There’s an episode of Miami Vice where the two detectives have to go to the Bahamas to arrest a drug kingpin. Now I have never been to the Bahamas, but I have been to the US Virgin Islands, and their version of the Bahamas suspiciously has a lot of American flags flying in the background and police cars with the Virgin Islands crest on them (complete with American flag). Also everyone drives on the right hand side of the road which being a British colony, they should be all driving on the left.
The movie “Identity Thief”, with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman, has a scene where they are driving across the Mississippi River into downtown St Louis, on a bridge that does not exist at that location in real life. The bridge is actually in Chattanooga and was digitally inserted. Having grown up in the St Louis area, that was definitely a “wait… what?” moment.
Actually they drive on the left in the USVI, too. But I take your point about the flags.
Even more obvious should be the topography. The Virgins are hilly; the Bahamas are flat.
I came to mention another topographical error: the early 90s film The Fugitive is set throughout northern Illinois (including Chicago), yet there is a scene with about an 800-foot dropoff (above a dammed river in a canyon) that can’t be anywhere in the Midwest (I think the scene was filmed in Idaho or Montana or maybe Colorado).
North Carolina - Cheoah Dam
That reminds me of Neil deGrasse Tyson pointing out to James Cameron that the stars in the sky over the titanic were wrong (mirror image, IIRC).
The movie Twilight was set in the town of Forks, Washington. Except for a few exterior shots of the high school, none of the movie was filmed in Forks. Most of it was shot in and around Portland, Oregon. The only thing they got right was a couple scenes shot in Port Angeles, the dress store and eating at a restaurant. There are a couple places in Forks trying to make a buck off the movie.
What I’ve never understood is why try to redress the Virgin Islands as Bermuda (or LA as SF, or Vancouver as every other city)… why not just change one sentence in the script? “Oh, we crossed out the word Bahamas, too expensive to shoot there.” Wouldn’t that be so much easier?
[tangent] I still wish someone had said “Oh, we crossed out ‘French’, because we switched to a starship captain with an English accent.”
If a French person learns English in England, would you expect them to have an American accent?
It’s set in the 24th Century. France had been a protectorate of Great Britain for centuries by then.
When the owners of the “blue house” from Lady Bird gave Greta Gerwig permission to film there, they reportedly thought “Oh, it’s just some small indie film, it won’t be a big deal.” Then when the film got a bunch of accolades they were suddenly inundated with a stream of people taking selfies in front of their house. Which they are cool with as long as you stay on the sidewalk. And it’s probably died down a but in the years since the movie came out.
Vince Gilligan did exactly that. Breaking Bad was originally going to be set in San Bernardino. But it was cheaper to film in New Mexico. So he just changed it to Albuquerque.
The X-files was supposedly set in Washington DC (they are FBI agents after all) but none of the street scenes look close to DC streets. It was produced in Vancouver and Los Angeles.
One of the X-files movies supposedly took place in West Virginia, but was obviously filmed in the Rocky Mountains.
The owners of the “Goonies House” in Astoria OR have had to ask the city for parking and driving restrictions on their street due to the incessant attention of fans.
My niece and a few of her friends made a pilgrimage to Forks years ago. I just rolled my eyes.
The Americans was set in Washington, DC, but mostly filmed in New York. But I’m not familiar enough with the DC area to say whether it looks right.
Supposedly there are a lot of security restrictions that make it really difficult to film in Washington, DC. But The X-Files was from before 9-11, so those restrictions may not have been in place at the time.
My older granddaughter, when she was a tween, was very much into the Twilight books and movies. As part of a vacation to the Seattle area, we drove her out to Forks. The look of disappointment on her face as we drove into town was unforgettable. (On the other hand, she had a blast wading in the ocean near La Push.)
Oh, speaking of Indianapolis, there is a Criminal Minds where the crime was supposed to have taken place on Christmas Eve, right after the family had been to one of those travelling parking lot carnivals.
There aren’t any of those in the winter in Indianapolis.
Another Oops! by writers who live in S. California.
People get New Jersey wrong
1.) In The President’s Analyst (James Cobern’s 1967 spy comedy) William Daniels’; character is supposed to b living in Seaside Heights, NJ. Seaside Heights is a beach community, built on a barrier Island. The MTV Beach house was located there, as were most of the scenes in Jersey Shore. But the scenes in the movie looked like some upper middle class suburban town nowhere near the shore.
2.) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai has scenes that are supposed to be set in Grover’s Mill, NJ. (the premise being that the War of the World invasion that Orson Welles broadcast actually did take place, only it was Lectroids, not Martians. They established themselves, all taking the first name “John” and building the Yoyodyne company there.) Grover’s Mill is actually a section of West Windsor Township, and is REALLY small. I think it’s smaller than the Yoyodyne factory. In any event, there are no palm trees nearby, as shown in the film. (I should know – my wife grew up there, and her sister was instrumental in setting up the War of the Worlds monument in town). There IS a nearby building that has brightly colored conduits all over the outside (like the Parisian Pompidou Center), which my wife and her friends dubbed “Yoyodyne”.
The movie’s scenes ostensibly set in New Brunswick, NJ, also pretty clearly aren’t.
Hocus Pocus is set in Salem, Massachusetts. And some scenes actually were filmed there. But not most of them. Salem is a really small, cramped town, and looks nothing like what you see in the movie. I haven’t seen the new sequel, so I don’t know how that looks.
There was a popular ABC sitcom, The Middle, that went off the air a few years ago, which took place in rural Indiana. One bit that rubbed me the wrong way involved the family traveling from their home to a shopping center and on the way they crossed a covered bridge. Um, no. No one crosses covered bridges in Indiana just going from here to there. You have to make a special trip to cross one.
There is a sign welcoming visitors now. My wife and I stopped by a few months ago while we were in the area.
There was a very funny Canadian espionage comedy called Insecurity that aired for a few seasons; a friend of mine was actually one of the stars. It was set in Ottawa, which was a first in my memory, but was filmed in Regina, I think. Though there was a bit of a thrill in hearing, for the only time in my life I’m sure, lines like “He’s being held at a safe house in Orleans,” (my parents live in Orleans, suburb in the far east end). There were the pro forma establishing shots involving Parliament Hill, but most of the exterior shots were obviously shot nowhere near Ottawa.
Another fun aspect of the Spot Toronto game is American shows ostensibly set down south but are shot in the winter. Both Sue Thomas, F.B. Eye and Hannibal took place in a Washington D.C. (and Baltimore, for the latter) that was seemingly always under a foot of snow.