Hey, It's That Place!

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A location that you just know you've seen in five other TV shows or movies. To locations what Hey, It's That Guy! is to actors.

Filming at a landmark is a separate trope when the scene is supposed to take place at that specific landmark (e.g. the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, famous courthouses), but it counts here when a landmark is used generically (e.g. any Vancouver landmark).

Sub-Trope of California Doubling, Kirk's Rock might be the single most-used That Place in American television, and the various BBC Quarries serve a similar role in the UK.

Examples of Hey, It's That Place! include:

Los Angeles and California

Vancouver

United Kingdom

  • 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.
  • London's 30 St Mary Axe, affectionately known as the Gherkin, is popular when the script calls for a contemporary-style European Skyscraper. Previously, it was the Lloyd's of London.
  • Cardiff Freakin' Castle. It's been in no less than five stories in the Whoniverse as of 2011.
  • 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 M.I.6.
  • 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.
  • St Cadoc's Hospital is starting to become a stock location for BBC Wales Productions too. for now : 2 Torchwood appearances (Episode "Sleeper" and the Children of Earth miniseries) plus Doctor Who‍'‍s "The Eleventh Hour" and is Nina and George's workplace in Being Human (UK)‍'‍s third series.
  • Walthamstow Town Hall and the neighbouring Assembly Hall in north London are the UK'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, the exterior of the hotel in Misfits series two part six, and the exterior of the Reichskanzlerei and the Nazi nightclub in the Doctor Who episode "Let's Kill Hitler".

Elsewhere

  • Casa Loma in Toronto has stood in for any number of fancy houses and castles. Not to mention its interior was used as the inside set for Xavier's School in the first X-Men film.
  • The UWaterloo Waterfall Building (Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman)
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Numerous locations in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Hamilton's been a popular shooting location in the past two decades because of its wide variety of locations, its proximity to Toronto and regional tax incentives.
  • Monument Valley is in a number of films and other media outlets—particularly Westerns.
  • 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).
  • The art deco edifice of the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto has appeared as as a lair for corporate villainy (The Pretender, Undercover Brother, Mutant X), a prison (Half Baked, Flashpoint), a mental asylum (In the Mouth of Madness, Robocop: The Series), and a brewery (Strange Brew).
  • 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.
  • Chateau De 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 Highlander episode 'Star-Crossed'.

Sets

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Hey,_It%27s_That_Place!?oldid=2047159"