well-executed Ruritania. There's also Khemed, which is a Qurac, and San Theodoros and its neighbor Nuevo Rico, each of which is a Banana Republic.
  • It was a bit more complex. Borduria started out as an expy of Nazi Germany (although the name of its leader Musstler is a blend of Mussolini and Hitler), but after World War 2 it became a counterpart to Stalinist Eastern Europe, with Marshal Plekszy-Gladz (Kurvy-Tasch) as a Stalin expy. Syldavia combined Balkan, Czech and Austrian elements with a king who resembled King Leopold III of Belgium. Although a bit of a Ruritania to begin with, it later became advanced enough to build nuclear reactors and a rocket that reached the Moon in the 1950s. San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico contain elements of Paraguay and Bolivia, as the conflict over the Gran Chapo region is partly modeled on the Gran Chaco War between those two countries.
  • Also from Tintin, the secret Inca Empire in Prisoners of the Sun is a clandestine continuation of the historic nation into the present, and the Sondonesian independence fighters in Flight 714 appear to be inspired by similar movements in Indonesia.

Films — Live-Action

• Avengers: Age of Ultron has Sokovia where the final battle takes place, somewhere in eastern Europe.
• Marvel's Black Panther (2018) is set in the fictional African country of Wakanda.
• The Great Dictator: Tomania, Fictional Counterpart to Nazi Germany; Bacteria, Fictional Counterpart to Fascist Italy, and Osterlitch, Fictional Counterpart of Austria.
• In the movie The Interpreter, the plot is all about saving the dictator of the fictional African country of Matobo, which seems to be a stand-in for Uganda under Idi Amin, and Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe ruled.
• The James Bond movies usually involve real-life countries, but if the country in question is given an unflattering portrayal, a fictional stand-in is used instead. The two cases of this are Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill. The first involves "San Monique" as a stand-in for Haiti, since the Big Bad is the country's prime minister who is loosely based on real-life dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The second involves "Isthmus" standing in for Panama, since the main villain is a drug lord who has the president in his back pocket. Interestingly, both cases also involve Artistic License – Linguistics, as if making it clear that they're not real. "San Monique" is a combination of Spanish and French and should be either "Santa Monica" or "Sainte Monique," respectively, and "Isthmus" is an English word; in Spanish it would be "Istmo."
• The Terminal features Krakozhia, the home country of the main character Viktor Navorski. (The real life counterpart of Navorski — Mehran Karimi Nasseri — was from Iran.)
• Moronica from The Three Stooges shorts "You Nazty Spy" and "I'll Never Heil Again"; Fictional Counterpart to Nazi Germany.

Literature

• Mixo-Lydia in Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels, is a stand-in for the unpleasant middle-European country of your choice, but mostly Romania. The Mix-Lydian refugees and diplomats have names like "Bronscu."
• Ligon: Ligon in the series of the same name by Kir Bulychev is based on his experiences in Burma.
• The Mark and the Void has a lot of these, some of which fall into the subtropes. In addition, there are the contrasting island nations of the South Pacific, Torabundo and Kokomoko. Torabundo is a tax haven that's sold off most of its natural resources to foreign investors. Meanwhile, Kokomoko is a peaceful Arcadia with a gift economy that builds strong social relationships. This contrast is used to further the novel's critique of banking.
• Rolitania is named after the odd, so-called "nerd paradise".
• In the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia the conceit is that Watson for reasons of discretion calls a real-world monarch "king of Bohemia". Strangely enough, at the time of the writing there actually was a king of Bohemia, that being one of the titles of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.

Live-Action TV

• 24 has the Islamic Republic of Kamistan (IRK) in season 8. Jack teams up with an agent from that country (nicknamed "Fauxraqistan" at Television Without Pity.com) for a while.
• Ambassadors follows the lives of British diplomats in the People's Republic of Tazbekistan — a fictional Central Asian country standing in for Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, et al.
• Chuck has Costa Gravas, a thinly veiled stand-in for Cuba.
• The fictional 'presidentdom' of Groland in the eponymous satirical news show — mostly a thinly disguised parody of France.
• Leverage has the country of San Lorenzo, the setting of the season 4 finale.
• The Suite Life on Deck usually visits real countries but the first season features the fictional European country of Liechtenstamp.

Video Games

• The world in the Ace Combat universe looks like a scrambled version of the real world, and most of the countries are fictional counterparts to real countries, eg Osean Federation=USA, Aurelia=Argentina, Sapin=Spain, Belka=Germany, Wellow=Greenland, Amber=Italy, Delarus=Belarus, Sotoa=Arabia, Kaluga=India, Clavis=Australia, Yuktobania=The Soviet Union/Russia, etc.
• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp references a few countries where coffee comes from (clearly based on real-life ones) in splash texts.
• Endless Ocean and its sequel are set in the Pelago Commonwealth, an archipelago of over 1,000 islands in the South Pacific, with a capital named Ka'ai. In European localizations, it's known as the Republic of Paoul, better alluding to its inspiration, the Republic of Palau, a real Micronesian nation.
• Far Cry:
  • Far Cry 4 is set in Kyrat, which is located in the Himalayan region of South Asia. It seems to be heavily inspired by the real countries of Nepal and Bhutan.
  • Far Cry 6 takes place in the heavily Cuban-inspired Caribbean nation of Yara.
• Mega Man Battle Network: While the original series was set in a future version of our world, BN was set in an alternate universe, and thus, has different coutries. Electopia is Japan, Netopia is America and Europe, Netfrica is Africa, and so on.
• Not for Broadcast is set on planet Earth — a globe with identical geography to our own is seen in the opening credits of the National Nightly News — but none of the countries are the same. It's implied that history diverged from our own sometime in The 20th Century, prior to the start of the game's events. (Jesus Christ is mentioned — often repeatedly — and the Gregorian Calendar is frequently seen throughout, but all of the celebrities, television series, and movies seen and mentioned are fictional.) The country in which the game is set, clearly based on the United Kingdom, is never named until it has occupied other territories in a war of annexation, when it is given the new name "Territory One".
• Implications are that the Earth in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe is nothing but fictional countries (barring a single mention of Japan which, if Ian Flynn's words are any indication, may've been retconned):
  • The United Federation is the United States.
  • The city-state of Soleanna is Venice.
  • Sonic Unleashed takes player around the world to locations such as Apotos, Mazuri, Chun-nan etc., but whether those names refer to countries or just the settlements Sonic visits is unclear (Archie Comics go with the latter interpretation). Still, it's pretty easy to determine which real-life culture each location is based off.
• WinBack has Sarcozia.
• All the countries in Papers, Please, representing various East-European communist states. "Cobrastan" takes the cake, however, being a fictional country in-universe.^note It turns up on a passport, no less.

Visual Novels

• Daiteikoku, the third visual novel erotic game from Alice Soft in the Dai series (whose games by the way, have nothing to do with each other apart from the word Dai in their titles and their similar logos), features a space RPG gameplay. It sets in some sort of futuristic World War, where the Allies and the Axis Powers are pitted against each other just like old times but under new names: the Empire of Japan, the Third Reich of Doktsch (called Dokutsu in Japanese; from Japanese Doitsu "Germany" and German Deutsch "German"), the Republic Empire of Italina (called Itarin in Japanese), the Republic of Gamerica, the Alish Empire (called Eirisu in Japanese; from Japanese Igirisu "the UK" and English English), the Soviet Organization for Human Integration, the Empire of Zhong (from Mandarin Zhongguo "China"), the Kingdom of Ofrance, the Soap Empire, the Kingdom of España, the Empire of Azteca, and the Nordic Union. Other former real-world colonies are also back at being, well, colonies: Canada, Manila 2000, Hawaii, South Africa, Shikoku (based on a real island of the Japanese archipelago), the Malay Tigers, Vietnam, Indian Curry, Arabia, Kenya, Andromeda, Dai-on Yeke Mongol Ulus (from the Mongolian names of modern Mongolia as well as the Yuan dynasty; called Gen "Yuan" in Japanese).

Web Original

• Dino Attack RPG:
  • Much of takes place in the fictional country of "LEGOLAND", first referenced in posts by Kotua in Space with appearances of the LEGOLAND military. The exact location is never stated, but it seems to resemble a typical Western lifestyle, with a mix of Canada/America and European elements.
  • Dino Attack RPG also has Barron, a fictional country located in eastern Europe, as a means of explaining Sam Sinister's title of Lord von Barron. Barron is depicted as a rather stereotypical version of Germany home to Mad Herr Doktors.
• Mani Mani People is set in a fictional country named Manihon, though everything is identical to Japan except for the name.
• Many of the countries on NationStates and Dream Fiction Wiki are either based on or Alternate Universe versions of real-life countries.

Western Animation

• City Island (2022): The characters live in an archipelago country called the United Islands, which is a stand in for the United States.
• Danger Mouse has Ündergargle as a stand-in for Switzerland in Frankenstoat Meets Duckula.
• Potsylvania in Rocky and Bullwinkle, a stand-in for the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries.
• Thembria in TaleSpin, Fictional Counterpart for the Soviet Union.
• Early episodes of Totally Spies! feature some fictional countries, such as Brazuela in South America, Lyrobia and Kenopia in Africa. Other more prominent countries, such as the US, the UK, France, Romania, China, Japan, still get to keep their real names.
• The Transformers features a Middle Eastern country named the "Socialist Democratic Federated Republic of Carbombya."
• North and South Rhelasia for North and South Korea in Young Justice (2010).

Whole-cloth fictional countries

Anime & Manga

• In later volumes of Bushin, a manga by Daichi Banjo, protagonist Ryusei goes to the Principality of Rosenbach, a fictional European country, to serve as a bodyguard for its princess named Ingram like his father did, thanks to his family skills in jujutsu. Unfortunately, the princess was a constant target of assassination and his father died protecting him and the princess. In the end, he manages to defeat his father's killer and protect the princess.
• Gosick is set in Sauville. Sauville is a tiny French-speaking country between France and Italy. It is supposed to look like a typical western European nation.
• Maken-ki! is set in Tenbi, a fictional region of Japan with it's own geography and government. In chapter 5, Himegami explains (to Takeru) that it's a small autonomous nation and that their academy was named for it.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration has the Republic of Bajirib located in Central Asia. It is run by a dictator, and is said to have sponsored bio-terrorism.

Comic Books

• DC Comics
  • Markovia, the Eastern European nation where Terra and Geo Force come from.
  • Themyscira, island home of the Amazons, whose location varies depending on continuity.
  • Zandia, an island nation with no extradition laws, whose population consists pretty much entirely of supervillains.
• De Kiekeboes: Eunuchië (De Eén zijn Dood), Papagaya (Het Plan Sstoeffer), Travakstan (De Roze Rolls), Boeloe Boeloe...
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel) has had some in addition to Benzeen and Trucial Abysmia listed under real-life parallels:
  • There are four countries close together somewhere in Europe: Trans-Carpathia, Darklonia, Borovia, and Wolkekuckuckland. ^note The last also doubles as a Bilingual Bonus Stealth Pun, as the name is in German and translates out to "Cloudcuckooland".
  • Sierra Gordo, Punta Del Mucosa, and Sierra Muerte are Latin American countries that border each other.
  • And of course, there's Cobra Island, an island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
• Marvel Comics:
  • Black Panther: Wakanda is a small yet high tech nation in the center of Africa with access to Vibranium, a super element. While its people still live in tribal lifestyle and maintain an absolute monarchy, they single handedly developed high tech capabilities and a beyond first world industrial base. While many westerners think it's odd that such a technologically advanced society is still rooted in tribalism, the Wakandans usually point out that they have a higher standard of living than most western countries because their social roots remain strong. For this reason it also retains a very isolationist stance. On the flip side, the post of king is open to Klingon Promotion. On the flip flip side, the current king happens to be Marvel's nearest analogue to DC's Batman.
  • Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom rules the tiny country of Latveria, which neighbours Hungary, Serbia and Romania. It is an absolute monarchy that has a large rural population, one airport and a single small city as its capital (Doomstadt), yet it is also one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet as Doom is a scientific genius who provides for the needs of every citizen and has an army of personally designed robots working as soldiers, servants, police, identical doubles and any other essential service. Doom is also ethnically Roma and Latveria prides itself on being a protectorate for the oft-persecuted Roma people. Stan Lee said he always liked the name "Latveria" because it sounded like a real country.
  • Spider-Man: Symkaria, home of the Silver Sable, is Latveria's neighbouring country with a single shared border; both of them are monarchies that are ruled by the aforementioned characters (via usurping the original dynasty, in Doom's case), and both countries' leaders maintain some measure of cordial relations between their nations.
  • X-Men: Genosha, an island nation with a horrific history of anti-mutant discrimination that was taken over by Magneto, before being destroyed by Professor Xavier's Evil Twin Cassandra Nova in an act of spiteful genocide.
• Nero: Found in the albums “De Gele Gorilla”, “De Groene Patreel”, “Prinses Lovely”, “De Mosterd van Abraham”,…
  • Slobobavia in “De Pijpeplakkers”
  • Papland in “De Gouden Vrouw”
• Suske en Wiske:
  • Chocowakije in "Rikki en Wiske in Chocowakije"
  • The isle Amoras in "Het Eiland Amoras", "De Stalen Bloempot" and "Amoris op Amoras". (Amoras Island, The Steel Flowerpot, Amoris on Amoras)
  • Mocano in "De Bronzen Sleutel" (The Bronze Key)
  • Frigoria in "Het Bevroren Vuur" (The Frozen Fire)
  • Bazaria in "De Speelgoedzaaier" (The Toy Sower)
  • Fantasia in "De Lieve Lilleham" (The Sweet Lilleham)
• A more generic fictional country from Tintin is the semi-independent Indian state of Rawhajpoutalah (Gajpajama) first seen in The Cigars of the Pharaoh.
• The country Marmeladië in the Belgian comic strip "'t Prinske"

Comic Strips

• Elbonia from Dilbert, a country populated by ditzes (their national bird is the Frisbee) who live in waist-deep mud.
• A Garfield strip features Garfield doing a routine on the fence for a boy scout delegation from the country of Booga-Booga. Made even funnier when he found out the hard way that the only currency in Booga-Booga is 800-pound chariot wheels.
• One week of strips from Pearls Before Swine is about Pig digging a hole to Kukistan. Interestingly, the original strips had Pig Digging to China, but the editors made Pastis change that rather than risk angering the Chinese with his portrayal of them. (Though the fictional country in question has a clear Soviet Russian feel to it.) In the rewrite, Pig is kind enough to explain the whole thing on day one.
  Rat: What are you doing?
  Pig: Digging a hole to Kukistan.
  Rat: There's no such country.
  Pig: I know...see, when Stephan originally drew this week's strips, he named an actual country, but his editors told him that if he did that, the people from that country would get mad and complain, so he had to alter all of the strips on the computer. On a positive note, the originals should be worth a bundle.

Films — Animation

• Maldonia, homeland of Prince Naveen in The Princess and the Frog.
• In Barbie movies, the heroine is often the heir of the kingdom where the story take place: Gardenia (Barbie: Princess Charm School), Meribella (Barbie as the Princess and the Popstar) and Windemere (Barbie in Princess Power).
• Igor centers on the dismal nation of Malaria, which is home and sanctuary to Mad Scientists galore, each given their own creepy castle as their residence cum laboratory. Malaria is ruled by King Malbert, who oversees the Gladiator Games that pit the scientists' evil monsters against each other. He then threatens to loose the champion monster on the neighboring nations unless he's paid richly to keep it bottled in Malaria.

Films — Live-Action

• Freedonia and Sylvania in Duck Soup.
• The French comedy "Le Crocodile du Botswanga" is set in Botswanga, a fictional country, counterpart to several sub-Saharan dictatorships.
• Klopstokia, a Ruritania that participated in the Los Angeles Olympics and won more medals than any other nation in the Jack Oakie/W. C. Fields vehicle Million Dollar Legs (1932).
• The Duchy of Grand Fenwick from The Mouse That Roared: despite being founded by a British Knight, it has never been part of any Real Life country throughout its history; it's just that no one could be bothered to recognize a few square miles-wide country... Until they accidentally hijacked a nuclear device.
• Princess Protection Program: Costa Luna and Costa Estrella.
• Secret Society of Second-Born Royals takes place in Illyria. While the name is taken from an historical region of the Balkans, the movie uses it for a small island nation in Scandinavia.
• The Banana Republic country of Val Verde is of special note, due to its extensive appearances in many fictional works. Most famously amongst 1980s action fans, it featured in Commando (1985), Predator and was mentioned in Die Hard 2. See its Banana Republic entry for more info.

Literature

• Chanda's Secrets and Chanda's Wars by Allan Stratton take place in a fictional sub-Saharan African country ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and civil wars.
• Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag and most of the other countries mentioned in Gulliver's Travels, although Lilliput and Blefuscu also mirror certain aspects of Great Britain and France, respectively.
• Molvania, Phaic Tan, San Sombrero and several others are presented in the Jetlag Travel Guides series.
• Atlantis in Kritias and Timaios by Plato. Although some people like to believe that it was real.
• Oz in the Land of Oz books is a "fairy land" country shielded from the rest of the world by an impassable desert.
• California (a country populated by Amazons ruled by Queen Calafia) in the chivalric romance Las Sergas del muy esforzado Caballero Esplendían by García Rodréguez Ordónez de Montalvo (died 1504). The states in the US and Mexico are named after it.
• The first of Gordon Korman's Macdonald Hall books mentions "Malbonia". The country "Pefkakia" is prominent in The Twinkie Squad, and it is also mentioned in A Semester In The Life Of A Garbage Bag.
• In The Princess Diaries, the queen is from Genovia, which seems to be a stand-in for the real life nation of Andorra.
• C. S. Lewis's novel Till We Have Faces takes place in the fictional kingdom of Glome, which was located to the north of Greece. Neighbors include Caphad (perhaps suggested by Cappadocia), Phars, and Essur.
• Utopia in the book of the same name by Thomas More.

Live-Action TV

• 24: The African country of Sangala in season 7.
• Commander in Chief has the South American country of San Pasquale.
• The 1990's Australian series Embassy was set in the South-East Asian country of Ragaan, located in the Malay Peninsula. Unfortunately the Malaysian government viewed it as a thinly-veiled attack on their own country and took offense, given that the Australian Broadcasting Commission is funded (but not controlled, contrary to what the Malaysians assumed) by the Australian federal government. The series was cancelled, ostensibly due to falling ratings, but with the inevitable speculation that the diplomatic fracas was a factor.
• Leverage has San Lorenzo in the TV series and Malani in the tie-in novel The Zoo Job.
• The NCIS episode "Defiance" involves the Defense Minister of Belgravia and his daughter. This may be the only episode that uses a fictional country, especially for a show that tries to follow real-life geopolitics. It actually derives its name from the London district.
• Balki from Perfect Strangers is a native of the Mediterranean island of Mypos. Some of his stories about it make it sound like a very strange country.
• Latka's unnamed crapsack homeland in the sitcom Taxi.
• The West Wing has Qumar, which is a middle-eastern country that is backwards and whose government officials perpetrate acts of terrorism against the United States. So it's pretty much like...
• The Whose Line Is It Anyway? game "Improbable Mission" has Colin and Ryan doing things for the rulers of fictional countries like "Groovefunkistan". Sometimes, it's a Fictional Province of a real nation, such as the Canadian province "Snakitoba".

Radio

• Monte Guano, a tiny country in the Papal States of Renaissance Italy, in the comedy series The Leopard In Autumn.

Tabletop Games

• Sentinels of the Multiverse features the country of Mordengrad, ruled over by Legacy's arch-enemy Baron Blade. It used to be a Soviet Bloc State before breaking away after the Baron killed a few Russian officials asking for weapons.
• Mutants & Masterminds: The default Freedom City setting has Dakana, an African nation and Expy of the above-mentioned Wakanda. Third edition's Atlas of Earth-Prime also has Costazul in South America and the Barony of Volkavia in Eastern Europe.

Video Games

• The Rogue Isles of City of Villains.
• Since the third installment of the series, the Dark Parables games are at least partially spent in one of these. The formula usually has the detective arriving in a real world country, then traveling from there to a Fictional Country. The tenth game skips the real world portion entirely and takes the detective directly to the fictional realm of Barsia.
• The Just Cause series takes place only in countries like these:
  • The first game is set in San Esperito, a Banana Republic in the Caribbean.
  • Just Cause 2 takes place in Panau, an island nation in the South Pacific.
  • Just Cause 3 takes place in the Mediterranean island of Medici, which combines many Latin characteristics.
• Gallowmere, the setting of the first MediEvil game, became this once the second game (set in Victorian-era London) was released.
• Metal Gear has Zanzibar Land located between the former Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. And Outer Heaven, which is an earlier attempt by Big Boss to create an independent nation where disenfranchised soldiers would find their place and is located in South Africa.
• Mission: Impossible: Operation Surma features Yugaria, another generic Balkan state ruled by an evil dictator. The name is apparently a portmanteau of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.
• In No Umbrellas Allowed, Mindlesia is a fictional country near Korea composed of seven artificial islands connected in a hexagon. Another notable fictional country mentioned is Bluebird, a corporate republic that planned to buy Mindlesia, but failed twice because of the latter's strong opposition against it.
• Psychonauts 2 has Grulovia, an Eastern European Ruritania formerly ruled by an oppressive monarchy before its collapse twenty years before the game. While never visited, it features heavily in the backstory. Series protagonist Raz and his family trace their roots to it, and the founding of the Psychonauts — and thus, the entire story — was spurred on by their involvement in the incident that lead to the country's collapse. On top of that, the Big Bad is the missing heir to the Grulovian throne, who blames the Psychonauts for the loss of his wealth and prestige. However, this might be a subversion as it's not clear how much the game's universe resembles ours — the first game featured references to real-world countries and history, such as Russia, Napoleon and the American Civil War, but these references are absent from the sequel^note With the exception of Raz's Big Brother Bully Dion insulting him by calling him 'Nostra-dumbass', and a world map shown at various points looks distinctly fictional.
• Punch-Out!!: King Hippo hails from the fictional Hippo Island, located in the South Pacific. The island is very tropical and King Hippo rules it.
• Soulcalibur IV gives us the fictional country of Wolfkrone ("wolf crown"), located somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany) and home to newcomer Princess Hildegard von Krone. Not much of the land has been seen, but it appears to be quite advanced for the late 16th century, considering that the Wolfkrone Monument stage is a carousel complete with animatronic musician-like figures that overlooks a castle and clockwork.
  • According to New Legends of Project Soul (a sourcebook for Soulcalibur V), the Wolfkrone Kingdom is something of a Micro Monarchy, located between Germany and Switzerland.
• Street Fighter 6 prominently features the Kingdom of Nayshall, a tiny South Asian monarchy with a strong martial tradition inspired by Bhutan and Nepal, though unlike other examples in the region it has a hot, desert like climate. Apparently, it only recently came into existence, explaining why it's never been mentioned before.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • The fourth game introduces Borginia, a small republic in Northern Europe.
  • Ace Attorney Investigations has the Republic of Zheng Fa in Asia. Also in the same game are the European countries of the Kingdom of Allebahst and the Republic of Babahl, which used to be one country called the Principality of Cohdopia until a civil war caused a separation. The countries were going to go through a reunification until two murders, the appearance of a phantom thief, and a raging fire all occurred at the embassies during the goodwill event. The reunification was able to occur after the Allebashtian ambassador was arrested and convicted.
  • Spirit of Justice introduces the Kingdom of Khura'in, an Asian country on the western edge of the Himalayan mountains.

Web Animation

• Uta's RomCom Manga Dubs: Elena comes from a small country named Ebantomississippi.

Web Comics

• Jaddo, a rural island in Beyond Bloom possibly located in the North Pacific Ocean, which, due to trade with more developed nations, is incorporating more modern technology and housing in wealthier areas.

Web Video

• Vinesauce's characters Sponge and Pretzel, two fake Mario brothers, come from Kraskatalia.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation has a couple anomalous countries in its archives.
  • The most famous of these is the Daevite Empire, a classic evil empire whose nobility used anomalous means to terrorize their own people, and who were so bad that the Sarkicists were the heroic rebels in comparison. They were, of course, overthrown and no trace exists in the present day — except for a book that writes them further into history when given some sort of ink. Or, if you believe one article, a central Asian country called Daevastan who dealt with the evil slaveholding bit of their history long ago, but were victims of Orientalist reality-rewriting.
  • The Islamic Republic of East Samothrace, an island near Greece in a constant state of conflict, and which may or may not exist. People can only perceive evidence of this country existing if they've heard the phrase, "You hear about the thing down in Samothrace?", and the Foundation isn't sure if the phrase is a memetic hazard that infects people with the idea of a country called East Samothrace and causes them to imagine evidence to that effect, or if Samothrace is a real country with a Perception Filter around it that only breaks if someone hears the trigger phrase. Either way, both sides are completely convinced that they're right, and the Foundation nearly had a civil war over it.

Western Animation

• Kasnia (or Kaznia) a country apparently somewhere in eastern Europe in the DC Animated Universe. Over the course of the various series, it starts as a monarchy, briefly becomes a dictatorship which holds the world hostage, undergoes a civil war, and joins the European Union and adopts the Euro as its currency.
• While epiodes of Inspector Gadget are usually set in real countries, like India, Japan, China, etc., the show also visits fictional countries, such as Pianostan, Romanovia and Yetzanistan.
• The Patrick Star Show has Klopnod, a vaguely European country said to be one of the silliest places in the ocean. It has lots of odd food and even stranger cultural traditions.
• Phineas and Ferb has Drusselstein, the homeland of Heinz Doofenshmirtz. It seems to be an agrarian German-speaking country somewhere in Europe. It’s also apparently a monarchy and by sheer coincidence, its Princess is Candace’s exact double.
• The unnamed state containing Springfield, Shelbyville and Capital City in The Simpsons is a borderline case, as it is part of the United States, but clearly not any one of the existing 50 states.
• Glacia, frozen homeland of the villains in the 1973/74 Superfriends episode "The Weather Maker".
• The Transformers had an African country called Carbombya, which is ruled by a dictator who is a cross between Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi. As you can probably guess, it wasn't exactly received too well, and would not fly these days. It was so bad that Casey Kasem, himself of Lebanese Druze ancestry, quit the show because of how offensive he saw the depiction. ^note As Kasem hinself put it: "A few years ago, I was doing one of the voices in the TV cartoon series, Transformers. One week, the script featured an evil character named Abdul, King of Carbombya. He was like all the other cartoon Arabs. I asked the director, 'Are there any good Arabs in this script for balance?' We looked. There was one other — but he was no different than Abdul. So, I told the show’s director that, in good conscience, I couldn't be a part of that show."

Real Life

• In the 1930s, democratic and socialist politicians in France received letters from dissidents in the East European nation of Poldevia asking for their support. This turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by a right-wing journalist who wanted to show them up and embarrass them and attracted a lot of attention at the time. (In the Tintin album The Blue Lotus, the Poldevian Consul in Shanghai is one of the patrons of the titular opium den). One right-wing French publicist said at the beginning of World War II that young Frenchmen did not want to die for the Poldevians, apparently equating the real-world threat to Poland with the plight of a fictional country.
• San Seriffe: A fictional island country invented by the Guardian newspaper as a hoax in 1977, but popular enough that if you register on the Guardian website, you can select it as your state of origin.
• Durning the 2015 US primaries, over 530 Republican voters were polled. One of the questions they were given was if they would support or oppose the bombing of Agrabah, the city in Aladdin. 30% responded that they would in fact support it, while 57% said they were unsure.[1]
• In 2017, Donald Trump mistakenly referred to Namibia as "Nambia", prompting a slew of jokes about this fake country.
• Listenbourg, located on a nonexistent landmass attached to the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (and including parts of Spain and Portugal), acquired memetic recognition on Twitter in the late 2022.
• ODIN DATE WORLD has an entire set of them for military training purposes, each country has mixed tropes of the original country or region they represent, sometimes with fake documentary included.

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