I assumed Chicago as well, based on the number of Chicago street names and (IIRC) L stops mentioned. It might have been just a tribute by the Wachowski brothers since they grew up in Chicago.
To be fair, I’ve never been to Toronto and the closest I’ve been to Chicago is playing Midtown Madness, so I don’t really have any context that my brain is trying to fit it into. I can see how this might be different for movie viewers with real-world experience of those places.
No, they make it clear that it’s Chicago. They don’t specifically call it by name, but they use all the famous street names in the loop and the Subway train is labeled with “Loop”. The trace in one of scenes is to a 312 area code and they show maps that are obviously of Chicago. Additionally the Wachowski’s are from Chicago, which is probably notable.
Some Googling shows that the movie was filmed in Sydney, not Toronto, so no big fucking lake to speak of. What do you mean… Ocean?!?
Of course you can easily apologize for the hole due to the fact that it’s all a computer construct. However, they are specific that the Matrix is a simulation of late 20th century world so if you want to geek out you could make a case for the fact that it should be realistic in that detail.
Most of the backgrounds and skylines are 100% CGI in the movie so maybe they have even less of an excuse for the screw up than some of the old westerns shooting in California do. They did have the technology to fix it afterall.
Bear in mind that unlike New York or LA, only Chicagoans are in any way familiar with Chicago landmarks. To most people, the *Matrix * city was “Anycity U.S.A.” It could have been Chicago, it could have been Detroit, it could have been Cleveland, it could have been Denver, it could have been St. Louis. I’m sure all those cities are clearly distinct from each other in many different ways, but to outsiders they all tend to look alike from a distance.
Parts of Sleepless in Seattle were, indeed, filmed in the Seattle area.
The “gone wrong” part was when they father and son took a row boat out.
If they had actually gone from where they started to where they arrived, they would have rowed over 20 miles in pretty dangerous waters.
They crossed Lake Union, went through the Ballard Locks, into Puget Sound in the shipping lane, then around Magnolia Bluff and up the beach to Alki.
Yeah… but… they also make clear that nobody really knows how accurate it is.
I don’t know that I’d recognize LA. I think many Americans at least might recognize Chicago from the Sears Tower or the Hancock Building, but neither of those were featured, which is what made the Chicagoans go “wtf?” as to us it became obvious what city it was intended to be, but the majority of the scenery - obvious and unobvious - didn’t match up.
That always got me. Every alien planet is apparently the same the whole way around. So the planet is completely lush or completely desert or completely mined-quarry. Apparently only Earth can have more than one feature.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai – the New Jersey scenes. I’m from New Jersey, and Pepper Mill grew up in Grover’s Mill.
1.) The New Brunswick scenes definitely weren’t shot in New Brunswick. But I have to give credit to the movie for even acknowledging that New Brunswick exists.
2.) Ain’t no palm trees in Grover’s Mill
3.) I think the Yoyodyne plant as shown is actually Bigger than Grover’s Mill.
I was going to say The Matrix was filmed in Sydney, not Toronto- you can see things like the Commonwealth Bank logo in street scenes and there’s also scenes of traffic driving on the left hand side of the road, as most of the British Commonwealth* does. Several of the buildings are clearly antipodean style, as well.
I didn’t realise it was “supposed” to be set in Chicago- I thought it was Anywhere City, USA, c. 1999.
Peter Jackson’s movie The Frighteners was filmed in Lyttelton, a suburb of Christchurch, NZ (and not far from the suburb I used to live in). However, the movie is set in a US city, and so you’ve got traffic driving on the right- despite the fact the visible road markings are clearly for driving on the left hand side of the road.
Tasmania was often shown in old Warner Bros. Cartoons as looking like a tropical South Pacific paradise with palm trees and sandy beaches and straw huts and what have you- totally unlike the real Tasmania, which is (by all accounts) cold, looks very much like NZ, and has modern buildings and conveniences like electricity and running water. 
*Not Canada, though. Splitters!
That’s what they want you to believe. The real Chicago is in the desert. You took the wrong pill.
All three seasons were set in Washington, the first in the 1940s and the second and third in the 1970s. Still doesn’t explain the palm trees, though (although a number of episodes were set on Paradise Island and Diana moved to Los Angeles at the end of season 3. God I’m a geek.).
Going back a ways, in the old John Wayne film The Green Berets the country of Viet Nam apparently is covered with a forest of pine trees with neatly cut grass. (It was filmed in Georgia.)
For Love of the Game has a couple scenes supposedly set in the Detroit Tigers’ spring training home of Lakeland, FL (where I live). The scenes had beaches and palm trees, like your typical gulf coast tourist town. Unfortunately for that scenario, Lakeland is 50 miles inland.
In **The Russian Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming **, after the Russian sub lands on Cape Cod, Massachusetts the crew members walk along the beach and in the not too distant distance are tall un-Massachusetts-like mountains.
Oh, it gets better. DC Police patrol Dulles Airport, which is located in Loudoun County, about twenty two miles outside their bailiwick.
Correct me if I’m wrong on this since it has been a while, but in Citizen Kane isn’t his San Simeon substitute Xanadu supposed to be on the Gulf Coast in Florida? It wouldn’t have taken a lot of work to learn that there are no mountains on any coast in Florida. The high point of the state is 345 feet.
The TV mini-series Maigret (starring Michael Gambon) was filmed in Budapest , standing in for 1950’s Paris. In one scene you have Maigret and his wife strolling along the banks of the “Seine” (Danube). On the opposite bank you can see a range of tree-lined hills. This is something you will not see in Paris.
Groundhog Day. Set in Punxsutawney, PA but filmed in Woodstock, IL. Woodstock doesn’t resemble Punxsutawney in the least. Biggest gaffe: “Gobblers Knob”, the place where the groundhog makes his annual appearance is on a hilltop a mile or so outside of town. The movie presents it as being in the middle of town. In the movie, Punxsutawney is depicted as a looking rather prosperous with wide streets. In reality, it’s pretty badly economically depressed_and has been so for decades_with one narrow main street and lots of vacant lots and empty storefronts. It also has a creek running through the middle of town and railroad tracks as well…as befits a town that exists in the first place because lumber and then coal were shipped from there. Oh, and Woodstock seems to be a pretty flat place whereas Punxsutawney is in the Appalachians and looks like it. Overall, it’s like the producers of the movie deliberately sought out a small town that looks as much as possible unlike Punxsutawney.
I have just though of another one. In a film version of David Copperfield there is a shot of the sun setting over the sea in Yarmouth. A tad impossible that, as this particular town lies on the east coast of England.