# Movies/TV shows set in a location you know well, but obviously not filmed there, or just gets something wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, movies\ **Created:** [September 21, 2022, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003 "2022-09-21T21:26:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/21 "2022-09-22T12:44:05Z")
I’ve mentioned this goof in a similar thread-- for the "just gets something wrong’ category: In the 1990 Goldie Hawn / Mel Gibson movie “Bird on a Wire”, the two leads are in Detroit and get on a ferry clearly labeled “DETROIT-RACINE FERRY”. Anybody who takes 10 seconds to glance at a map of the Great Lakes area will see that that would be one long-ass ferry ride. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/22 "2022-09-22T12:50:09Z")
_Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle_ is written as a very New Jersey movie by a couple of Jersey guys. Other than some establishing shots like highway signs it was mostly filmed in Canada. I was sitting in an open air theater in Guantanamo Bay when I saw the movie for the first time. I was hoping for some footage from home. I didn’t get it. They decide to go to New Brunswick to go to White Castle. There has never been a White Castle in New Brunswick. They find it is closed so decide to travel 60 miles to go to Cherry Hill to find another one. Leaving out the fact there also isn’t a White Castle in Cherry Hill, there are at least 3 White Castles that are relatively close to Cherry Hill. Then they get to Cherry Hill. Instead of a flat densely populated suburb there is a forested area that includes a giant cliff they could hang glide off of. I was in New Jersey when I first saw _Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay._ Unsurprisingly the scenes in Gitmo look nothing like the real place. However not nearly as bad as _Bad Boys II._ ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/23 "2022-09-22T12:56:12Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > Rocky- The movie (still beloved her in Philly) has the El running in south philly. The EL runs from northern to cenral Philly. - [Rocky ran 30.6 miles.](https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2013/09/18/30-6-miles-distance-actual-rocky-run/) > you realize quickly that Sylvester Stallone was supposed to have run a heck of a lot further than just those 70 or so steps in front of the Art Museum. Just how much further? A whopping 30.61 miles through the city, according to a new (and very, very scientific) analysis by our friends over at the [Philly Post](http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/09/18/rocky-training-run-rocky-ii/). > _Rocky_ aficionado Dan McQuade, in his words, “pieced together the routes Rocky could have traveled from scene to scene in this training montage and calculated distance.” Now, that’s dedication, people. Check out the scene-by-scene breakdown [here](http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/09/18/rocky-training-run-rocky-ii/). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/24 "2022-09-22T13:12:35Z")
Yeah, that’s a general problem for Texas movies. The popular assumption for cowboy movies is that Texas is some sort of arid, tumbleweed infested desert. Which is funny because something like 37% of the state is forested, and the majority of the rest is farmland or ranchland, with only the far western parts being arid desert-like areas. And those areas weren’t settled back in the 19th century- it was pretty much San Antonio eastward. Most of the Texas Revolution took place in the coastal plain area between San Antonio and Houston, which is not arid at all. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/25 "2022-09-22T16:27:45Z")
A couple of episodes of _Mindhunter_ took place in Sacramento. I’m sure none of it was actually shot here, but most of the scenes were just set in a generic working class neighborhood and a generic downtown police station, so I can forgive that. But there was one scene where the two FBI agents are eating in a diner alongside a two lane highway, which appears to be on the banks of the Sacramento River with the [Tower Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Bridge_(Sacramento,_California))\* prominently visible in the background. There is no place in Sacramento that looks like that from which you can see the bridge. The shoreline is pretty much all pedestrian walkways in that area. It’s like someone on the production team went “Hey, let’s Photoshop a local landmark into a scene so it looks like they were actually there!” \*The one in Sacramento, not the one in London. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/26 "2022-09-22T17:30:44Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > There is no place in Sacramento that looks like that from which you can see the bridge. Sort of like how the view of the Space Needle out Frasier’s window suggests his apartment is hovering six stories above the middle of Elliott Bay. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/27 "2022-09-23T01:55:46Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > _Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle_ is written as a very New Jersey movie by a couple of Jersey guys. Other than some establishing shots like highway signs it was mostly filmed in Canada. I was sitting in an open air theater in Guantanamo Bay when I saw the movie for the first time. I was hoping for some footage from home. I didn’t get it. They decide to go to New Brunswick to go to White Castle. There has never been a White Castle in New Brunswick. They find it is closed so decide to travel 60 miles to go to Cherry Hill to find another one. Leaving out the fact there also isn’t a White Castle in Cherry Hill, there are at least 3 White Castles that are relatively close to Cherry Hill. Then they get to Cherry Hill. Instead of a flat densely populated suburb there is a forested area that includes a giant cliff they could hang glide off of. > > I was in New Jersey when I first saw _Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay._ Unsurprisingly the scenes in Gitmo look nothing like the real place. However not nearly as bad as _Bad Boys II._ I Google-mapped Harold and Kumar’s route one time. They picked a path that literally circumvented every White Castle between Hoboken and the Pine Barrens. Speaking of New Jersey - I don’t care how bad-ass John Wick is. [There’s no way he’s taking the PATH train to Rector, Canal, or Broad street.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO9coydHA3k) Even if they are pretending it’s a southbound C train…which also is incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/28 "2022-09-23T18:59:59Z")
I’ve never actually seen _The Walking Dead_, but I _have_ seen the iconic shot of Rick riding his horse up a deserted highway towards the Atlanta skyline. It’s a cool shot, and was taken from the Jackson Street bridge, one of the few places in the city where the whole skyline is visible that way. However, as I understand it, Rick is supposed to be riding up I-75 from somewhere in south Georgia. The Jackson Street bridge crosses I-20 and is east of the city: in the shot, Rick is riding due west. A small thing, but I’ve noticed it every time I see that image. > [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > There’s a lot of movie/shows set and filmed in Chicago, and I can’t help but notice when they get the trains wrong. Usually a line being on an elevated track when I know that in that area it’s a subway, or connections that don’t exit, or lines directly over a street in a neighborhood where the lines run over alleys. _The Matrix_ never identified in what city it was set, but the street names mentioned suggested Chicago - Wacker, Halstead, Van Buren, and such (IIRC). I noticed that during one scene where Neo runs up a hill - a topographic feature noticeably absent from downtown Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/29 "2022-09-23T19:08:53Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > _The Matrix_ never identified in what city it was set, but the street names mentioned suggested Chicago - Wacker, Halstead, Van Buren, and such (IIRC). That’s because it wasn’t set in any real city, it was set in a virtual city in a computer. That virtual city was probably based on a real-life Chicago from before the apocalypse. But it wasn’t intended to be faithful to anything, that’s part of the plot. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/30 "2022-09-23T19:11:58Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > That virtual city was probably based on a real-life Chicago So it was Neo-Chicago…? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/31 "2022-09-23T19:14:57Z")
He was Chicago Neo, from Neo-Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/32 "2022-09-23T19:32:52Z")
_One Day at a Time_. Much as I loved this show, it was very obviously not filmed in Indianapolis. Ann was supposed to have moved there from Logansport, but when they show the entrance to Indianapolis, it’s an entrance to highway 70. That’s an east/west entrance to Indy, the right one from Hollywood or NYC, but the wrong one from Logansport. Barbara is once at a meeting for her college political group, and someone is introduced as spearheading the recall election for some politician. Indiana, unlike California, does not have recall elections. We just hope our bad governors leave office to run as VP for even worse presidential candidates. We _do_ have a law that you can’t run for one office while holding another. A city police officer shows up at the apartment, and says he’s from the IPD. The Indianapolis police department is referred to as the IMPD, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, to differentiate it from the ISPD, the Indiana State Police Department. Also to express the fact that it has co-jurisdiction with the township departments outside the city proper, like Speedway, Carmel, etc. Ann and the girls live on the 4th floor of her building. No building of residential units, unless it’s a high-rise, is higher than 3 floors, because there is a statute that a building (other than a private residence) with more than 3 floors must have an elevator, so there are no 4, 5 or 6 floor apartment buildings: they present a nightmare for landlords if the elevator goes out, so they end up actually needing to have at least 2. The lowest residential building I’ve seen with more than three floors has 10, and it’s downtown. The family does not live downtown. I’ve also seen some 5-floor medical buildings in the VERY expensive Carmel. They couldn’t afford to park a bike in Carmel. There’s also an occasional reference to Indiana University, and to the Indy 500, but never to anything campus specific at IU, and once there’s some famous orchestra conductor who is in Indianapolis, and conducting, apparently, the barely professional Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra with no reference to the world-famous Indiana University School of Music (yes, people come from world-over to study there). And though Ann must live on the westside (by process of elimination), she never griped once about racetrack traffic. Anyway, there’s never any reference to anything Indianapolis-specific, that a resident would recognize-- or that a Hoosier from any city would recognize, like the things you get all the time in shows set in California and NYC-- Sparkletts water, or ConEd, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/33 "2022-09-23T19:43:58Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > A city police officer shows up at the apartment, and says he’s from the IPD. The Indianapolis police department is referred to as the IMPD, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, to differentiate it from the ISPD, the Indiana State Police Department. Prior to 2007, what is now the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) was known as the Indianapolis Police Department (IPD). ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/34 "2022-09-23T19:44:36Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > The family does not live downtown. I’ve also seen some 5-floor medical buildings in the VERY expensive Carmel. They couldn’t afford to park a bike in Carmel. My daughter lives in Carmel. Very expensive there, but I live in the Bay Area and the house prices are dirt cheap in comparison. I get your point, but I chuckled at that. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/35 "2022-09-23T19:47:06Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > There’s a lot of movie/shows set and filmed in Chicago, and I can’t help but notice when they get the trains wrong. Usually a line being on an elevated track when I know that in that area it’s a subway, or connections that don’t exit, or lines directly over a street in a neighborhood where the lines run over alleys. Most of us have probably seen _The Blues Brothers_, and remember Elwood’s tiny room in a flophouse. If IMDb can be believed, that very same room was home to Kirk Douglas in _The Fury_ a few years earlier. > [@Cervaise](#): > > - During one sequence, you pass through a large passenger-and-vehicle ferry that’s been beached near downtown. In the pilothouse, you find a journal that describes the boat’s route from California up the coastline to Seattle. An outsider may think nothing of this, but Pacific Northwesterners know this is a Washington State Ferry, which transits exclusively between ports in the relative safety of Puget Sound. Not only are these ferries never taken past Anacortes in actual practice, they simply aren’t seaworthy on the open ocean, and wouldn’t last a day in the conditions of the Pacific. I’m not sure that’s true. According to Wikipedia, the Super class of ferries (_Hyak_, _Kaleetan_, _Yakima_, and _Elwha_) were built at a shipyard in San Diego in the late '60s. I’m not sure what special planning or precautions are done to travel up the Pacific coast, but apparently it can, and has, been done. > **[Super-class ferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-class_ferry)** > > The Super-class ferries are a class of 382-foot (116 m), 144-car ferries built in 1967 for Washington State Ferries. > The Super-class ferry was designed to complement the smaller Evergreen State-class ferries, as well as to replace the aging Kalakala. The design of the Super class was done in Seattle by W.C. Nickum and Sons, a naval architectural firm, and Washington State Ferries. Funding for the Super-class ferry design and construction was made available by the United States Department of Hous... ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/36 "2022-09-23T19:49:59Z")
My brother lives in Northridge, CA, and used to live in Hollywood. His house cost a mint, but he makes a lot, too, that makes what I make look like peanuts, but what I make goes further than what he makes. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/37 "2022-09-23T19:56:47Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > But if you _are_ a longtime local, there’s a bunch of deep-tissue stuff that tells you the game’s design team did not include anyone from Seattle, and that their research mostly amounted to looking at maps and “touring” the city via Google Street View. That game got be twice, both as a past resident of Seattle and a current resident of Santa Barbara. Both representations in the game are a strange combo of serious attention to detail interspersed with WTF moments. The maps are what particularly stood out to me. Let me be clear that I am not expecting a game to be a playable atlas. Needs of gameplay dictate that somethings have to be rearranged and I’m fine with that. But the Seattle neighborhood maps you find in the game have both correctly named and placed neighborhoods as well as odd typos and misalignments. Harder to make wrong than right, IMO. At least the maps explain how [Queen Anne has become an island](https://i.redd.it/5oze0q14e1791.jpg)… In Santa Barbara, Constance Avenue (a key gameplay location) is in the wrong place, most notable because I live only a couple blocks away from the real world location. A glance at the map in game solves the mystery. There are two Constance Avenues in the game environment. One on the east side and one on the west side. Why? Other than that, the Santa Barbara map is extremely accurate, as opposed to the Seattle map. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/38 "2022-09-23T20:06:58Z")
Yep The saguaro grows almost entirely in Western Mexico and Arizona, with some plants in California (where people can not dig them up ans steal them). So a few in the rugged areas of CA would be okay. There used to be more in CA. On another note- Almost all of NCIS is filmed in Santa Clarita Calif. - which looks very little like the East coast area they are based in. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/39 "2022-09-23T20:15:13Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > _One Day at a Time_. Are you referring to the series that ran from 1975 to 1984? Were the elevator laws and election laws the same back then? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2022, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003/40 "2022-09-23T20:22:22Z")
The election laws absolutely were. Not positive about the building codes, but considering the age of many buildings I’ve lived in that are three stories, and were built in the 70s of before, and didn’t have elevators, they probably were. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-tv-shows-set-in-a-location-you-know-well-but-obviously-not-filmed-there-or-just-gets-something-wrong/972003.md?page=3)