Hey, It's That Place! - TV Tropes

California

• The Griffith Observatory is a staple landmark of L.A. and Hollywood and, as such, has been prominently featured in countless films, TV shows, music videos, etc.. Just a few examples include The Terminator (and Terminator Genisys), Bowfinger, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Yes-Man, Gangster Squad, La La Land, Rebel Without a Cause, and the Star Trek: Voyager 2-part episode "Future's End".
  • Red Alert 3 converts it into an artillery piece against the Imperial landing at Santa Monica.
• 380 S. San Rafael Ave., Pasadena, California, 91105◊: Erected in 1928, this mansion might be among one of the most recognized exteriors in film and TV. It was perhaps most famously used as "Stately Wayne Manor" in the Batman (1966) TV series and movie. Other notable appearances include, but are not limited to Stand by Me, Rush Hour (1998), Kit Ramsey's estate in Bowfinger, Hell House in Scary Movie 2, Dinner for Schmucks, Bridesmaids, Murder, She Wrote, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
• Circus Liquor (Clueless, Alias, Private Practice)
  • The store where the clerk asks for "more" (teeth, skin) from smokers in the "Real Cost" anti-smoking PSAs does not have the official Circus Liquor sign, but it is extremely similar (same clown, but it says "Jiffy" on the drum instead of "Circus Liquor"). It's likely the owners didn't want to be associated with the Real Cost’s infamous Totally Radical PSAs.
• The former Unocal building, now part of Los Angeles Center Studios. The lobby and some other interior spaces are available for filming, and you might recognise them from these photos. (Alias, The Boys (2019), Cold Case, NUMB3RS, NCIS, Mad Men, The X-Files: Fight the Future, early commercials for Life, even a California tourism commercial of all things).
• Diamond Ranch High School (various high-tech facilities in Live Free or Die Hard, The Cell, Serenity, Impostor)
• There's a house somewhere in California that was used in Charmed, Journeyman, and the film Premonition.
• For anybody who watched MTV in the '80s, The Rainbow Bar and Grill is an example.
• The concrete ditch◊ surrounding the Los Angeles River (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Boomtown, 24, The Core, The Italian Job (2003), Point Blank, Grease... The Other Wiki has an extensive list). There's an entry here as well.
• Bronson Canyon and Caves, a cave system set in a rock quarry that has been used in countless movies and TV shows for over 100 years, due in equal parts to its craggy appearance looking suitably alien and desolate when shot in closeup but also for being located in Griffith Park, and therefore easily accessible for filming purposes.
• The Brandeis-Bardin Institute library, also known as the House of the Book; featured once in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and once in Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Descent"), and served as the visual for the exterior of the command center/power chamber in Power Rangers. As well as several commercials and a movie nobody has ever heard of.
  • The Museum from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
  • Another museum on Chuck.
  • Also the headquarters for the Visualize cult on The Mentalist.
  • Also also a part of Hell in an episode of The Twilight Zone (1985).
• The Universal Studios back lot is highly recognizable from Back to the Future, Murder, She Wrote, Remington Steele, and other works. Unfortunately, it was heavily damaged by a massive fire in June 2008, and the rebuild wasn't entirely a perfect replica.
  • Colonial Street, on the backlot, made famous as Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives, actually first gained cult status as "Mayfield Place" in the Tom Hanks Comedy The 'Burbs. Also seen in The Munsters and Leave It to Beaver.
• The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute was featured prominently in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, although Greeked into simply the "Cetacean Institute".
• Point Dume in Malibu is a favorite spot for beach filming. It's most memorable appearance was at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968), but it also appeared in several of the other films in that series as well (it's where the apes land in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, for example). Tony Stark's home in Iron Man was located there via CGI; Psycho Beach Party was was filmed there as well. It also appears in several commercials.
• Mugu Rock, found along the Pacific Coast Highway north of Los Angeles, appears regularly in car commercials. The Rock was formed when a path for the Pacific Coast Highway was cut through the mountain.
• The Bradbury Building's unusual architecture has made it a staple of sci-fi/quirky TV and film, most notably Blade Runner.
  • And the Genesis music video for the song "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight."
  • The Outer Limits (1963) episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" was filmed almost entirely inside the Bradbury.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has the Hallowbrook Hotel as a run-down version of the Bradbury.
• Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles slopes down along Bunker Hill past several photogenic Los Angeles landmarks like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the MOCA. As a result, it shows up in a surprisingly large number of car commercials.
  • Running three blocks parallel is Broadway, whose grimy, old-new architecture has been a popular location for films like Blade Runner and Inception.
• If there's a scene at a carousel, there's a good chance it was filmed in one of two L.A. locations: the outdoor Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round or the indoor carousel at the Santa Monica Pier.
• The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Ennis House has been in quite a few movie and TV productions, perhaps most famously the Vincent Price version of House on Haunted Hill (1959), Blade Runner and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• There are several mansions in southern California that have appeared in a dozen or more adult films each.
• Torrence High School was used as the school in Beverly Hills, 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and multiple movies.
• The Craven Estate in Pasadena, owned by the American Red Cross, was used as the headquarters building in JAG. It has also been used for many other series like 24, Bones, Commander in Chief, Judging Amy; and movies like Enemy of the State, Rush Hour 3, Swordfish and Traffic (2000).
• Randy's Donuts in Inglewood got destroyed in 2012 and served as the meeting place between Tony and Nick Fury in Iron Man 2. It's iconic giant donut is also popular to place in background shots to establish that the scene is taking place in LA.
• If a scene in a movie or TV show is set in a cafe, odds are better than good it will be shot at The Quality Cafe, an out-of-business cafe that's used exclusively for movie and TV shoots.
• (Former) Johnie's Broiler in Downey, CA, a classic American suburban diner built in 1950s which appeared as an old-fashioned diner in a lot of movies and TV shows (see the link for the list). The establishment went through a lot of bad times in 2000's, including being almost completely demolished illegally. Now restored and operating as a Bob's Big Boy Restaurant.
• Cracked's 5 Places You'll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie lists several landmarks that have appeared in multiple films, such as the Griffith Observatory and Biltmore Hotel in LA. It goes on to suggest writing crossover fanfiction based on the universes that used the Mount Hollywood Tunnel.
• The Caltech campus represented its own fictionalized copy, the California Institute of Science ("CalSci"), in NUMB3RS. The older Mediterranean-style buildings on the east and south parts of the campus (especially the faculty club known as the Athenaeum) also appear in a fair number of films and commercials. Ironically, Real Genius (which was also set at a Caltech stand-in) had its outside scenes filmed at Occidental and Pomona; the interiors of buildings and dorms were recreations.
  • Caltech Hall can be seen in the opening credits to Legally Blonde standing in for the fictional "CULA (California University, Los Angeles)".
  • The university was featured as itself in the 2015 Disaster Movie San Andreas.
• The Oviatt Library◊ at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) will either be instantly recognized as Sky High or Kelvin Timeline Starfleet Academy from Star Trek (2009).
  • Interiors within the CSUN campus were used for the cosmetics facility in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde with the Oviatt seen in one shot.
  • CSUN exteriors also served as the "University of Los Angeles" in the Pauly Shore comedy Son in Law with the Oviatt in the establishing shot.
• The High Tower apartments in Hollywood were famously used as Philip Marlowe's residence in The Long Goodbye, and also showed up in Dead Again.
• John Marshall High School has a lengthy list of film credits owing to its main building's Collegiate Gothic architecture and its location just east of Hollywood and south of Burbank.
• Commercials or films that need a busy train station lobby or other busy public area often shoot at Los Angeles Union Station. The old ticket lobby is no longer in use, so it's a frequent filming and event space.
• Long Beach State's college basketball arena, The Walter Pyramid, frequently appears in TV shows and commercials depicting basketball games, because it's in the Thirty Mile Zone and looks like a big arena on the inside (even though it only has 4,000 seats). The unique ceiling design makes it immediately recognizable.
• In The Mickey Mouse Club serial Annette, the entrance of Annette's high school is that of the (now former) animation building at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
• As mentioned in the introduction, Vasquez Rocks National Park near Agua Dulce has been in almost every TV western series imaginable as well as the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena", which gave it the name on this very wiki of Kirk's Rock. It was also featured in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and served as "Bedrock" and other places in The Flintstones 1994 Live-Action Adaptation as well as the prequel.
  • As a nod to its history with Star Trek, the park was used as exteriors for "Vulcan" in Star Trek (2009).
• A music example: the same small stone house in Topanga Canyon was used for the cover photos of The Notorious Byrd Brothers by The Byrds (1967) and Hand Sown...Home Grown by Linda Ronstadt (1969).^note 
• There's a McDonald's in City of Industry, CA, that exists only to be used for shooting McDonald's commercials. Renovated and rebuilt many times over the years so it matches the latest exterior designs used by the company, it is not open to the public and does not actually serve customers, but has appeared in every single McDonald's television commercial for decades.
• Numerous car commercials were filmed on the Sixth Street Viaduct over the Los Angeles River and adjacent railroads, until the bridge was demolished in 2016 because concrete cancer had rendered it likely to collapse in an earthquake. Other distinctive concrete viaducts over the river have also been used.
• The Kaiser Steel Plant in Fontana, California, is used in films needing either an ominous industrial setting or a post-apocalyptic site (or both), such as A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, In the Aftermath: Angels Never Sleep and Mortal Kombat: The Movie. When it was still in operation, it was the filming location for the 1952 romantic comedy Steel City and was toured by Ayn Rand while she was doing research for Atlas Shrugged.

Elsewhere in the USA:

• 55 Central Park West, otherwise known as the Ghostbusters Building. Note that it's not as tall as the film makes it out to be (or has a super-conductive paranormal antenna/pagan temple on the roof).
• Monument Valley is in a number of films and other media outlets, particularly Westerns, and most particularly those directed by John Ford.
• The detention room in The Breakfast Club in suburban Chicago was re-used in Not Another Teen Movie. For bonus points, Paul Gleason reprised his role as the principal!
• Virtual example: 90% percent of Machinimas using The Sims 3 will be filmed in recognizable Sunset Valley locations. This is because Sunset Valley is the only neighborhood which comes pre-made with the game.
• Old Tucson Studios. Built initially for the movie Arizona in 1939, its buildings were used as the sets of countless Western television shows and movies, including episodes of Gunsmoke, Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, and Have Gun – Will Travel. It is also a tourist attraction, though most of the original sets were lost in a fire.
• The Webb Institute's Stevenson Taylor Hall was used as Wayne Manor for Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Gotham, and Joker (2019), and appears in Great Expectations.
• "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler: The Grand Canyon was used as the secondary focus on Tyler in many other shots in the video.
• The rooftop gardens at 620 Fifth Avenue in Rockefeller Center are commonly used as a filming location in New York City.
  • Spider-Man used them as the place where Spider-Man deposited Mary Jane after rescuing her from the Green Goblin's attack on Times Square.
  • Daredevil (2015) used the gardens in "Nelson v. Murdock" for a private meeting between Wilson Fisk and Madame Gao. They are later used in The Defenders (2017) where Madame Gao meets with Alexandra here, and where Alexandra has a one-on-one with Elektra as the Hand's plans are set into motion.
  • John Wick: Chapter 2 uses the gardens for a one on one between John Wick and Winston.
• The Fort Worth Water Gardens were used in various scenes in Logan's Run. It's also featured at the end of the 1980 TV adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven and music videos by Solange ("Almeda") and Kendrick Lamar ("N95").
• Cortlandt Alley in Lower Manhattan, New York is a stock location to film scenes set in alleyways in New York, while ironically, there are very few alleys in New York, and especially the island of Manhattan, movies and TV making them appear much more common.
• Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets station in New York is the stock Subway station in works set in New York, or vague metropolitan area in the US, including in the music video for "Bad" by Michael Jackson.

London

• Plenty of places in London may seem rather familiar...
  • Senate House, the administrative centre of the University of London, was said to have inspired the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four - and was used as such in the film adaptation. It's also featured in Richard III, Batman Begins, Fast & Furious 6, Jeeves and Wooster and Killing Eve.
  • The Quad of University College London (UCL) is often used (particularly in Spooks), as it is a passable imitation of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. Girls Aloud filmed a KitKat advert on the steps, and it’s also been in the 1959 version of The 39 Steps, Minder, Poirot, the Doctor... Series, Raising the Wind, and even The Sooty Show.
    • Christopher Nolan, a UCL alumnus, uses it a lot in his films.
    • Any time a British film or TV show has a scene outside an observatory, chances are it's UCL's one in Mill Hill.
  • The British Museum has appeared, usually as itself, in Bulldog Jack, The Ipcress File, The Day of the Jackal, The Mummy Returns, Justice League and Detectorists.
  • 30 St Mary Axe, affectionately known as the Gherkin, is popular when the script calls for a contemporary-style European Skyscraper (it's been in A Good Year and Basic Instinct 2, among others). Previously, the nearby Lloyd's of London building was used for this purpose.
  • Vauxhall Cross, the real-life headquarters of MI6, has appeared in several Bond films. It was attacked in The World Is Not Enough and blown up in Skyfall.
  • Battersea Power Station is a familiar sight — its Wikipedia page mentions that it has been used as a shooting location in "many films, television programmes, music videos, and video games". Some of these pre-date its appearance on that Pink Floyd album cover; its earliest known appearance on film was in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage in 1936, before the second half of the power station was built ^note . The power station is actually a major plot point in the Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) episode "Money to Burn", in which Jeff is suspected of being involved with a criminal gang who are stealing old banknotes that are being sent to there for incineration.
  • Holloway Asylum was used in Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes" video, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and other 80s standards. It's also appeared in Inspector Morse and Jack the Ripper.
  • Waltham Forest Town Hall and the neighbouring Assembly Hall are London’s stock location for a large inter-war building due to the art deco exterior and surviving 1930s interiors. Notable appearances include many different fictional locations in Poirot and the exterior of the hotel in Misfits series two part six. Many recordings of classical music have been made in the Assembly Hall as well.
  • St. Leonard's Church in Shoreditch has appeared in Rev. (in which it's St. Saviour's Church) and the second series of Luther.
  • Parts of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were filmed in Borough Market, where Bridget Jones lives in an apartment above a pub — the Globe Tavern, which also features in the Michael Caine film Blue Ice.
  • If a film is going to have a scene set on the London Underground, then it's a good bet that it will be filmed in one of two places:
    • The disused Aldwych station was regularly used for filming even before its closure as it had a peak hours only service on weekdays - scenes in Battle of Britain and Death Line were filmed there. Since it closed in 1994, Aldwych has been commonly used for filming period Underground scenes - among them V for Vendetta, The Edge of Love, Rock & Chips and Darkest Hour.
    • For more modern Underground scenes, the old Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross (which were closed in 1999 after the line was extended from Green Park to Stratford, bypassing Charing Cross) can be used. Scenes for The Bourne Ultimatum, Sherlock, Skyfall and Killing Eve were filmed there.

Elsewhere in England

• Several British productions have used the gate of Chatham Dockyard (now Chatham Historic Dockyard after the Naval base closed in 1984) as a prison gate. The linked photo doesn't show the wooden doors, but when closed they look convincingly prison-like.
• The Sunbury Pump House, near Shepperton Studios, Surrey, provided interiors for Red Dwarf and Gamesmaster. The Red Dwarf cast invoke this trope on the DVD commentary as they try to remember what other series were filmed there.
• The village of Lacock in Wiltshire has been used as the location for many a Costume Drama - among them Pride and Prejudice, Cranford (Lacock was Cranford) and Downton Abbey. Lacock Abbey, the local stately home, was Wolf Hall in, err, Wolf Hall. Also, several scenes in the Harry Potter movies were filmed in both the village and the Abbey (one of several places across Britain that has been used as Hogwarts).
• Stoke Park, a well-to-do country club in Buckinghamshire, was the venue for James Bond's golf match against the titular villain in Goldfinger. Bridget Jones later went there for her mini-break with Daniel Cleaver, and in 2004 three more movies were filmed there — Wimbledon, Bride and Prejudice and Layer Cake. it's since been used for Rock N Rolla, and has also been used for TV shows like The Professionals and Midsomer Murders.
• Lincoln Cathedral has stood in for Westminster Abbey in The Da Vinci Code and The Young Victoria. For The King's Speech and The Crown, they used Ely Cathedral.
• Oxford is, of course, the centre of the Morseverse. Although the colleges in those shows are fictional, real colleges were used as filming locations; one of the more modern-looking university buildings was even used as the police station in later episodes of Endeavour. Oxford has also been used for the Brideshead Revisited adaptations. In the Harry Potter movies, Oxford is one of several locations that have been used for Hogwarts interiors.
• As of 2021, Blenheim Palace is reported to have appeared, sometimes as itself, in 71 productions — more than any other English stately home. Among many others, it has featured in the James Bond, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter franchises, while on the small screen it has been in Inspector Morse and The Diplomat, among many others.
• Highclere Castle is best known as the eponymous setting of Downton Abbey, but it has shown up in a number of other works, including Jeeves and Wooster.
• Sticking with stately homes, Wrotham Park also gets used rather a lot (its proximity to London — just within the M25 in fact — no doubt helps). It's been in Jeeves and Wooster, Gosford Park, the Kingsman films, The Gentlemen, Downton Abbey, The Crown, etc, etc.
• Horsted Keynes Station on the Bluebell Railway has appeared in Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Downton Abbey, The Railway Children, Jeeves and Wooster, North and South, Sally Lockhart, Endeavour, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Scrapheap Challenge... It's a wonder that characters who go there don't come out in a completely different show. In 2013 there was a narrow miss when preliminary work for Downton Abbey started just as The Muppets were finishing a shoot.
• The former nuclear bunker at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex has featured in a number of TV shows and films.
• Durdle Door has starred in several films and music videos, such as the music video for "Shout" by Tears for Fears. The nearby beach at Lulworth Cove appeared in Doctor Who as Maidens' Bay.
• Down in Cornwall, the fishing village of Port Isaac starred as itself in the 2019 movie Fisherman's Friends and its 2022 sequel Fishermans Friends: One And All, having previously become well-known for being Portwenn in Doc Martin. Which was a spin-off of the 2000 comedy Saving Grace which was also filmed in the village.
• Car Share was based on the idea of two workmates commuting into work every day and the interactions they had in the car. The streets of Greater Manchester became an unintended third star in the series, and viewers with local knowledge gained an extra dimension of satisfaction by identifying the streets and the locations used, sometimes repeatedly. Peter Kay has played with this no end, adding driving scenes which make the route taken nigh-on incomprehensible, to the point of having some driving scenes filmed in Liverpool.
• In a lot of film and TV productions, Liverpool has doubled for locations as diverse as New York City, London, Chicago, Paris and Gotham City.

Scotland

• Ardverikie House in Inverness-shire featured in Monarch of the Glen and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen before it was used as the stand-in for Balmoral in The Crown.
• Eilean Donan Castle◊, ancestral fortress of the Clan MacRae, on Loch Long. Or, if you go by film only, it's the home of the Clan Macleod,, stands on a lake where a big scary monster has lived for hundreds of years, and is a branch office for MI6.
• Inveraray Castle has been in Downton Abbey (as Duneagle Castle, home of the Marquis of Flintshire), The Diplomat and A Very British Scandal. Bonus points to that last one, as the castle is actually owned by the Dukes of Argyll (the current Duke is the grandson of the one portrayed in the show).
• Doune Castle was used to depict various castles in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and benefitted from a considerable Tourist Bump as a result; Terry Jones even provided the narration for the castle's audio guide! It's also been in Game of Thrones (as Winterfell), Outlander and Ivanhoe. Appropriately enough for those last two, the castle was actually occupied by the Jacobites during the '45, and in another of Walter Scott's novels, Edward Waverley is taken there.
• Glasgow City Centre features a grid design with distinctive Victorian and early Edwardian-era architecture, which makes it feel surprisingly American in places. As a result, it is common for the city to double for East Coast or Midwest United States cities.

Wales

• In Wales, there's a lot of Doctor Who-related stuff going on, thanks to it being filmed in the BBC's Cardiff studio...
• The countryside around Beddgelert in Snowdonia National Park doubled as China in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life. It also doubled for the Khyber Pass in Carry On Up the Khyber.
• Pembroke Castle has appeared in The Lion in Winter, the BBC adaptation of Prince Caspian and The Bad Education Movie (as a castle in Cornwall in the case of the latter).

Vancouver (Stargate City)

• The Lions, a twin-peaked mountain north of the city (Rumble in the Bronx, MacGyver (1985), Battlestar Galactica (2003), Iron Chef's Canadian contestant). However, they are not the mountains featured on Twin Peaks.
• The Lions Gate Bridge (Final Destination 5, TRON: Legacy, Deadpool 2). The studio Lionsgate, which was founded in Vancouver, takes its name from the bridge, itself named for the aforementioned mountain.
• The Simon Fraser University Burnaby quad◊ and rotunda (Battlestar Galactica, J Pod, Masters Of Science Fiction, SG-1's Tollan homeworld, Andromeda)
• Whytecliff Park, a small beach sandwiched between cliffs and a small rocky island, shows up whenever a lonely beach is needed. (Eight Below, Series/Arrow,Once Upon a Time (2011), Supergirl (2015)
• The Caretaker's Cottage in Murdo Frazer Park is a small log cabin five minutes from a suburban shopping centre. But since its surrounded by thick forest, it shows up whenever characters need to visit an isolated wilderness cabin. (Psych, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time (2011), The Flash (2014),Stargate SG-1)
• Library Square◊ (Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, unaired Global Frequency pilot).
• Hatley Castle — not actually in Vancouver, but close enough for BC-based productions to use (Smallville, X-Men Film Series, Arrow)
• The Ovaltine Cafe (I, Robot, unaired Global Frequency pilot)
• The Chan Centre and other locations at UBC (The 4400, Battlestar Galactica, Reaper, Stargate Atlantis)
• The Capilano Suspension Bridge (Sliders, MacGyver (1985), The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, The 100)
• The Riverview Hospital, in Coquitlam, British Columbia. (The X-Files, MacGyver (1985), Smallville, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Continuum, Happy Gilmore, and Romeo Must Die).
• The Terminal City Iron Works in East Vancouver with the distinctive G&R Jacoe Chemical Co. painted on the side of the building has been seen in Supernatural, Fringe, Eureka, and Sanctuary.
• Mount Seymour (Supernatural, Highlander, Stargate SG-1, The X-Files, and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse).
• The Bloedel Conservatory and Aviary in Queen Elizabeth Park has appeared in Stargate SG-1, The Outer Limits (1995), Sliders, G-Saviour, Andromeda, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Beyond the Black Rainbow, Supergirl (2015), Legends of Tomorrow, Eureka, Fringe, Continuum, Supernatural and Timeless.
• The distinctive beach at Minaty Bay, just south of the Britannia Beach community, is a go-to for when you need a beach with an unsettling or sinister vibe. It pops up in Psych, The 100, Altered Carbon, The Flash (2014), Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, The Magicians, Travelers, Eureka, Supergirl, The Interview, Siren, and others.

Elsewhere in British Columbia

• Hatley Castle/Royal Roads University, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, has featured in numerous films; The X-Men franchise and Masterminds are among the better-known titles. Other Victoria landmarks seen or at least used include Fan Tan Alley (seen in Bird on a Wire), and the Royal British Columbia Museum (which hosted an episode of MacGyver (1985)).

Ontario

Thanks to regional tax incentives, this happens a lot.

• Toronto has appeared as various American cities — the locals joke that all you need to do to make the Downtown area look like an American city is change the colour of the mailboxes and put some litter on the floor.
  • It doubled for New York in Short Circuit 2, The Incredible Hulk (2008), Suits, and The Boys (2019).
    • Lampshaded in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in which Toronto plays itself, but in a fight scene at a film shoot, Scott is sent flying through an Empire State Building backdrop, which tears to reveal the CN Tower behind it.
  • It stood in for Chicago in Due South, to the extent that the American Consulate in Toronto was used for the exterior shots of the Canadian Consulate in Chicago. Lampshaded by the fact that, when an episode required the characters to go to Toronto, Chicago was used as a filming location.
  • It was also used for Chicago in Chicago (yes, really) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (appropriately, the city's Greektown neighbourhood featured prominently in the latter).
  • While Hairspray (2007) is set in Baltimore, it was filmed in Toronto.
  • Parts of the downtown were used as a stand-in for Washington DC in Designated Survivor (in which the President was played by a Canadian).
  • Red (2010) may well take the prize here, for it had Toronto double for several cities (Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Washington DC).
  • Parts of the University of Toronto have appeared as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Good Will Hunting, Princetown University in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and the university in Black Christmas (1974).
  • Casa Loma has stood in for any number of fancy houses and castles - most notably as Xavier's School in the first X-Men film.
  • The art deco edifice of the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant has appeared as as a lair for corporate villainy (The Pretender, Undercover Brother, Mutant X), a prison (Half Baked, Flashpoint, Mayor of Kingstown), a mental asylum (In the Mouth of Madness, RoboCop: The Series, Nightmare Alley (2021)), and a brewery (Strange Brew).
  • The City with No Name in which Police Academy is set? In real life, it's Toronto.
  • Sometimes, Toronto does get to play itself. Canadian films and TV shows like Being Erica, Coroner, Chloe and parts of Bon Cop, Bad Cop are actually set in Toronto as well as being filmed there.
• Numerous locations in Hamilton as well.
• Further north, North Bay has a history of this going back to the 1942 war film Captains of the Clouds which starred James Cagney and featured a cameo by Canadian World War I fighter ace Billy Bishop VC. More recently, it's been in Canadian films like Still Mine and The Colony. Plus, it appeared as Algonquin Bay, a thinly-disguised version of itself, in Cardinal.

Quebec

• Montreal has stood in for so many cities due to its well-preserved built heritage, it was reported that locals have jokingly asked, "which part of the States are we pretending to be today?"

Paris

• On Le Métropolitain, Porte des Lilas station is frequently used as a go-to location for filming on the system. In 1921, a short shuttle line connecting Line 3 and 7 was built, but this closed down in 1939. In subsequent years this short stretch of track became a testing area, and the abandoned platforms at Porte des Lilas (fittingly named "Porte des Lilas - Cinema") became an ideal filming location due to its typical Paris Metro architecture, lack of public access, and the fact that trains can still easily enter it.

Département of Oise

This area right North of Paris has a high concentration of big 17th-18th century castles (more akin to palaces), which makes it perfect for films set in such eras.

• The castle of Chantilly has been used for Le Gentleman d'Epsom, The Longest Day, A View to a Kill, Michel Vaillant, Beaumarchais, Farewell, My Queen and 2023's Three Musketeers duology, among others. Its world-renowned horse race facilities are also used sometimes (most famously in A View to a Kill).
• The castle of Ermenonville was used for Jean Renoir's Elena et les Hommes (1956), Les Visiteurs (1993) and its 1998 sequel, Claude Zidi's Arlette (1997) and Gabriel Aghion's Belle-maman (1999).
• The castle of Pierrefonds, known best now for playing Camelot in Merlin, also appeared in several other shows and movies-one example was as an Italian castle in the Highlander episode "Star-Crossed". Long before that, at least five swashbuckler movies starring Jean Marais (The Eagle with two Heads, Le Bossu, Le Capitan, The Miracle of the Wolves and Peau d'Âne) were shot there. And also Gramps Is in the Resistance.
• The castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte is often used when Versailles is not available ^note  as far as quintessential French 17th-18th century places are concerned, or really just to play its own role sometimes. Things that were filmed there include The Married Couple of the Year Two, Delusions of Grandeur (where it California Doubled as a Spanish castle), Que la fête commence, Moonraker (where it is a French castle displaced in California stone by stone, no less), Valmont, Revenge of the Musketeers, The King's Alley, Marquise, Ridicule, The Man in the Iron Mask, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time, The King Dances, Vatel, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Vidocq, Napoléon (2002), Marie Antoinette (2006), The Evasion of Louis XVI, Le Roi, l'Écureuil et la Couleuvre (about its former owner Fouquet, precisely), Versailles, The Emperor of Paris and Marie-Antoinette (2022), among many others.

Brittany

• The coastal castle Fort la Latte, or Castle of the Rock Goyon, in the Côtes d'Armor department, was used for 1931's Le parfum de la dame en noir, The Vikings, The Three Musketeers (1961), Lancelot du Lac (1970), the series L'Épervier and another adaptation of The Three Musketeers, The Three Musketeers: Milady.
• The port city of Saint-Malo is famous for its ramparts and tall 17th century buildings its inhabitants fought hard to rebuild near-identically after they were flattened during World War II. It can be seen in 1947's Cargaison clandestine, A Summer's Tale (1996), Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie and 1999's The Color of Lies, 2001's Cet amour-là, 2003's Monsieur N., 2011's Headwinds, 2014's Never on the First Night, 2015's In Harmony, 2016's L'Avenir, the 2021 series Gloria, 2023's Flo and 2023's The Three Musketeers: Milady (where it doubles as La Rochelle).

Atlantic Ocean coasts (Western France)

• The World War II German submarine pen of La Rochelle was used in Das Boot and Raiders of the Lost Ark (which were filmed there at the same time) as well as in the Das Boot series.
• The fortress/former prison of Fort Boyard off the coast of La Rochelle isn't just the site of the eponymous Game Show. A scene of Love on a Pillow was filmed there, as well as Les Aventuriers and Liberté-Oléron.

Dordogne

The département of Dordogne is exceptionally well suited for Period Pieces set in either The Middle Ages or The Cavalier Years with all its preserved castles, old churches and abbeys, towns that retained medieval looks and forests.

• The castle of Beynac (one of the best preserved of its kind in France) was used for Le Capitan, Revenge of the Musketeers, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time, Ever After, Chocolat, Fanfan la Tulipe, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and The Last Duel.
• The castle of Biron was used for Le Capitan, Revenge of the Musketeers and Brotherhood of the Wolf.
• The bastide (old fortified medieval town) of Monpazier. Ridley Scott really loves the place and filmed The Duellists and The Last Duel there. It was also used for films such as Le Capitan, The Musketeer (2001) or Fanfan la Tulipe.
• The old town of Sarlat-la-Canéda was also used for Revenge of the Musketeers, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time and Brotherhood of the Wolf, as well as Les Misérables (1982), Jacquou le Croquant, Nicolas Le Floch and Les Fauves.

Southern France

• The fortified medieval city of Carcassonne (which also gave its name to a tabletop game) in the Southern département of Aude is one of the most remarkable of its kind. Films that had scenes shot there include The Miracle of the Wolves, The Sucker, 1968's The Lion in Winter, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Les Visiteurs, The Musketeer (2001) and many others.

• The old city of Matera in Basilicate, Southern Italy (which can be seen as itself and in all its untouched beauty in No Time to Die) has served as stand-in for Jerusalem, of all places, in countless biblical films or similar stories (such as 2016's Ben-Hur) for obvious reasons, but also due to its ramparts. It also appeared as the city of the Amazons on Themyscira in Wonder Woman, with added CGI scenery.
• The Ancient Greek temple of Hera in Paestum near Salerno is one of the best preserved in the world and it's been used for many Sword and Sandal films. Two Greek mythology-based films with special effects by Ray Harryhausen were filmed there, 1963's Jason and the Argonauts and 1981's Clash of the Titans.

Asia:

• In many Hong Kong action films, there will be a fight in an abandoned industrial plant with a lot of pipes. This is actually a desalination plant that proved not be economically viable and is now used as a location for filming.
• Tokusatsu fans are familiar with quite a few locations in Japan that seem to be used every year, no matter what the series. This practice goes back to the original Kamen Rider, which prided itself on picking outdoor locations like dams, quarries and coasts for elaborate fight scenes. A comprehensive list of recurring locations from Toei series can be found here.
  • Super Sentai often uses Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Dome. When these appear in Power Rangers, they obviously aren't supposed to be those locations. One notable example is the Power Rangers Zeo episode Rangers of Two Worlds. The Zeo Rangers and Alien Rangers perform their rollcall outside Tokyo Dome... or rather, Angel Grove Stadium. The following season, the Dome was the base for the Rescue Zords and Artillatron.

Africa:

• The scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark with Indy threatening to blow up the Ark was filmed in the same canyon where R2-D2 was captured by Jawas in A New Hope. The canyon (which is located in Tunisia and is now known as "Star Wars Canyon") also appears in The English Patient.
• Monastir, Tunisia has a well-preserved Medieval Ribat fortification, that has been used for many shoots set in ancient Middle East or Rome, most famously Monty Python's Life of Brian, which was filmed not long after the more serious miniseries Jesus Of Nazareth was shot at the same location.

Middle East:

• The ruins of Petra, Jordan, have been seen (doubling for different locations) in such films as Arabian Nights (1942), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), the Arabian Nights TV miniseries (2000), and Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen (2009). Outside films, it also appears in the Tintin story The Red Sea Sharks.

Europe

• There's a good chance that a random live-action fairytale film for kids will have been filmed in the Czech Republic, and have a shot from the Charles bridge in Prague.
• You might recognize the Plaza de España in Seville, Spain as the Cairo officers' club in Lawrence of Arabia, the outside of Theed Palace in Attack of the Clones, or the presidential palace in The Dictator.
• The rocky isle of Filfla, South of Malta, is often used as the fictional Isle of Monte Cristo (which is supposed to be off the West coasts of Italy). It's been the case for the 1998 miniseries, the 2002 film and the 2024 miniseries.
• Trinity College Dublin has appeared in The Blue Max, The First Great Train Robbery, Educating Rita, Circle of Friends, Michael Collins and the RTÉ adaptation of Strumpet City.
• Liège-Guillemins railway station (Belgium) appears in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), where it is located in a town of planet Xandar, and Up for Love (Un homme à la hauteur, 2016), where it doubles as an opera house. It also features in The Fifth Estate (2013) and Gemini Man (2019) (2019), but in these films the scene is supposed to take place in Liège, Belgium.

• Hang'n With Mr. Cooper used the same set as Growing Pains for the first season.
• The house from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was used briefly in Charlie's Angels (2000). This was the scene where Drew Barrymore's character falls naked from her house.^note 
• Epitome Pictures doubles up on sets a lot, sometimes in really blatant ways.
• Cracked's 5 Places You'll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie mentions Courthouse Square in Universal Studios in California, which was built in the 1940s. It played the courthouse in To Kill a Mockingbird, the clock tower in Back to the Future, and key scenes in Bruce Almighty.
• The eponymous Dollhouse of Dollhouse resembles the office of Wolfram & Hart from Angel with a few modifications and a new paint job; the Angel set was refurbished for use in Dollhouse. This is particularly glaring when the characters look down from the top balcony of either show.
• Eddie's kitchen on Absolutely Fabulous eventually became the joke/gift shop in Miranda (2009).
• People in movies were flying in Lockheed L-1011 jets long after the model was retired from service mainly due to one that was cut into sections and repurposed as a movie set for scenes on aircraft.
• Darrin and Samantha's house from Bewitched briefly appears on The Partridge Family as the home of Keith's girlfriend.
• The legendary Brady Bunch house interior set appears in several other Paramount Television productions in the early '70s, most notably an episode of Mission: Impossible (with the staircase removed), and Mannix, which also featured Brady star Robert Reed.
• The main house set for Gullah Gullah Island was also used for Clarissa Explains It All.
• A street set built at Pinewood Studios for exterior scenes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was subsequently used in various films and TV shows made at Pinewood in the early-to-mid 1970s, among them Carry On at Your Convenience, All Coppers Are... and episodes of The Persuaders! and The Professionals.
• The "Hanazono Room" is an indoor pool located in Tokyo's Shinjuku district on a condominium rooftop, with its most distinctive features being its large, slanted windows on one side. It's a popular photography and filming set for adult entertainment and has been showing up frequently enough that it was given a nickname, Rei no Pool ("That Pool").