"It's a bit of a mystery, yes, but if ya look at the clues, you can figure it out."
The location of the city, state, region or sometimes even the country in which a work is set is never revealed or intentionally hidden.
It’s most often used as a Running Gag, but it can also be used in drama to create an atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty. Leaving a location unspecified can help it serve as a geographic Audience Surrogate. It can serve to create a City of Adventure (if only because very few real locations have every possible thing to see and do). Other times, the writers simply never see a reason to bring it up.
Creator Provincialism and No Communities Were Harmed come into play if the location is vaguely based on a real place, but here the difference is that the creators can also play fast and loose with the accuracy. Nevertheless, fans will still sometimes go to extensive effort to piece together clues and pin down the location, which usually just leads them to conclude that it’s set wherever it was filmed.
The trope is named after Springfield, the hometown of The Simpsons, which even has its own Separate Simpsons Geography Thing. “Springfield” is one of the most common namesnote for towns and cities in the United States, so the name serves as an indicator of an Everytown, America.note
Compare City with No Name, Everytown, America, and Fictional Province. Contrast No Communities Were Harmed and Canada Does Not Exist, where the setting is based on a real-life location but never outright identified, and Informed Location, in which the location is clearly specified. If the place is given a generic Mathematician's Answer of a name, then it's a Business of Generic Importance. The temporal version of this trope is Ambiguous Time Period.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Black Fox: Brad City's location isn't given, though it evokes American architecture.
- The town that D.N.Angel is set in is a strange case. All the characters have Japanese names and they seem to follow Japanese customs, but the town's architecture makes it look like a seaside European village. The anime added a character who claimed to be an exchange student from America, but otherwise countries aren't really mentioned. The audio commentary for the English dub has two of its voice actors asking, "Where is this set, anyway? France?"
- Just like the Devil May Cry games' fictional settings, it's difficult to pinpoint the locations of Capulet City and Morris Island, the respective named settings of Episodes 3 and 8 in Devil May Cry: The Animated Series. Although, being named after Romeo and Juliet from the British Author William Shakespeare hints that the former has British influences.
- Dragon Ball is heavy on Worldbuilding, but it’s still not clear where on Earth much of the action is taking place. None of the nations are named or specified, and cities have names like “East City” and “Ginger Town”. The series started out based on Journey to the West, so the setting (especially early on) feels like a fantasy hybrid of Japan and China. It's not even clear if their "Earth" is even the same planet as ours, or they just happened to have it called the same thing, as pretty much nothing on Dragon Ball's world resembles anything like ours. On the rare occasion that Earth is clearly visible from space in the franchise, at the very least the land masses roughly correspond to real life.
- Gangsta.: While Ergastulum has quite diverse population, it mostly keeps to naming convection of European intermediate countries. No actual position is given and nothing is known about the outside world, aside from establishing an alternate history.
- The Girl I Want is So Handsome! takes place in an unspecified part of Japan. The only time actual place names are mentioned is near the end, when Hanna upsets her girlfriend Rei by deciding to go to college in Hokkaido, which would force them into a Long-Distance Relationship for at least a year, since Hanna is a third-year and Rei is a second-year.
- It's never revealed what country the jungle in Haré+Guu is in. It does have Indonesian flowers, bears, and orangutans, but the rest of the wildlife is totally bizarre.
- Most of the race locations in Initial D are actual mountains, but Akina is a notable exception. It’s somewhere in Gunma and looks kinda-sorta like the real-life Haruna; beyond that, details are sketchy at best. The closest settlement is “S City”, which doesn’t help. The course in the manga also doesn’t match the Haruna course in the video games.
- Is the Order a Rabbit? is supposedly set in Japan; everyone follows Japanese customs, eats Japanese food, and uses Japanese currency. But the town is modeled after Colmar, a town in Alsace – a region of France with a strong German influence, so there are both French and German influences as well (like the German-style Christmas market). And the military rations shown in Episode 3 include things like raisin walnut, marshmallow fudge, and panna cotta, which the Real Life Kaiju Defense Force is unlikely to provide. Eventually, it would be revealed the series exists in The Multiverse together with all the weird What If? events the series produced for April Fool's Day, and that (from our perspective) "The girls live in a European-styled town" is just an oddball parallel universe that exists between the universe where Chino is a magical girl and the universe where the girls are all conductors on a galactic railroad.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: In Diamond is Unbreakable and JoJolion, Morioh is stated to be a suburb of "S City" in "M Prefecture." This hints at it being an offshoot of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture (where the series's author grew up), but nothing about either the town or what is seen of the larger "S City" matches up with the real-life historic city.
- Much of the Nasuverse media is set in or around three fictional Japanese cities: Misaki, Fuyuki, and Mifune. Fuyuki is a coastal city modeled after Kobe, while Misaki lies further inland, near Tokyo. Beyond that, we know nothing about where they might be.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi features Mahora Academy. All that can be determined of its location is that it's likely somewhere in the Kanto region of Japan (so somewhere near Tokyo).
- Ojamajo Doremi has Misora Town (or “Misora City”), which is claimed to be in the Kanto region of Japan (i.e. near Tokyo). There is a real Misora Town, but that’s in Otsu, in the Kansai region.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Daten City and neighboring Oten City are equally vague. The setting itself is an Americasia, so while we see several Eagleland references, Daten City also has parts that look just like a Tokyo suburb.
- Prétear is set in the fictional Awayuki Town, somewhere in Japan. We're shown that the town appears to be on a small island connected to the main part of Japan by a bridge, but it's hard to tell much else.
- Pretty Cure:
- Futari wa Pretty Cure is set in Wakabadai, an amalgam of various suburbs surrounding Tokyo on different sides. There is a real town by that name, but it's not anywhere particularly near Tokyo.
- Yes! Pretty Cure 5 is set in a city that is supposedly somewhere in Japan. But it’s full of French signs, and some fans have noted that it looks like The Theme Park Version of London.
- Princess Tutu is set in the town of Kinkan, which is translated to "Gold Crown" in the English dub. But nearly all the text in the series is in German. Only in the last episode did we see a clue as to its location, where a town map named the town "Goldkrone" — German for "Gold Crown". This implies that it's either in Germany or a fantastic equivalent. It appears to be based on the real-life German town of Nördlingen.
- Mitakihara, in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, is one of the stranger examples of this trope: there's a lot of very recognizable architecture, but it puts the series setting in thirteen different cities on four different continents. note While by all accounts it and other cities in Madoka, such as the neighboring Kazamino, Asunaro, Hohzuki, Kamihama, Takarazaki, Matsumiya, Kirimine Village, Futatsugi, and Yukuni are located in Japan, they don't have a confirmed location in Japan itself beyond some hints in some maps that, in the anime, Mitakihara and Kamihama are in the northeast of Japan's main island of Honshu, with some of the cities having relative locations to those cities at best, though in turn the game Kamihama, which is based on the city of Yokohama which is located to the south of the anime location at several points shows a warmer climate than being in Northeastern Honshu would imply at several points, muddling the issue between two different mediums. Puella Magi Tart Magica averts this as the locations visited are based on the real-life locations associated with Joan of Arc, who is the titular Tart.
- Tiger & Bunny: It is unclear exactly where Sternbild is. It appears to very similar to America culturally, but it has it's own currency (the sterndollar) and seems to be a man-made island in the ocean, meaning it's possibly a sovereign nation unconnected to any other.
- Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha are both set in Uminari City; all we know about it is that it’s somewhere on the coast of Japan. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT places it somewhere in the Tokyo area.
- Umi no Misaki is set on what is for all intents and purposes a fictional small island in the vicinity of Okinawa.
- Itomori in Your Name is located somewhere in the Gifu province in Nagoya, just east of Kyoto, but doesn't exist in real life (or maybe it did, but was wiped away by the comet and no one noticed).
- Yu-Gi-Oh! is mostly set in Domino City, which is almost definitely somewhere in Japan. Some speculate that it’s a fictitious Tokyo. Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL takes place in Heartland City, and all we know about it is that it’s somewhere else in Japan. Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, the first season at least, takes place in Maiami City, which looks more like U.S.A.'s Miami, although the school and cram schools makes it feels more like they're in Japan. And Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS is set in Den City, which is even more ambiguous, as it's never even stated to be in Japan, and the only houses seen don't really resemble Japanese houses, yet everyone have clearly Japanese names.
Asian Animation
- Catch! Teenieping: The show takes place in the small town of Harmony. It seems to be set somewhere in the West or at least not in South Korea, given that the locals all have Western names and the usage of Western values (such as the characters wearing shoes inside their homes, though this could be because of Limited Wardrobe).
- Miniforce: It is hard to tell if the main setting of the show takes place in South Korea or somewhere in the West, since most of the human characters have Western names (with the exception of Miri and Uncle Doori), and none of the school-aged characters wear uniforms, but it is possible that it takes place in a westernized version of South Korea or a country that is a mix between South Korea and some Western country.
Comic Strips
- While we know Agnes is set in Ohio, it's not clear where, except that it's the southeastern part of Ohio.
- Beetle Bailey: When first seen, Camp Swampy had palm trees and was definitely not in Alaska. That's about all we have, except the palm trees aren't there anymore, and it now snows there.
- Big Nate has never specified its location, though it's most likely set somewhere in Maine (where Lincoln Peirce is from), which is supported by the fact that there is plenty of snow during the winter. Even with that information, the city Nate lives in is unnamed. The name of Nate's school doesn't give any clues either, simply being called P.S. 38.
- Calvin and Hobbes never makes any direct mention of where it's set, and Calvin and Hobbes themselves aren’t quite sure. Played for Laughs when Ms. Wormwood asks Calvin what state he lives in during a geography class and he replies "denial". Ms. Wormwood states she can't argue with that.
"If I remember my atlas, we live in a big, purple country.
And our house is by the giant letter 'E' in the word 'States'."- That said, there are some hints that it’s in Bill Watterson's hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland. This strip
◊ clearly shows the Great Lakes when Calvin imagines he’s climbed up to outer space, and a splash panel from a Sunday strip with GROSS had a sign next to their treehouse reading “Beware: falling buckeyes!”, a reference to Ohio’s nickname of “the Buckeye State”. Also, a giant-sized Calvin is depicted carrying the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop on the back cover to The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.
- That said, there are some hints that it’s in Bill Watterson's hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland. This strip
- Curtis takes place in a city that was unnamed for decades – until 2009, when Curtis and Barry play hooky to watch Obama’s inauguration in Washington. They travel there by city bus, proving that they live in Baltimore.
- Dick Tracy's adventures take place in an unnamed analogue of Chicago (based on the presence of Capone counterpart Big Boy). Interestingly, the 1990 Warren Beatty film adaptation never revealed the city's name (the characters just called it “the city”), but many film critics automatically assumed it was Chicago.
- Dykes to Watch Out For: The city is never named, but depicted as a medium-sized American Midwest town with snowy winters, a university, and a large and diverse LGBT community. Maps included as title pages in some of the collections show a surprising number of streets named after famous lesbians. Author Alison Bechdel has said that the look and character of the city is very loosely based on Minneapolis.
- FoxTrot has hinted that the town in which the Fox family lives is called Hillsdale (e.g., a Hillsdale Mall in an early strip, H's on the school team's uniforms, etc.), but besides an address in the first strip, no specifics are given. Peter and Roger are fans of Northeastern sports teams (like the Boston Red Sox, Washington Redskins, and Chicago Bulls), but even that doesn't necessarily place them in the Northeast. There are some indications that they live in the Chicago metro area, since Roger takes a flight from the Chicago airport in one arc.
- Garfield's location is never specified in the comics, though according to the animated special Garfield Goes Hollywood, it's Muncie, Indiana, Jim Davis' hometown.
- Westfinster, the town where Heathcliff takes place, is a mystery. Given its fishing industry and snowy winters (especially prevalent in animated spinoffs), Westfinster's most likely setting is either New England or the mid-Atlantic.
- On the Fastrack and Safe Havens never clarifies exactly where the main hometown, Havens, is, other than it's a seaside city, it's located a long way away from the state capitol, and it's not Seattle (since in Safe Havens the Seattle Supersonics were relocated to Havens instead of Oklahoma City). That Havens is capable of launching spacecraft does narrow it down to certain states though.
- Peanuts never explicitly stated its setting, but the few clues given suggest either Minnesota (where Charles Schulz grew up), Northern California (where he spent the last four decades of his life), or a fanciful combination of the two. The frequent snow depicted in Peanuts would seem to tip things more to Minnesota, since snow in Northern California is pretty rare outside of the Sierras.
- Lampshaded in one strip from April 1995, when Rerun says that marbles-playing bully Joe Agate is "the best player this side of the Mississippi".
Lucy: Which side of the Mississippi are we on?
Rerun: I don't have the slightest idea. - The strip never brought up the name of the town, but it's been mentioned in other Peanuts material on at least two occasions: the 1963 book Security is a Thumb and a Blanket calls the town "Pinetree Corners", while the 2002 TV special Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales lists it as "Sparkyville, USA".
- Lucy did once win a trophy for "Miss Fussbudget of Hennepin County", which would conclusively put them in or near Minneapolis. On the other hand, the character 5 once said his last name was 95472 and further claimed that was also his family's ZIP code, which would put them in Sebastopol, California.
- Lampshaded in one strip from April 1995, when Rerun says that marbles-playing bully Joe Agate is "the best player this side of the Mississippi".
- At least one early strip in Pearls Before Swine said the strip took place in Stephan Pastis' hometown of Albany, California, which is near San Francisco. However, this is never mentioned again, and a later series shows the characters needing to take a cross-country bus trip to San Francisco.
- Zits is never precisely clear on where it’s set, but a number of references suggest that it’s somewhere in central Ohio (although Jeremy does state that he was born in Nebraska). The strip is drawn by Jim Borgman, a chief cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, which is in southern Ohio. A 2024 strip has Connie stating touring Europe would be easier if it was closer to Dayton, suggesting the strip is either in or near Dayton.
Eastern European Animation
- Investigation Held by Kolobki is an interesting example. Originally, the city the story takes place in was called “Ensk”, a Russian catch-all term for a small provincial town meaning "City n". The sequel shorts and video games, though, have established it as Berdychiv, Ukraine, which moves it into "Wacky Detectives in Berdychiv" territory.
- KikoRiki: The exact location of KikoRiki Island has been a subject of speculation for years, and there hasn't been a definitive answer since. The island got a variety of landscapes: desert with many cactuses, mountains with few active volcanos, forest, jungle and sea at the same time, making it impossible to pinpoint a place on Earth that would match all of these. Dmitry Yakovenko, one of the lead writers, thinks Chamomile Valley would be somewhere close to Kazakhstan.
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: Most of the stories in this series are post-canon and have a rural setting in an unknown US state. It may or may not be located in Flyover Country. The clues given so far:
- Pigeons, starlings, and crows live there as wild birds, and their winters are cold enough for snow ("The Blood Brother").
- Sunflowers are grown there ("The Ship" and "The Kippies").
- It's a reasonable commuting drive away from an unnamed large city which is home to a college with a veterinary school ("The Coffee Shop").
- There's a freight train line in the very general vicinity, located between their house and the unnamed large city. A tornado also occurs in that city's outskirts ("The Wind").
- It's several hours drive from the nearest ski resort ("The Ski Resort").
- It's about a three-and-a-half hour drive away from Prairie City, a locale large enough to field a Single A baseball franchise ("The Baseball Game").
- It's not near any of the cities named in "The Imaginary Letters."
- Age of consent in the state where Penny lives is 16 years old ("The Cameo").
- By the Sea: Obi-Wan lives on a western temperate coastline, but Anakin is stated to have grown up in a "miserable sandy place" on the other side of the (English-speaking) country. Whether this was intended to be Obi-Wan living on the eastern coast of the US with Anakin coming from the southwestern US (an area that is sandy), or just a bit of deliberate Artistic License is unclear, and no surface-world place names or other regional or geographical information is given. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter that much to the story.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series goes back and forth on this. An earlier episode revealed it to be near Yellowstone National Park (i.e. Montana or Wyoming). A later episode lampshaded when the weather reporter simply calls the nearest county “that unnamed county that’s next to us.”
- We don’t know where exactly Cellar Secrets is set, but we can assume it’s in America (the author’s home country), based on little details like the house having a basement and characters having middle names. But we don’t know exactly where in America they live.
- Similarly, in Kiryuuin Chronicles, we can assume that the fic takes place in America; Rye is community somewhere in New York, and Satsuki's father, Soichiro lives there, although other details suggest that the story itself (or most of it) takes place somewhere in the Midwest.
- Much like the aforementioned two, we don't know where The Outside takes place but we do know it's an America, as in one piece of dialogue, Rei specifically says "state" (other countries tend to use terms like "province", "prefecture", or "region").
- D.J.I.N.N.: Way to Home: the author, koolkame, has stated that Heatherfield is located somewhere in northern California.
- In the expanded Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, Rimwards Howondaland is an Expy of South Africa, but an exaggerated version, based on scattered hints dropped in canon, and pushing what everybody thinks they know about South Africa and White South Africans all the way off the scale. note . The city of Piemberg was imported for this purpose from the black farces of Tom Sharpe and given a Discworld twist or two, largely as a rural backwater place for characters to come from. Word of God says that the author didn't properly do the research, so that in some tales Piemberg is in Natal, or a Natal-like place, and in some it's in the Transvaal, or a Transvaal-like place. The Drakensberg Mountains shift around a lot, too. Piemberg is best thought of as a shifting Brigadoon for all the South African clichés to find a home in. Lawkes Drain is fairly nearby, for instance...
- From Behind Bars:
- The story identifies the lions of The Lion King as being of the Panthera leo massaica subspecies (now known as Panthera leo melanochaita subspecies). This pins the series as taking place somewhere in east Africa, but the exact location is unspecified.
- Mufasa and Scar are sent to a European zoo. It's never described where the zoo is; however, one of the characters is based on a lynx from a Polish zoo.
- Part of the worldbuilding of The Guide to Lost and Hidden Locations of Earth and Near-Earth is set on averting this, with locations given to traditionally undetermined locales.
- Autobot City is located in Oregon, while Sub-Atlantica is in the Puerto Rico trench. Said Sub-Atlantica is part of the Sea of Monsters, as is the Great Asparagus Sea. The Cybetronian Ship Atlantis was also in the Sea of Monsters, and is not to be confused with the other Atlantis cities and locations.
- Frozen's setting of Arendelle is placed around the border of Sweden and Finland. Weselton and the Southern Isles are in modern times a part of Sweden and Finland.
- The islands of Berk are in the Norwegian Sea.
- Latveria is in Southeastern Europe in the Banat region near the Carpathian Mountains. East of it is Mechanicsburg.
- Central City is in Missouri.
- Gotham City, where Batman dwells, is in New Jersey.
- Amity Park is in Ohio near Lake Erie.
- Tremorton is in Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area.
- Kahndaq is on the Sinai Peninsula.
- Birdwell Island is south of Cape Cod.
- Prehistoric Park is given East Africa as a location.
- The Xiaolin Temple is in the mountainous parts of central China, while Chase Young's lair and territory is in the Zomia geographic region.
- Retroville is in Texas.
- Miracle City is located in Sonora Mexico.
- Townsville, Angel Grove, and Bellwood are all in California: Townsville is in the Bay area, Angel Grove is between Los Angeles and San Francisco, while Bellwood is in north-central California. San Fransokyo is across the bay from San Francisco proper, and is also the location of the Ace Attorney series in the setting.
- Guys Being Dudes: It's ambiguous where the setting is, or if it's even on Earth vs. the Pokemon world. Earth pop culture and Mexican food exists, but canon regions are also mentioned. All that's known for certain is that it's somewhere that it's summer and hot in June, that Team Valor HQ is within a bus trip of Orre, and that it's not Kanto, Johto, Alola, or Orre.
- The Home Series:
- The series takes place in Hurricane, Utah. References to surrounding cities and areas in Washington County, such as St. George and later Zion National Park, are made, and some locations are even visited by the crew.
- Animatronicon, a multi-day convention and exposition aimed at animatronic businesses and enthusiasts, takes place in Flagstaff, Arizona.
- The location of Chipper's is left completely up in the air. It apparently takes hours to reach from Hurricane, and there's nothing but desert and highways between the town and the establishment, but beyond that, there are no hints as to where it might be.
- It's very ambiguous where Amestris is in the Alternate Universe Fic i'm giving you a nightcall. Countries like the U.S. and Japan exist separately, and Amestris is further implied to have been created post-WWII based off Edward I's stories of the actual Amestris.
- Quartz, TX from In the Eye of the Beholder is said to be located somewhere between Houston and Galveston, with part of the QIB visiting Houston at one point to visit a con.
- Joe the Great takes its sweet time getting around to telling you that Joe, Fred, and Sam are originally from the city of Boomfield. But neither it nor its sequels Magic Squad, Ultimate Magic, or Superverse (which actually stays close to home instead of going all over the US) ever bothers to mention which state Boomfield is in. It never snows there and there is a desert within fifty miles; Wild Mass Guessing usually puts it somewhere in California or Nevada. Although in Joe the Great: Magic Flock, a map on a computer showed Boomfield to be in the upper Midwest near the Minnesota-Wisconsin area. However, in Joe the Great: Ultimate Magic, it is revealed Ethan and Joy ran away to New York City as children and the now abandoned fashion show appears which is the same one Joe, Fred, and Sam met Ethan and Joy, this would indicate Boomfield is in New York.
- The Pokémon Squad's Unnamed Town parodies and subverts this trope. While the town was first mentioned as "an unnamed town" in an early episode, it was later established that it's indeed the town's name. It was also later established that Unnamed Town is located on an island called "Unnamed Island", which is between Kanto and Johto.
- Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy takes place in the fictional town of Oriyama, which neighbours the equally fictional town of Tsukimiya. Add another equally fictional town, Isuten, and you have the Tri-Cities. The author is still not sure where exactly they’re located.
- There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton:
- The story Thanatos Scowled establishes Amity Park as being in Minnesota, near both the Great Lakes and the Canadian border.
- The author notes in Chapter 13 of From His Vantage Upon the Moon state that Tremorton is in Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh and in the location of real world Templeton.
Music
- "857-5309/Jenny", the song where Jenny's Number originates, by Tommy Tutone. It's a Telephone Song that references the phone number 867-5309. However, it doesn't include an area code or country code, meaning that the number referenced could be anywhere in the US, Canada, or a country that uses a similar-looking phone number (such as many Caribbean countries, or a US territory such as Guam). Word of God has it that the number belonged to the lead singer's ex, to flood her phone with nuisance calls, but there's no telling what town, city, county, state, province, or country "Jenny" is in from the number.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic was asked on Reddit about where the family in the song "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" lived. His answer?
Weird Al: They live in Springfield, like the Simpsons.
Myths and Religion
- Polynesian culture, as a result of being spread around several distant Pacific islands, tended to refer to The Old Country in this way. Hawaiian mythology, for instance, refers to “Kahiki”, which is often interpreted to be Tahiti, but can theoretically mean anywhere in Polynesia that isn't Hawaii. The Maori concept of "Hawaiki" is similar (and may or may not refer to Hawaii). Recent DNA and linguistic studies have suggested that Taiwan could be the original Polynesian homeland—but that may be too deep in time as under this hypothesis Taiwan is the ancestral home for the whole Austronesian language family, and the Polynesian languages are just a sub-branch of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the family (which also includes most of the major languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines).
- According to the legends of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), its inhabitants originally came from the island of Hiva, possibly the Marquesas Islands.
- Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztec people, is in an undefined location. The descriptions of the place seem to contradict each other, and could be anywhere between Nayarit in central-western Mexico to the Sonoran Desert (in the area where the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California meet the U.S. states of California and Arizona). The only thing everyone agrees on is that it was somewhere north of where Mexico City is today.
- The Garden of Eden from the Book of Genesis. Could it have been a (semi-)real place? It's possible. All we know is that its location was somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and there are two more rivers mentioned that have no modern equivalent. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, though, are real, and would put the location "somewhere in the Fertile Crescent," or modern-day Iraq, Syria, Iran, Jordan, or Turkey (or, according to Pavel Chekov, "just outside Moscow", not to mention Mormonism's belief that it was located in the area around Independence, Missouri).
- Caphtor, the homeland of the Philistines in The Bible (Amos 9:7). The Book of Jeremiah suggests that Caphtor is an island ("the isle of Caphtor"), but the term might alternatively refer to a seashore. It is assumed Caphtor is the modern day Crete.
- Some historians believe that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by the Minoan civilization of the island of Crete, and its decline as a result of various natural catastrophes including a volcanic eruption.
Podcasts
- The Neighborhood Listen: The podcast is about the community in the American town of Dignity Falls, but the location of Dignity Falls is never revealed. The geography of the town is rather loose and made up on the fly by the hosts, though it is established through a Running Gag that almost every street in town is named after an American president, favoring the more obscure ones.
Professional Wrestling
The whole concept of Parts Unknown with all of its different "communities" would seem to apply here, especially because wrestlers from these places are never shown "there". Because of Kayfabe, it's never explained how these wrestlers get paid, how they get home, if they have passports, etc.
- Sometimes, wrestlers would be billed from the same fictitious location as another:
- John Cena (as "The Prototype") and Soldier Ant were both billed from "Classified" at different times. Was it the "same" "Classified?"
- 'The Shah' Hack Meyers and Sami Callihan were both billed from "The Last House on the Left." Was it the same house?
- The Tag Team The Skyscrapers, Chris Hero and Eric were all billed from "Metropolis".
- Glenn "Kane" Jacobs (as "Doomsday") and The Ascension were billed from "The Wasteland."
- Dutch Mantel was billed from "Oil Trough, Texas", a town whose exact location in the state was undisclosed. When asked where Oil Trough was, Mantel answered with a question to the effect of "Do you know where *insert Texas town here* is?", and if the answer was "yes," he replied "It ain't nowhere near there!"
Puppet Shows
- The Muppets:
- Kermit's swamp, initially in an undisclosed location in The Muppet Movie, is revealed to be in Florida during The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and then Kermit's Swamp Years puts it in Mississippi, not far from Jim Henson's birthplace. That seems to have stuck, with Denise commenting that his state tree is magnolia in The Muppets (2015) episode "The Ex Factor".
- The locations of the Muppet Theatre in The Muppet Show and KMUP Studios in Muppets Tonight are never revealed in the original series either, since what exists beyond the show isn't relevant. (The CGI background of the MuppetVision studio in The Jim Henson Hour arguably isn't intended to have a realspace location.) There's a slight hint early on that the Muppet Theatre might be in London (the spelling of "theatre", a reference to The Tube in The Muppets Go to the Movies, and, of course, that's where they were actually filming), but it mostly seems to be in the US. It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie establishes it's in a city with a park, a bank, and, for some reason, Whos, but doesn't name it (even the Official Historical Landmark certificate just says "the City". The skyline outside Piggy's window in the alternate universe is New York, but there are some issues with taking that literally). The Muppets (2011) makes it part of Muppet Studios in Hollywood.
- In Mustard Pancakes the location of the host, Courtney Campbell’s house is never revealed in the show.
Radio
- In the Focus on the Family radio show Adventures in Odyssey, the location of Odyssey is never actually revealed (naturally, neither is Campbell County). It’s implied to exist somewhere in the American Midwest. At some points, it’s explicitly stated to be in Ohio, but other mentions contradict this (such as a claim that it was a month’s wagon journey from Virginia). The wiki still maintains it to be in Ohio.
- Centerville, the hometown of the title characters in The Aldrich Family, is in an unnamed state. The fact that many episodes that aired during the winter months reference heavy snowfall implies that it is north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but that's as much as can be easily inferred.
- Dead Ringers:
- After getting a spare episode, the cast of Line of Duty spend it trying to figure out where the show is actually taking place. They figure it's probably Birmingham, but their wide variety of accents, spanning the length and breadth of Britain, makes that a toss-up as well.
- A similar dilemma befalls the cast of The Archers during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the tier system is introduced, since they've no idea which bit of Britain they're in, and therefore which tier they're in, and the cast's accents don't help.
Tabletop Games
- Heroes Unlimited (Palladium Books): The precise location of Century Station is left up to the GM. This partially to suit the needs of their campaign, and partially as a nod to the famous larger-than-life, vaguely situated comic book cities which inspired it, like Metropolis and Gotham.
Theatre
- Avenue Q takes place, according to Word of God, “in an outer-outer borough of New York City.”
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The West End version does this. Despite specifying where Augustus, Veruca, and Violet are from (Bavaria, England and California, respectively), Mike is said to come from "Suburbia". The Broadway adaptation fixes this problem, stating instead that Mike is from Idaho, though the onstage background during his introduction still suggests he lives in an Everytown, America.
- As explained by this exchange in Footloose:
“What he means is that he’s moving to some little hick town that nobody's ever heard of.”
“Hey! People have heard of it!”
“Oh, yeah? What's the name of it?”
“You can find it on any map.”
“What's the name of it?”
“Folks are flocking there from all over.”
“What's the name of it?”
“Beaumont!”
“Beaumont?! Where the hell is Beaumont?!” - Glengarry Glen Ross: While the Glengarry Islands and a few other (fictional) locations sold by the firm are in Florida, it is never revealed where their current focus, "Rio Rancho," is. There is a real Rio Rancho in New Mexico, and land there has actually become much more valuable since the play was written.
- The film adaptation is even more confusing; while it was shot in New York, the dialogue is full of Chicago-area references.
- The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is implied to be set in the U.S., but beyond that, it’s unclear exactly where. Consensus suggests that it’s Alabama, though; it’s near the coast (but not close enough), on the track of a hurricane that destroys Pensacola, within driving distance of Georgia, and of course mentioned in the “Alabama song”. But at the same time, there’s also a mention of Alaskan miners coming down the unspecified coast, which implies California.
- Starlight Express: It is never mentioned where the railyard the musical takes place in is set, despite the fact that competitors from numerous different countries around the world take place in the championship races. It would make sense if it was set in the country of performance- England for the West End production, America for the Broadway production, Germany for the Bochum production, etc- but there are already national trains representing the wide majority of those countries, including the three mentioned previously. To partially remedy this issue, many fans have settled on the idea that it is set in the (entirely fictional) Apollo-Victoria railyard, commonly referred to as 'the AV', which was named after the original West End theatre that Starlight Express took place in.
- The location of the nameless city in which Urinetown is set is a complete mystery. All that can be inferred (though the presence of Senator Fipp) is that it is in the U.S.
Toys
- The marketing department for Sylvanian Families apparently can’t make up their mind on the location of Sylvanian Village. Early marketing materials claims the village is somewhere in North America. But towards late 2000s they changed their minds and imply that Sylvanian Village is somewhere in the UK (via the presence of an analogue of Queen Elizabeth II and some of the villagers named after the royal families). Then lately, their Japanese website started putting up stories that imply that the village is somewhere near Tokyo.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney: While the Western localizations has the series take place in an alternate universe Los Angeles that features heavy Japanese influence, the original version is just set in an unnamed Japanese city.
- Artificial Nexus: There's no explicit mention of where exactly the COEUS facility that Hank and Susan are in is located. The knowledge base's history on COEUS mentions that COEUS has expanded internationally, but when discussing COEUS' origins it only refers to the country of origin as "the country". The closest to an answer is that the various employees mostly have fairly European names, hinting that it could be somewhere there, but nothing concrete can be pinpointed.
- CLANNAD: The location of the town in Japan is not specified.
- Daughter for Dessert:
- The name of the city where the majority of the story takes place is never named, nor is the name of the state ever mentioned. Using context clues, the story probably takes place in California, possibly in a secondary city such as Pomona or Merced.
- The location of Whiskeyville is likewise never stated. A prime possibility is Texas. However, there are no towns named Whiskeyville anywhere near California.
- So in what country exactly does Double Homework take place? From the architecture, it is somewhere in Western Europe. It is ruled by a king/queen in a constitutional monarchy. It is a small country that gets little media attention. It either contains mountainous terrain, or has an easy travel deal with at least one other country that does. Unfortunately, that leaves no possible real countries. In addition, the location of the much-hyped Winter Olympics throws another wrench into the equation. In Rachel’s epilogue, Rachel, her mother, and the protagonist travel to the host city by bus, so the games must be held somewhere in Europe as well. This leaves two possibilities for the host city: Sochi, Russia (site of the 2014 Winter Olympics) is the most likely, but it’s more practical to travel there by plane from anywhere in Western Europe. The lesser possibility is that the story takes place all the way back in 2006, and the Winter Olympics in question were the ones in Turin. Alternatively, though, the game could be set in the near future instead (the 2026 Winter Olympics are set to be held in Milan).
- Famicom Detective Club: Most of the locations you visit don't have their locations in Japan clearly stated. In fact, the name of city where your agency is located — and, by extension, the setting of The Girl Who Stands Behind — is only ever named in the instruction booklet for The Missing Heir and the art books, which place it somewhere south of Mount Myōjin... of which there are several in Japan. However, other context clues and pieces of character dialogue through the franchise suggest that it's probably in Kanagawa Prefecture, Kantō.
- The Many Deaths of Lily Kosen: The exact country that the story takes place in is ambiguous - all that we know about the setting is that the characters are living in a small town. Victoria's choice of clothes hint that it may be Japan, though.
- In Melody, some parts of the setting look American, while others look European. However, since Christmas (presumably) takes place in the summer, the story must be set in Australia (the home of Mr. Dots) or New Zealand.
- Paper Perjury: Azure City is roughly based on San Francisco (which explains the laws in favor of castle doctrine and heroes Lying to the Perp, as well as the law against service cats), but the setting is original and explicitly has some details that clash with real life.
- Kadath in Shikkoku no Sharnoth is either somewhere north of Britain or in an alternate dimension. Evidence tends to point to the latter, apart from the fact that to get to Kadath you have to keep going north.
Web Animation
- The Northern English town in which Lee Hardcastle's Ghost Burger is set is never really given a precise location, but from what Ritchie tells us, it's close to an ocean, so it's probably somewhere in Lancashire or Yorkshire, since both parts of England have coastlines.
- Homestar Runner is set in "Free Country, USA". Not even the characters really know where it is (apparently, it's in "Place"). The only map of the place showed the continental U.S. as a free-floating continent, with Free Country in the exact center (so presumably Nebraska). And in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, even locations within Free Country move around freely. That said, Creator Provincialism puts Free Country somewhere on the East Coast (radio stations begin with "W", and they're within driving distance of a Hardee's restaurant). This confluence could easily place Free Country in rural Illinois, Indiana, or western Ohio.
- Mystery Skulls Animated: Vivi, Arthur and Lewis are from a town called Tempo that is somewhere in the vast state of Texas.
Webcomics
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is set in a town with haunted woods, a pharmaceutical research facility, a warehouse district, a pirate bar and various other locales useful for the plot or action scenes. It is eventually revealed, through a series of hints in art and dialogue, to be Cumberland, Maryland (and later lampshaded in the Alt Text).
- In Blood Stain, Dr. Stein's house is known to be in a city by the Mediterranean Sea. Said city is dubbed “God-knows-where” in lieu of an actual place name. In chapter three, the protagonist is shown an envelope with the house’s address, showing that the city is literally named “Godknowswhere”.
- Bob and George is set in an undisclosed location. They’re presumably Japanese, but if so, why do they celebrate the Fourth of July?
- El Goonish Shive’s Moperville is in an undisclosed location somewhere in the US. At one point, in order to avoid revealing the location when Sarah is trying to search obituary records, the State abbreviation is replaced with asterisks. Fans have established that Moperville is most likely based on Naperville, Illinois, at least according to the wiki.
- A Ghost Story is set in a large, unnamed city. Though there is a functioning public transit system there, and in one instance a Chicago Cubs game is on television, there are virtually no clues as to location.
- Gunnerkrigg Court and Gillitie Wood are located somewhere in the UK (apparently in Campbell Country). So far, only two further clues to their location have been given: the nearby Annan Waters (a real river in Scotland), and a letter from Kat (whose contents imply that the Court is not in Scotland). It's eventually revealed that while the entrance to the Court is somewhere in the U.K., most of the Court is contained inside a Pocket Dimension.
- Homestuck originally played this trope straight and left locations ambiguous, but Andrew Hussie did an about-face and gave all the heroes’ homes exact coordinates, which puts three of them in various parts of the U.S. and one in the South Pacific. Only Dave’s location is kind of ambiguous; he’s near Houston somewhere, but Hussie hadn’t drawn the city to look like Houston.
- Housepets! is set within Babylon Gardens, a suburban neighborhood somewhere in the United States; the exact location is not specified and has even been un-revealed, although the author has stated that the main characters’ home was based upon a former residence of his in North Carolina.
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! is set in the aptly-named suburb of Generictown. It has not yet been specified what city Generictown is a suburb of. It is adjacent to Pitcheresk Forest, with a mountain range beyond that, including Mount Generic (which is notable for having a hole in its peak, thanks to events in one storyline).
- Joe vs. Elan School: Aside from the titular school itself (which is in Poland, Maine), the trope is justified as the author is writing an autobiographical story and wants to remain anonymous for his own safety.
- The beginning of the comic seems to indicate that Joe's hometown is somewhere in Missouri, but it declines to say exactly where. The prequel comic Joe Before Elan School would later avert the trope and establish Baltimore, Maryland as where Joe was living when he was sent away.
- In college, Joe attends a foreign exchange program in a city called Vrátskajeki in an unnamed Ruritania. He doesn't say which country it's in, but his descriptions of the country hint that it may be a thinly disguised Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- Kevin & Kell has never made explicit where exactly Domain is, but there are many hints that it's the parallel to Atlanta, Georgia, in the human world: references to events that happened in Atlanta (such as the 2014 Snowmageddon that stopped traffic, here reimagined as shed fur causing the traffic jam), the coordinates for Dorothy's lair in the Wild matching just south of Alpharetta, part of the Atlanta metropolitan system, and a reference to I-85, a highway that runs through Atlanta.
- Tailsteak intentionally avoids giving a precise location for the setting of Leftover Soup, though occasional hints are provided. One common theory is that it might have been set in Portland.
- The location of the city in The Letters of the Devil is never specified. See also City with No Name.
- Little Nuns: Aside from characters speaking and writing in English, the convent's location remains a mystery. Fanon placed it somewhere in Australia based on a few strips involving kangaroos. But this was disproven by a strip where a platypus (actually a disguised mole) was explicitly identified as a "non-native animal". The series also consistently featuring winter season seems to indicate that it might takes place in an English-speaking country of northern hemisphere area.
- Exactly which country Miss Abbott and the Doctor takes place in is never made clear, other than people speaking and writing in English.
- qxlkbh is set in Citygradville, which has absolutely no clues to its location. The narrator lampshades this:
- Narrator: In a city of ambiguous location...
- Unwinder's Tall Comics is set somewhere in Minnesota. Eli Parker tried to avoid revealing its exact location for a long time, but eventually, a conversation came up which would have been too awkward to write without the characters mentioning the town’s name. It wound up being set in Garen, Minnesota, a real-life Ghost Town.
Web Original
- Classic Alice is set in Valeton; all we know about its location is that it's "somewhere in New England". Based on the leak of Alice and Andrew's phone numbers, we know that Alice is from Connecticut and Andrew is from Long Island.
- The Grossery Gang webseries takes place in Cheap Town, which has various contradicting elements to its locale that makes it impossible to pinpoint, such as Australian-style wall outlets and snow during Christmastime.
- The early episodes of RedLetterMedia's Half in the Bag are inconsistent regarding where Mr. Plinkett's house is. It would switch between Teaneck, New Jersey (setting of Mr. Plinkett Reviews) and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (real location of RedLetterMedia). After they confirmed the fan theory of there being two different Plinketts, they settled on "Fake Plinkett" being based in Milwaukee.
- The house used for exterior shots (also used for the Plinkett Reviews) is indeed located in Milwaukee, in the Riverwest neighborhood. However it obviously does not match the fictional address of 874 Hauser Street given in-universe. Where exactly in Milwaukee the Plinkett house is located is dependent on the context of whatever joke "storyline" the characters are acting out at the time.
- The Hidden Almanac: The Gregorian calendar, and references to real holidays and products, all suggest the setting may be the real world. Except, well, a lot of obviously impossible stuff happens and the only places mentioned are fictional. The City with No Name and the country it resides in have an erratic mix of English and US American cultural and political traits, but references to its neighbors predate the European discovery of the New World, further confounding where it might be located. So maybe a very strange corner of Earth, or (given references to The 'Verse) an alternate Earth with lots of weird stuff going on?
- In Legion of Net.Heroes, Net.ropolis floats from state to state. It has its own senator for this reason.
- Ransom Notes Daddy's House Church is vaguely located "just off the I-95". Taylor Ransom was brought up in Tennessee, nowhere near the titular highway. (which connects Florida and Maine; even non-Americans can grasp that this covers over 1500 miles of the USA). It is very possible that Taylor is blurring things here so that no actual American church can be identified as the location. The very earliest videos in the story say that the previous name of Daddy's House Church was Crestwood Community Church. A look at a gazeteer of placenames tells us there are only three places in the USA of any significance called Crestwood: one each in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. This is possibly not vague enough - unlike Springfield - so a change of name was mandated.
- Aside from Stampy's Lovely World obviously taking place in a northern setting, as it makes liberal use of Dreaming of a White Christmas and establishes it's a relatively short distance from the North Pole, where exactly in the north or even what country is never specified.
- T.O.T. mostly takes place in a subdivision called Green Water, and it's implied the characters live somewhere out in the country, given that the police force is small and consists of deputies. However, no one ever says what county, city, or even what state the story is located in.
- In Twelve Hundred Ghosts Scrooge apparently lives in England, America, Japan, and Canada all at the same time, and in different time periods.
- Unwanted Houseguest: Despite being set in an Eldritch Location, this is eventually averted. Doctor Wolfula discovers Owl Head Lighthouse within a few miles of the Houseguest's home while studying a map of New York.
- Welcome to Night Vale's eponymous town is known to be somewhere in the deserts of the American Southwest (and by Word of God not in Texas), but beyond that the location is uncertain. The fact that local grocery store is a Ralph's suggests that it might be in southeastern California, although the fact that the town's natives have never seen mountains complicates the issue, as most of the candidate locations are actually quite hilly. "Best Of?" reveals that there actually are hills in Night Vale, but the citizens carefully avoid looking at them because they don't want to be reminded of the strange shadow creatures that watch them from the distance. Given that space and time don't function normally in Night Vale, it may not have a definite physical location at all.
- Winter of '83 deals with the events that bring to an end to the small town of Fawn Circle, Minnesota. However, it is never state where exactly. Segment One states that the station K83FC is owned by the Spencer Sheridan Foundation, who works with Redwood County, MN. However, Segment Two reveals that the transmitter is so low powered that it's only supposed to only serve Fawn Circle but could transmit to Chaska "on a good day". Chaska is a little over 76 miles from Redwood County's edge if using Redwood Falls as an edge point.
- You Have Become Your Avatar parodies the trope; Marcie!Joshua purchases a map that has every city labeled "Springfield".
Other
- The London Underground has a fake station called “Ashfield West,” which has no particular location and is served by no particular line. It’s technically used for training purposes.
- Similarly, the telephone exchange "555" in the US and Canada is not affiliated with any town, city, county, state, or province, and most often is used to denote a fictional phone number, or a number for training purposes in the telecommunications field.
