History TelevisionGeography / Film

* In ''Film/NoWayOut'', there's the (nonexistent) Georgetown Metro stop, with the DC Metro being portrayed by the Baltimore Metro.

* People from Bayonne, New Jersey, had a lot of fun in the remake of ''Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' starring Creator/TomCruise. The house in the beginning of the movie is in downtown Bayonne, right underneath the Bayonne Bridge. However, during the alien landing, Tom Cruise walks over to a church that is actually in Newark in under a minute. Beyond the miles of distance required to walk there, Cruise would also have to either swim across Newark Bay or dodge highway traffic across the NJ Turnpike bridge.

* Much later, ''Film/RobinHoodPrinceOfThieves'' manages to walk the 170 miles from Sycamore Gap at Hadrian's Wall to Nottingham in a day, having somehow bypassed Nottingham on his trip from the south coast, which was over 200 miles away from Nottingham to begin with.
** He bypasses Nottingham on the way back down as well, since Locksley Manor was actually Old Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, which is over 200 miles to the south of Sherwood Forest.

* Much later, ''Film/RobinHoodPrinceOfThieves'' manages to walk the 170 miles from Sycamore Gap at Hadrian's Wall to Nottingham in a day, having somehow bypassed Nottingham on his trip from the south coast.

* The 1976 Mythology/RobinHood film ''Film/RobinAndMarian'' was filmed in Pamplona, Spain, which, needless to say, looks nothing at all like Nottinghamshire.

* ''In Cold Blood'' (1967): Not a big, famous town such as L.A. or Vancouver, but when the criminals are seen approaching the Clutter's home, they cross the railroad tracks in Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutters did live across the tracks, but the car in the scene is going north. The Clutters lived '''south''' of the tracks.

* The ''Film/GreenLantern'' film takes place in fictional Coast City, but there are a lot of recognizable New Orleans landmarks in several scenes. Then again, almost every DC Universe city is a disguised version of a "real world" city. (Just ''which'' city, though, is sometimes [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield open to debate]]...)

* The ''Film/GreenLantern'' film takes place in fictional Coast City, but there are a lot of recognizable New Orleans landmarks in several scenes. Then again, almost every DC Universe city is a disguised version of a "real world" city. (Just ''which'' city, though, is sometimes [[FanWank open to debate]]...)

* ''Film/LeapYear'', apart from its appalling {{Oireland}} setting, uses atrocious geography. Anna's flight from Boston to Dublin is diverted to Wales due to weather, although London is a major international hub and a much more obvious place in which to divert the plane. This is also ignoring other Irish airports, such as Cork or Shannon. Then, she gets a ferry from Wales to Cork, but stopping in Dingle due to weather -- Dingle being on the ''southwest'' coast of Ireland and is ''further west'' than Cork, ignoring the regular Holyhead-to-Dublin ferry. Dingle is shown as a tiny village when it's actually a moderately-sized town. Then, her journey from Dingle to Dublin passes the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, neither of which would be anywhere near her route.

* ''Series/CoronationStreet'' featured a ChaseScene showing a car turning a corner in Salford and crashing into a canal in Ashton (about 8 miles or so apart). Granted, both scenes are meant to be in the fictional borough of Weatherfield, so in the context of the show, both spots ''could'' be close together.

* ''Series/CoronationStreet'' featured a ChaseScene showing a car turning a corner in Salford and crashing into a canal in Ashton (about 8 miles or so apart).

* In the film ''Film/DrivingLessons'', Creator/RupertGrint and Julie Walters drive to Edinburgh, arriving on a scenic road down a hillside... which is in the centre of the city and can only be reached once you're already in the city. This is after they've driven ''south'' past a recognisable nuclear power station to get there, and following this, you see them going up alleyways and out of entirely different alleyways on the opposite side of the castle. It's a bit disorientating.
* Baltimore tourists are often told that the ''Film/StepUp'' movies were filmed at the famous Baltimore School for the Arts, probably because the school in the film is based on that. In fact, they were filmed at a local middle school.
* The beginning of ''Film/{{Zombieland}}'' supposedly takes place in Garland, Texas, a suburb of [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas]], but the details in the background make it painfully obvious to locals of North Texas that it was actually filmed in Georgia.
* ''Film/FortyEightHours''; Chinatown is ''not'' "down the alley" from the Mission District.
* In the climax of Creator/GuyRitchie's ''Film/SherlockHolmes2009'', characters somehow manage to run from the sewers of the Houses of Parliament to the top of the newly constructed tower bridge within minutes. The two land marks are miles apart.
* In ''Film/PlanesTrainsAndAutomobiles'', Creator/SteveMartin and John Candy are taking a bus from Kansas to St. Louis... cue iconic shot of The Gateway Arch as the bus they are traveling on crosses the Mississippi River. Problem is, the bus is now traveling west from Illinois instead of east from Kansas.

* ''Film/BlowOut'': Creator/JohnLithgow drags Creator/NancyAllen onto a subway-surface trolley car at the 15th Street underground station. Cut to them climbing to street level at Penn's Landing, 15 blocks away. The subway-surface lines terminate at 13th Street. There is no underground station of any kind at Penn's Landing.

* ''Film/RoboCop1987'' is set in Detroit, but the skyline of Dallas is clearly visible in one chase scene. OCP headquarters is a matte painting featuring Dallas City Hall as its lower floors.
** OCP apparently does a *lot* of work to Detroit, because by the time ''Film/RoboCop2'' rolls along, Detroit somehow looks exactly like Houston.
* ''Film/AnimalHouse'' was set in a northeastern university but the shooting took place in Oregon.

* In vampire film ''Film/InnocentBlood'' a vampire drive out of the Fort Pitt tunnel only to find the sun rose while he was driving through it. The sun burns him. Neat idea, except that tunnel faces northeast, and the sun would be obscured by several buildings and hills at that point in the morning. (It was still dark when they entered the less-than-a-mile-long tunnel. Who knew the sun rose so fast in Pittsburgh!)
* ''Film/InvasionUSA1952'': Enemy paratroopers are shown landing on a beach supposedly outside Washington, D.C., which is 30+ miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
** Called out in [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S06E02InvasionUSA the MST3K version]]:

** Meanwhile, scenes of the ''other'' Washington show paratroopers landing in the wide open plains around Puget Sound, with not a single tree or hill in sight.
* The 1971 cult film ''Film/GetCarter'' ends with a scene where [[spoiler:Michael Caine]] chases after [[spoiler:Ian Hendry]] with a shotgun. They run away from Blythe Staithes (in the county of Northumberland) onto the beach at Blackhall Rocks (in the County of Durham), a mere 35 miles farther south.
* In ''Jönssonligan får guldfeber'', a film in the Swedish version of the film series ''Film/OlsenBanden'', there's a memorable scene on the clock of the Stockholm City Hall main tower. Except that the tower has no such clock there. The reason is that in the original Danish version, they were at the Copenhagen Town Hall, which ''does'' have a clock on the tower.
* ''Film/AGoodDayToDieHard'' contains a notorious example (much derided in the Russian press) where the protagonists drive from Moscow to Pripyat (the ghost city evacuated during the Chernobyl disaster) in about two or three hours like no big deal. In reality, it is 600 miles away, is a restricted zone, and, last but not the least, on the territory of another country (Ukraine).
* A rare example of the deliberate use of this trope is the 1971 film ''Film/{{Walkabout}}'', in which the main characters travel on foot, as the title would suggest, across areas of the Australian outback radically different from each other in climate and terrain... and very distant from each other in real life. Director Creator/NicolasRoeg did this on purpose as he didn't want the journey in the film to be possible in real life.

* The platform behind the Hollywood sign in ''Film/RockOfAges'' grants the visitor a wonderful view over Hollywood. However, that's not Hollywood below, it's Miami, and the real Hollywood sign is quite difficult to reach on that hillside and of course doesn't have a viewing platform.
* In ''Film/RedDawn2012'', one scene features a building exploding after Korean soldiers trip a bomb. Local residents of Mount Clemens, Michigan can testify that the film crew legitimately blew that building up. The crew bought the abandoned property and building and received permission from the city before doing so, of course, but many residents pass by the now empty lot quite often.
** Another scene depicts Korean tanks using the freeway to move. The local freeways are not only easily recognizable (a particular sign is even seen completely unchanged, attached to an overpass), but said freeways were specifically built with the purpose of transporting heavy military vehicles in mind, adding in an amusing dose of irony.

* The car chase in ''Film/{{Salt}}'' which is meant to take place in New York City was partially filmed in Albany, New York. Some visible landmarks are the New York State Museum and the Albany Iron Building (noticeable for the U-Hail truck on the roof)

* Due to CaliforniaDoubling, Hollywood movies in general tend to have palm trees popping up in the background of states where there quite obviously are no palm trees. For example, watch the daytime neighborhood scenes in ''Film/{{Halloween 1978}}'' (a movie that takes place in Illinois) and you will see it.
** No natural palm trees. They are actually a fairly commonly planted tree even in temperate and cold climates (for instance see here in Long Island; https://www.islandwidepalmtrees.com/cold-hardy-palms.html)or even as far north as Connecticut; https://www.ctpalmtrees.com
* In ''Film/KnightAndDay'', Creator/TomCruise's character seems to hop around different places in [[https://maps.google.at/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=47.800559,13.046283&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x47769063cca7009b:0x6770528c7143e4d3,47.800559,13.046283&gl=at&ei=DLuSUvPyEaW9ygOB2ILwAg&ved=0CCoQ8gEwAA Salzburg]] during his stay there. This is especially apparent in the roof chase sequence, where he starts off in ''Altstadt'' centre on on the roof of the ''Residenz''[[labelnote:*]](with several faculty buildings of Salzburg University seemingly standing in as his hotel building)[[/labelnote]] to the south of the river Salzach, and ends up on the ''northern'' bank near the foot of the ''Kapuzinerberg'' mountain before falling off and plunging into the aforementioned river (and ''not'' smashing head-first into the two-lane street, promenade and gravel bank that are ''actually'' there).
* Reviews of the low-budget ''Film/AtlasShrugged'' movie reveled in poking fun at the movie's depiction of Wisconsin. The land of cheese has a surprising number of cacti.

* In the beginning of ''The Wild Stallion'', Creator/MirandaCosgrove's character narrates that she grew up in Cleveland, with an aerial view of a city that is obviously Boston, with shots of the Back Bay, the New England Aquarium, and the Tobin Bridge.

* The ChaseScene is especially prone to TelevisionGeography. San Franciscans can go on for hours about ''Film/{{Bullitt}}''.
** In ''Bullitt'''s chase scene, it seems like ''every'' time they take a right turn onto a downhill street, there's a beige Volkswagen Beetle parked on the right with its back to the camera, in the same spot every time...
** An interview about ''Film/TheBourneIdentity'' had someone [[LampshadeHanging noting]] that the famous car ChaseScene took a very unconventional route through Paris.
*** Similarly, the opening chase to ''Film/BabyDriver'' did not take a contiguous route through downtown Atlanta.
** Ethan Hunt in ''Film/MissionImpossibleII'' 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 mistake about Spain.
* Much of the film ''[[Film/TwentyOne 21]]'', taking place at MIT in Cambridge, MA, was shot directly across the Charles River on Boston University's campus. In an interesting twist on the Television Geography trope, BU students enjoyed the movie more because of the familiar locales, despite its use as another university's campus.
** MIT's administration actually banned the filming of movies on campus after the crew of ''Film/GoodWillHunting'' displayed an annoying tendency to randomly close important parts of the school. Given that most of the school didn't have a particularly good opinion of the quality of ''21'', it's probably best for the moviemakers that they didn't try it.
* ''Film/ThePerfectStorm'' is based on a true story of fisherman from Gloucester, MA. The bar they frequent, The Crow's Nest, is shown right next to the pier on Harbor Loop. The actual Crow's Nest is about a half mile away, across the street from a wharf for a whale watch business.

* ''Film/TenThingsIHateAboutYou'' is nominally set in Seattle, but the high school that all of the main characters go to is easily recognizable as Stadium High School (incredibly distinctive)... in Tacoma, about a half-hour's drive away. Several other distinctive locations are also in Tacoma.
** And, every Western Washingtonian knows you don't wear tube tops and halter tops during the school year. It's just too dang cold! It'd be believable if the show was set in late July or August.....RuleOfSexy?

* Wherever the remake of ''Film/AssaultOnPrecinct132005'' was filmed, it sure wasn't Detroit! In fact, it was filmed in Toronto. Details [[http://torontoist.com/2009/07/reel_toronto_assault_on_precinct_13.php here.]]

* ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'' was nominally set in San Dimas, California, but the school identified as San Dimas High School was actually Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

* ''Film/JamesBond''
** ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'', at one point, had Bond driving along a lovely Bahamian ocean road past some sort of charming open-air market. There's absolutely ''nothing'' out there but houses.
** Another one from ''Casino Royale'': Establishing shot of Montenegro was a high-speed train Bond used to get to the Casino. The Montenegrin audiences found this rather amusing, which led to many a MemeticMutation. Montenegro has no high-speed railway, and their trains are mostly leftover Yugoslav and Romanian machines from the '80s. The Casino and its surroundings were in fact filmed in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, standing in for Montenegro.
** Considering Bond's globetrotter nature, there are many more examples from the movies. In ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'', he seems to teleport randomly around Vienna.
*** In about half of these scenes he's supposed to be in Bratislava at the time, making this especially funny to Austrians; also, there are no high mountains between Bratislava and Vienna.
** In ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' you get a similar effect with Hamburg. As a bonus, in the scene with the chase in the parking-house next to the Hotel Atlantic, it ends with the car crashing through the wall and falling several stories into Mönckebergstraße - at a spot which is actually about half a kilometer away from the hotel.
** In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Bond pursues the villain through two stations in UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground - Temple and Embankment, both on the sub-surface District and Circle lines. However, they're depicted as deep-level lines served by Jubilee Line train stock - most likely the shooting locating was the disused Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross, which are frequently hired out for filming. And when an exterior shot of "Embankment Station" is shown, that's actually the Northumberland Avenue exit of Charing Cross station - though that's very close to the real Embankment.
*** Also in ''Skyfall'', the A9 road is namedropped as the route Bond and M take to reach the title location, which - going by the scenery - is in Glen Coe, a part of Scotland nowhere near the A9.
* The Dabney Coleman/Henry Thomas film ''Film/CloakAndDagger'' was filmed in San Antonio, Texas. In a climactic scene, Thomas's character, Davy, has to get from San Antonio's Riverwalk (downtown) to the airport (on the outskirts of the city) in less than fifteen minutes. If he'd left for the airport immediately, he still probably wouldn't have made it in time. Yet, Davy has time for a shootout with the {{mooks}}, followed by a car chase with the {{mooks}}, before showing up at the airport to confront the BigBad with a few minutes to spare.

* In ''Film/DieHard2'', the action is set at Dulles Airport, near Washington DC, but the pay phones bear [[CaliforniaDoubling Pacific Bell logos]]. And the police are consistently identified as DC police even though Dulles is in Virginia. And the bad guys plan and execute an escape by snowmobile, and a long icicle is used effectively as a weapon. Washington area winter weather almost never supports snowmobile use in the suburbs, and is almost always mild until after the Christmas season.
** Additionally, the airport used in the movie looks nothing like the real Dulles Airport which has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_Airport very unusual architecture]]. That's because many of the exterior airport scenes were shot at Alpena Regional Airport, in Alpena, Michigan, on Lake Huron. Alpena was chosen in part because the producers needed a location with consistent, heavy snow, winter weather cold enough to use snow makers if necessary, and it's small enough that they could close several runways for shooting. The scenes in the baggage-claim drive-through were shot at Denver-Stapleton.
** In ''Film/LiveFreeOrDieHard'', the main characters realize they have to run to DC. When they realize this, they are clearly on Light Street in Baltimore, MD. They manage this. [[note]]It's roughly 40 miles from Baltimore to Washington DC.[[/note]]
* ''Film/DirtyHarry'': going from Forest Hills Station to Aquatic Park to Mount Davidson in under an hour would be a neat trick in a car (without sirens), let alone on foot.
** Harry also is able to take the train directly from Forest Hills to Delores Park which is impossible in real life. You have to take a separate line.

* ''Film/EnemyOfTheState'' was set in Washington DC, but filmed in both DC and Baltimore. Multiple scenes have characters walking from a location in one city to a location in the other city, even though they are about an hour's drive apart.
** To say nothing of the "Georgetown" Metro stop that found its way into that and several other movies.

* Possible aversion: the Chicago-area [=McAllister=] house in the ''Film/HomeAlone'' movies is an actual suburban house in Winnetka (a Chicago suburb).
** As it was written by Creator/JohnHughes it's half aversion, half this trope. They never mention which Chicago Suburb the [=McAllisters=] live in, but you can be certain that it's the same fictional town - Shermer - that Hughes set all his Chicago-based films in.
** A possible exception being ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'' where the characters visit almost every landmark in Chicago in the span of a few hours and make it home in time for their parents to get back from work. Even if one were to assume they only spent a few minutes at the Cubs' game, a few minutes at the Sears Tower, etc., traffic and distance would stop them from visiting all of those places during a 9-5 workday.

* Not a big, famous town such as L.A. or Vancouver, but when the criminals who are the subject of ''In Cold Blood'' (1967) are seen approaching the Clutter's home, they are crossing the railroad tracks in Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutters did live across the tracks, but the car in the scene is going north. The Clutters lived '''south''' of the tracks.
* The Norwegian film ''Film/{{Insomnia}}'' (later remade in Hollywood): When the main characters drive from the airport to their hotel, they make an inexplicable detour past a building several kilometers out of their way. And the exterior of their "hotel" is recognisable as an office building that ironically is very close to several real hotels.

* Creator/NicolasCage's ''Film/{{Knowing}}'', set in Boston and New York, was filmed in Melbourne, Australia. One of the scenes was filmed on the steps of the state Parliament House. Imagine, Americans, a film set halfway around the world with a scene taking place outside your State Capitol.
** ''Knowing'' is theoretically set in the Lexington area, Massachusetts, but you can safely say that the film's director has never even seen pictures of Lexington. This is most evident on any scene set on a highway, where there are huge desolate areas with no trees, where Massachusetts has an overabundance of them near its highways.

* Parts of the Film/SyFyChannelOriginalMovie ''Locust'' take place in Southern Indiana/Kentucky, and one scene features the main characters driving from Kentucky to Indiana. They pass a "Welcome to Indiana!" sign by the side of the road with trees and dirt and such. Go check out a map of the Indiana/Kentucky border to see why that wouldn't work. (Hint: the Ohio River defines the entire Indiana/Kentucky border.) That's not even mentioning the scenes taking place in southern Indiana showing perfectly flat, level ground despite the huge number of thousand-foot hills in that area.

** Another issue that the film ignored: After you cross the Ohio River into that one small slice of Kentucky, you literally can't miss the Ellis Park horse racing track on your right. The track property runs right up to the state border.

* The ballpark used for the Cleveland Indians' home stadium in ''Film/MajorLeague'' was actually County Stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The filmmakers had to shoot there to work around Bob Uecker's schedule (since they cast the real-life Brewers broadcaster as the fictional Indians broadcaster Harry Doyle), and they thus also recast the Milwaukee TV station with its real life logo on the outfield scoreboard as a Cleveland station.
** And ''Major League II'' used Camden Yards and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* When the Griswolds set out from Chicago in ''Film/NationalLampoonsVacation'', oil rigs can be seen in the background. [[CaliforniaDoubling L.A.]] has plenty of these (and even southern Illinois has some oil deposits), but not Chicago. Much of the rest of the movie was filmed on location.
** Some tall palm trees, and maybe even mountains, can be seen in the background of the early scenes at the car dealership as well. Oops.
* Another Creator/NicolasCage example, from ''Film/NationalTreasure 2: Book of Secrets''. In the car chase in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, the cars cross Westminster Bridge north to south, engage in a chase in what is clearly the City of London, which is north of the Thames - you can see the street signs, then cross Southwark Bridge ''again north to south''.

* Exactly whose mega-mansion was depicted in ''Film/OutOfSight''?
* As with the TV show ''Series/InspectorMorse'', films set in Oxford (England) tend to frequently play fast and loose with geography -- characters in ''The Oxford Murders'', for instance, step out of a pub onto the sidewalk in front of a lingerie store on the other side of the road.
** Morse has, for instance, stepped from a cobbled street in the town centre to a park two miles away.

* Consider an early scene in ''Film/ThePrestige'' when Creator/HughJackman's character arrives in Colorado Springs. The town he arrives in is high in the mountains (the Springs, like Denver, is situated on the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Front_Range Front Range]], just east of the Rockies), and Pikes Peak is nowhere to be seen. Later, he approaches Tesla's lab on a path lined with deciduous trees, not the pine and aspen forests common in that part of the world.
** Not to mention the fact that Tesla's Lab was in a very flat, comparably treeless portion of town as compared to the steep sloped, heavy woodlands depicted.

* Many of the locations used for ''Film/AQuietPlace'' aren't well-known even to people who live in upstate New York, but if they are ... the Abbotts cover quite a bit of distance barefoot on their sand path at the beginning of the film. Their house is in southeastern Dutchess County, the bridge is about 50 miles to the west (and across the Hudson River) near New Paltz, and Little Falls, almost a hundred miles to the northwest, is downtown.[[note]]Where they then scavenge from a health-food store in Beacon ... back in Dutchess County, to be fair, but still a long walk from their house.[[/note]]
* It's terribly obvious they filmed ''Film/ResidentEvilApocalypse'' in UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}}. An opening shot in the theatrical version shows the CN Tower, and the climax of the movie occurs at another famous landmark -- Toronto's uniquely designed City Hall. Granted, a city so much like Raccoon City doesn't exist.
** [[http://torontoist.com/2008/10/reel_toronto_resident_evil_apocalypse/ This]] takes the entire thing apart.
--> Despite the economic turmoil, Scotiabank's Racoon City expansion plans were unaffected.
** In one scene, ''Apocalypse'' seems to place Raccoon City in somewhat central New Jersey. Oddly enough, they realistically portrayed an evil pharmaceutical company having a research office, in the middle of nowhere NJ, yet relatively near a larger city. Johnson and Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth, Hoffman-[=LaRoche=], Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Schering-Plough all have locations in NJ that somewhat parallel this. No zombies yet though...

* In ''Film/ShortCircuit 2'', the Unnamed American City which hosts the action also hosts the CN Tower, the Toronto Transit Commission subway, World's Biggest Bookstore and Roy Thompson Hall (lesser known than the CN Tower, but still landmarks).
** Dialog between characters establishes the movie is set in New York City.

* ''Taking Lives'' is set in Montreal, which you can tell from the establishing shot of... the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_Frontenac Château Frontenac]]. Oh, dear.
** The villain also takes a train to Fredericton... in three hours. IRL, the trip is 22-24 hours.

* ''Film/TheRock'': towards the climax of the movie, a nerve gas missile is fired from [[TheAlcatraz the titular island]], programmed to hit the Oakland Coliseum stadium. Seconds later, when the missile is shown approaching its target, the stadium shown is actually Candlestick Park in San Francisco; it's most obvious when you consider the stadium's red seats, and that Candlestick is neighbored by the water and hills shown in the movie while the Coliseum is surrounded by flat dry land next to a basketball arena and a freeway.

** Can ''Run Lola Run'' really be considered part of this? Obviously the running took place in some fantasy reality, seeing as how [[spoiler: she makes the run multiple times, usually ending with her boyfriends death]].

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' was filmed, in part, at Yale University, including a chase scene. Indy and Mutt travel at about the speed of sound, judging from how fast they get from some points to others.
** While this may be, the scenes aren't set at Yale University but at the (seems to be) fictional Marshall College. There's no incorrect way to portray a fictional location.
* While ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'' mostly averts this, with most of the exteriors actually being shot in Chicago, the Palace Hotel, supposedly in Wisconsin, has an Ohio flag flying in front of it.[[note]]Keep in mind that the flag of Ohio is the only pennant-shaped US state flag.[[/note]]
** Also, the unfinished highway ramp in the ChaseScene at the end is in Milwaukee.

** Isn't the weather at least justified, as it was supposed to be one of the worst winter storms on record that particular terrorist-laden Christmas?

** The car chase is all over the place geographically. For example, at one point, a police report says they are heading west on California Street... But in the very next shot, not only is it obvious that they are not on California Street, but they are also headed ''east'' on Filbert Street towards Coit Tower. If you've been to that part of San Francisco, it's especially obvious that they didn't even drive away from the Fairmont Hotel; not only is the exterior completely different (it's actually the Millennium Biltmore Hotel is Los Angeles), but they drive away in the ''opposite direction'' of where they're supposedly headed. Those narrow alley sections early in the chase were filmed in downtown Los Angeles; if you stop and look carefully, they zoom past the historic King Edward Hotel via Werdin Place and pass Indian Alley. Mason hits the water truck at the 3700 block of Carolina Street in San Francisco, which is all the way in Potrero Hill, nearly halfway across the city to the southeast. The multi-car explosion and Goodspeed's window shortcut were in San Pedro on West 7th Street, near the La Salle Hotel. They somehow make it all the way back to San Francisco, going south at the corner of Hyde and Clay next to the 1st Chinese Southern Baptist Church. Then they awkwardly double back half a mile north and blow up a cable car at the corner of Jones & Pacific Avenues on Russian Hill. The only thing that ''does'' make sense is that Mason was able to drive from there to the Palace of Fine Arts in only a few minutes. At no point were they actually on California Street.

* In the climax of Creator/GuyRichie's ''Film/SherlockHolmes2009'', characters somehow manage to run from the sewers of the Houses of Parliament to the top of the newly constructed tower bridge within minutes. The two land marks are miles apart.

* In ''Film/RideAlong'', Philips Arena, home of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks, doubles as the fictional Highlands High School. What makes this more JustForFun/{{egregious}}: another scene has James showing up at the CNN Center, which abuts Philips Arena.

* While ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'' mostly averts this, with most of the exteriors actually being shot in Chicago, the Palace Hotel, supposedly in Wisconsin, has an Ohio flag flying in front of it.

* ''Film/LegallyBlonde 2'' takes place in Washington, D.C. Not a single scene was filmed there. Luckily for the filmmakers, plenty of states have state capitols that look very similar to the US capitol. They chose [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_State_Capitol Illinois']] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Capitol Utah's,]] then hung around Salt Lake City to film other scenes in the offices of the venue now known as Vivint Smart Home Arena.

* In ''Film/EscapeFromLA'' Snake Plisskin flies a home-built hang glider from Griffith Park to a climactic final battle at the site of the former Disneyland in Anaheim in under 10 minutes. Mind you, these locations are roughly 30 miles apart.

* A rare example of the deliberate use of this trope is the 1971 film ''Film/{{Walkabout}}'', in which the main characters travel on foot, as the title would suggest, across areas of the Australian outback radically different from each other in climate and terrain ... and very distant from each other in real life. Director Creator/NicolasRoeg did this on purpose as he didn't want the journey in the film to be possible in real life.

* ''Sid And Nancy'' features the characters leaving San Francisco to go to the San Francisco International Airport (which is south of the city) by going across the San Mateo bridge, which is even further south of the airport and which leads to the other side of the Bay from where the airport is. If you are already in the city you don't cross any bridges to get to the airport.

* Parts of the Film/SyFyChannelOriginalMovie ''Locust'' take place in Southern Indiana/Kentucky, and one scene features the main characters driving from Kentucky to Indiana. They pass a "Welcome to Indiana!" sign by the side of the road with trees and dirt and such. Go check out a map of the Indiana/Kentucky border to see why that wouldn't work. (Hint: the Ohio River defines the entire Indiana/Kentucky border). That's not even mentioning the scenes taking place in southern Indiana showing perfectly flat, level ground despite the huge number of thousand-foot hills in that area.

* By the same token, much of the scenes in the 1994 remake of ''Angels in the Outfield'' were shot at Oakland's Alameda Coliseum rather than the Angels' home field of Anaheim Stadium.

* ''Taking Lives'' is set in Montreal, which you can tell from the establishing shot of... the [[http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_Frontenac Château Frontenac]]. Oh, dear.
** The villain also takes a train to Fredericton...In three hours. IRL, the trip is 22-24 hours.

* In ''The Prize'' the American protagonist comes to Stockholm to receive a Nobel Prize. In one scene he falls off the Symphonic Hall into Lake Malaren, which in fact is about a kilometre away from that building. Also, the seasons are wrong: the Nobel Prizes are awarded in early December when Lake Malaren is about +4 degrees Celsius. If you fall into it, the cold will paralyze you in seconds.

* ''Film/TheRock'': towards the climax of the movie, a nerve gas missile is fired from [[TheAlcatraz the titular island]], programmed to hit the Oakland Coliseum stadium. Seconds later, when the missile is shown approaching its target, the stadium shown is actually Candlestick Park in San Francisco; it's most obvious when you consider the stadium's red seats, and that Candlestick is neighbored by the water and hills shown in the movie while the now-named O.co Coliseum is surrounded by flat dry land next to a basketball arena and a freeway.

* ''Film/{{Trainspotting}}'' is the Scottish city of Edinburgh, right? Then what can explain the scene where Renton and Diane come out of the nightclub and it is revealed to be the very distinctive exterior of the Volcano... which is ''Glasgow,'' a good fifty miles from Edinburgh?

** No natural palm trees. They are actually a fairly commonly planted tree even in temperate and cold climates (for instance see here in Long Island; https://www.islandwidepalmtrees.com/cold-hardy-palms.html)

** In ''Bullitt''s chase scene, it seems like ''every'' time they take a right turn onto a downhill street, there's a beige Volkswagen Beetle parked on the right with its back to the camera, in the same spot every time...

* ''Before Sunrise'': Creator/JulieDelpy and Creator/EthanHawke manage to get ''everywhere'' in Vienna, despite only spending only one night there. Pretty amazing, if you consider that the location are spread out over the city and are visited in random order. It's even more amazing if you consider that all of this time they never get on a bus or take a taxi (except once - during the day).

* Averted in ''The Collector'', which is set and filmed entirely within the confines of the city of Vancouver. And "'only'" Vancouver, none of the adjacent municipalities.

** And Major League II used Camden Yards and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* ''Film/BlowOut'': John Lithgow drags Nancy Allen onto a subway-surface trolley car at the 15th Street underground station. Cut to them climbing to street level at Penn's Landing, 15 blocks away. The subway-surface lines terminate at 13th Street. There is no underground station of any kind at Penn's Landing.

** Another one from ''Casino Royale'': Establishing shot of Montenegro was a high-speed train Bond used to get to the Casino. The Montegrin audiences found this rather amusing, which led to many a MemeticMutation. Montenegro has no high-speed railway, and their trains are mostly leftover Yugoslav and Romanian machines from the '80s. The Casino and its surroundings were in fact filmed in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, standing in for Montenegro.

* In the climax of Guy Richie's ''Film/SherlockHolmes'', characters somehow manage to run from the sewers of the Houses of Parliament to the top of the newly constructed tower bridge within minutes. The two land marks are miles apart.

* ''Sunshine on Leith'', the JukeboxMusical built around songs by Music/TheProclaimers, has a few amusing moments for natives of Edinburgh. For one, the main character's mother is implied through establishing shots to work at the Scottish National Gallery, one of the city's many art galleries, except that the interior used for filming is recognisably that of Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow; for another, during the climactic RaceForYourLove sequence, the characters seem to spontaneously teleport randomly around the city centre.