Vancouver is a city in British Columbia, Canada with over 600,000 people, rising to over 2 million when you count the metropolitan area, which is officially called Metro Vancouver and nicknamed the "Lower Mainland". Vancouver is on the lower part of the BC mainland, which can reach as far as Abbotsford
and the Fraser Valley (around the Fraser River). Very popular among Chinese, Indians and British. It has a fairly extensive elevated train network called the SkyTrain, which moonlights as a subway in the downtown area. The twin peaks north of town called The Lions are a prominent landmark, and also lend their name to the iconic Lions Gate Bridge, built in 1938, which connects downtown to the North Shore (and of course, it's also the namesake of Lionsgate Films). Also quite well known for its rain, leading to the use of 'Raincouver' by residents as a semi-affectionate nickname.
Although it is the biggest city in British Columbia (and the largest metropolitan area in western Canada), it's not the capital of the province. The capital city is Victoria, which is situated, confusingly enough, on Vancouver Island. It's usually just called "The Island" by locals. Ferries run between the Island and the mainland every day, so travel between the two cities is very common.
Vancouver has become the third-largest film production centre in North America, being called "Hollywood North" because of it. This has led to the increased presence of the Pacific Northwest, particularly Seattle (for which Vancouver often doubles), in American media, leading to the term "Seacouver" to describe the vaguely northwestern-ish setting of works filmed in Vancouver, but just as possibly set south of the border in the United States. Among the works shot in Vancouver are all three shows in the Stargate-verse, hence the original trope name "Stargate City". Tony Zhou, a Vancouver native and creator of Every Frame a Painting, did an episode titled "Vancouver Never Plays Itself" about how the city is so often disguised as somewhere else in film and television. The Global Television Network, while headquartered in Toronto, based its' national news centre in town upon their acquisition of the city (and indeed the province)'s dominant TV station, CHAN-8 (better known as BCTV); their evening News Hour is still the most-watched news in the area. BCTV had been doing national news for their sister stations under WIC Television ownership for most of the 1990s, after an effort to do a national newscast for BCTV's then-network CTV failed. The station had always been at odds with the network and especially with CFTO-9 of Toronto and their owners over the sway CFTO held over the network; combined with Global parent company CanWest buying the WIC assets, this boiled over into a Disaster Dominoes situation in September of 2001 that saw every private station in town switching affiliations.
The city is also the location of The Ocean Group production company and a number of other recording studios, who specializes in dubbing of many well-known Anime (along with a some English language productions). Possibly most well-known for their work on nearly every release in the Gundam franchise, including Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny, and Mobile Suit Gundam 00. For a list of their many works, see their page.
Nintendo of Canada and EA Canada are also there, just a few miles across the border from Nintendo's U.S. headquarters in greater Seattle. A large number of other gaming studios are located in Vancouver, including Capcom Vancouver, Rockstar Vancouver, Radical Entertainment, United Front Games, Slant Six Games, and Sega's Relic Entertainment, to name only a few.
Vancouver hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics. This came after hosting Expo '86 (the 1986 World's Fair), a minor transportation themed exposition; the Expo featured the opening of Vancouver's light-rail transit system, the SkyTrain; as of 2006, the SkyTrain held the record for the longest fully-automated rapid-transit system in the world.
Vancouver and the metropolitan area is home to diverse ethnicities, mainly coming from East and Southeast Asia. There is a large population of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, and Filipinos here. It is also been stated to be the most "American" city in Canada, due to the large number of American visitors as well as American expatriates.
A list of Vancouver's 'famous faces' would probably go on for pages; among others, James Doohan, Carrie-Anne Moss, Michael J. Fox, Ryan Reynolds and Michael Bublé have all called the city 'home' at one point or another.
Shows filmed (but not set) predominantly in Vancouver:
- The 100
- 21 Jump Street
- The 4400
- Andromeda: In one episode the trees are referred to as "terraforming pines" suggesting a lot of planets have been made into copies of British Columbia.
- Arrowverse
- Arrow
- The Flash (2014)
- Legends of Tomorrow
- Supergirl (2015), from Season 2 onward (Season 1 was filmed in Los Angeles).
- Batwoman (2019)
- Bates Motel
- Battlestar Galactica (2003), the revival and reboot of the 1978 version.
- In one episode, the Vancouver skyline directly subbed in for the Delphi city skyline on the planet of Caprica. Especially notable considering that one of the skyscrapers in that shot has an easily identifiable Scotiabank logo on it, an actual Canadian banking company which obviously has no business in the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.
- Caprica, prequel to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica
- Charmed (2018)
- Dark Angel
- Dead Like Me
- Season 2 of Falling Skies
- Fear the Walking Dead: Doubled as Los Angeles in majority of the episodes of the First Season.
- First Wave
- Fringe, from Season 2 onwards. The Vancouver Public Library - a pretty cool Colosseum-like structure - is the Alternate Earth's Fringe Division.
- Harper's Island
- Highlander: The Series: The namer for "Seacouver"; the first few seasons are officially set in a city named "Seacouver", which appears to be Ascended Fanon.
- Human Target
- Invaders
- iZombie. This gets lampshaded in the episode "Method Head", which revolves around the production of a fictional zombie show on The CW; it's set in Portland, but filmed in Seattle for tax credit reasons.
- The Killing
- Lucifer (2016), until Season 3, when it moved to Los Angeles.
- MacGyver (2016)
- The Magicians (2016)
- The Man in the High Castle: Used to double a Japanese-occupied West Coast.
- Nancy Drew (2019)
- The Outer Limits (1995)
- Once Upon a Time
- Powerless (2017)
- Psych (an inverted California Doubling!)
- Reaper
- The Returned
- Riverdale
- Sanctuary, which TWoP has dubbed "Torchwood: Vancouver".
- Siren (2018)
- Sliders, Seasons 1 and 2, where Vancouver doubled for San Francisco, inverting California Doubling as well. Starting with Season 3, it was written in that the Sliders could now travel to Los Angeles (where, strangely enough, shooting had also moved to.)
- Smallville
- Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe
- Supernatural
- Van Helsing (2016)
- Wiseguy
- The X-Files, seasons one through five (and parts of the first film). Seasons six through nine (and the rest of the first film) were shot in Los Angeles. The second film and the revival series returned to Vancouver.
Vancouver in fiction (when it's not playing another city)
- Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (Inexplicably)
- Better Than Chocolate
- The Border has a few episodes that take place in Vancouver.
- Cold Squad
- Continuum
- Girlfriend in a Coma
- Godiva's
- Da Vinci's Inquest
- Da Vincis City Hall
- The Extinction Parade: The two female vampire protagonist watch a news report in a TV store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia broadcasting the situation of the zombie outbreak in Vancouver.
- Fear the Walking Dead: Does not appear in the show physically but was mentioned by George Greary in Season 2 that all cities in the American West Coast to the Continental Divide, from San Diego all the way up to Seattle and Vancouver, were bombed in order to eradicate the infected.
- In The Heroes of Olympus, the Zhang family has their big mansion somewhere in the outskirts. And by big we mean really big, enough to have a whole attic containing weapons. It's glimpsed in Frank's flashback at first, but the protagonists eventually visit it during their trip to Alaska. Pity that it has to be destroyed.
- Intelligence (2006)
- Homefront: The backstory mentions that U.S. Armed Forces in the nearby Washington State attempted to resist the KPA invasion but were overrun and forced to retreat to British Columbia. This is noted by a British news reporter based in Vancouver who also mentions that Canadian troops have increased their presence in the U.S.-Canada border.
- Intersection
- jPod
- The Man in the High Castle: A map in Season 2 reveals that the Japanese Pacific States extends to much of Western Canada and Alaska. British Columbia, Yukon, and portions of Alberta belong to the JPS. While the city of Vancouver has not been seen, it can be implied to be one of the major cities within the JPS.
- In Mario Kart Tour, you can race through a track set in Vancouver called Vancouver Velocity.
- Mass Effect 3 begins in Vancouver.
- Laurentia from Nexus Clash is a No Communities Were Harmed version of Vancouver.
- Motive
- LaRousse City in Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Vancouver.
- Stargate Atlantis has actually had a episode set in Vancouver.
- That Cold Day in the Park: Usually credited as the first Hollywood production to shoot in Vancouver. The titular park is Tatlow Park in the Kitsilano neighborhood (near Point Grey).
- Tony Hawk's Underground, partially
- The final episode of The X-Files to be filmed in Vancouver was also set there.
- Though it hasn't been seen on-screen, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has the Equestrian city of Vanhoover. This may be an in-joke as the series is largely produced in Vancouver. The city has only appeared on the official map of Equestria◊ in, unsurprisingly, the northwest corner of the kingdom.
Notable films shot in Vancouver:
- 50/50
- 2012
- Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
- Alone in the Dark (2005) (by Uwe Boll)
- Antitrust
- Blade Trilogy:
- BloodRayne II: Deliverance
- The Butterfly Effect
- 2
- Cats & Dogs
- Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
- Catwoman (2004)
- The Chronicles of Riddick
- The Core
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
- Deadpool (2016): the many shots are done around the Downtown Eastside area, including the stripclub. In Deadpool 2, the city's docks and a map of the metro can be seen.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid
- Doctor Who: The 1996 TV movie (We apologize for your half-humanity, Doctor.)
- Dudley Do-Right
- Fantastic Four (2005)
- Far Cry (Uwe Boll version)
- Final Destination
- Freddy vs. Jason
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (despite what the title says). Since they only had the budget to shoot in New York City for a week, most of the film was shot in Vancouver. The SkyTrain is used to stand in for the New York City Subway; both New Yorkers and Vancouverites will immediately peg the "New York" subway cars as SkyTrain cars with added graffiti.
- Godzilla (2014)
- Good Luck Chuck
- Halloween: Resurrection
- Halloweentown II Kalabar's Revenge
- House of the Dead: Doubles as Seattle but the ending shot reveals the obvious waterfront and the lack of the Seattle Space Needle.
- I, Robot
- Insomnia (2002 remake)
- It
- Jennifer's Body
- John Tucker Must Die
- Josie and the Pussycats (much like This Means War! did {see below}, the HMV, or back then, the Virgin Megastore, at 750 Burrard Street {currently a Victoria's Secret} was used as the record store where Wyatt is shown influencing the shoppers with Subliminal Seduction)
- Jumanji
- Juno
- The King of Fighters
- The Lizzie McGuire Movie
- The Man in the High Castle
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller: The Wild West town was built from scratch in the hills above North Vancouver.
- The NeverEnding Story and its two sequels
- Twilight
- New Moon
- Night at the Museum
- Painkiller Jane
- Paycheck
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
- Punisher: War Zone
- Romeo Must Die
- Rumble in the Bronx
- The Scary Movie tetralogy (we apologize for this)
- Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
- The Mystery Begins
- Stay Tuned
- Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
- Timecop
- This Means War (2012)
- To the point that they used the flagship store of HMV, a now-defunct entertainment retail chain in Canada, as a stand-in for a video rental shop.
- Trick 'r Treat
- TRON: Legacy
- Amusing note: if you saw it at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Vancouver, as soon as you walked out of the cinema you'd be looking out a large window at exactly the spot where they digitally inserted Encom Tower.
- Underworld: Evolution
- Watchmen
- White Chicks
- The Wicker Man (2006)
- The X-Files: I Want to Believe
- X-Men Film Series
- X-Men
- X2: X-Men United
- X-Men: The Last Stand
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- One building at the University of British Columbia was surrounded by barbed wire fence and turrets for the gang headquarters at the beginning of the movie, confirming student belief that Buchanan Tower (used for the offices of various liberal arts departments including English) was actually designed as a prison.
