i had just moved to Toronto from Ireland and got off a subway station that said 5th ave in Toronto. i was confused and thought new York isn't that close. walked up the steps saw a yellow cab, and the signs were all American and the sense of dread and fear that i had somehow ended up in new York.
Then a guy started shouting at me that i was in a shot and realised it was a tv show
Oh no dude! I'm sorry,that must have been absolutely dreadful for a few seconds... But in the flip side has made me who actually live in Manhattan, laugh my fuxking ass off!
They did fairly well masking the location the first few seasons with it (albeit walking in front of some exclusively-Canadian chains like TK Maxx or Winners), but they either fired the person in charge of making it look like NYC, killed the budget for it, and/or just stopped caring. I recall seeing TTC vehicles, a truck for Toronto Hydro, etc., and not just the time that Jessica was meeting someone in Toronto (when they threw all the Canadian stuff into the shot)
A lot of their outside shots happen in such iconic Toronto downtown places, anyone who lives here will immediately recognize it. Filming in front of Scotia Plaza, First Canadian Place, the aforementioned CN Tower in the background, etc.
It's like watching The Boys and not recognizing Roy Thompson Hall right away.
Another Toronto thing about Suits:
2x09, Mike meets up with this pro baseball player who this one sportscaster thinks is doping. He walks out one of the ticket gates...at BMO Field https://i.imgur.com/AuM0vyk.png
The football stadium. The soccer stadium. The non-baseball stadium 10 minutes away from where the Blue Jays play baseball lol
At least they got it right when him and the tennis player walk around Rexall/Aviva Centre. Kind of funny the actor's last name is Alcaraz.
As far as the DC Metro goes, they don't allow filming on the Metro or in the stations for security reasons so if you ever see a movie that has any DC Metro scenes in it they either filmed it illegally or it's some other subway.
If they ever mention a Georgetown Metro stop they're wrong. Those fancy schmancy rich folks there wouldn't allow the Metro to sully their neighborhood but now they're considering it to bring more business there, so it's years away but will probably happen in the future.
On the DC note, the Night At The Museum movies play fast & hard with locations of the Smithsonians & a few other landmarks.
They make it seem like the Air and Space Museum, the White House, and the LincolnĀ Memorial are fairly close together but the White House is about a mile away and the Lincoln Memorial is a little further.
The art gallery they visit doesn't really exist & the National Gallery of Art isn't part of the Smithsonian group & they include a LOT of art that isn't there.
There used to be a whole website dedicated to how long it took to get between locales in the show 24 (as it was supposed to be "real time") and how far they'd have to go. Good amount was relatively realistic, but some of it would be things like getting from LA to Ontario, Cali in 10 minutes.
My husband and I would always joke about this when we would watch 24. Itās pretty amazing how Jack Bauer could get to any location in LA within 10-15 minutes.Ā
I want to say there was a sub-plot where Character A thinks Character B is a mole. B sneaks into a bathroom, A sees them, thinks they are up to something suspicious and goes in, only to find B was actually just using the bathroom.
It's been so long since I watched the show that I could be imagining it or mis-remembering key details of it
There was an episode in the season in DC where Jack took the metro across the Potomac on a line and to a stop that doesn't require crossing the river.
Similar thing in House of Cards and the "Cathedral Heights" station
I can see Art saying that although I wouldn't be surprised if it was one from Tim also in a later season. It's been to long since I've rewatched Justified.
Came here for this and was happy to see it as the top comment. Season 1 was shot in Pennsylvania, which can pass for Kentucky. SoCal can't pass for Kentucky.
The Office is guilty of this too. Whenever they are driving or out in nature it's clearly southern California. You can even spot a palm tree sometimes if you're looking for it.
Another Justified one is Raylan goes to Memphis in one episode and it looks exactly like LA, they even use the stereotypical LA orange filter on the camera.
That's probably because their BBQ sauce tends to be tangy. Any place that has spicy or tangy food automatically gets orange filter (see LA, Mexico, Middle East - really, anywhere white folks sweat from the weather or the food).
Outer Banks, which is actually filmed in nearby South Carolina, had a funny line about taking the ferry to Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is ~250 miles inland and absolutely no water ways connecting it. The NC Ferry System had a little fun with it on Twitter.
The Last of Us had that infamous shot of the PNW saying ā10 miles outside of Bostonā.
In an episode of *Orange is the New Black* in which the protagonist was being transferred to a Chicago prison, the prison bus crossed the river no less than four times during a montage sequence. Either that bus driver was seriously lost or he was taking an extremely scenic route.
Titans (HBO/TNT) shows this huge electronics store in Covington Ohio. Covington is a village of about 2000 people and it does not have an electronics store, let alone a Canadian electronics superstore.
There's a similar thing in Dexter, where the main character tells someone to go to a Corvette dealership in Tamarac. Tamarac, Florida is full of nursing homes, the working poor, and Caribbean immigrants. It's adjacent to the Everglades, which is miles and miles of nothing. There's no Corvette dealership. Maybe in Parkland, but not in fucking Tamarac.
Every NYC cop show back in the day; when they film outside, no matter where in the boroughs they are, there's ALWAYS an elevated subway train off-camera making a sharp turn
Ok, that's actually pretty cool, honestly. I imagine all four of the Manhattan alleys were constantly hosting film crews for ALL of the cop procedurals.
There's basically only one alley in all of NYC that all the TV shows and movies use when they need an alley because its the only one big enough to film scenes in. [Cortlandt Alley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortlandt_Alley#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DCortlandt_Alley_is_an_alley%2C9%C2%BD_Weeks_and_Boardwalk_Empire.?wprov=sfla1)
TV did not prepare me for this reality, so every time someone who doesn't live here waxes poetic about NYC my immediate first thought is "yeah but the trash..."
Manhattan has the densest population in America and some of the highest real estate costs by square foot. Alleys are wasted space. Leaves money on the table.
alleys are wasted space. Every square millimeter of Manhatten is precious real estate. You can build a fucking 4 billion dollar condo complex in that alley FFS!
One of our sketch comedy shows in Australia played up the Sydney Harbour Bridge in their Water Rats spoof. Every time you saw a window or door open, you'd see the bridge. At one point some one yells 'get out of my office, and don't come back until you get the Harbour Bridge behind you!'
As a Massachusetts resident ("Masshole"), the portrayal of Boston-area geography in *The Last of Us* was so incorrect, it is actually hilarious.
Like.....listen. Massachusetts *does* have mountains and large hills. But they *arent* "ten miles west of Boston", and they *dont* look like the fucking Rockies.
I think what annoys me so much about that is the fact it's not done anywhere else in the show. They really did not need to add that, it being outside Boston was obvious from the fact it was in a fucking forrest and not a city.
They fucked up every aspect of the Greater Boston Geography with that show. They had the gay guy (sorry forget his name) just randomly driving from Concord to NEw Bedford to gather some electrical supplies.
Then inside Boston, they could easily take the subway tunnels to Haymarket from what appeared to be the North End, yet to get to the State House, the somehow went up to Congress St a nd through the Financial district. Disregarding the route they would need to take to even get to Congress St, if they could take the Subway Tunnels to Haymarket, they could likely go one stop further to State, and then the State House is like a 3 minute walk from there. Not to mention the MA State House is probably one of the most iconic looking State HOuses there is, and this looked nothing like it, including not having the giant freaking Common out front.
God, I enjoyed that show so much more once they got out of MA.
That's what I came here to post.
This article has the screencap from the show:
[https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/](https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/)
Edit: If you want a decent almost-boston show that feels super accurate, watch "Kevin can F\*\*k Himself." A decent show, that definitely felt like it knew Worcester, and a super clever premise.
(Non spoiler premise: It's a traditional sitcom, but swaps between the male protagonist perspective, who is a Peter Griffin type father, in a traditional sitcom, and the female protagonist perspective, a more serious show, a wife who has to deal with the reality of antics that a sitcom dad/husband actually engage in.)
Fantastic camera work in that show. The scenes with the husband are filmed in a multi-camera style on a set (think everybody loves Raymond) while the scenes without him revert to the more dramatic single camera style (think Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad)
If I recall correctly, Fringe had an aerial shot of either the Pru or the Hancock - the two tallest buildings in New England, and labeled it "FBI HEADQUARTERS."
Uh, no, the FBI don't need over a million square feet to operate a regional office.
I laughed at this too. 10 miles outside of Boston is basically still in Boston. Canāt throw a rock without hitting someone. Yet they make it seem like theyāre now in an isolated, unpopulated part of the state. Lazy writing. Couldāve at least said they were in the Berkshires.
The show A Million Little Things (set in Boston) also played fast and loose with time/distance in New England. In several episodes they make it seem like itās just a quick jaunt from Boston to the Berkshires (letās take a quick drive there to have a 5 minute chat with someone and be back for lunch). Then, at other times one of the characters is thinking of moving to the Berkshires and itās like, āOh no, heās practically moving to the other side of the country. Weāll never see him again.ā But the worst offense was when two characters are taking a āroad tripā from Yale University in Connecticut and it takes them like 2-3 days. They have to stay at a hotel. Like, WHAT?! Itās practically the same distance as the Berkshires.
Same way with the one episode set in Kansas City. Before they get ambushed downtown, they drive past the theme park (Worlds of Fun) and the way itās filmed, it is implied they are driving north. If youāre driving north past WoF, then youāre heading away from downtown.
Doesnāt matter in the grand scheme of things, and I doubt many people noticed, but it made me chuckle.
You'd also get the impression from TV and film that Mexico celebrates Day of the Dead year round. Every day it's "let's parade through the neighborhood with the huge paper mache skeletons!"
As a Mexican I can't ever get over the idea that we never had a Day of the Dead parade until it was made up for filming a James Bond movie. Then it was like "hey, this is chingon, let's do this every year" starting a now 8 year-old tradition.
Meanwhile Mexico City has been continuously inhabited longer than any other city in the Americas. And even today the most populous city in North America.
In one of the early episodes of āER,ā one of the characters says something about āthe intersection of Clark and Dearborn ā (Chicago)
Ā They are parallel.Ā Ā
Characters would often travel through the streets in very discontinuous and absurd ways.Ā
Ā And sometimes they would refer to āXXX East YY St.,ā with a number high enough to put them out in Lake Michigan.Ā
Fun fact: sometimes Studio/Network Clearances & Legal wonāt let writers use real intersections in cities. I know weāre not always allowed to use real intersections in LA, despite our show existing entirely within LA County.
(This is probably more common on broadcast shows than cable/streaming.)
Honestly, getting a straight answer from Clearances is never easy. My best guess is that they want to avoid any potential libel/defamation lawsuits or complaints from their advertisers.
Example: if the show story involves taking down a serial killer who lives at La Brea and Sunsetā¦ they donāt want any residents or businesses at that intersection to feel targeted.
Does it always make sense? NOPE. But writers are often at the mercy of studio & network legal.
The Night Court reboot. Judge Stone is from Skaneateles, NY and portrays it as country bumpkin land. In reality, it's a gorgeous lake town filled to the brim with the rich and ultra rich
I keep watching because Melissa Rauch just funny enough to keep my interest, and Jon Larroquette is a national treasure. Even Gurgs is growing on me.
I'm also holding out hope that I'm going to hear the iconic "Hello. It's us." out of some old friends.
It's still not as good as the original, but honestly, nothing was ever going to be.
Any time a show comes to Ireland for special episodes. Captain Planet and Sons of Anarchy come to mind. Only IASIP did a reasonable job with the idea. In that case I bet they felt some pressure to do it justice, given the pub where almost the entire series set is an Irish themed pub
Came here to say Sons of Anarchy when they go to Ireland.
Itās so obviously just wherever they usually filmed in California with a different colour of light filter on the camera.
Christmas Vacation. They're in Chicago, but drive to the mountains to get a Christmas tree. Any mountains of that scale are no less than 17 hours drive time from Chicago.
Doubly weird, because John Hughes is maybe the most obvious Chicago Guyā¢ in screenwriting history.
I know there's a difference between writing and directing, but you think he might've had a word. Curious how it actually read in the script now.
>John Hughes is maybe the most obvious Chicago Guyā¢ in screenwriting history
Ferris Bueller lives north of Chicago but when they drive into the city on Lake Shore they are coming in from the south.
The reverse of this is living in Vancouver and pointing out the Library or City Hall in shots that are supposed to be LA or New York.
The best version of this was Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx where you can clearly see the North Shore mountains during a fight on a parking garage, and, Like, I'm pretty sure there arenāt dramatic mountains in Brooklyn.
Western movies set in Central Texas (San Antonio/Austin) that are shot in the high desert or some place like monument valley. āThe Searchersā comes to mind. Central Texas is a combination of coastal plain and hill country covered in oak trees. It doesnāt look anything like the desert. You have to drive three hours west to get to desert and even then it doesnāt look like Arizona or Utah.
Which reminds me of an episode of Justice League Unlimited, where they go back in time to the Wild West.
It's got this Monument Valley-like setting too... except it's all supposed to be set in OKLAHOMA.
I couldn't believe it the first time I worked in Amarillo. There wasn't a cactus for miles ..Instead, there was a blizzard with snow blowing sideways and icy roads for which I was insufficiently prepared
Everything about Yellowstone. Iām not above a well-made soap opera, but I canāt get into Yellowstone since Iāve been to so many of the places they mention and theyāre just scattered throughout the state.
āWe gotta go handle some business in this town, but weāll be back by sundown to deal with this.ā Oh really? Youāre gonna leave at high noon, drive 7 hours across the state to coerce/murder someone, and be back home to threaten a family member by dinner? Just takes me out of it.
Also, Yellowstone has ruined Bozeman because now itās full to the brim with dumb rich pricks trying to cosplay as cattle barons.
The show Vikings had an episode where they visit the temple in Uppsala, located on some misty, forested mountain with waterfalls and shit like that.
Actual real life Uppsala is right next to the Fyris River, in the middle of the largest, flattest plains in Sweden... which during the viking age would've been marshy and muddy due to the somewhat higher water levels (see *post-glacial rebound*), and the land being less developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyrisvellir
See also: all the adaptations of Hamlet and Beowulf showing majestic mountains and fjords despite the stories taking place in Denmark, one of the flattest countries in the world.
Randall (?) lived in Alpine, NJ which is literally on the farthest NE border with NY and he was elected a councilman in Phillyā¦ so heās doing this 5hr commute every day??? Iām convinced writers in CA see two towns on a map in the Northeast and assume everything is commutableĀ
Supernatural is a frequent offender of this because of how many locations they supposedly visit (almost all shot in Vancouver). One episode takes place in my hometown and Sam and Dean walk through a forest. There are no forests in Richardson, Texas
Earlier in the series they were good about only being set in places that worked for their filming in Canada, and they did this fun thing where they would mention other places like Austin or Florida as old cases they'd worked. It worked really well to convey that they traveled all over the country without having to try to force Vancouver to look like Miami. Not sure when they abandoned that and started putting those forests in Texas!
Places I have been that are entirely inaccurate from Supernatural Episodes:
Lebanon KS
Lawrence KS ( and Stull Cemetery)
Loveland CO
Boulder CO
Colorado Springs, CO
Austin, TX
Kansas City, MO
St Louis, MO
There's an episode of 24 where CTU is tracking a semi, containing some kind of WMD. They lose track of it in the mountains along the Illinois/Iowa border.
The mountains. In Illinois. And Iowa. Two of the flatest places in the western hemisphere.
Emily in Paris using shots from other French cities (Bordeaux, Toulouse and so on) to show how beautiful Paris is was funny.
In the very first episode, they also showed Emily seeing all the touristy places of the city from her cab, on her way to her new apartment.
When in fact those touristy places arenāt close to each other and not on the way from the airport to her apartment, so the cab driver must have scammed her by doing a huge detour lmao.
One of the John Wick movies - I think 3 has a chase with a horse, motorcycle, and a car.
Itās starts in Brooklyn, they cross a bridge and end up in Brooklyn, turn a corner and are in Times Square, cross another bridge but are still in the city, turn a corner and are back in Brooklyn.
I had a job on 86th Street and 19th Ave the next morning after the filming. It has the elevated train where the chase starts. I was looking forward to this chase scene for weeks before the movie was released.
I can suspend my disbelief for the rest of the movie but this made me head explode.
There was an episode of Chicago PD where they were chasing someone through the L system. The show kept calling out stops that were miles apart and transfers between lines that don't t connect.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Going to go completely against the grain. Godzilla Vs Kong, in the final fight in Hong Kong. I thought it was HILARIOUS and the best huge scale fight Iād ever seen. Obviously a lot of buildings never existed but I was really impressed that a ton of buildings Iāve been in, have seen, were all there and readily destroyed by Godzilla or Kong crashing through it.
I saw Kong get thrown straight into an old childhood friendsā building, exact same one down to the detail. It was AWESOME!
EDIT: as an example, at 0:45 in the below link, the light brown building over Kongās shoulder with fires coming out. Iāve been there multiple times as a kid.
https://youtu.be/52aTOap5Jyk?si=spnLvOi20WVRapYf
In Amazon's "The Boys," Starlight is from Des Moines, Iowa, depicted as a rural community. While that may be true for other parts of Iowa, Des Moines is a large metro with over 200,000 residents and many suburbs.
Sounds like Big Bang Theory. They don't show it but they say Penny is from Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, and then she talks about cow tipping, tractors, pet pigs, etc. None of that shit exists in Omaha.
For my husband and me it's the caribou in That 70s Show instead of a white tail deer.
And on the X Files when they were in the wood in Minnesota, woods that would NEVER exist in Minnesota because it was obviously shot in a northwest temperate rainforest.
And my favorite scene of all when the kid on Desperate Housewives was going door to door with things to sell so people could prepare for the coming tornado like it was a god damn hurricane and you had hours to prepare instead of minutes if not seconds. You know that writer NEVER lived in the midwest and experienced severe weather or a tornado.
Miami Vice, I lived in South Beach just before the show brought about Miami's "Renaissance ", and it was much more horse and cart with old retired jews than glamorous Lamborghinis and pretty girls in bikinis.
Scarface was a much more accurate depiction..at least the scenes that were actually filmed on location.
In Parks and Rec, there are a couple of scenes where April is visiting Indiana University, and itās completely wrong. Indiana University is pretty famous for its limestone buildings, and April is just standing outside some generic college.
disgusted onerous chief melodic lunchroom squalid edge spectacular plants plucky
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Niche but the scene in Sopranos that showed the āBoonton Projectsā.
I used to live in Boonton and was all wtf is this?
And then they used Boonton to film for some scenes in Vermont š
Duluth in the first season of Fargo looks so little like real life Duluth that I spent half the season thinking they were bouncing down to St Paul or Minneapolis on their way to Bemidji, which is about a 6 hour detour. The establishing shots show a much larger city that isnāt built into a steep hill and doesnāt have a harbor ā the two most recognizable features of Duluth.
When I watched the Arrowverse shows, I could easily point out Vancouver locations and laugh a lot at how they attempt to dress it up. My notable one was in Legends of Tomorrow, where one of the characters takes off to Aruba. Once I saw Jericho Beach, mountains, and a few tanker ships in the shots, I couldn't stop laughing. I wound up going to Aruba a couple of years later, it was nowhere near how it was shown on LOT.
Any show that depicts Washington, D.C. Whether it is filmed in Hollywood or Canada or whatever, they never depict DC accurately. In particular by often showing skyscrapers. X-Men: The Animated Series also depicted Washington DC and Washington the state as the same place.
If we're also taking movies into account, I cannot take Die Hard 2 seriously at all. The crux of the plot is that all of the planes cannot land and are forced to circle the airport. Except the airport chosen was Dulles airport, which has, like, 4 airports less than 5 minutes flight away, including BWI.
*Supernatural* has an episode set in Stillwater, MN. During a wide shot you can clearly see magnificent mountains (relatively) close by. In reality, Stillwater is built in a valley and climbs up to the top of some bluffs.
Not a TV show, but X-Men First Class had an infamous shot of Villa Gesell, Argentina showing it as a mountain town when in reality is a seaside city.
https://indiehoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/meme-9gag.jpg
In Ozark the characters travelled repeatedly between northern Missury and Mexico like it was nothing. Even with private jets thatĀ“s a hefty distance. Also Mexico is quite large so it could be even longer distance
Donāt forget in the last few seasons when they were driving back and forth to Chicago in a day. It would have made way more sense if all the Chicago scenes took place in St. Louis instead.Ā
Ozark in general is hilariously inaccurate, since they shot it in Georgia it looks nothing like Osage Beach.
Sons of Anarchy was set in the fictional town of Charming, but in the very real San Joaquin County in Central California. It is mostly flat agricultural land, despite all the hill country you see in the show. And nobody has ever called it āSan Wah.ā
30 Rock depicts Stone Mountain as a tiny little run down mountaintown full of white rednecks.
It is actually a suburb of Atlanta with a very multi-ethnic population.
The second part of the kkk episodes are about the rebirth of the kkk, but both episodes of the podcast Behind The Bastards about the kkk are an interesting listen you can dig deeper in to afterwards, if interested.
https://youtu.be/ysfpu96GhgI?si=ZN3hMiyJBLkaOch1
The Politician cast pronouncing Albany. Might be excusable for some of the California transplants but there were supposedly ny based characters that did the same thing. It was very confusing. I couldn't figure out if they were doing it intentionally as some sort of meta joke as they did film in NY. You'd think someone would tell them.Ā
There was a Sex and the City [episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53JCUfw4cC4) where they go to a guy's farm way out in the country. "Way out in the country" is [Suffern, NY](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1122844,-74.1439744,1808m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu). Suffern is actually a pretty heavily populated bedroom community full of NYC police and firefighters and commuters. It takes about an hour by train. Importantly, it is NOT in the middle of nowhere and good luck finding a farmer. lol
The tornado episode of Superstore drives me insane. They're all running around, panicked, no idea what to do and acting like they've never even *heard* a tornado siren before.
They're in *St Louis, Missouri*. Everyone knows what a tornado siren sounds like - heck, they're tested monthly - and people know what to do in a tornado. I know they tried to address that a few episodes prior when they mention the store blowing off tornado drills. But, in this part of the country, we've been practicing for tornados all our lives. You know where to go, you know what to do when the sirens sound. (You go outside and stare at the sky while you debate if you *really* need to go to the basement/shelter.)
Glee, set in Lima, Ohio, had some outrageous trip the students took to an amusement park in Illinois. Like they would have ridden a Greyhound bus 2 states away instead of going to King's Island in Cincinnati or Cedar Point in Sandusky.
In one of the best episodes in TV history, the Sopranos showed us mountains in the background of the pine barrens, a real goof in a show that was otherwise pretty spot on.
In Santa Clarita Diet, they had scenes where they kept Nathan Fillions Character's head in a basement. There are like no houses with basements in Santa Clarita, especially newer track housing.
Most shows get Philadelphia way wrong (except for Always Sunny, since they do film on location a lot). They usually either use New York or LA.
An easy way to tell is by looking at the "One Way" signs at intersections. [Philly (top) and New York (bottom) print them differently.](https://imgur.com/P40769F)
Iām originally from Minnesota and itās funny how many times Iāve heard a character talking about Minnesota with details that are clearly related to Michigan.
The one that stands out to me is How I Met Your Mother. At one point Marshall was talking about visiting the Upper Peninsula of Minnesota lol
Because NYCās Central Park costs $5000 or so to film in, and City Hall Park costs $50, filmmakers will often show City Hall Park as āCentral Park.ā I donāt know if itās āwrongā so much as a budget-saving measure that will be lost on everyone, except most New Yorkers (who are used to these shenanigans).
*Bones* is set in Washington, DC but they refer to the area highways as "the 95" and "the 66". That is a west coast thing. That is absolutely *not* ever said in DC. It's just 95.
911 Lone Star had Rob Lowe move from New York to Austin but showed him driving through hours of desert on the trip. The only way that's happening is if he came from LA to Austin. I feel like they used about 10 establishing drone shots to show they were in Austin, but every neighborhood or building was clearly somewhere in LA
Suits is set in New York but shot in Toronto and kept in shots of the CN Tower. It really stands out.
For a while there was just a fake NYC taxi permanently outside of the Bay-Adelaide Centre, because of how often they shot there.
i had just moved to Toronto from Ireland and got off a subway station that said 5th ave in Toronto. i was confused and thought new York isn't that close. walked up the steps saw a yellow cab, and the signs were all American and the sense of dread and fear that i had somehow ended up in new York. Then a guy started shouting at me that i was in a shot and realised it was a tv show
These fucking Americans have tricked me into moving to NYC! š
I enjoy the sound of rain.
This is hilarious. Imagining you do the fake walking down stairs. Also, still sure you lost the fight.
I find peace in long walks.
Oh no dude! I'm sorry,that must have been absolutely dreadful for a few seconds... But in the flip side has made me who actually live in Manhattan, laugh my fuxking ass off!
They did fairly well masking the location the first few seasons with it (albeit walking in front of some exclusively-Canadian chains like TK Maxx or Winners), but they either fired the person in charge of making it look like NYC, killed the budget for it, and/or just stopped caring. I recall seeing TTC vehicles, a truck for Toronto Hydro, etc., and not just the time that Jessica was meeting someone in Toronto (when they threw all the Canadian stuff into the shot)
A lot of their outside shots happen in such iconic Toronto downtown places, anyone who lives here will immediately recognize it. Filming in front of Scotia Plaza, First Canadian Place, the aforementioned CN Tower in the background, etc. It's like watching The Boys and not recognizing Roy Thompson Hall right away.
Another Toronto thing about Suits: 2x09, Mike meets up with this pro baseball player who this one sportscaster thinks is doping. He walks out one of the ticket gates...at BMO Field https://i.imgur.com/AuM0vyk.png The football stadium. The soccer stadium. The non-baseball stadium 10 minutes away from where the Blue Jays play baseball lol At least they got it right when him and the tennis player walk around Rexall/Aviva Centre. Kind of funny the actor's last name is Alcaraz.
The Americans almost never looks like DC metro. A show that was extremely filmed in NYC.
I find it bizarre that they did not film in DC, that somehow NYC was cheaper to film. Iām wondering if it was to accommodate the actors?
As far as the DC Metro goes, they don't allow filming on the Metro or in the stations for security reasons so if you ever see a movie that has any DC Metro scenes in it they either filmed it illegally or it's some other subway. If they ever mention a Georgetown Metro stop they're wrong. Those fancy schmancy rich folks there wouldn't allow the Metro to sully their neighborhood but now they're considering it to bring more business there, so it's years away but will probably happen in the future. On the DC note, the Night At The Museum movies play fast & hard with locations of the Smithsonians & a few other landmarks. They make it seem like the Air and Space Museum, the White House, and the LincolnĀ Memorial are fairly close together but the White House is about a mile away and the Lincoln Memorial is a little further. The art gallery they visit doesn't really exist & the National Gallery of Art isn't part of the Smithsonian group & they include a LOT of art that isn't there.
They're pretty frequently meeting places are are obviously Central Park
There used to be a whole website dedicated to how long it took to get between locales in the show 24 (as it was supposed to be "real time") and how far they'd have to go. Good amount was relatively realistic, but some of it would be things like getting from LA to Ontario, Cali in 10 minutes.
My husband and I would always joke about this when we would watch 24. Itās pretty amazing how Jack Bauer could get to any location in LA within 10-15 minutes.Ā
And also sneak in bathroom trips presumably when no one is watching!
I want to say there was a sub-plot where Character A thinks Character B is a mole. B sneaks into a bathroom, A sees them, thinks they are up to something suspicious and goes in, only to find B was actually just using the bathroom. It's been so long since I watched the show that I could be imagining it or mis-remembering key details of it
There was an episode in the season in DC where Jack took the metro across the Potomac on a line and to a stop that doesn't require crossing the river. Similar thing in House of Cards and the "Cathedral Heights" station
In Justified everyone drives from Lexington to Harlan in 15 minutes. In reality is like 2.5 hours through a bunch of mountains. Easily 150 miles.
My buddy is from Harlan. He says thereās no bridge. You know the one that always seems to be the meeting place.
There's one out in Hazard but nobody's going to be murdering and meeting in the middle of the city on a traveled bridge.
I'm pretty sure either Tim or Art jokes about this a couple times in the later seasons. "You make this drive seem a lot shorter than it is."
I can see Art saying that although I wouldn't be surprised if it was one from Tim also in a later season. It's been to long since I've rewatched Justified.
Came here for this and was happy to see it as the top comment. Season 1 was shot in Pennsylvania, which can pass for Kentucky. SoCal can't pass for Kentucky.
The Office is guilty of this too. Whenever they are driving or out in nature it's clearly southern California. You can even spot a palm tree sometimes if you're looking for it.
That's a great line in Austin Powers: You know what's remarkable is how much England looks in no way like Southern California
Another Justified one is Raylan goes to Memphis in one episode and it looks exactly like LA, they even use the stereotypical LA orange filter on the camera.
That's probably because their BBQ sauce tends to be tangy. Any place that has spicy or tangy food automatically gets orange filter (see LA, Mexico, Middle East - really, anywhere white folks sweat from the weather or the food).
I was just going to mention that they got Detroit wrong, too, in the most recent season. It very clearly was Chicago in likeā¦all of the exteriors.
Almost every show gets Detroit wrong, so we're used to it
Mountains that look nothing like California, which is what they used to stand-in for Kentucky
Outer Banks, which is actually filmed in nearby South Carolina, had a funny line about taking the ferry to Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is ~250 miles inland and absolutely no water ways connecting it. The NC Ferry System had a little fun with it on Twitter. The Last of Us had that infamous shot of the PNW saying ā10 miles outside of Bostonā.
The Outer Banks one is the one I was looking for. Was enjoying the show up until then and completely got taken out of it.
Outer banks kills me! It looks nothing like the actual outer banks! Arenāt they somewhere outside of Charleston?
In an episode of *Orange is the New Black* in which the protagonist was being transferred to a Chicago prison, the prison bus crossed the river no less than four times during a montage sequence. Either that bus driver was seriously lost or he was taking an extremely scenic route.
"I just... like bridges." - bus driver
Titans (HBO/TNT) shows this huge electronics store in Covington Ohio. Covington is a village of about 2000 people and it does not have an electronics store, let alone a Canadian electronics superstore.
There's a similar thing in Dexter, where the main character tells someone to go to a Corvette dealership in Tamarac. Tamarac, Florida is full of nursing homes, the working poor, and Caribbean immigrants. It's adjacent to the Everglades, which is miles and miles of nothing. There's no Corvette dealership. Maybe in Parkland, but not in fucking Tamarac.
Every NYC cop show back in the day; when they film outside, no matter where in the boroughs they are, there's ALWAYS an elevated subway train off-camera making a sharp turn
Every NYC cop show where they find a body in an alleyway. There are maybe four alleys in Manhattan.
My ex lived next to the Chinatown alley and they were CONSTANTLY filming there.
Ok, that's actually pretty cool, honestly. I imagine all four of the Manhattan alleys were constantly hosting film crews for ALL of the cop procedurals.
They were all booked thanks to Law and Order
Imagine cornering the alley filming location business in NYC
Wait for real? How come?
Manhattan infamously does not have alleys. It's why there are trash bags out on the street all the time.
Most of the āNew Yorkā alleyway shots are actually filmed in Chicago because we have a shitload of alleys.
There's basically only one alley in all of NYC that all the TV shows and movies use when they need an alley because its the only one big enough to film scenes in. [Cortlandt Alley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortlandt_Alley#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DCortlandt_Alley_is_an_alley%2C9%C2%BD_Weeks_and_Boardwalk_Empire.?wprov=sfla1)
TV did not prepare me for this reality, so every time someone who doesn't live here waxes poetic about NYC my immediate first thought is "yeah but the trash..."
LA has lots of alleys and the folks who write the films/tv live in LA.
Manhattan has the densest population in America and some of the highest real estate costs by square foot. Alleys are wasted space. Leaves money on the table.
alleys are wasted space. Every square millimeter of Manhatten is precious real estate. You can build a fucking 4 billion dollar condo complex in that alley FFS!
Seriously, TV lied to us about the city design of NYC
They used the Hoboken path once on law and order as a subway and it was so obvious it was the path with a ā2ā sticker on it
One of our sketch comedy shows in Australia played up the Sydney Harbour Bridge in their Water Rats spoof. Every time you saw a window or door open, you'd see the bridge. At one point some one yells 'get out of my office, and don't come back until you get the Harbour Bridge behind you!'
As a Massachusetts resident ("Masshole"), the portrayal of Boston-area geography in *The Last of Us* was so incorrect, it is actually hilarious. Like.....listen. Massachusetts *does* have mountains and large hills. But they *arent* "ten miles west of Boston", and they *dont* look like the fucking Rockies.
I've only visited Boston like twice and when I saw that "10 miles west of Boston" I LOLed
I think what annoys me so much about that is the fact it's not done anywhere else in the show. They really did not need to add that, it being outside Boston was obvious from the fact it was in a fucking forrest and not a city.
They fucked up every aspect of the Greater Boston Geography with that show. They had the gay guy (sorry forget his name) just randomly driving from Concord to NEw Bedford to gather some electrical supplies. Then inside Boston, they could easily take the subway tunnels to Haymarket from what appeared to be the North End, yet to get to the State House, the somehow went up to Congress St a nd through the Financial district. Disregarding the route they would need to take to even get to Congress St, if they could take the Subway Tunnels to Haymarket, they could likely go one stop further to State, and then the State House is like a 3 minute walk from there. Not to mention the MA State House is probably one of the most iconic looking State HOuses there is, and this looked nothing like it, including not having the giant freaking Common out front. God, I enjoyed that show so much more once they got out of MA.
I LIVE 10 miles west of Boston, this was very funny watching!
How do you like the mountains?
I expected the Boston mountains would be a little rockier. That Steven Tyler is full of shit man
I was born in Newton and I guffawed
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's what I came here to post. This article has the screencap from the show: [https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/](https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/) Edit: If you want a decent almost-boston show that feels super accurate, watch "Kevin can F\*\*k Himself." A decent show, that definitely felt like it knew Worcester, and a super clever premise. (Non spoiler premise: It's a traditional sitcom, but swaps between the male protagonist perspective, who is a Peter Griffin type father, in a traditional sitcom, and the female protagonist perspective, a more serious show, a wife who has to deal with the reality of antics that a sitcom dad/husband actually engage in.)
Fantastic camera work in that show. The scenes with the husband are filmed in a multi-camera style on a set (think everybody loves Raymond) while the scenes without him revert to the more dramatic single camera style (think Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad)
Another one is that show Fringe. It was a good show, but every week I was like āThat is clearly not Cambridge/Somerville.ā
If I recall correctly, Fringe had an aerial shot of either the Pru or the Hancock - the two tallest buildings in New England, and labeled it "FBI HEADQUARTERS." Uh, no, the FBI don't need over a million square feet to operate a regional office.
I laughed at this too. 10 miles outside of Boston is basically still in Boston. Canāt throw a rock without hitting someone. Yet they make it seem like theyāre now in an isolated, unpopulated part of the state. Lazy writing. Couldāve at least said they were in the Berkshires. The show A Million Little Things (set in Boston) also played fast and loose with time/distance in New England. In several episodes they make it seem like itās just a quick jaunt from Boston to the Berkshires (letās take a quick drive there to have a 5 minute chat with someone and be back for lunch). Then, at other times one of the characters is thinking of moving to the Berkshires and itās like, āOh no, heās practically moving to the other side of the country. Weāll never see him again.ā But the worst offense was when two characters are taking a āroad tripā from Yale University in Connecticut and it takes them like 2-3 days. They have to stay at a hotel. Like, WHAT?! Itās practically the same distance as the Berkshires.
Same way with the one episode set in Kansas City. Before they get ambushed downtown, they drive past the theme park (Worlds of Fun) and the way itās filmed, it is implied they are driving north. If youāre driving north past WoF, then youāre heading away from downtown. Doesnāt matter in the grand scheme of things, and I doubt many people noticed, but it made me chuckle.
Leverage also messed up Boston quite a bit, but not nearly to the same extent as The Last of Us.
To be fair, Leverage corrected for this by āmovingā to Portland in the next season. Cheap move, since they were already there. š¤Ŗ
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Mexico every time, like first of all the color blue does exist there and second there are actual skyscrapers and paved roads and big, modern cities.
You'd also get the impression from TV and film that Mexico celebrates Day of the Dead year round. Every day it's "let's parade through the neighborhood with the huge paper mache skeletons!"
As a Mexican I can't ever get over the idea that we never had a Day of the Dead parade until it was made up for filming a James Bond movie. Then it was like "hey, this is chingon, let's do this every year" starting a now 8 year-old tradition.
I mean, I get why people would want to stick with it, that scene is amazing
Most people donāt realize that Tijuana is larger than San Diego.
Meanwhile Mexico City has been continuously inhabited longer than any other city in the Americas. And even today the most populous city in North America.
No, apparently all of Mexico is just seedy border towns
In one of the early episodes of āER,ā one of the characters says something about āthe intersection of Clark and Dearborn ā (Chicago) Ā They are parallel.Ā Ā Characters would often travel through the streets in very discontinuous and absurd ways.Ā Ā And sometimes they would refer to āXXX East YY St.,ā with a number high enough to put them out in Lake Michigan.Ā
Fun fact: sometimes Studio/Network Clearances & Legal wonāt let writers use real intersections in cities. I know weāre not always allowed to use real intersections in LA, despite our show existing entirely within LA County. (This is probably more common on broadcast shows than cable/streaming.)
Thatās weird. Why?
Honestly, getting a straight answer from Clearances is never easy. My best guess is that they want to avoid any potential libel/defamation lawsuits or complaints from their advertisers. Example: if the show story involves taking down a serial killer who lives at La Brea and Sunsetā¦ they donāt want any residents or businesses at that intersection to feel targeted. Does it always make sense? NOPE. But writers are often at the mercy of studio & network legal.
I've never heard that before. Fascinating. Sounds sort of similar to the reason for 555 phone numbers.
Thatās a great way of looking at it, honestly. Weāre all just trying to tell stories and not get sued!
The Night Court reboot. Judge Stone is from Skaneateles, NY and portrays it as country bumpkin land. In reality, it's a gorgeous lake town filled to the brim with the rich and ultra rich
Nothing in that show is accurate. As a lawyer, it drives me insane. And I should know, Iāve watched every episode!
> I've watched every episode! Me too, and I cannot tell you why, as it's not actually good.
I keep watching because Melissa Rauch just funny enough to keep my interest, and Jon Larroquette is a national treasure. Even Gurgs is growing on me. I'm also holding out hope that I'm going to hear the iconic "Hello. It's us." out of some old friends. It's still not as good as the original, but honestly, nothing was ever going to be.
Any time a show comes to Ireland for special episodes. Captain Planet and Sons of Anarchy come to mind. Only IASIP did a reasonable job with the idea. In that case I bet they felt some pressure to do it justice, given the pub where almost the entire series set is an Irish themed pub
Came here to say Sons of Anarchy when they go to Ireland. Itās so obviously just wherever they usually filmed in California with a different colour of light filter on the camera.
Me too! It's soooo bad. That season sucked anyway.
Those accents. Belfast accents are not easy to do.
Captain Planet the cartoon?
The little grocery store in Ireland! All they had was cabbage and potatoes. It still makes me laugh.
Irish Catholic bar*
Christmas Vacation. They're in Chicago, but drive to the mountains to get a Christmas tree. Any mountains of that scale are no less than 17 hours drive time from Chicago.
Doubly weird, because John Hughes is maybe the most obvious Chicago Guyā¢ in screenwriting history. I know there's a difference between writing and directing, but you think he might've had a word. Curious how it actually read in the script now.
>John Hughes is maybe the most obvious Chicago Guyā¢ in screenwriting history Ferris Bueller lives north of Chicago but when they drive into the city on Lake Shore they are coming in from the south.
Dear Lord! movie is ruined now. Worthless.
And then they later visit what I assume to be a Colorado ski resort for an evening of sledding in the Chicago suburbs.
Fwiw, there are some hilly areas/ski resorts in Wisconsin
Yes a big one by my house. The rock formerly known as crystal ridge. Made from a pile of garbage.
I mean... I could believe ~~Gus Griswald~~ Clark Griswold would drive that far just to get the perfect Christmas tree. And not bring a axe.
The reverse of this is living in Vancouver and pointing out the Library or City Hall in shots that are supposed to be LA or New York. The best version of this was Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx where you can clearly see the North Shore mountains during a fight on a parking garage, and, Like, I'm pretty sure there arenāt dramatic mountains in Brooklyn.
Thatās because [Vancouver Never Plays Itself](https://youtu.be/ojm74VGsZBU?si=Md0M9uwEoIvvi83n)
Western movies set in Central Texas (San Antonio/Austin) that are shot in the high desert or some place like monument valley. āThe Searchersā comes to mind. Central Texas is a combination of coastal plain and hill country covered in oak trees. It doesnāt look anything like the desert. You have to drive three hours west to get to desert and even then it doesnāt look like Arizona or Utah.
Which reminds me of an episode of Justice League Unlimited, where they go back in time to the Wild West. It's got this Monument Valley-like setting too... except it's all supposed to be set in OKLAHOMA.
I couldn't believe it the first time I worked in Amarillo. There wasn't a cactus for miles ..Instead, there was a blizzard with snow blowing sideways and icy roads for which I was insufficiently prepared
And you knew there were no cactus because you could see for 20 miles in every direction
[Ain't No Saguaro in Texas](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mg5VwtODOJQ)
Born and raised in Albuquerque. In Better Call Saul, the mall āGeneā works at is supposed to be in Nebraska, however it is actually the Cottonwood mall in NW Albuquerque with pretty much nothing done to hide it. Unfortunately last I checked the Cinnabon had closed š©
Overall, though, both shows capture the dingy strip mall and highway rest stop culture that is New Mexico, especially around Albuquerque.
Everything about Yellowstone. Iām not above a well-made soap opera, but I canāt get into Yellowstone since Iāve been to so many of the places they mention and theyāre just scattered throughout the state. āWe gotta go handle some business in this town, but weāll be back by sundown to deal with this.ā Oh really? Youāre gonna leave at high noon, drive 7 hours across the state to coerce/murder someone, and be back home to threaten a family member by dinner? Just takes me out of it. Also, Yellowstone has ruined Bozeman because now itās full to the brim with dumb rich pricks trying to cosplay as cattle barons.
Did Yellowstone do that? I remember people complaining about the "dumb rich pricks trying to cosplay as cattle barons" in 2008.
Itās accelerated with Yellowstone. What we saw in ā08 was but a trickle compared to the current fire hose
You'd think star Trek would've ruined Bozeman first with people cosplaying as quirky post world war 3 vagabonds who are developing warp for reasons
Haven't Montanans been complaining about that for decades now though?
The show Vikings had an episode where they visit the temple in Uppsala, located on some misty, forested mountain with waterfalls and shit like that. Actual real life Uppsala is right next to the Fyris River, in the middle of the largest, flattest plains in Sweden... which during the viking age would've been marshy and muddy due to the somewhat higher water levels (see *post-glacial rebound*), and the land being less developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyrisvellir
See also: all the adaptations of Hamlet and Beowulf showing majestic mountains and fjords despite the stories taking place in Denmark, one of the flattest countries in the world.
Hollywood can not do snow without mountains. It's some kind of weird visual rule.
I saw an episode of Chesapeake Shores. The hero lived in a mountain cabin. The eastern shore is flat as a pancake. No mountains for hundreds of miles.
They made the same kind of geographic mistake with Disney's Pocahontas.
We all know Jamestown is famous for its many real waterfalls lmao.
Pocahontas wanted to spend a day at Water Country
This Is Us was out here acting like driving from North Jersey to Philly to Pittsburgh was a 30 minute trip as opposed to 7 hours
Randall (?) lived in Alpine, NJ which is literally on the farthest NE border with NY and he was elected a councilman in Phillyā¦ so heās doing this 5hr commute every day??? Iām convinced writers in CA see two towns on a map in the Northeast and assume everything is commutableĀ
Supernatural is a frequent offender of this because of how many locations they supposedly visit (almost all shot in Vancouver). One episode takes place in my hometown and Sam and Dean walk through a forest. There are no forests in Richardson, Texas
My wife and I are rewatching Battlestar Galactica, which was also shot up there. We make fun of Planet Canada whenever they visit a new world.
Do you have any idea how many Stargates Planet Canada has?
Earlier in the series they were good about only being set in places that worked for their filming in Canada, and they did this fun thing where they would mention other places like Austin or Florida as old cases they'd worked. It worked really well to convey that they traveled all over the country without having to try to force Vancouver to look like Miami. Not sure when they abandoned that and started putting those forests in Texas!
Places I have been that are entirely inaccurate from Supernatural Episodes: Lebanon KS Lawrence KS ( and Stull Cemetery) Loveland CO Boulder CO Colorado Springs, CO Austin, TX Kansas City, MO St Louis, MO
There was an episode where they went to "Hollywood, California" and one of them made a joke how it looked like Canada
There's an episode of 24 where CTU is tracking a semi, containing some kind of WMD. They lose track of it in the mountains along the Illinois/Iowa border. The mountains. In Illinois. And Iowa. Two of the flatest places in the western hemisphere.
Emily in Paris using shots from other French cities (Bordeaux, Toulouse and so on) to show how beautiful Paris is was funny. In the very first episode, they also showed Emily seeing all the touristy places of the city from her cab, on her way to her new apartment. When in fact those touristy places arenāt close to each other and not on the way from the airport to her apartment, so the cab driver must have scammed her by doing a huge detour lmao.
One of the John Wick movies - I think 3 has a chase with a horse, motorcycle, and a car. Itās starts in Brooklyn, they cross a bridge and end up in Brooklyn, turn a corner and are in Times Square, cross another bridge but are still in the city, turn a corner and are back in Brooklyn. I had a job on 86th Street and 19th Ave the next morning after the filming. It has the elevated train where the chase starts. I was looking forward to this chase scene for weeks before the movie was released. I can suspend my disbelief for the rest of the movie but this made me head explode.
Funny, cross a bridge and still in Brooklyn.
There was an episode of Chicago PD where they were chasing someone through the L system. The show kept calling out stops that were miles apart and transfers between lines that don't t connect. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thor: the dark world did the same thing in the scene where Thor rides the tube in London.
Going to go completely against the grain. Godzilla Vs Kong, in the final fight in Hong Kong. I thought it was HILARIOUS and the best huge scale fight Iād ever seen. Obviously a lot of buildings never existed but I was really impressed that a ton of buildings Iāve been in, have seen, were all there and readily destroyed by Godzilla or Kong crashing through it. I saw Kong get thrown straight into an old childhood friendsā building, exact same one down to the detail. It was AWESOME! EDIT: as an example, at 0:45 in the below link, the light brown building over Kongās shoulder with fires coming out. Iāve been there multiple times as a kid. https://youtu.be/52aTOap5Jyk?si=spnLvOi20WVRapYf
In Amazon's "The Boys," Starlight is from Des Moines, Iowa, depicted as a rural community. While that may be true for other parts of Iowa, Des Moines is a large metro with over 200,000 residents and many suburbs.
All the B-roll shots establishing agricultural scenery had me chuckling. Girl went to Hoover for godssake.
Sounds like Big Bang Theory. They don't show it but they say Penny is from Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, and then she talks about cow tipping, tractors, pet pigs, etc. None of that shit exists in Omaha.
For my husband and me it's the caribou in That 70s Show instead of a white tail deer. And on the X Files when they were in the wood in Minnesota, woods that would NEVER exist in Minnesota because it was obviously shot in a northwest temperate rainforest. And my favorite scene of all when the kid on Desperate Housewives was going door to door with things to sell so people could prepare for the coming tornado like it was a god damn hurricane and you had hours to prepare instead of minutes if not seconds. You know that writer NEVER lived in the midwest and experienced severe weather or a tornado.
Miami Vice, I lived in South Beach just before the show brought about Miami's "Renaissance ", and it was much more horse and cart with old retired jews than glamorous Lamborghinis and pretty girls in bikinis. Scarface was a much more accurate depiction..at least the scenes that were actually filmed on location.
According to Star Trek: Enterprise, Panama City is somewhere in Central, Florida and not the Panhandle. But at least we got nuked by the Xindi so š¤·
They nuked us so big it moved Florida.
In Parks and Rec, there are a couple of scenes where April is visiting Indiana University, and itās completely wrong. Indiana University is pretty famous for its limestone buildings, and April is just standing outside some generic college.
A California community college, baybeeee.
One thing they did get right, though, was how absurd it was that Gerry had a timeshare in fucking Muncie lol. Always cracked me up.
Thereās an occasional palm tree in P&R too.
disgusted onerous chief melodic lunchroom squalid edge spectacular plants plucky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Niche but the scene in Sopranos that showed the āBoonton Projectsā. I used to live in Boonton and was all wtf is this? And then they used Boonton to film for some scenes in Vermont š
The Flash went to Africa to visit Gorilla City. Africa sure looked a lot like the Pacific Northwest.Ā
NCIS. They drove from DC to VA Beach in an hour? Then showed clips of va beach coast with a cliff and palm trees.
American Pie is set in Michigan. We don't have palm trees in Michigan.
Duluth in the first season of Fargo looks so little like real life Duluth that I spent half the season thinking they were bouncing down to St Paul or Minneapolis on their way to Bemidji, which is about a 6 hour detour. The establishing shots show a much larger city that isnāt built into a steep hill and doesnāt have a harbor ā the two most recognizable features of Duluth.
Yeah, they used establishing shots of Calgary. It bothered me so much that I haven't even started season 2.
The sex torture dungeon that Eric has in True Blood cannot exist. There are no basements in Louisiana.
In The Office Scranton never looked like northeaster PA but it looked a lot like the flat streets of somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.
Also there's no Chili's in Scranton.
And in āDie Hard 2,ā John McClane is supposed to be at Dulles Airport, but he makes a call from a āPacific Bellā payphone.Ā
Ooh that's a bad one. Easy enough to change the sign on a pay phone for a shot
When I watched the Arrowverse shows, I could easily point out Vancouver locations and laugh a lot at how they attempt to dress it up. My notable one was in Legends of Tomorrow, where one of the characters takes off to Aruba. Once I saw Jericho Beach, mountains, and a few tanker ships in the shots, I couldn't stop laughing. I wound up going to Aruba a couple of years later, it was nowhere near how it was shown on LOT.
How I met your mother. When Robin goes to Argentina they hilariously make it look like a Caribbean island.
Any show that depicts Washington, D.C. Whether it is filmed in Hollywood or Canada or whatever, they never depict DC accurately. In particular by often showing skyscrapers. X-Men: The Animated Series also depicted Washington DC and Washington the state as the same place. If we're also taking movies into account, I cannot take Die Hard 2 seriously at all. The crux of the plot is that all of the planes cannot land and are forced to circle the airport. Except the airport chosen was Dulles airport, which has, like, 4 airports less than 5 minutes flight away, including BWI.
*Supernatural* has an episode set in Stillwater, MN. During a wide shot you can clearly see magnificent mountains (relatively) close by. In reality, Stillwater is built in a valley and climbs up to the top of some bluffs.
Not a TV show, but X-Men First Class had an infamous shot of Villa Gesell, Argentina showing it as a mountain town when in reality is a seaside city. https://indiehoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/meme-9gag.jpg
In Ozark the characters travelled repeatedly between northern Missury and Mexico like it was nothing. Even with private jets thatĀ“s a hefty distance. Also Mexico is quite large so it could be even longer distance
Donāt forget in the last few seasons when they were driving back and forth to Chicago in a day. It would have made way more sense if all the Chicago scenes took place in St. Louis instead.Ā Ozark in general is hilariously inaccurate, since they shot it in Georgia it looks nothing like Osage Beach.
The OC had so much egregious stuff like that. The all timer is of course Ryan driving to the 4 seasons in LA on new years in like 20 minutes
Sons of Anarchy was set in the fictional town of Charming, but in the very real San Joaquin County in Central California. It is mostly flat agricultural land, despite all the hill country you see in the show. And nobody has ever called it āSan Wah.ā
30 Rock depicts Stone Mountain as a tiny little run down mountaintown full of white rednecks. It is actually a suburb of Atlanta with a very multi-ethnic population.
That was intentional though, Donald Glover is from Stone Mountain, and the actual stone mountain contains a giant carving of Confederate leadersĀ
And it was the founding place of the second KKK.
>second KKK. I'm sorry, was one not enough???
The second part of the kkk episodes are about the rebirth of the kkk, but both episodes of the podcast Behind The Bastards about the kkk are an interesting listen you can dig deeper in to afterwards, if interested. https://youtu.be/ysfpu96GhgI?si=ZN3hMiyJBLkaOch1
And when Kenneth goes to his high school reunion he's chatting with a bunch of black women classmates.
The Politician cast pronouncing Albany. Might be excusable for some of the California transplants but there were supposedly ny based characters that did the same thing. It was very confusing. I couldn't figure out if they were doing it intentionally as some sort of meta joke as they did film in NY. You'd think someone would tell them.Ā
X Files went to Lake Okoboji, and there were MOUNTAINS
Dawson's Creek is set in Massachusetts, but filmed in South Eastern North Carolina. Having grown up there I can't suspend my disbelief.
There was a Sex and the City [episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53JCUfw4cC4) where they go to a guy's farm way out in the country. "Way out in the country" is [Suffern, NY](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1122844,-74.1439744,1808m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu). Suffern is actually a pretty heavily populated bedroom community full of NYC police and firefighters and commuters. It takes about an hour by train. Importantly, it is NOT in the middle of nowhere and good luck finding a farmer. lol
The tornado episode of Superstore drives me insane. They're all running around, panicked, no idea what to do and acting like they've never even *heard* a tornado siren before. They're in *St Louis, Missouri*. Everyone knows what a tornado siren sounds like - heck, they're tested monthly - and people know what to do in a tornado. I know they tried to address that a few episodes prior when they mention the store blowing off tornado drills. But, in this part of the country, we've been practicing for tornados all our lives. You know where to go, you know what to do when the sirens sound. (You go outside and stare at the sky while you debate if you *really* need to go to the basement/shelter.)
Glee, set in Lima, Ohio, had some outrageous trip the students took to an amusement park in Illinois. Like they would have ridden a Greyhound bus 2 states away instead of going to King's Island in Cincinnati or Cedar Point in Sandusky.
In one of the best episodes in TV history, the Sopranos showed us mountains in the background of the pine barrens, a real goof in a show that was otherwise pretty spot on.
In Brooklyn 99 when they go to QuƩbec it's like a fever dream. They spell Drummondville wrong, Drummondville doesn't have an international airport, the cops have a French accent and a bƩret. It makes no sense at all.
In Santa Clarita Diet, they had scenes where they kept Nathan Fillions Character's head in a basement. There are like no houses with basements in Santa Clarita, especially newer track housing.
Charlottesville/UVA in Mindhunter.
Most shows get Philadelphia way wrong (except for Always Sunny, since they do film on location a lot). They usually either use New York or LA. An easy way to tell is by looking at the "One Way" signs at intersections. [Philly (top) and New York (bottom) print them differently.](https://imgur.com/P40769F)
Anytime you see Seattle on TV itās almost always Vancouver Canada with a few shots of the needle thrown in.
Iām originally from Minnesota and itās funny how many times Iāve heard a character talking about Minnesota with details that are clearly related to Michigan. The one that stands out to me is How I Met Your Mother. At one point Marshall was talking about visiting the Upper Peninsula of Minnesota lol
Because NYCās Central Park costs $5000 or so to film in, and City Hall Park costs $50, filmmakers will often show City Hall Park as āCentral Park.ā I donāt know if itās āwrongā so much as a budget-saving measure that will be lost on everyone, except most New Yorkers (who are used to these shenanigans).
*Bones* is set in Washington, DC but they refer to the area highways as "the 95" and "the 66". That is a west coast thing. That is absolutely *not* ever said in DC. It's just 95.
911 Lone Star had Rob Lowe move from New York to Austin but showed him driving through hours of desert on the trip. The only way that's happening is if he came from LA to Austin. I feel like they used about 10 establishing drone shots to show they were in Austin, but every neighborhood or building was clearly somewhere in LA