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The Mountains Of Illinois
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Movies and TV shows, wherever they're supposed to be set, tend to be filmed in Southern California or British Columbia. This leads to a common error, where mountains show up in the background of settings which have no visible peaks in Real Life, such as in Illinois, which, if you haven't already realized it, is as flat as this joke.
A subtrope of Television Geography. See also Misplaced Vegetation. Note that in some parts of Illinois, the mountains of Missouri are indeed visible. But this obviously doesn't include Chicago, the default location for shows based in Illinois.
Examples:
Anime
- Miami Guns parodies Japanese cop show cliches, and is set in ostensibly-Miami. Various episodes have villains illegally drift racing through the mountains of Florida (max. elevation 346 feet), or having a shootout in a wild west style desert (Miami is more of a swamp).
Film
- In Austin Powers 2, the Hollywood hills are clearly visible in the background to the "London" scenes. According to the commentary, the hills can't be seen from the set but were deliberately added in in post-production to make the scene look even more fake.
- Named for the opening scene of Beginning Of The End, as lampshaded in Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- And the episode for the movie The Rebel Set features a car chase through the mountains we all know are outside of Chicago.
- To be fair, there are mountains outside of Chicago. A very long way outside (and over the horizon), mind you, but they're definitely outside.
- Exceptionally unacceptable since it's animation, Beowulf opens with a wide shot of the majestic mountains of Denmark - a country so flat its highest peak is a TV tower (and said TV tower is twice as tall as the highest natural point).
- The first scenes of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind depict in a few places what seem to be mountains and cliffs in what is Indiana (whose geography is nearly identical to Illinois
 ).
- To quote one of this troper's friends, "There is something central Indiana lacks: elevationchanges.
- In {{Cold Mountain}} (set in the Appalachian Mountains region of North Carolina), the Romanian location is mostly accurate....until giant craggy peaks appear towards the end.
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Fotheringay Castle, in which Mary, Queen of Scots is confined prior to her execution, is played by Eilean Donan castle in Scotland, complete with romantic mountains and loch. The real Fotheringay Castle is in Northamptonshire, which has a distinct dearth of either.
- The movie version of The Fugitive has plenty of this when Kimble steals the ambulance and gets chased to the dam. (Most of the film's location shooting was done in the Great Smoky Mountains, although the action is nominally confined to Illinois...which is ironic, seeing as how the original show sent Kimble running all over America!)
- The docu-drama Gacy, about real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, is set in Des Plaines, Illinois. In the movie you can clearly see both mountains and wild palm trees, none of which exist in Illinois. On the DVD commentary, the producer and director actually counts them...
- In John Carpenter's Halloween, the town of Haddonfield is supposed to be in Illinois, but a sharp-eyed viewer can not only see mountains in the background of some scenes, but palm trees as well.
- In Independence Day, the first sighting of the alien ship takes place in Novosibirsk, Russia. A news reporter says the ship is "clearing the mountains" - but there are no mountains in Novosibirsk, the area is flat.
- Inversely in the same film, the landscape supposedly surrounding El Toro shows a desert. El Toro Marine Base is located in a hilly section of Orange County.
- Inverted in Kingdom Of Heaven, where Jerusalem is located in a flat desert.
- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation takes place in suburban Chicago, but in the opening scene where the Griswolds are driving down the highway to look for the perfect Christmas tree, mountains can be seen very clearly in the background. Chicago does not have mountains anywhere near it (the closest mountains may be in South Dakota, and I doubt they went that far).
- It's Clark Griswold looking for a Christmas tree. He's just crazy enough to drive to the Rockies for one.
- The first vacation movie shows palm trees, and maybe some mountains as well, in the background of the car dealership scenes.
- According to Disney's Pocahontas, there are tall mountains in Virginia. Perfect for a musical number.
- While there are some tall mountains in Virginia, there are none anywhere near Jamestown.
- Or Norfolk, despite the fact that in Down Periscope peaks are visible from the naval base.
- There are also the craggy mountains of Norfolk, England (famously one of the flattest areas in the UK) in Reign Of Fire.
- The Jackie Chan film Rumble In The Bronx is supposed to take place in the Bronx, New York City. Of course it was filmed nowhere near the Bronx, but rather in Vancouver, British Columbia. The only remotely mountain-like higher land within view of New York City are The Palisades in New Jersey, which look nothing like the towering mist-shrouded Cascade Mountains you can very clearly see in the background of several scenes in Rumble.
- The Rundown has some hills in The Amazon... considering the highest places in the forest◊ are nowhere near the Amazon river...
- The 1950s Hollywood Mountie movie Saskatchewan had the Mounties riding through the majestic snowcapped mountains of said province. A province which, in reality, is so stereotypically flat that Canadians make jokes about roof repair guys being treated in Saskatchewan like astronauts.
- Some say that the movie was about the Saskatchewan Territory that extended into Alberta, and therefore the mountain scenes are accurate. But Alberta isn't one big mountain range: the Rockies are only found on the southwestern edge, nowhere near the old Saskatchewan territory. The movie was marketed as a comedy in Alberta, incidentally.
- Starman begins with the titular character crashing to earth in Wisconsin... with mountains clearly visible in the background. While the country is certainly hilly, there are no mountains in Wisconsin.
- The Thief Of Baghdad (1940) depicts the city of Baghdad as surrounded by craggy peaks. The real city stands in a perfectly flat plain.
- Deep Impact shows a packed highway fleeing Virginia Beach from the impending titular impact. While the movie did film that scene in Virginia, they did so several hours northwest *
specifically on what is now the VA-234 bypass west of Manassas, which was nearing completion at the time filming was done; the mountains in this case are the Bull Run Mountains, an outpost of the Blue Ridge not far from there , and thus, has mountains visible that should be well over the horizon.
- In Stick It, the opening scene (and all travel scenes) show great panoramic shots of the desert wasteland that is Plano and Houston (note: there isn't a desert within 200 miles of Plano, and if not for modern drainage, Houston would be a swamp). Also, neither city has elevation changes large enough to help your bike downhill, much less to perform stunts. The film was so obviously made in Arizona and California that it isn't funny. Don't set a show in Texas if it isn't relevant and you don't include Texas culture.
- Maybe they got that from the first X-Files movie, which also featured a desert around Plano.
- Not exactly an example of this trope (what do you mean Middle Earth isn't real?!), but since Lord Of The Rings was filmed in New Zealand, there are mountains in most scenes. Which is fine, when they are traveling through countries that are supposed to be mountainous. But the Shire is certainly not within sight of any mountains, yet we see Frodo and Sam traipsing across it at the beginning of the first film with majestic mountain backdrops. The inclusion on the page is slightly justified, because Middle Earth does have a scale map (which they show in the film), showing that the mountains are very far away. In addition, Bilbo lists his desire to see mountains again as a reason to leave the Shire.
- Mission Impossible II: Ethan Hunt gets a car and chases the girl, leaving the Spanish city of Seville and suddenly reaching some cliffs that might be anywhere but near Seville. Not the movie's only example of Did Not Do The Research about Spain.
- Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle: In the climatic scene, the heroes hang glide off a massive cliff to reach the White Castle in Cherry Hill, NJ. Sadly, there are no such cliffs. Though artistic license should be granted for such a serious, moving piece.
Live Action TV
- The fourth season of 24 had terrorists hiding a nuclear missile in the mountains of Iowa, a state which in Real Life has nothing more than rolling hills.
- While parts of the seventh season were filmed on-location in Washington DC, California Doubling was used in a large portion of the episode. Thus, you get palm trees and brown hills ... in DC.
- In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, the Florida Everglades has mountains. As does the rest of the world, thanks to filming in New Zealand.
- Justified in Power Rangers RPM, set in the desert valleys of... what used to be the greater Boston metropolitan area. Justified in that there was just a Robot War humanity lost, and there are several hints the robots had used a lot of nukes. That... does stuff to the environment.
- A third-season episode of Smallville features a scene on the shores of one of Kansas' picturesque mountain lakes. For those of you in other countries, the terrain of Kansas is just like a billiards table, except for just enough ripples to mess up your shot. (According to research published in the Annals of Improbable Research, the state is literally flatter than a pancake.)
- And to add insult to injury, Kansas has no natural lakes.
- It goes much further than an isolated incident in Smallville. This site has an entertaining list of many unlikely elements of the show, but scroll down to about 2/3rds of the way down for a list of appearances of "Mountains in Kansas"
- On the other hand, it is an excuse to get Erica Durance in a bikini...
- The same Kansas Problems for Clark and the gang also apply to Jericho.
- An episode of The X Files featured the SAME fjord surrounded by mountains and pine trees that played a lake in Kansas in the Smallville example above as a lake in Iowa.
- They even spelled Okoboji wrong.
- The Commish was supposedly set on Long Island, but one Chase Scene showed the Rocky Mountains prominently in the background.
- The Minnesota farmland in Little House On The Prairie was peppered with suspiciously Californian mountains and hills. (Not to mention that it rarely ever snowed there, except during Christmas episodes.) Though the state of Minnesota does incorporate both prairies and mountains (not particularly tall ones), they are nowhere near each other.
- The TV miniseries version of Stephen King's The Stand featured a pyromaniac setting fire to an oil tank farm in Gary, Indiana, just to watch it burn. Mountains are clearly visible in the background behind the oil tanks. Big mountains. Northwest Indiana is flat enough to make Iowa look mountainous by comparison.
- Gary actually has two "mountains". One is Mt. Tom, a very large sand dune, and the other is an old garbage dump covered in dirt and fenced off. They are no where near within sight of each other.
- Then again, The Stand is (explicity) not set in our universe.
- In Heroes, Claire goes to an oil rig in her hometown of Odessa, Texas several times, and the background is quite mountainous. On the commentary for the episode "Godsend," Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder) said, "I'm from San Antonio, and I've been to Odessa, and there are no mountains in Odessa."
- The illegal road race in Drive begins in Key West and runs through South/Central Florida for several episodes, featuring the mountains of the Florida Keys and Everglades in many of the highway scenes.
- Supernatural is guilty of this all the time. This troper couldn't stop giggling when a scene set outside Lincoln, Nebraska had pine-covered mountains in the distance. Nebraska does have canyons, bluffs, and buttes (though nowhere near Lincoln), but mountains? Not so much.
- Averted in Carnivale through the magic of CGI, as it was supposed to be taking place in the dustbowls of Depression USA, hence no mountains at all.
- Despite being set in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, the NCIS agents sure spend a lot of time on dirt roads and empty farmland.
- A 20 minute drive from DC can put you in that kind of terrain, not outside the realm of reality for the team to go investigate.
- The Made For TV Movie Spring Break Shark Attack was supposed to be set in Florida but was shot in South Africa... with lots of nice shots of the mountains near "Miami Beach".
- Happens occasionally on Bones, which is set in DC but filmed in California. This leads to such geographical wackiness as the team visiting a racetrack in the middle of what appears to be a desert...in Virginia.
- The first episode of Star Trek Enterprise has a Klingon ship crash-land in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Since Oklahoma is right in the middle of Flyover Country, the writers apparently assumed that it was nothing but a big, flat, cornfield. Except that Broken Bow is actually in a fairly mountainous and forested part of the state.
- The syndicated cop show Silk Stalkings was filmed in San Diego, but supposedly took place in Palm Beach, Florida. Of course, Mount Soledad, the Laguna mountains and many lesser hills were all over the background of every exterior shot. Several Floridian fans of the show joked that it was obviously Mount Dora we were seeing in the background.
- For the record, Mount Dora, Florida is a small town that sits at an elevation of 144 feet. In Florida, 144 feet puts Mount Dora at one of the highest elevations in the state. While not famous for hills the way, say, San Francisco is, San Diego does have a few streets that climb that far in a few blocks.
Music
- Sufjan Stevens' The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the "Illinois" Album. His press releases for the album joked about the Prairie State's lack of real avalanches, and said that the name was meant to suggest "musical debris". The title track from the album is apparently about a Chevy Avalanche.
Comics
- During the Magneto War crossover, Magneto met up with the Acolytes in an alpine looking location. Which the caption box called "the Netherlands".
- Just to clarify that one, the Netherlands has a single hill that's high enough to be noteworthy for cartographers. And it's pretty small.
- Which is, of course, why it's called the Lowlands.
- An early issue of Alpha Flight showed mountains in the distance in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is located in the Red River Valley, one of the flattest areas on Earth. The nearest mountains are nearly 900 miles (1400 km) west, in Alberta.
- At one point, the headquarters of the Justice League Of America was indentified as inside a mountain in Rhode Island, which doesn't have any. Really strange seeing as Rhode Island isn't a place that demands they set up shop there.
Video Games
- In the first Call Of Duty game there's a mission where you have to blow up the Eder Dam. The background is hilarious to any German; the Alpine peaks definitely don't look much like Hesse.
- In the expansion United Offensive, a mission takes place "somewhere in Holland" (presumably near Rotterdam, since that was what the plane you were in was bombing before it was shot down), yet features hills and even some rocky cliffs (there are no cliffs in the Netherlands, and the only hills are in the southeast, about 150 kilometers from Rotterdam).
- Taken to an absurd degree in Dangeresque 3: Venice, Cairo, Ireland, Tokyo, and Paris are all the same set (which, of course, resembles none of the aforementioned places) with a really badly made prop in the background. They even have the same character (sort of) standing around in the same place in each.
- Not mountains as such, but this troper recalls an 80's arcade game involving a motorcycle racing across the US. The stages alternated between "street" and "desert", which worked plausibly except that it placed a desert in Illinois.
Real Life
- There is a region of the Midwest called the Driftless Area running through southeastern Minnesota, southwestern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa and, yes, northwestern Illinois that, in contrast to the surrounding states, is fairly mountainous. Just to show you: this◊ is Wisconsin.
- Which would be considered "mountainous" by people from the Netherlands, Denmark or northern Germany◊.
- Even so, Illinois' tallest mountain (1,250-foot Charles Mound) is 200 feet shorter than the Sears Tower. That's right, Illinois' highest point is a man-made structure.
- Which considering that the Sears Tower is the tallest man-made structure in the U.S., that doesn't say quite as much.
- Same in Florida; highest natural point: Britton Hill (345 feet) whereas there's a hotel in Miami that tops out at 789 feet. And "Britton Hill" is a sobriquet— it's technically not even a hill, merely a 'rolling plain'. The Netherlands' highest natural point (Vaalserberg - 1059 feet) positively towers over both Florida's natural AND man-made highest points.
- Estionia's highest natural point, a large hill, is jokingly called "Big Egg Mountain" by its residents. The rest of the country is otherwise fairly flat.
Web Original
- According to Mountain Zone.com: "Illinois features many high mountain peaks and summits, topped by the highpoints of Charles Mound, Benton Mound, and Mound Sumner." The entry for every state begins with "(State) features many high mountain peaks and summits..."
Western Animation
- Several episodes of Family Guy (set in Rhode Island but, of course, written in L.A.) feature a rugged, mountainous landscape forested with pine trees. Rhode Island does have some hills, but not very large or jagged ones. Its highest point is 812 feet. Also, New England has many pine trees, but the native tree, the Eastern White Pine, looks rather distinct from the bushier Ponderosa of the West.
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