Eiffel Tower Effect / Video Games

• Any Mario Kart Tour track based off a real-life city will try to shove as many iconic landmarks into the track regardless of actual geography. Paris Promenade mainly features the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, Tokyo Blur does the same with the Tokyo Tower, the Rainbow Bridge and a clear view of Mt. Fuji, Sydney Sprint has the race start close to the Sydney Opera House and have drivers race through Luna Park Sydney while Uluru can be seen in the background (despite the fact that Uluru is thousands of miles away from Sydney)... just to name a few.
• Mass Effect 3 begins the final mission in London by throwing a backdrop of Big Ben right in your face from the offset, despite how your location seems to not match up to anywhere near the tower. Sure, some rebuilding will have happened, since the Mass Effect series is futuristic, but a lot of current-day architecture seems to be intact in the city.
• In Keen II: The Earth Explodes, eight different major landmarks around the world were used to represent the cities in which they were located (and the threat of that city's impending doom):
  • Big Ben - London
  • The Sphinx - Cairo
  • Sydney Opera House - Sydney
  • Statue of Liberty - New York
  • Eiffel Tower - Paris
  • Colosseum - Rome
  • St. Basil's Cathedral - Moscow
  • White House - Washington
• Early in the life of Euro Truck Simulator 2, cities were little more than a generic industrial district surrounded by more built-up inaccessible areas. Thus, the easy way to give cities a bit of character was to place some local landmarks in the distant skyline and call it a day. As the map expanded, the cities began to become much more lifelike and the landmarks are now more smoothly incorporated into the map; the rebuilt version of Paris even removes the Eiffel Tower out of a lack of a sensible location to place it.
• Fallout 3 made sure to beat up on the Washington Monument, so that players would know they were in a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC. It's in remarkably good shape for a stone structure after a nuclear war and 300 years of chaotic anarchy (but unlike its real-life counterpart, it's reinforced by a metal skeleton). It's one of the first things you can see once you exit the Vault, although it's actually pretty far away.
  • There's also the scarred remains of the Capitol building (which you can freely explore), along with several national museums (these are within walking distance in real life, too, though all that walking to be done on the Mall is conveniently abridged). Oh, and if you're feeling patriotic, you can always go visit the White House, or rather the smoldering radioactive hole where it used to be.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, The Lucky 38 can be seen from nearly anywhere, outside of DLC area, much like its real life counterpart, the Stratosphere. It itself is very mythic in gameplay lore as it shines in the wasteland's nights and in that no one is allowed in under its owner's, Mr.House, watch. In terms of gameplay as well, it helps give you bearing on where you generally want to head towards, the Strip.
  • The Other buildings in the strip also count, as the area is generally still just as it was before the war due to Mr.House's defense systems saving most of it from the atomic bombs.
• Happily averted in Hitman. Our globetrotting 'hero' rarely checks himself into a conspicuous place... though Blood Money eventually led him to Washington D.C. The mission? Break into the White House.
  • IO Interactive landed in hot water when they included the Harmandir Sahib, a Sikh temple, as a sniper's nest in Silent Assassin. Whoops.
  • Discussed during Hitman 3 — Agent 47 maintains a social media account for his go-to civilian alias, "Tobias Rieper", and one character comments it consists entirely of "bland, generic tourist photos" of clichéd landmarks. Considering he never appears in any of them, it's implied they're in fact stock photos.
• The first level of Jungle Strike is set in Washington DC (the jungle comes later), so the bad guys' first targets are the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, and the Library of Congress, with your base at the White House.
• In every version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, going to almost any country will immediately take you to its most famous landmark, which just happens to be where the crook last was. Slightly subverted in the third version in which the Golden Gate Bridge, of all places, is the U.S. locale, presumably because the heroes' headquarters is supposed to be in San Francisco.
• The Final Boss battle of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty takes place on top of New York City's federal hall.
• Act 3 of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots takes place in an unnamed city somewhere in "Eastern Europe". However, the Charles Bridge makes it very obvious that it's Prague.
• Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE had, in its intro, as one of the last surviving elements of Tokyo, the Tokyo Tower. Somewhat ironic given that game's portrayed genre, that tower's survival ratio is extremely low indeed.
• In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, all of the exotic cities in "Dangeresque 3: the Criminal Projective" are filmed in the same location (the Stone Bridge) with a really crappy cardboard cutout of a landmark or other relevant object sitting nearby. Paris gets the Eiffel Tower, naturally.
• The bigger levels in the Katamari Damacy games have countries that consist of a landmark and a few stereotypical homes. Or sometimes several iconic landmarks right next to one another. Apparently, the Roman Colosseum is on a large plateau above downtown Paris, and New York is within driving distance of Easter Island. Who knew?
• Earth Eternal has a few landmarks left over from the human age, notably the Chunnel and the Eiffel Tower.
• In Agent USA most cities have a generic "city" look to the skyline, sometimes with water for coastal cities or mountains for cities in the mountains, like Denver. However, the skyline in New York City clearly shows the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building and, in fact, is a pretty good representation of the famous Manhattan skyline.
• In Resistance 3 part of the game takes place in St. Louis, and the Gateway Arch is prominently depicted though the game is supposedly set well before it was built.
• In Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure, the Eiffel Tower appears prominently on the cover and in just about every shot of the skyline in the game. it also serves as the place where Napoleon tells Phantom R to meet him to exchange the Dragon Crown for Marie, and Phantom R uses it to get into the Hanging Gardens.
• Pokémon:
  • As Kalos is based on France and Lumiose City is based on Paris, the games get this in the form of the Prism Tower, Clemont's Electric-type Gym.
  • The very first trailer for Pokémon X and Y had Pikachu standing on the (real) Eiffel Tower. In the game itself, we get Prism Tower, very obviously inspired by it, down to being able to be seen pretty much anywhere in Lumiose City. Since Kalos has so much inspiration from France, its hub city had to be quite clearly Paris. Even the name evokes the La Ville-Lumière (City of Light) epithet of Paris.
• Trailers for Splatoon 3 have shown a wrecked Eiffel Tower in a desert scene, implying the setting used to be France.
• In Modern Warfare 3, the Eiffel Tower is prominently featured (and destroyed) in the appropriately-named mission "Iron Lady" (that being one of its many nicknames), while the Statue of Liberty and the not-yet-complete One World Trade Centre can be spotted around New York City in "Hunter-Killer".
  • Christ the Redeemer is fairly visible in the Brazil levels of Modern Warfare 2.
• Battlefield 3 actually manages to avoid showing the Eiffel Tower in the Paris-based mission "Comrades", but the multiplayer maps based on it have the Tower visible in the background. Meanwhile, every mission in Tehran has Milad Tower prominently visible on the skyline.
• Krang steals the Statue of Liberty in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. The final battle with Shredder takes place on scaffolding overlooking Lady Liberty's face.
• SNES racing game Top Gear (no relation to the TV show) mostly played this straight, with every race going on in a major city around the world (except maybe Sheffield^note this actually was Creator Provincialism since the developer, Gremlin, is based there). It gets ridiculous when, in the Loch Ness level near the end of the game, they went to the length of placing a Stock Ness Monster in the lake, off in the distance.
• The Cruis'n series uses this a lot by way of designing the tracks as essentially The Theme Park Version of the location you are in, especially in Cruis'n World, whose locations are more recognizable to players. While they usually save the biggest landmark for the finish line (e.g. you only see the Eiffel Tower when you finish the France race), some other things in the scenery give this vibe (e.g. the Golden Gate Bridge segment in the San Francisco stage of Cruis'n USA and racing on the Great Wall of China in World).
• El Viento begins with the spirit of Hastur being summoned into the Empire State Building, "the landmark in New York." The game is set in 1928, and the Empire State Building wasn't even under construction until 1930.
• In Spec Ops: The Line, the Burj Khalifa (or rather, a crude facsimile of it called the Burj Aurora) can be seen at all times during the game. This is understandable as it is quite hard to miss the tallest building in the world, and it's a good stand-in for an Evil Tower of Ominousness.
• The Sims 3: World Adventures: The Egyptian setting is the biggest offender, including the Pyramids, the Sphinx, Abu Simbel, and Temple of Queen Hatshepsut all within short distances of each other. The Chinese setting has the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and the Great Wall. In the French setting, the Eiffel Tower is visible in the distance (you can't actually visit it) even though the community is modeled as a vineyard town.
• TumblePop is set in the real world and every level has the appropriate background for each region, from the Sphinx to Mt. Fuji, from Christ the Redeemer to Ayers Rock/Uluru. The French level however has the Arc du Triomphe in the background, because all the stages are set inside the Eiffel Tower, full of killer robots for no real reason!
• Pang (the Pang and Super Pang entries at least), like TumblePop above, has the players traveling across the world with different landmarks as backgrounds. In France those backgrounds are respectively the Arc du Triomphe and the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Look up anywhere in the Imperial City and you'll see The White Gold Tower. Whiterun has Dragonsreach, while Winterhold has its eponymous college.
• In Slipstream 5000, some of the racetracks use monuments and landmarks to make sure you know where you are. The London track, for example, is mainly underground, but you pop out for long enough to pass St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower Bridge. Similarly, the Egypt track features the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, while the New York track features the Statue of Liberty. However, some tracks avert it — for example, the France track is entirely in caves, with not a single Eiffel Tower to be found.
• In Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life, winning the game gives a video of a modern New York City, with the Statue of Liberty featuring the winning sapient species.
• The fifth game in the parody kusoge Pole no Daibouken lets you know you're in Japan by featuring the Tokyo Tower.... multiple copies of the Tokyo Tower, in fact.