History Main / AliensInCardiff

* ''Literature/RichardTheThirdInTheTwentyFirstCentury'' comes to call Portland, Oregon home after his initial trip through time there. Other important scenes take place in Rochester, New York, and the BigApplesauce shows up as a location only because of the [[JustifiedTrope justified]] use of New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Hospital as the site of some very specific medical research.

* In ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', Ford Prefect explains why aliens always seem to land in the middle of nowhere.

Are aliens landing in [[FlyingSaucer UFOs]]? They'll land in [[Film/{{District9}} Johannesburg, South Africa]]. Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's in UsefulNotes/{{Luxembourg}}. Is there a [[HellGate Hellmouth]] opening? It's opening in UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}}. Is there a magical gateway between worlds? It's in [[WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom the Midwest]] ([[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer one of them]] in UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}). Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the earth's surface, wherein aliens once upon a time created all life on earth? It's underneath [[UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} Sugarloaf Mountain]]. Is there a huge, creepy castle home to a ruthless villain who wants to conquer the universe? It's smack dab in the middle of [[HollywoodNewEngland the Berkshires]]. Is there a forest home to talking animals following legends? That forest's in [[WesternAnimation/ToadPatrol Ontario]] or [[Literature/{{Redwall}} somewhere]] [[Literature/WarriorCats in England]]. Are you looking for TheLeader of a secret den of werewolves? He's enjoying a day of fun at [[Ride/SixFlags Six Flags Fiesta Texas]]. Has a ZombieApocalypse or ThePlague broken out? The epicenter is in SweetHomeAlabama.

* ''Film/SantoContraLaInvasionDeLosMarcianos'': [[NecessaryWeasel while it makes sense]] for a Mexican BMovie production to have its events occur in Mexico, we are still talking about a Martian plan to [[AlienAbduction abduct certain greatest members of the human race]] and then [[AlienInvasion start to stomp on mankind's face]] (''luchador''-style) that takes place in the suburbs of the (then-) Federal District.

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* ''Series/{{Sesamstrasse}}'', the German co-production of ''Series/SesameStreet'', takes place in the Eimsbüttel district of Hamburg ([[CreatorProvincialism where the show is made]]) according to WordOfGod as well as the ''Eine Möhre für Zwei'' spinoff's TV movie ''Alarm im Zirkus''. Thus, this has had the amusing result of several ([[{{Edutainment}} educationally-focused]]) bizarre events occuring in ''Hamburg'' instead of a typical "major" German city like Berlin or Munich.
[[/folder]]

* ''Film/{{Kronos}} (1957)'': While (as usual of films of the era) AmericaSavesTheDay, the titular alien lands on (and stomps flat a good chunk of) Mexico.

* ''Kronos (1957)'': While (as usual of films of the era) AmericaSavesTheDay, the titular alien lands on (and stomps flat a good chunk of) Mexico.

* ''Film/KoiMilGaya'' has aliens, including Jadoo, visiting the hill station of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasauli Kasauli]] in Himachal Pradesh, a town of less than five thousand. Justified in that they were inadvertantly called there by Rohit using his father's computer.
* ''Film/SuperDeluxe'' lampshades it when the [[spoiler:alien girl]] mocks Vasanth for his skepticism that she is, in fact, an [[spoiler:alien girl]] born in the unnamed setting of the movie.
-->Do you think aliens only visit America?

* In ''Film/{{Nope}}'', the UFO targets a ranch in a small inland town nestled in the California desert. [[spoiler:Since Jean Jacket is a wild animal, it likely did not “choose” this area for any particular reason beyond it having enough food and being far away from anything likely to harm it.]]

* Vladivostok, gets to feature not just in one, but in ''two'' completely unrelated shows with a supernatural touch. But while ''{{Anime/Darker Than Black}}'' 's representation is [[RealPlaceBackground completely accurate]], ''Anime/BloodPlus'''s was [[HollywoodGeography almost unrecognizable.]]

* In ''Anime/AldnoahZero'', the Vers Empire's invasion of Earth begins with Martian Landing Castle slamming into four key cities. [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Tokyo]] and UsefulNotes/{{Beijing}} are megacities you'd expect an extraterrestrial enemy to invade... but UsefulNotes/NewOrleans and [[UsefulNotes/{{Mozambique}} Maputo?]] But those cities makes sense when you consider the map of the Earth as it stands in ''Aldnoah.Zero's'' setting: [[FallenStatesOfAmerica the East and West Coasts of America are gone]], and [[ApocalypseHow nearly all of the western coast of Africa as well as northern Mozambique]] is devastated, so it stands to reason that New Orleans and Maputo have become megacities thanks to population explosions from fleeing refugees. Episode 9 shows us [[http://postimg.org/image/7taub5vzd/ a full map of the invasion.]]

* ''Series/WhatWeDoInTheShadows'': In the second season, Laszlo spends an episode hiding from a rival in Clairton, Pennsylvania, an outer suburb of Pittsburgh.

* ''Film/WhatWeDoInTheShadows'' follows the misadventures of a group of ancient, murderous vampires living as flatmates in UsefulNotes/{{Wellington}}, UsefulNotes/NewZealand. The [[Series/WhatWeDoInTheShadows spin-off TV show]] focuses on a different group who live on Staten Island, which, while technically part of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, is considered the BlackSheep of the Five Boroughs and often viewed as an extension of [[{{Joisey}} suburban New Jersey]].

Looking for a place to set the disaster of the week/alien invasion/supervillain's base/origin of the bad guys/home of the heroes etc? Well, you can use the classics: [[BigApplesauce New York]], {{Tokyo|IsTheCenterOfTheUniverse}}, [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]] or UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} for the first three, places like [[CommieLand Russia]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny North Korea]] or [[{{Qurac}} the Middle East]] for the other two, or UsefulNotes/LosAngeles or (again) New York for the last one. Of course, you may think that's too cliché. Another alternative is having the plot take place in a generic EverytownAmerica or [[NothingExcitingEverHappensHere a fictional town in the middle of nowhere]], and have the villains come from some equally-fictional {{Ruritania}} or BananaRepublic. Or you may TakeAThirdOption. Have the center of the plot be in an actual place, but some relatively harmless semi-known non-exotic location which makes you ask [[PlaceWorseThanDeath "Why THERE, of all places?"]] That is the basis of the trope.

Are aliens landing in [[FlyingSaucer UFOs]]? They'll land in [[Film/{{District9}} Johannesburg, South Africa]]. Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's in Luxembourg. Is there a [[HellGate Hellmouth]] opening? It's opening in UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}}. Is there a magical gateway between worlds? It's in [[WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom the Midwest]] ([[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer one of them]] in UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}). Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the earth's surface, wherein aliens once upon a time created all life on earth? It's underneath [[UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} Sugarloaf Mountain]]. Is there a huge, creepy castle home to a ruthless villain who wants to conquer the universe? It's smack dab in the middle of [[HollywoodNewEngland the Berkshires]]. Is there a forest home to talking animals following legends? That forest's in [[WesternAnimation/ToadPatrol Ontario]] or [[Literature/{{Redwall}} somewhere]] [[Literature/WarriorCats in England]]. Are you looking for TheLeader of a secret den of werewolves? He's enjoying a day of fun at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Has a ZombieApocalypse or ThePlague broken out? The epicenter is in SweetHomeAlabama.

This trope is generally reserved for science fiction, fantasy and other settings to contrast the mundane, out of the way locations with impossible situations, often as a grounding element. It doesn't apply as frequently to plausible real life scenarios, even large scale action ones-a group of vampires in Lansing Michigan might fit, but a high-stakes shootout between criminals and police, not as much.

** [[http://www.users.waitrose.com/~magonia/ms50.htm Another - possible - case of alien abduction was that of Cabo Valdés]], which occurred in 1977, near the border between Chile and Bolivia.
* When the Live 8 concert locations were announced back in 2005, with concerts in places like London, Paris and Berlin, Canada's concert venue was held in Barrie, a cottage town about 60 miles north of Toronto. This was much to the bemusement of many, particularly residents of Barrie.
* The original Woodstock concert took place on a dairy farm in the Catskills near Bethel, New York. Most of the area's few thousand residents felt the same way about its attendees and performers as they would have about alien invaders.

* The ''Website/SCPFoundation'' is very fond of this, which can partially be attributed to [[CreatorProvincialism Creator Provincialism]] as it's a collaborative writing site. This is also [[InvokedTrope invoked]] with Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin, a small town which has just so happened to wind up as one of the strangest ([[LighterAndSofter and funniest]]) places the Foundation has on their docket.

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' is very fond of this, which can partially be attributed to [[CreatorProvincialism Creator Provincialism]] as it's a collaborative writing site. This is also [[InvokedTrope invoked]] with Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin, a small town which has just so happened to wind up as one of the strangest ([[LighterAndSofter and funniest]]) places the Foundation has on their docket.

* In [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun_(2007_video_game) Shadowrun]], the powerful artefact that allows magic to return to the world is located in Santos, Brazil. Cyberpunk shooting ensues.
* ''VideoGame/WarcraftI'' where the orcs from Draenor invade, and curbstomp, the backwater kingdom of Stormwind rather than the powerful center of human civilization in Lordaeron to the north. The reason for this is that [[EvilGod Sargeras]] had a hard time Mind-controlling [[ThePossessed Medivh]], so although he managed to tell the orcs how to build the portal between worlds, said portal ended up in the middle of a dragon-infested swamp on the edge of a backwater kingdom. Instead of in Stromgarde, an already empty fortification, and a much more logical place to launch an invasion from. Basically, the Horde's conquest was doomed from the start by being dumped in a crappy location.

* An episode of ''Series/MyHero2000'' had Thermoman stop an abandoned Russian space station from crashing into the center of Grimsby.

* The protagonists of ''WebAnimation/HunterTheParenting'' stumble into a vampire turf war over control of North Norfolk and Yarmouth. Even the vampires admit it's kind of pathetic

* Used in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, for good reason: many big cities were nuked into oblivion during the war (Los Angeles was destroyed so badly that it was called "the Boneyard", San Franciscio is mostly deserted, and it's implied that New York is just a radioactive crater). Therefore, the capital of the New California Republic isn't New Sacramento or anything like that, but instead a formerly small, post-apocalyptic community called Shady Sands. Somewhat averted in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' and ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', which take place in Washington, DC, Las (New) Vegas, and Boston, respectively, but in the case of New Vegas and 4, it's justified: the de-facto ruler of New Vegas, Robert House, had a missile defense system set up that destroyed most of the nukes before they could land, and most of the conflict in 4 comes from the actions of the Institute (formerly CIT, the Fallout version of MIT), which wasn't founded in its current form until after the war. However, the trope is once again invoked as {{DLC}}s for the new games take place in exotic locales such as Zion National Park (''Honest Hearts''), Pittsburgh (''The Pitt''), Maine (''Far Harbour''), Anchorage (''Operation: Anchorage''), Point Lookout State Park (''Point Lookout'') and quite often, areas that, in real life, are empty or just don't exist (''Lonesome Road'' and ''Old World Blues'').

* White Wolf's website had a Java-based RPG chat room for their ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'' also set in Atlanta, Georgia; the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' chat had the fictional city of "[[IstanbulNotConstantinople New Bremen]]" instead. The World of Darkness has also released sourebooks for cities all over the world. In addition to the obvious (New York, London, Hong Kong, etc.), there is also the rather twisty ''Milwaukee by Night''.

** Of course, Roswell is ''now'' a landmark, but that's because of the [=UFO=] crash more than anything else.
** Following WWII (and at the time of the Incident) Roswell was the home base for the 509th Bombardment Wing, the world's only nuclear strike force. Which almost certainly has nothing to do with the Incident, but it makes ''great'' conspiracy theory fuel.
** It is also worth noting that Roswell is where Robert H. Goddard, a founding father of modern rocketry developed and tested rockets in the 1930s. A local high school is named in his honor. Given [[MadeOfExplodium the dangers inherent in rocket testing]], locating it as far away as possible from anything was almost certainly intentional.
** The UsefulNotes/ColdWar made this kind of appearance a necessity. The declassification of what happened there revealed that the "weather balloon" ''was'' a balloon, but carrying detection equipment prototypes meant to spot bombers carrying a nuclear weapon (as [=ICBMs=] (nuclear missiles) didn't become common until TheSixties), possibly a SuperPrototype if the weird materials the theories mention actually existed. Testing it in a backwater desert region meant that even when the military got caught, the focus on the [=UFOs=] did the job the cover-up couldn't... and might have even been done on purpose to replace a failed cover-up. Similarly to this trope being about the place nobody suspects, a genuine former government agent could easily be given a final assignment to spread disinformation to someone crazy enough to believe something just because it perfectly fits their world-view, in lieu of a better way to keep experimental military technology unknown to a potential foe. When even the people who would never trust you can't see through a trick, the paranoid who hear the disinformation are Cardiff, and an otherwise mundane SpyFiction[=-like=] scenario becomes the "Aliens" doing the "invading". How's ''that'' for a conspiracy theory?

* An episode of ''Series/MyHero'' had Thermoman stop an abandoned Russian space station from crashing into the center of Grimsby.

* The protagonists of ''WebAnimation/HunterTheParenting'' stumble into a vampire turf war over control of Norwich and Yarmouth. Even the vampires admit it's kind of pathetic