6 Fictional Places You Didn't Know Actually Existed
#3. The Canyon City from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Fictional Setting:
When you try to remember a setting from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we're betting you come up with two: "That cliff they drove the tank off of" and "That weird hidden city carved into the rock face where they found the grail."
"There was definitely a boat, too. Or a submarine. Maybe both?"
It is cool, but also looks kind of fake. Who would take the trouble to carve a whole hidden city into a remote canyon?
The Real Place:
That city is completely real, and it is called Petra.
In the film, the grail is stashed in an ancient temple deep within the Middle Eastern desert in "The Canyon of the Crescent Moon."
Referred to in earlier drafts of the script as "The Desert of the Frowny Face."
Surely that has to be a matte painting (which, to our younger readers, is a thing they used to do in the days before a director could just beat his dick against a computer until it shit out alien landscapes). But it was modeled after the narrow canyon that leads through the ancient Jordanian town of Petra:
Getty
It was once the capital city of the ancient Nabataeans, who were apparently so far ahead of their time they carved their buildings directly into the stone for what we're assuming was a safeguard against nuclear war (today we known that you can forgo all that stonecutting nonsense and invest in refrigerators).
Bernard Gagnon
If it were wired for FIOS, this would be the ideal supervillain lair.
The city remains perhaps the single most jaw-dropping surviving masterpiece of rock-cut architecture on the planet, boasting a theater, a monastery, numerous tombs and, at the end of a narrow passage, Al Khazneh: the treasury.
Yep. It's a friggin' bank.
#2. The Emerald Bamboo Forests from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Fictional Setting:
Here's another one from the "only setting from the movie you can immediately remember" category -- the bizarre forest where the martial artists from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had their sword fight atop flimsy yet impossibly tall trees:
"How the hell did we even get up here?"
The Real Place:
Bamboo forests like that can be found around the world, and they're actually more striking than what you saw in the movie. Here's Arashiyama, a forest outside of Kyoto, Japan:
All Japan Tours
Before you can walk down this pathway, you are literally required to fight whoever is with you.
Of course, Crouching Tiger wasn't the first movie to realize what an awesome setting bamboo forests would be for karate fights -- they turn up in House of Flying Daggers and the 1993 epic poem/anime expose on supernatural rapists Ninja Scroll. The consensus seems to be that the more bamboo you stick into a sword fight, the more likely it is to be awesome.
Seventy-eight of the script's 94 pages are totally blank except for the words "More bamboo."
When you see them in real life, it isn't hard to understand why filmmakers feel so inclined to toss in a bunch of sword-fighting ninjas, because chances are you're already imagining that yourself.
Bernard Gagnon
Looks like Mother Nature's compensating for something.
A particularly stunning example is China's Shunan Bamboo Sea, which stretches over an area covering more than 500 hills:
Without question, each one of those hills is like a Pez dispenser full of samurai warriors. There are several more examples all over the Eastern hemisphere, each picturesque landscape just begging for a decades-old blood feud to be settled among their branches.
Ryokan-Yachiyo
The soil here is fertilized with fallen legends.
#1. Several Locations in Pixar's Up and Cars
The Fictional Setting:
For starters, check out Paradise Falls from Up:
The Real Place:
It's pretty much a photograph (with some artistic license) of Venezuela's Angel Falls:
Jlavovskis
Number 3 on Cracked's list of "Best Things to Ride a Barrel Off Of."
Holy crap, the real thing looks more like CGI than the animated movie.
Pixar films love to reference and tie in to one another, but as a general rule they keep references to the real world at a minimum (surprising, we know, that a studio would want to keep its movie about a green Cyclops with the voice of a Jewish comedian separate from reality). However, when the real world does show up, it's pretty spot on.
Even the house of main character Carl was based on a real place, although Pixar refuses to reveal the identity of the inspirational location. However, Internet sleuthing has narrowed it down to this house in the greater Oakland area, and we have to admit, it's pretty freaking close:
SFGate
The fact that it's raised up has nothing to do with flying and everything to do with flood insurance premiums.
But all that is beans compared to the town in Cars. The history of Radiator Springs and its struggle with the tourism industry was directly inspired by the real-life town of Amboy, California, but the physical locations in the movie were taken from places all over the Western United States. And by "taken" we mean directly copied.
Clinton Steeds
Guess which one is a great place to buy meth.
The left photo is Ramone's body shop from the film. The right is the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas. Then there's the Cozy Cone Motel:
Motto: No leg room!
Which is clearly based off the Wigwam Motel in Arizona:
Wigwam Motel
If we know our road motels, at least a third of those wigwams are active crime scenes.
There's even a subtle reference to a famous billboard for the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, also in Arizona (on the right there):
Honestly, it seems like Pixar just drove along Route 66 and put all the most interesting sights in the movie.
Getty
Even the speedway at the beginning of the film was based off of the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee:
Now somebody take us to that volcano island fortress Syndrome had in The Incredibles.
Jacopo della Quercia is the proud author of "Go @#$% Yourself!" - An Ungentlemanly Disagreement, by Filippo Argenti and "The Sound of Laughter" in Wordplague's The Four Humors. David is a freelance writer and aspiring screenwriter, follow him on Twitter or check him out over at Film School Rejects.
For more fiction that became reality, check out 7 Real World Heists That Put 'Ocean's 11' to Shame and 5 Real Bank Heists Ripped Right Out of the Movies.
And stop by LinkSTORM to learn where the hobbits are.
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die hard reference ftw!!!! great article
Replygood article indeed like the venezuela falls and petra palace
Replyooooh love the place in silent hill can i go with you??
ReplyKind of irrelevant but, holy f**k, Birmingham is a shithole these days. Apart from the centre. Obviously. This is the UK after all. It's OK to have the country's 2nd city be a shithole as long as the centre is pleasant enough for people to pretend that the rest of the city isn't a shithole. Fair enough... I guess.
ReplyAccording to Word of God, Gotham is actually in New Jersey. And funny enough, there's Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, located in New Jersey. It hit peak numbers of overcrowding in 1953, at more than 7,000 occupants. The architecture is also very similar to the fictional Arkham Asylum.
ReplyIf gotham was new jersey batman would be fighting idiots ruining TV with fake tan and stupid catchphrases instead of insane clowns and fat bird themed crime lords
The entire view from Radiator Springs is clearly Monument Valley (Ornament Valley in the film) and the major interstate is interstate 44. Been there, uncanny resemblance. Love it :)
ReplyTitle is a bit of an oxymoron...
ReplyI thought the Up house was in Seattle...
ReplyI was actually hoping for an actual ghost town named Silent Hill that rains ash all day, but this will do. Finally, I can visit Silent Hill, YAY!
ReplyI interviewed a former resident of Centralia (a member of the remaining church) two weekends ago during my visit. The buildings are all down, the smoke from the coal fire is still visible but way less so (just little wisps of smoke here and there- nothing like in the article), and the church is nothing like the Silent Hill church except for being highly visible from a distance. The people in it are ridiculously friendly, going out of their way to greet outsiders, and when I asked the reverend if I could interview him about the town, he was far more apologetic than he needed to be, saying that his schedule was completely booked for the day, and went through the congregation to find someone else who could talk to me about the town. I even stayed for the service- not being Christian, I had little to compare it to, but it seemed pretty normal to me.
ReplyIf anything, the really cool thing about the town is the graffiti on the closed highway. That and the fact that the area itself is really beautiful scenery. I've gone up there two weekends in a row now, just because it's a great place to visit.
The great dining hall in Harry Potter is based on a hall inside a church building on my college campus. But it's quite unimpressive tbh. I spent more time looking of a portrait of a cardinal who looked like Alec Baldwin when I was in there.
ReplyOxford, right?
I went to Centralia in November of 2010, but couldn't find the route to the homes or town centre. I DID see the church and have photos of it, since that's right outside of the town. I think I went after the government forced the last surviving people out and officially condemned the town and did away with the zip code. I do have video of sulfur vents and whatnot.. the place is creepy. I loved it.
ReplyI've been to Centralia, and i've got to say it was quite a disappointment. It is nowhere near as eerie as everyone makes it out to be.
Replydid you go at night?
#3, #2, and #1 are the laziest mounds of s**t you included.
ReplyThis cartoon... it showed this triangular HUGE town made of metal bug DID YOU KNOW THAT THE EIFFEL TOWER IS A REAL PLACE!?!
What?
Everyone deserves good and beauty in lives. A perfect place to provide
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Ha, f**k yeah, I knew it already, but I'm technically in Mordor right now. Have been since I was born, and to be honest, there are plenty of orc lookin people round here.
Replycrouching tiger hidden dragon was made before house of flying daggers
ReplyConversely, when Sylvester McCoy was playing Doctor Who, his companion Ace came from a really boring small town named Perivale. I assumed this was a fictional place, until the final episode, which was actually filmed on location in Perivale. Oh!
ReplyAnd not one mention of Tatooine, Tunisia...
Replyeveryone should know about that by now.
also, i found out about the animators trip to angel falls just by watching the behind the scenes footage on the UP dvd.
I've been to Centralia. The description and photos here are, shall we say, misleading. A decade or so ago, one might have seen boarded up houses and such. Today, virtually all of that is gone. There are a couple-three houses occupied by stubborn residents who refuse to leave and a municipal building which appears to still be in use. On the outskirts of the town there is a church that is, clearly, still a going concern. The heaved up pavement, the cracks in the ground, and the famous cemeteries (which can be seen at other websites) are all clustered pretty closely together atop one hill. It's been a year or two since I was last there. During my last visit there was strip mining taking place very close by and there was talk that Centralia itself would soon disappear to the dragline. Maybe that has already happened. In any case, Centralia may well have served as an inspiration to the makers of the games and the movie, but I doubt any of them were ever actually there. The place is more nondescript than it is eerie.
ReplyI have a strange feeling that you copied almost all of that from the Wikipedia article.