It also shows up in the first installment of the trilogy, Fated to Love You.
It's actually shown and identified by caption in the first episode of Love Keeps Going.
Vanity Plate: The classic Thames Television logo (1969-1989) shows a montage of London buildingsnote left to right, the City of London School, the Big Ben clock tower, the GPO (later BT) Tower, St Paul's Cathedral and Tower Bridge and their reflections emerging from a mirrored sky, but in real life they're not nearly so close together. A version made for Russian markets replaced the reflections with a montage of Moscow buildings (including the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral) which are also not that close in real life.
Series:
Alias: Plays it straight with the Los Angeles skyline, which will always show the U.S Bank Tower.
The Benny Hill Show: Subverted in a spy movie sketch. An establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower is shown, and after a second, the caption "Istanbul" appears on the screen.
Bones was fond of inserting Washington, D.C. landmarks like the Washington Momument( often digitally inserted behind the Los Angeles building that played the Jeffersonian), Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Building in its wide shots.
By Any Means: Uses establishing shots of famous London landmarks such as The Shard and Trafalgar Square to disguise the fact that the action is actually filmed in Birmingham.
Castle: Played straight, where (almost) every scene-changing shot to Paris had the Eiffel Tower in it. Also, many scenes took place near a bridge that looked very much like the place where Duncan MacLeod (see Highlander entry) had his barge anchored.
Subverted or even defied by CASUAL+Y. Imagine a show making frequent use of the Eiffel Tower yet claiming not to be set in Paris but merely in some French everytown. That's basically what the early years of Casualty did with its Bristol locations, not least the city's iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge, which even appeared as scene-setting in the very first episode.
Charmed: Virtually every episode featured a montage of San Francisco aerial footage beneath the first-act credits, much like the CSI example below but even more extended. In later seasons, some of the main characters (with the ability to teleport at will) took to using the top of one of the Golden Gate Bridge's towers (or an approximation thereof on a Los Angeles soundstage) as a regular meeting place.
Invoked in Chernobyl — Lyudmilla visits her bedridden & dying husband in the hospital he's been airlifted to in Moscow, where they'd always planned to visit together. He asks her to look out the window and tell him what she sees, and rather than tell him it's just a dull concrete building, she begins to describe all the famous Moscow landmarks.
Café Americain: Played with in this short-lived sitcom. Valerie Bertinelli's character rents a cheap apartment from which she can see the Eiffel Tower — when she leans way out of the window with a mirror.
Colonel March of Scotland Yard: "Death in Inner Space" opens with a shot of the Effiel Tower, followed by the Arc de Triomphe and the Fontaines de la Concorde to establish beyond a doubt that the episode starts in Paris.
Cosmos: Lampshaded in the new series, Season 1, Episode 12. The establishing shot of Paris instead uses Notre Dame.
Neil Degrasse Tyson: Paris, September 1878. The Eiffel Tower won't be built for years to come.
CSI: Loves this. Vegas is shown in loving detail in nearly every episode. Expect to see tons of aerial shots of the Vegas strip at night. Especially of The Stratosphere.
CSI: Miami: In the episode "Rio", set in, Rio, the opening shot shows Caine getting down on one knee dramatically, and then pans up to reveal the Christ the Redeemer statue just before the YEEEEAAAAHHH. This statue is in virtually every shot of the episode. Caine even looks up at it (dramatically) after the episode's climactic knife fight.
CSI: NY: Much like the original series, this spin-off treats it's aerial shots like a love letter to it's titular city's landmarks. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Statue of Liberty are all shown practically every episode, and not just in the opening credits. Sometimes they're featured more prominently:
A famous building climber falls to his death while scaling the Empire State Building in the season 2 premiere.
A murder is committed on Lady Liberty in the season 4 premiere and the Statue is vandalized as well.
Another episode has a clue left in a box atop a high-rise with a perfect view of the Chrysler Building and Mac tells Adam it's the spot where he & Claire got engaged.
Mac, Danny & Sheldon search for evidence while harnessed to the top of Empire during "The Triangle."
Daybreak: The studio of the London-based breakfast news programme had a window wall with a view of the London skyline, centred on the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Where the trope really comes into play is that with the show being on at 6am, in the winter it was still dark outside. So the production company paid to have the cathedral lit up specially.
The show's rotation of Establishing Shots include the CN Tower as well as several views of Toronto streetcars, a "De Grassi Street" sign and the exterior of the school itself.
In Snake and Spike's wedding episode the DP tried valiantly to get them (on a lakeside boardwalk) and the tower's observation pod in the shot at the same time. And couldn't.
Cardiff is always represented by the Roald Dahl Plass, with its recognizable Millennium Centre and Water Tower. On Torchwood, a sweeping aerial shot of the Plass is frequently used to indicate the action is moving to the Torchwood Hub, which is directly beneath the Water Tower.
"Aliens of London" features an alien ship crashing through Big Ben before landing in the Thames. Between this and finding out that the "alien" in the ship is just a pig that's been hotwired by alien technology, the Doctor deduces that the real alien invaders have staged the whole event, and it's too perfect a crash landing in terms of cinematography for the ship to have hit Big Ben the way it did.
"Spyfall": When the Doctor and Ada Lovelace wind up in 1943 Paris, the Eiffel Tower is clearly visible from Noor Inayat Khan's window. The Doctor later meets the Master on top of the tower. Curiously, Ada does not comment on the tower despite it not existing in her time.
Arguably in the original series episode "The War Machines". To really sell the fact that after three years of past Earth, future Earth, and distant planet yarns this is the first Who story truly set entirely in contemporary Londonnote if you don't count "Planet of Giants", in which the regulars are only a few inches tall the whole time, the villain is a supercomputer located at the very top of the newly completed and very prominent Post Office Tower (now the BT Tower).
When the show's biggest aliens try to conquer Earth (meaning London), they're always shown marching past major landmarks, as if they were just like any other tourists visiting London apart from the mass extermination of humans. These images would not only feature prominently in the show as a Wham Scene, but would form a major part of the accompanying publicity barrage in The Radio Times and elsewhere. Examples include:
The Daleks in front of Big Ben (truly shocking at the time), Trafalgar Square, and Nelson's Column in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", as shown on the recap page.
The Cybermen marching past St. Paul's Cathedral for "The Invasion"; again, the famous image is also on the recap page.
Expanded beyond London in the new series: in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" there are quick checklist shots of famous world landmarks with Cybermen in front of them, including the Taj Mahal for no good reason other than that the Cybermen wanted to get a really good set of holiday snaps.
Eurovision Song Contest: During the results portion of the show each spokesperson is shown in front of a projection of a location from their country, often with a famous landmark featured prominently to remind you where they're speaking from. The backdrop for the French spokesperson usually includes the Eiffel Tower.
Frasier: The pilot episode has Frasier pointing out the Space Needle, which, of course, his lofty apartment has a view of. Martin thanks him for pointing out a landmark that Frasier acts like his father has never seen before, despite having lived here all his life. The view from Frasier's apartment is an example of Artistic License – Geography. The only way to get that view of the Space Needle is to stand atop a hill in Seattle which, at the time the series was made, didn't have any apartment buildings on it.
Grey's Anatomy: The show is set in Seattle. The Space Needle is prominently displayed.
Subverted on Growing Pains when Jason and Maggie go on a second honeymoon in Paris. She comes down with appendicitis and has to be hospitalized. Jason tries to cheer her up by reminding her they're still in Paris by opening the curtains to her window but instead of a view of the Eiffel Tower it's the brick wall of a building a few feet away.
The Handmaid's Tale: As with seemingly anything taking place in Boston these days there’s the obligatory scene at Fenway Park. However this scene is significantly more disturbing than watching the Red Sox-it's used staging a mock hanging to punish defiant Handmaids.
Highlander: Frequently featured numerous, plot-irrelevant establishing shots of the Eiffel Tower when the characters were hanging out in Paris. And one plot point actually took place on top of the tower. It resulted in the series opening always having the shit of the tower being hit by lightning after that arc.
Averted Trope: When Robin goes on a bender, Barney tries to dramatically show she'd ended up in Toronto by opening a window, hoping to see a memorable Toronto monument. Except there isn't any, just the solid wall of another building about 10 feet away blocking the entire view.
This was also invoked by Barney when he would blindfold a girl and take her on a long bus ride then take her to his (New York) apartment. Once there, he would project an image outside his window of an iconic view from a famous city so he could convince her he'd flown her somewhere like Paris. The girl ended up mistaking the Eiffel Tower for the one in Vegas, but it still worked.
iCarly: It wasn't until the third season that this show added an establishing shot of the Seattle skyline with the Space Needle prominent.
Joey: Spoofed: Gina's apartment has a view of the Hollywood sign - if you lean back on the balcony. And then you only see the middle of it, so technically, it's a view of the OLLYWOO sign.
In the final episode, we see Tendo in Paris (actually a green screen, of course), and he's basically walking in front of the Eiffel Tower, as if he was just walking in a postcard photoshoot.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: The first two episodes of season 2 see a subplot where Midge and her father have to travel to Paris because Midge's mother has ran off there, dissatisfied with life in New York City. A transition shot between the Empire State Building in the 1960s New York City skyline, matched to the spire of the Eiffel Tower, is used for the establishing shot.
Murder, She Wrote: Used all the time. If Jessica is in a city, expect an establishing shot of the Empire State Building, or the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben, or the Kremlin, or whatever.
Whenever Gibbs flashes back to his time in Paris with Sheppard, the Eiffel Tower is intercut about every other frame or so with stock footage of two people on a bed.
The Title Sequence always ends with a shot of Capitol Hill.
The New Avengers: "Complex", the first episode filmed in Canada, opens with a shot of the CN Tower in Toronto so there can be no doubt where they are.
Averted by Orphan Black, which despite being clearly set and filmed in and around Toronto seems to go out of its way to avoid showing the CN Tower.
The opening shot of "A New Life" features the Golden Gate Bridge, indicating that Daniel, Beth and Thomas lived in San Francisco before joining Father's religious community.
In The Teaser of "Flower Child", the meteor containing the plant-based alien that later transformed itself into Violet passes by the Golden Gate Bridge as it falls to Earth, setting the scene in San Francisco.
Parodied. Frank Drebin goes to question the relative of a victim in Little Italy; as he drives there, Stock Footage of the Colosseum is rear projected behind him. When he arrives, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is visible from the apartment.
The view from the Police Squad office window changes from episode to episode. In one, the Eiffel Tower can be seen; in another, the US Capitol Building is clearly visible.
Poltergeist: The Legacy: Often had stock footage of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and other San Francisco landmarks. There was also a scene in a bar in the Tenderloin (a famous San Francisco slum), with a crude mural of the Golden Gate, the Trans-America Pyramid, Coit Tower and a cable car.
Revolution: Makes use of some notable Chicago areas, like the Grand Hotel, and they use Wrigley Field as this, even using it in all of the trailers for the show.
Root into Europe: The couple travels to Paris, where, you guessed it, the Eiffel Tower is in view. It's even visible on the VHS cover.
Largely averted by Six Feet Under. There was a conscious decision not to depict LA in any of the usual ways.
Mocked in a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Ru Paul riffing on children's books in a library. He goes off on Madeline for the cover of the book depicting the Eiffel Tower in the middle of several trees.
RuPaul: Miss Madeline, I have bad news. The Eiffel Tower is not in the woods. You better draw France right, bitch! Somebody trying to act like they been to Paris, p'shaw, you ain't never been there, girl!
Smallville: When Lana Lang visits Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral is always shown whenever the episode shifts to her story.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: One episode features a scene in Paris where the Eiffel Tower is visible in the background of nearly every shot, even if two shots are facing in opposite directions. It was a recreation of Picard's memories on the Holodeck, so maybe the computer was trying to be clear it was simulating France.
One episode had an odd Subverted Trope instance: the Golden Gate Bridge was destroyed, but off-camera, and we only got a brief view of its wreckage. Maybe not so odd on a TV fx budget.
It became a noticeable element of Deep Space Nine's style to use this trope for in-universe locations as well, with standard establishing shots repeatedly used to introduce scenes on Bajor, Cardassia, Future!Earth and Kronos. note In part this was because the limited access to CGI meant having actual backgrounds wasn't technically feasible, so there would always be precisely one sweeping vista created via matte painting and the rest of the scene would take place indoors.
Whenever a scene takes place in San Francisco, it's usually preceded by a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.
In "Remembrance", there's a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower before it switches to Dahj hiding in a Parisian alleyway.
Super Adventure Team: When Buck crashes on a deserted island, he meets Phillipe, a French scientist who switched his body with the body of a chimp. When we see his laboratory in Paris, the Eiffel Tower is in the background.
Tatort: No matter where a Münster episode is set, even if it is in the suburbs or a village in the environs, there will always be a sequence involving the Prinzipalmarkt and the church St. Lamberti, and often Thiel or Boerne will also pass the cathedral. Episodes set in Cologne will usually show Cologne cathedral; here it helps that Ballauf and Schenk are regular customers at a fast-food trailer directly across the river from the cathedral.
(1969-1989) shows a montage of London buildingsnote and their reflections emerging from a mirrored sky, but in real life they're not nearly so close together. A version made for Russian markets replaced the reflections with a montage of Moscow buildings (including the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral) which are also not that close in real life.