Wallace & Gromit takes place in a generic Northern English town, though when Wallace gets post, the address can be briefly seen as "62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan". Other hints also suggest a Lancashire setting; though ironically (given the counties' infamous rivalry) Peter Sallis' voice acting gives Wallace a Yorkshire accent.
Most Pixar movies in explicitly American locations set in undetermined locations (the big exceptions being Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, which are set in the Pacific, with the former going to Australia, and the latter to California; and Inside Out deals with a Minnesota girl moving to San Francisco):
The Toy Story movies are set in “the Tri-County area”, as seen on newspaper vending machines, TV ads for Al’s Toy Barn, the local airport, and WebTuraMaps. Some of the architecture suggests a Southern California setting, albeit a rather provincial, suburban one; Simi Valley is a good bet.
The Incredibles is set in Metroville, which is in an undetermined location, it takes place in the United States, and much of the action takes place on Nomanisan Island, a tropical volcanic island in another undetermined location. We do know, though, that Violet’s middle school is based on Brad Bird’s high school in Corvallis, Oregon. In one scene Edna had the homing device and it showed Metroville to be close to California, so it’s most likely California. New Urbem’s location is unclear but it appears to be on the east coast, considering Elastigirl took a plane.
Cars is set in Radiator Springs, which is clearly located somewhere in the southwestern U.S. near I-40 and Route 66, but its exact location and whether it's in Arizona or New Mexico are never explained.
In A Bug's Life, the setting is never specified, but the arid landscape and mention of a rainy season heavily implies it is either in Texas, the American Southwest, or Southern California.
Up: Played straight with the city Carl lives in. Averted with Paradise Falls - eagle-eyed viewers might spot that the plane tickets Carl buys before Ellie's death are listed for Venezuela.
The setting of the films from the Disney Animated Canon are often subject to speculation, particularly concerning the kingdoms of the Disney Princesses. Some of them are easy guesses: Beauty and the Beast is obviously set in France, Mulan is obviously set in China, and Pocahontas is obviously set in Virginia, USA. Others are a little more points of contention:
Sleeping Beauty is possibly the most controversial. Strong reasons to believe it takes place in France include the fact that, when Aurora and Phillip unite in the ending, the court plays Marche Henri IV, a historical anthem of the Kingdom of France; and the presence of the Fleur-de-lis in some of the banners. However, there are fans who believe it's Britain, due to the fact that the creators specifically wanted to give Aurora a British accent. You may also find fans who point to a number of other European countries, citing a variety of arguments such as character names.
Cinderella is usually assumed to take place in France, for being based on the french Charles Perrault version of the fairytale, and for the French names present ("Mademoiselle Augustina Dubois, the daughter of General Pierre Dubois"). However, it's also worth noting that the Tremaines' surname is of Cornish origin (a region of England). Perhaps more importantly, the fact that the costumes appear to be based on Victorian Era fashion should rule France out, since that would place the setting after the French Revolution.
In the Frozen Christmas short "Olaf's Frozen Adventure", one baker Olaf runs into is making a gingerbread cookie in the shape of Norway. Arendelle, however, was previously implied to be the Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Norway. Anna also has lines implying that Arendelle is literally just that town surrounding the castle (which clashes with a map in "Frozen Fever" which suggested Arendelle also includes the forests and mountains for a couple hundred miles to the west and north). The special makes it ambiguous whether Arendelle is a city-state or a country and if it is a city-state, just where does it take place (in Norway, nearby Norway, etc). To make it more confusing, the novelization has the family baking a cookie of Arendelle, implying that Norway doesn't exist.
The town where Lady and the Tramp takes place is in an unidentified state in the United States. The architecture strongly suggests upstate New York or New England. Word of God says it's somewhere the Midwest, specifically Walt Disney's hometown of Marceline, Missouri. Somewhat alleviated in the sequel Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure which has an opening number about the New England setting of the movie.
The Lion King (1994) is heavily implied to take place in eastern Africa due to the brief appearances of Victoria Falls and Mt. Kilimanjaro at the very beginning of the movie.
Most of Kiki's Delivery Service takes place in a city that explicitly borrows architectural elements from such locations as Stockholm, Visby, Lisboa, Naples, and Paris. It is implied to be located in Northern Europe, and the inhabitants seem to be a mix of European and East Asian phenotypes with no hint of racial segregation or discrimination. Word of God holds that Kiriko is basicaly a "Stockholm-in-a-world-without-WWII" with some other influences thrown in. Hayao Miyazaki says that most of it is based on his notes and sketches from the time he visited Astrid Lindgren to discuss possible adaptation of Pippi Longstocking. The talks fell through,note The first Lindgren work to be adapted by Studio Ghibli is the Ronja the Robber's Daughter filmed by his son Goro Miyazaki some thirty years later. but the materials he obtained on the trip went into the movie.
Part of Your Name is set in Itomori, a fictional town in Gifu Prefecture, Japan that is based on the real-world Hida City, but is also next to a lake based on Lake Suwa in not that near Nagano Prefecture. Given Shinkai's pendant for Real-Place Background, fans have tried to determine its location, but in Real Life there is only a swamp where it should be.
Films — Live-Action:
Se7en takes place in an unnamed American city. Some take it to be Seattle due to much of the film taking place on rainy days. Word of God, on the other hand, calls the film Andrew Kevin Walker's "love letter to New York City".
The Saw franchise is set in an unnamed American city (and its police department is known simply as the "Metropolitan Police Department"), with the only clear hint to the location being the TV network WNKW, implying that it's east of the Mississippi River. Darren Lynn Bousman (the director of Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV and Spiral) said that the producers deliberately keep the location ambiguous to the point of not even permitting driving shots.
In the first film, Tapp and Sing are seen using a map with the layout of Washington, D.C.. Also, Gordon's medical degree is from Indiana State University, implying that the city could be within the Rust Belt (if Gordon didn't move from Indiana to another state outside the belt), a statistical region defined by high economic depression and vacant industrial properties, similar to the Crapsack World status the city is implied to be in; additionally, both Illinois and Ohio (which are part of the belt) are two of the eight US states with the most serial killers.
Jigsaw further establishes that the series doesn't take place in Cleveland, as Eleanor is offered the position of medical examiner in that city.
That said, most fans believe that the films take place somewhere on the East Coast, specifically around Philadelphia, as that city's skyline was used in establishing shots of Spiral, and while the license plates seen in the films leave off the name of the state, their style resembles that of New Jersey plates (which is right across the Delaware River from Philly, implying a South Jersey location specifically).
The state represented by Senator Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is not named, even though (or more likely because) its two senators, the governor, and the boss of its political machine are all central characters.
Subverted by the opening voiceover of Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, which states that "this could be any city", though actually there's no real mystery about the location — it's Edinburgh.
The city of Springwood in A Nightmare on Elm Street wanders all over the country as the series goes on. The first movie is set in an unnamed Los Angeles suburb, but as Continuity Creep sets in with each sequel, the setting picks up the name Springwood and enough backstory to turn into a Town with a Dark Secret. The sixth film's opening finally puts Springwood squarely on a U.S. map – in Ohio. Freddy vs. Jason suggests that it’s near Camp Crystal Lake (which is in central New Jersey), but Word of God clarified that the movie just didn’t show how long it took Jason to get to Springwood.
Batman films tend not to be consistent with Gotham’s location (the city is supposed to be an analogue for the dark side of New York, in contrast to the more idealistic Metropolis; Gotham is even one of New York City's many nicknames):
The Dark Knight Trilogy never hides the fact that the first two films were shot in Chicago, with prominent landmarks like the Wrigley Building, Sears Tower, Chicago Board of Trade Building, and Randolph Street Station visible, among others, but there the location of its Gotham City is apparently fantasy, given that its license plates state that it's located in Gotham State. The map of Gotham is the same one from Batman: No Man's Land, which puts the city on a group of fictional islands in New Jersey’s Great Bay. The final film throws Los Angeles, New York and Pittsburgh into the mix as well. Given that the police cars use a paint job that the NYPD used in the 1990s, along with aerial shots of Manhattan used when Bane's takeover is going on in The Dark Knight Rises, it's safe to assume Gotham is meant to take the place of New York City ("Gotham" even being a nickname for parts of Manhattan at night).
Batman Forever hangs a lampshade on Gotham’s ambiguous geography by giving it landmarks associated with different real-world cities, like the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge. Some Batman continuities give Gotham a “Statue of Justice” or "Queen of Freedom" instead.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice takes this a step further by placing Gotham quite literally across a bay from Metropolis (in the comics, they're a short drive away, but not that close). Suicide Squad has papers saying Gotham is in New Jersey, and Word of God says Metropolis is a federal district in Delaware. Here, Gotham City is being represented by Detroit.
The Batman (2022) was primarily filmed in Liverpool, but Pete Savage has a prominent New England accent and most of the mobsters have Northeastern Italian American accents. Those details, coupled with the architectural styles and the location of the city along a waterfront, indicate that the most likely location is somewhere in Eastern New England, likely either around Providence and Fall River/New Bedford, or possibly in Greater Boston.
The Cat in the Hat: A specific location isn't given for Anville; a close-up of the contract's text states that it's located in "Lewis & Clark County", which is a real county in Montana. (The filming took place in California, in the town of Pomona, and in parts of the Simi Valley). The Cat does point out that a Rhode Island license plate is rare around Anville, hinting that it’s not in or near Rhode Island.
Payback is set in some city during some decade. The architecture, clothing, furniture, and phones all make its city difficult to place both in location and time.
Office Space had cars with generic “USA” license plates, but it's implied to be set near or around Dallas-Fort Worth: the boat Peter, Joanna and Lawrence fish in has a Texas registration number (with Texas state shape), the place where Lawrence mentions he's helping build a new McDonald's is an actual Dallas suburb, Las Colinas (where many big companies have operations), the “channel 39” Joanna mentions at the restaurant is an actual Dallas station (for many years it aired lots of Westerns; now it's the Telemundo station); and the fact that both Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill are also made by Mike Judge and are both also set in Texas.
The Transformers film series is all over the place. Sam Witwicky lives in a place called Mission City, which in the first film was 22 miles from the Hoover Dam, putting it somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. Its final battle sequence, though, was very obviously filmed in downtown Los Angeles (with some bits in Detroit as well). Sam also goes to college somewhere far enough from Mission City that he has to fly there, although Executive Meddling necessitated this one – since the second film also shows his mother’s marijuana-fueled escapades around campus, several colleges forbade Michael Bay from identifying the place.
Zigzagged in the Indiana Jones movies. Originally, there was no need to name Indy’s home town (although the maps showed it was somewhere in New England) or the college where he taught, and neither is given a name in the films. Novelizations and video games, however, do both, as the author found writing a novelization difficult without doing so. The town was named Bedford and put in Connecticut, and the school was named Marshall College after Frank Marshall, a collaborator of Steven Spielberg and producer on all the films. It did, though, conflict with the video game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which called the school “Barnett College” – fans theorize that Indy teaches at more than one school.
Footloose takes place in Beaumont. Many viewers assume it’s meant to be Beaumont, Texas, but dialogue references (e.g., being within driving distance of Chicago) place it somewhere in the Midwest. The story Footloose is based on occurred in Elmore City, OK.
In Cinderella (2015), the kingdom's location is never given; however, it is clearly set in the real world, as various globes and maps can be seen around Ella's house. Influence was drawn from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France is also nearby, or at the very least, Ella is fluent in French.
The Double takes place in a dystopian city, but the time and location are both unclear. The actors are predominantly white and speak English with American accents, but there is a noticeable number of British accents as well. In one scene, Simon uses a Japanese coin to play a Japanese song on a jukebox. Another scene features a lounge band playing a song referencing Iwo Jima.
It's a Wonderful Life drops dozens of hints that Bedford Falls is in upstate New York, but never conclusively says so. Fanon has Bedford Falls as a No Communities Were Harmed version of Seneca Falls, New York, and the town has embraced the idea.
No Escape (2015) went to great lengths to make the setting as vague as possible, other than it being somewhere in Southeast Asia. Despite being filmed in Thailand, no Thai is spoken or seen written. The police officers’ shields have a modified Khmer script, and dialogue is a mix of several languages. This was done because the setting is not shown in a good light, and they didn't want to offend their audience.
The cult favorite slasher film Sleepaway Camp is known to take place in Upstate New York, made evident by the natural scenery of the camp’s location and the New York accents and dialogue of several characters, who obviously live in the New York City area and would logically head upstate for summer camp. However, it's unclear exactly where upstate the camp is.
Carry On Cowboy is set in a town called Stodge City somewhere in The Wild West. They seem to get telegrams from Washington, D.C. very quickly, but the Lovable Rogue cowboy says that he's from Texas and he's been wandering the roads for ten days; given the state's size, he could very well still be in it. Furthermore, although Stodge City is firmly in The Wild West, Washington looks like it's in The '60s.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment are both set in a town called Denton – 18 towns in America have that name. In Rocky Horror, Janet is seen reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which suggests that it’s Denton, Ohio (confirmed by the Rocky Horror Scrapbook). But Shock Treatment tried to throw that out of whack by filming it in Denton, Texas (but due to a writers’ strike, they had to film in England instead). Shock Treatment’s Opening Narration also refers to it as “a town not far from yours.”
Casino is set in Las Vegas, but the flashbacks of the main characters refer to their previous city as "back home" without specifying its name.
The Phantom (1943) is set in The Jungle, with no explicit statement of where this jungle is. The latter half of the serial introduces a warlord known as the Tartar, which would suggest an Asian setting... except that despite their clothing and interior decorations, he and his retinue are clearly white men. The fauna and flora are the usual Hollywood mishmash, but the natives, clothing, and architecture are suggestive of South America (Which is interesting, because although the location of the Phantom's home jungle moved around quite a bit in the early years of the comic, South America is one place it never was).
This Land Is Mine: The movie is set in an unnamed location in Nazi-occupied Europe. The opening text identifies the setting only as "somewhere in Europe". The opening shot features a newspaper headline that says "HITLER INVADES" with the name of the country torn off. There are no flags. When talking about the occupiers and the resistance George only says "our country".
Rattle The Cage takes place in an unnamed Arab country. The film was one of the few made in the United Arab Emirates, but it's not clear if it takes place there. Both female characters do not wear hijab, and all but one of the five male characters wear western-style clothing. Alcohol consumption is a plot point, with the police station having two full bottles of liquor, while the UAE is one of the Arab countries with a legal prohibition against alcohol consumption by non-Muslims. None of the main actors come from the UAE, with both main characters played by Israeli Arabs.
Matilda takes place in an unspecified neighborhood in Southern California. It was shot in places such as Pasadena and Whittier, but no actual locations are mentioned in the film.
It's not entirely clear where the story in Patrick Still Lives, an unauthorized In Name Only sequel to the 1978 Australian film Patrick, is meant to take place. A reference to Lyndon being a Member of Parliament suggests that it may have been intended to be set in Australia like the original film, but all the vehicles are left-hand drive. The fact that it's very obviously filmed in Italy doesn't help.
Dual: It's never made clear where Sarah lives. She has an American accent and uses American money, but many other characters have British, Australian, or German accents. The license plates are generic white and have European dimensions. The final scene takes place at a traffic circle, which are rare in America. The movie was filmed in Finland.
Ultraviolet (2006) is set in some generic city in the future, whose location isn't specified. In real-life the futuristic scenes are filmed in Shanghai (the Pearl Oriental Tower can be seen in the opening sequence) but the movie itself doesn't seem to be set anywhere in Asia.
We're All Going to the World's Fair: It's left ambiguous as to where Casey is living, though a shot of a highway reveals a lot of cars with yellow-gold New York license plates, suggesting that that's where it was filmed, at least. JLB states he returned to Long Island after meeting Casey, but we're not given any indication of how far that was. Casey herself has an Unexplained Accent that sometimes doesn't even sound American.
Dead Man's Letters: Director Konstantin Lopushanksy deliberately went out of his way to make the film's geographical setting ambiguous. All we know is that the story is not set in the former USSR, something which is made clear by the appearance of Western equipment and consumer products. The characters' names suggest that the most likely setting is somewhere in Scandinavia, possibly Norway or Sweden.
The story in American Nightmare (1983) is said to take place in a major city somewhere in the U.S., but where exactly is never specified.
Born in the Maelstrom: The location where the film is set isn't clear. However, it seems to be somewhere in the American South, judging by the scenery and accents.
Gremlins (1984): The first film takes care not to mention where Kingston Falls is located or which "Chinatown" Rand visited. Most of it was shot on the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles, using the same small town sets that would be used for Back to the Future. However, according to the script, Kingston Falls is located somewhere in Pennsylvania and the sequel establishes that Mr. Wing's shop is in New York City.
The enemy country in both Top Gun films is never named and doesn't cleanly correspond to any real-world country. They're located within flight range of the Indian Ocean, but fly Soviet/Russian aircraft painted with a red star in the first film, which would seem to indicate a Warsaw Pact state or a Soviet 'stan. They also have a cadeuceus-like roundel. Top Gun: Maverick adds that they have a nuclear program against the wishes of the UN, plus a small number of old F-14s, which corresponds to Iran, but they also have Su-57s, which Russia hasn't sold to any other country yet.
They Cloned Tyrone is set in a neighborhood only known as The Glen. From certain context clues, it appears to be somewhere in the South (the film itself was shot in Atlanta), Memphis apparently being the closest big city. At the end, when the news are reporting on the escaped clones, there's a cough right when the reporter says what city The Glen is in.
, a historical anthem of the Kingdom of France; and the presence of the Fleur-de-lis in some of the banners. However, there are fans who believe it's Britain, due to the fact that the creators specifically wanted to give Aurora a British accent. You may also find fans who point to a number of other European countries, citing a variety of arguments such as character names.