Although it's yet to make an appearance on the most-depressing "Only '90s Kids Will Remember This" nostalgisticle, the Siege of Dubrovnik was a hideous footnote in the messy divorce been Croatia and Yugoslavia, which resulted in several war crimes charges against some of the military leaders involved. In 1991, the city was surrounded by artillery situated on the overlooking foothills and shelled for three whole months. By some miracle, "only" less than a hundred civilians were killed during the ordeal, although the bombardment blew significant parts of the city back to the Middle Ages -- making it the perfect setting for the escapades of the Stark family and the gang.

Next time you're watching the show, look out for these locations. Firstly, there's Pile Harbor, site of the epic Battle of the Blackwater, where the waters were set alight thanks to the sheer volume of fuel from its destroyed boats.

HBO, Pavo Urban
Setting fire to the water does sound like some George R.R. Martin shit.

The streets where Cersei walks from the Great Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep? (Don't lie. You've still got the scene on your DVR.) They were shelled into oblivion.

HBO, Croatian World Network
And no CGI body doubles were involved, sadly.

Then there's the arena where the infamous duel between Gregor Clegane and Oberyn Martell takes place. In a past life, that was the waterfront seating area of a now-destroyed, still-abandoned hotel.

HBO, fitzy8871
This explains why they got such poor WiFi.

Even Trsteno Arboretum, the gardens that the show's characters are apparently unable to visit without conspiring to kill somebody, were originally burned almost to the ground by gunboats and looted.

Oddly enough, the city's ancient walls stood up to the constant artillery better than many of the modern fortifications. Chances are, however, they won't be looking too good after Season 7: Dragonpocalypse.

But, since the visitors to Jurassic World weren't coming for the roller coasters, the filmmakers couldn't film in the midst of the park and instead elected to build a massive sound stage on the outskirts to simulate the park's streets -- as you might remember from the scene where some people become prehistoric-bird food.

Universal Studios, Seph Lawless via NY Daily News
In this universe, Kanye accuses George Bush of not caring about black pteranodon victims.

Besides providing suitable ambiance, the park's location meant that no one would be able to sneak a peek at the sets -- they could probably have gotten away with putting real dinosaurs in there. It was the perfect shooting location ... you know, if it wasn't for all the real nature that tried to interrupt their film. For protection from the area's population of wild pigs, alligators, and snakes, the crew had to have a team of animal experts around just to make sure that things didn't get too real. We're assuming the team included at least one chaos theorist to wax philosophical and remove his shirt.

Speaking of things getting too real, it's a shame that the movie didn't make use of one of the park's old rides.

However, this isn't Hankley Common's only claim to fame when it comes to derring-do. During the second World War, it was used to test the Churchill AVRE Double Onion: a superweapon designed to gently stroll through the Atlantic wall on a mixture of nothing more than whiskey, bravado, and a shit-ton of explosives. For some reason, history doesn't record whether it was equipped with an ejector seat or laser guns, so we'll do the sensible thing and assume that, yes, it was.

Royal Armoured Corps
An AVRE tank during its Rocky-esque training routine.

The AVRE was designed to work in the same way as a breaching charge. Alongside a normal cannon, the tank was equipped with a gigantic plate on its front. When it reached an enemy fortification, its drivers would jump out, affix explosives to the plate, rest it against the object that they didn't want to exist anymore, and ... boom. This might sound like a novel form of suicide, but the plate was designed in such a way that the force of the blast was channeled against the wall, reducing it to rubble. The drivers, meanwhile, would survive -- shaken, not disintegrated.

So, how do you test a tank designed to blow up walls? Simple. You build a wall of reinforced concrete and set the damn thing loose.

via The Tank Museum, Gaius Cornelius/Wiki Commons
It shares Bond's tact and tenderness when it comes to penetrating things.

At the same test range, the tank's main gun was used to clear a minefield and blow a hole in the same wall. In fact, the amount of explosives used to test this thing created so much fracas that a nearby neighbor reported her ceiling collapsing. That's right; for all their pomp and formality, the British designed a weapon capable of simulating the experience of getting invaded by KISS before that was even a thing.

In other words, not at all like how the palace played a hand in ending the granddaddy of them all, World War II.

During the war, Caserta Palace was the equivalent of a child stuck in a super-messy custody battle between the Axis and the Allies. That is, until 1943, when the Allies finally managed to seize control for good and established it as Allied High Command for the Mediterranean. Cue two years of good ol' fashioned ass-kickings planned in its halls, jeeps racing up and down its well-maintained terraces, and a whole battalion of soldiers asking where the pretty local girls at.

Lucasfilm, US Army
OK, they might have used CGI here.

In May 1945, however, the palace played host to a couple of extra special guests: a diplomatic team who had been sent to negotiate Germany's exit from the war with as much of their dignity intact as possible. In hindsight, they should have realized that this wasn't going to happen, what with their leader ... indisposed and their military not looking that much better. With nothing remaining in the way of bargaining chips, the surrender was signed, thus ending the war in Italy. Cue the John Williams!

US Army
It was exactly as awkward as a middle school dance.

See, after its use as a location for a 1939 World's Fair, the island was handed over to the U.S. Navy for use as a shipyard and training school -- called the Nuclear War Academy, which sounds fucking awesome. Unfortunately, this also involved students being handed samples of radioactive materials such as radium, plutonium, and caesium-137 because ... we don't know, they were preparing for scavenging the battlefields of the future? Honestly, it's really unclear.

As part of their training, the students were also expected to know how to clean a ship of radioactive contamination. When a real contaminated ship wasn't available, however, they'd just spray a test one (codenamed USS Pandemonium) with radioactive material and scrub it down good. Shit, we're surprised that they didn't just go whole hog and have them spray each other in their underwear.

Principles of Radiation and Contamination Control
This might also be the inspiration for Top Gun.

Eventually, the military realized that this stuff might be a tad dangerous and started to clamp down on the antics of National Lampoon's Mutated Animal House. Well, sort of. The radioactive samples used in the classes were confiscated and disposed of using the scientific method of burying them in pits. Also, they forgot to mark out where the pits were. Or tell anyone about them.

When the Navy decided to hand the site back over in 2007, they embarked on a massive clean-up operation that, shock horror, discovered traces of radiation all over the island. In the years following the introduction of concepts such as "safety" and "not fucking with nuclear materials," housing and industry had taken over the island, the construction of which had tracked radiation all over the place. To this day, some areas of the island are still off limits to those who don't want their faces to end up like the bad guy's at the end of Raiders.

Unsurprisingly, using an ex-industrial site as the location for a movie comes with its own problems ... namely, the obscene amount of chemical detritus just haphazardly lying about. Alongside the constant threat of Kubrick doing his trademark thing to their fear receptors, the cast and crew had to contend with buildings littered with asbestos, Mordor-esque air contamination, and the occasional puddle of chemical waste dribbling across the landscape.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the site itself was overlooked by a gigantic pile of industrial waste created during its life as a gas processing plant. This pile of slag, known affectionately to the locals as the Beckton Alps, was made up of a toxic mixture of lime, sulfuric acid, creosote, and tar. After filming was completed, Kubrick abandoned the site as is, probably figuring that a population who put up with this bullshit wouldn't mind a building complex littered with bullet holes, craters, and signs asking them to buy Vietnamese.

boltancestry.co.uk
This confused the hell out of anyone who woke up here after a heavy night out.

E.T. is a light-hearted tale about the friendship between a young boy and an alien-shaped testicle. Also, the dangers posed by foreigners who come here to gather intelligence for their own purposes, subvert the population, "phone home," and escape before they can be apprehended by the authorities. It's quite apt then that the street where Elliott's house was filmed was only a stone's throw away from an internment camp for people whom the government suspected were up to these same shenanigans and more.

Universal Studios, via Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition
E.T. was better fed, though.

After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government declared that the region's 100,000-plus Japanese-Americans were to be interned, lest they turn saboteur for the homeland. (You might have heard similar proposals in modern politics recently.) One of these camps was Tuna Canyon Detention Station, a repurposed relief camp situated in the foothills of Tujunga, a suburb of Los Angeles. From 1941 to 1943, the camp played host to around 1,500 "enemy combatants," many of whom were ordinary civilians such as teachers and religious leaders. In other words, the people most likely to conduct an uprising, obviously.

INS, via Densho Encyclopedia
This happened before there was even an "Asians all know martial arts" stereotype.

As for the facilities, they ranged from "comfortable for an unconstitutional prison camp" to "Steve McQueen wouldn't stand for this shit." There were medical facilities, sleeping quarters, barracks, a rudimentary school (you thought kids got a pass?), and a barbershop. On the other hand, they had to deal with frequent interrogations, impossible-to-complete "loyalty questionnaires," and, oh right, being torn apart from their families to live inside a machine gun-surrounded, lawyer-free, state-sanctioned prison. Fortunately, many didn't have to deal with these conditions for long, because they were released ... and transferred to a larger, shittier camp.

The camp was eventually closed in 1943 -- not because anyone came to their senses, mind, but probably because they ran out of people to imprison. You can't actually visit the remains of the camp, because it was torn down, as dirty little secrets tend to be, and replaced by a golf course.

When Adam isn't slagging off his beloved England for cheap jokes and dirty, dirty money, he reminisces on Twitter about his own shady past. He also has an email address, where you can contact him with compliments/complaints/something else that begins with C.

Be sure to check out 26 Awesome True Stories Behind Famous Movie Locations and 5 Photos That Shatter Your Image Of Horror Movie Locations.

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