***ALL THE TABS***
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MineralMacguffin
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffinLocation
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_city
http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/incross.shtml#moai The Magus Sisters are in FFXI! In the North American client they are known as the Mithran Tracking Sisters, named, respectively Shikaree X, Y, and Z; however, in the Japanese client they are referred to as "three sisters" and retain their original names as they first appeared in FFIV: Magu, Dogu, and Ragu. In the Chains of Promethia expansion's storyline, they endlessly hunt down the hyper-notorious monster Tiamat in the Attowha Chasm (a very powerful dragon, usually requiring in excess of an hour to down for players). In FFIV, Magu (Sandy) was tall and skinny and wielded a Spear, Dogu (Cindy) was fat and wielded a scythe, and Ragu (Mindy), the tiny one, wielded two daggers. They retain these characterizations in FFXI: Shikaree X is a Beastmaster/Ninja (allowing dual wielding of daggers), Shikaree Y is a Dark Knight/Monk, and Shikaree Z is a Dragoon/White Mage. As part of the second instanced battlefield in FFXI where players face the Shikaree Sisters, "Requiem of Sin," three of the EXTREMELY RARE rewards are "X's Knife," "Y's Scythe," and, "Z's Trident." The dagger in particular is highly sought after by thieves in FFXI for the very unique way it modifies critical hit damage.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Atlantis
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture # The Ace Combat series loves these. At the most blatantly obvious, the Osean Federation is the United States, Emmeria is too [adding a C makes it very obvious], North Point is Japan, Yuktobania, Erusea and Estrovakia [the Stroviet Union] are all Russia, Belka is Germany and Sapin is Spain. Aurelia and Leasnath appear to represent the entirety of South America.
* Strangereal's lack of nuclear proliferation gives us a subversion; characters in The Belkan War and especially The Unsung War display attitudes about and intentions with nuclear weapons that seem downright bizarre to the player, who has lived in a world with thousands of the things their whole life.
# The building and unit designs for all four nations in the series Advance Wars are based on World War II-era combatants: Orange Star is America, Soviet Russia is Blue Moon, Green Earth is Germany, and Yellow Comet is Japan. Interestingly, none of the four nations are villainous. The bad guys, Black Hole, have no earth parallels and are designed to appear off-world or alien.
* Similarly, you have the Western Frontier (American), Tundran Territories (Russian), Xylvania (Germany/Romania), Solar Empire (Japan), and Anglo Isles (England) in Battalion Wars.
. . .
Almost all video game RPGs contain at least one such country, usually modelled after Japan. See Wutai.
* Other than the aformentioned Wutai, however, most Final Fantasy games are surprisingly good at inventing unrecognisably fantastic cultures aside from a few vague parallels. A noticable exception is Final Fantasy X 's more deliberately asian-like setting. ((Inaccurate, I posit. Final Fantasy V is very German (built on top of Egypt/Mesoamerica/Atlantis/whatever); Final Fantasy VI is Steampunk Italy with Chinese hermits and monks (and Doma's Samurai dynasty); Final Fantasy VIII is a Planet America; and Final Fantasy XII is the Roman Empire versus (maybe?) Moorish Spain/Soviet Russia, with Arabian Nights stuck in the middle... and it's set in Ivalice, which (in War of the Lions) is pretty much just England (with a little bit of France).))
* Some elements of the Middle East are notably present in Aht Urhgan, The Empire of Final Fantasy XI. San d'Oria also possesses many elements of Europe's middle ages.
o The Ogir-Yensa Sandsea of Final Fantasy XII is very obviously based on Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and Gulf War-era Iraq, with keffiyeh-wearing fish people running around executing sneak attacks on travelers, and giant rusting oil field tanks lying around, rendered useless due to terrorist activity and the invading country not wanting to waste any more time and money protecting them. It even has a a native who gets executed by the Culture Police -minded queen for being interested in something other than killing and religion!
. . .
The Warcraft Universe has a lot of these, which is particularly evident in their architecture:
. . .
* The tauren's culture is similar to western Native American tribes; some male Tauren even saw "How" when you greet them.
* The orcs are were originally a mix of vikings and mongols. However, after the Ret Con about them being Chaotic Good instead of Evil, they've gotten more and more of the positive cultural and architectural motifs connected to barbarians, their main city being a glorified camp site in a ravine, everything made out of animal hides and with spikes. There are also elements of Samurai Bushido in their battle culture, particularly in their "Victory or Death" philosophy.
* Jungle trolls speak with Jamaican accents, practice voodoo, do capoeira, and live in huts, while building giant Mesoamerican-style Temple cities and practicing human(oid) sacrifice.
* Forest trolls speak with hispanic accents, build giant Mesoamerican-style pyramids and have human(oid) sacrifice.
* Ice trolls use floating weapons, zulu shields and tiki masks to guards their houses, and build giant Mesoamerican-style/Babylonian Zigurats, while worshipping/killing animal gods, and practicing human(oid) sacrifice.
* The qiraji and some silithid have a sort of amalgamation of Egyptian and Mesopotamian architecture (most of the Silithid live in enormous hives).
* The night elves are an unholy mashup of Classical Greece, and Feudal Japan, with some Nordic elements as well. Fluted columns stand side by side with torii in many parts of their lands. Also, the style of dress of night elf male aristocrats greatly resembles Japanese court robes.
* The blood elves, on the other hand, have influences from the middle east. Their buildings often are adorned with geometric archways, rugs and floor cushions, and hookah pipes.
* The dwarves use of runes and their hairdos and braided beards seems inspired by the vikings. They talk with scottish accents and can do the Cossack dance, however.
* The Draenei have eastern European accents and Crystal Spires And Togas architecture.
* The pandaren have a psuedo-Chinese culture. They were originally styled as samurai, but this offended Chinese fans since pandas are their national animal (and the only place in the world where they're found in the wild).
* The Tuskarr, who live in the cold north, seem to be the walrus-ified version of the Inuit.
* And the Vrykul is clearly inspires by the old vikings, complete with giving their leaders swedish/norwegian names
* Come to think of it, it would be easier to have the voice actors just tell what nationality you want them to do
. . .
The map of Golden Sun's planet, called "Weyard," appears to be a very distorted version of Earth.
. . .
The various regions in Pokemon are based on various bits of Japan. The first region (Kanto) even has the exact same name.
* Some of the cities in the handheld games are also based on European locations, e.g. Sootoplis City is based on Santorini, Greece. The Orre region, from the Game Cube games, is based on, of all places, Arizona.
. . .
# In Avatar The Last Airbender is a somewhat different examples in that while the Air Nomads are based on Tibet, the Water Tribes the Inuit, the Earth Kingdom on Qing dynasty China, and the Fire Nation on a combination of Tang dynasty China and Imperial Japan, there are many subculture examples. For instance, Kyoshi Island is based off isolationist Japan and the Foggy Swamp Tribe is based on a combination of native South America and Mississippi River Delta. In the episode "Cave of Two Lovers", Zuko also met a girl named Song whose name and dress resembled that of traditional Korean culture. Later, Aang and Zuko meet the Sun Warriors, who are simply Incas with the serial numbers files off. So needless to say, a lot of different non-European cultures were included in Avatar.
* I thought the Foggy Swamp Tribe was based off of Vietnamese culture. They, at the very least, have Vietnamese names. ((The Hollow King, World of Warcraft (Trolls), Final Fantasy XI (Elvaan), Pax Aeternus, The Adventures of Rocky Swivel, Storm City (Minotaurs, Tiridians), Aredain (Koukia), Star Wars (Mandalorians, Coruscanti, Corellians, Gungans), Gensou Suikoden, Walkin' On Sunshine, SEVENTH SEA...))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheThemeParkVersion World Of Warcraft is a much smaller version of Azeroth and Outland than is generally depicted in the lore and in the previous games. While generally all the important details are there and in (mostly) the right places, all the continents are scaled down so as to not affect gameplay - creating the Theme Park Version of Warcraft. Funnily enough, it causes Sequel Displacement for the rest of the series.
* There are other things wrong. Places are missing, as is one of Azaroth's moons (Despite models of it appearing in Northrend Dungeons), Teldrasil looks like a humongous stump with a Forrest growing from it's remains rather then the thriving tree it is in lore... The list goes on.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IstanbulNotConstantinople In So You Want To Be A Wizard, the main character reads in her wizard's manual about "alternate earths where the capital of the United States was named Huictilopochtli or Lafayette City or Hrafnkell or New Washington".
* For that matter, it isn't specified whether all of these are actually Washington DC under different names. The capital could be located elsewhere. ((I don't know if this goes here, but: HEXICO (McTroit, Smexas, Hexico...); DIBALA SHIKARU, MUTHAFUCKA!! (Brokeland, New Jeridan...)))
. . .
Seventh Sea has thinly veiled Renaissance-Enlightenment pastiches of the British Isles (Avalon), France (Montaigne), Italy (Vodacce), the Middle East (the Crescent Empire), and so on and so forth through the major sectors of the Old World - there is no Africa or America except for an archipelago supposed to represent the Golden-Age-of-Piracy Caribbean. The Cathay sourcebook also revealed that Cathay was a seven nation empire composed of alternate India, China, Mongolia and every other East Asian country except Japan.
. . .
Dragon Warrior III's world map is based on the real world map, with locations having similar names to their real world counterparts. For example, Portoga is Portugal/Spain, Baharata is India, Isis is Egypt and Zipangu is Japan, among others.
. . .
The Grand Theft Auto series has examples of these in most of its versions: The State of San Andreas (California and Nevada), containing the cities of Los Santos (Los Angeles), Las Venturas (Las Vegas), and San Fierro (San Francisco), there is also Liberty City (New York City) and Vice City (Miami).
. . .
# Valkyria Chronicles has 'Gallia' (the Netherlands).
* Switzerland might be a better fit: it's implied all Gallians have militia training, and they have a history of neutrality in continental conflicts between The Empire and The Federation. ((REALLY? NOBODY'S gonna mention Arc the Lad?))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DaysOfFuturePast
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceRomans
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wutai Mizuho of Tales Of Symphonia. Lampshaded when one of the characters convinces the others that they'll be visiting The Theme Park Version of Feudal Japan, much to the irritation of the one character who's actually from there.
* There's also the hidden Ninja village of Tales Of Phantasia, which is Mizuho, 4000 years later. Note that this game is predominantly Norse in its mythology.
. . .
The Edo plane in Sa Ga 2 (aka Final Fantasy Legend II), complete with a black market in "bananas" in the Bowdlerised localization. (In the original Japanese, it's opium.)
. . .
# Rokkaku in Suikoden: a hidden ninja village that's oddly small even by RPG standards. Then again, they are ninjas, so maybe the player character only sees as much of the village as they want him to see.
* The series also has several other Japanese-looking and -sounding characters who explicitly have no connection to Rokkaku, with not even vague hints as to where they do come from. Some even live in the Medieval European Fantasy towns, with no other residents finding anything odd about this.
* At least in the first two games, there are certain towns that have a decidedly eastern style of architecture, while others are more western. Seems like quite a big difference for cities within the same empire/nation.
o Might be a little justification here. Suikoden's first game, perhaps not so much, but understandable since what may have been expected to be a one-off had to get all it could in. The second game takes place across several countries, each with a distinct culture. The United City States of Jowston are not the one nation.
# Kyo in SaGa Frontier, home to the Mind Magic dojo and at least one Opium Den. It's more like a drug factory run by a minion of the Big Bad
# Yamato in Valkyrie Profile.
. . .
Super Mario Land has World 4.
((Fucking HELLO? Tokio in Terranigma/Tenchi Sozo? COME ON!!))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyKitchenSink The Matrix Reloaded sets the stage for a fantasy kitchen sink, but does not develop it.
. . .
The entire Final Fantasy series draws on this, with gods and goddesses from just about every culture in the world, as well as the run of the mill robots, mummies, vampires, etc.
. . .
# Shin Megami Tensei. YHVH and Vishnu have a tenuous alliance. Lucifer is buddy-buddy with Surt. Lilith and her succubi keep trying to get into the hero's pants. Loki was last seen poking Taira no Masakado in the eye with a sword he stole when Athena wasn't looking. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne stated unequivocally that one goddess wasn't real: the Christo-Roman-Wiccan goddess Aradia. But who's the one to tell you Aradia isn't real, you ask? If you're asking, you've not played enough. Aradia tells you this when you speak to her. Obviously.
. . .
# Fall From Heaven, a Game Mod for Civilization IV, has every fantasy trope from orcs to dwarves to elves, with nations of wizards, vampires, ghosts, and pirates, a religion based on the worship of Eldritch Abominations, with other random like werewolves and jinn thrown in for good measure.
* Another mod, Fictionalization IV, has a similar mishmash of things from various fantasy tropes as well as superheroes, mecha, and other tropes from sci-fi.
. . .
Family Guy. The underlying reality of the show is deliberately tenuous anyway.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeakingSimlish
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShiftingSandLand In keeping with the Wild West theme, practically all of Wild ARMs 3 takes place in a desert. You even have a sand cruiser rather than a ship.
* Sand rivers and ocean themed areas appear in most of the other games in the Wild ARMs series, as well.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceJews
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KillSat
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitleaoruqdnx?from=Main.ItsASmallNetAfterAll
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/The7thSaga
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AncientAstronauts
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BambooTechnology
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gotterdammerung The Lord Of The Rings ends with the beginning of the age of Man, with the last of the elves leaving for the land of the not-quite-gods (Valar); the backstory presents this as an ongoing process, with unnumbered years where the Valar coexisted directly with the world, three ages of ascendance for the elves, and then a slow dimming away, with Middle-Earth eventually becoming the world we know today. As such it is both Gotterdammerung (for the First and Second Ages) and The Magic Goes Away (for the Third).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdvancedAncientAcropolis
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Precursors
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Contact
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnyoneYouKnow
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SandIsWater
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostTechnology Nearly every early Final Fantasy game has some elements (6 and 7 as Lost Magic), usually just to give you a chance to dungeon crawl through a high-tech tower of some sort. No one ever thinks to pick up a dropped laser gun or study the tech for the betterment of the world, though.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackBox
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeglectfulPrecursors
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostColony Used in spades in Battlestar Galactica. The Twelve Colonies are lost colonies of Kobol, whose civilization was destroyed by a civil war between humans and Cylons. The Colonists spend much of the series looking for Earth, Kobol's other lost colony, before discovering that Turns out it's a nuclear wasteland as the result of another human-Cylon conflict. Ultimately, our Earth is revealed to be their lost colony which they settled on 150,000 years ago.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlebvh6quvp?from=Main.HumanitysWake The book Re Body, Robots kill us all, revive a human head, and set out to destroy some uplifted animals we had created.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceAmish
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TransplantedHumans One variation is that that's how we got to Earth, and the origin planet of humanity is somewhere else. This has become less common, however, as evidence that we're biologically related to other Earth species has become pretty hard to talk your way around.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GivingRadioToTheRomans Nimue Alban's situation in David Weber's Safehold series lacks time travel, but otherwise fits perfectly. Nimue (or rather a Ridiculously Human Robot with her personality) is awoken in the last human world of Safehold, which has been trapped in Medieval Stasis for almost a millennium thanks to its delusional founders. Nimue's objective is to undo this and bring humanity back into the era of space travel. Many details listed in the description are averted, since robots can't get sick, and Nimue has to learn Safeholdian English before she can venture out among its people.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MiningAccidentOnTroy This is Grasshopper's ending in Twisted Metal 2. She's an android in the shape of Calypso's late daughter, who was killed in a car accident. When she gets close to Calypso, her programming kicks in and she explodes. She does seem remorseful for killing Calypso, even crying and asking him to hold her when it happens.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RobotRollCall
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Panspermia
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceshipGirl
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InstantAIJustAddWater
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalFantasyVIII
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Xion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_XIII#Xion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Kingdom_Hearts#Ventus
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Eraqus
((Ein (Cowboy Bebop), Ine (Project A-ko), Nei (Phantasy Star II)))
((ENIX (AKIHABARA) IS THE NOBODY))
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Yen_Sid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuji_Horii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Story (Final Fantasy, Lost Odyssey, Last Story... we get it.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Veitch
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffinLocation
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_city
http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/incross.shtml#moai The Magus Sisters are in FFXI! In the North American client they are known as the Mithran Tracking Sisters, named, respectively Shikaree X, Y, and Z; however, in the Japanese client they are referred to as "three sisters" and retain their original names as they first appeared in FFIV: Magu, Dogu, and Ragu. In the Chains of Promethia expansion's storyline, they endlessly hunt down the hyper-notorious monster Tiamat in the Attowha Chasm (a very powerful dragon, usually requiring in excess of an hour to down for players). In FFIV, Magu (Sandy) was tall and skinny and wielded a Spear, Dogu (Cindy) was fat and wielded a scythe, and Ragu (Mindy), the tiny one, wielded two daggers. They retain these characterizations in FFXI: Shikaree X is a Beastmaster/Ninja (allowing dual wielding of daggers), Shikaree Y is a Dark Knight/Monk, and Shikaree Z is a Dragoon/White Mage. As part of the second instanced battlefield in FFXI where players face the Shikaree Sisters, "Requiem of Sin," three of the EXTREMELY RARE rewards are "X's Knife," "Y's Scythe," and, "Z's Trident." The dagger in particular is highly sought after by thieves in FFXI for the very unique way it modifies critical hit damage.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Atlantis
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture # The Ace Combat series loves these. At the most blatantly obvious, the Osean Federation is the United States, Emmeria is too [adding a C makes it very obvious], North Point is Japan, Yuktobania, Erusea and Estrovakia [the Stroviet Union] are all Russia, Belka is Germany and Sapin is Spain. Aurelia and Leasnath appear to represent the entirety of South America.
* Strangereal's lack of nuclear proliferation gives us a subversion; characters in The Belkan War and especially The Unsung War display attitudes about and intentions with nuclear weapons that seem downright bizarre to the player, who has lived in a world with thousands of the things their whole life.
# The building and unit designs for all four nations in the series Advance Wars are based on World War II-era combatants: Orange Star is America, Soviet Russia is Blue Moon, Green Earth is Germany, and Yellow Comet is Japan. Interestingly, none of the four nations are villainous. The bad guys, Black Hole, have no earth parallels and are designed to appear off-world or alien.
* Similarly, you have the Western Frontier (American), Tundran Territories (Russian), Xylvania (Germany/Romania), Solar Empire (Japan), and Anglo Isles (England) in Battalion Wars.
. . .
Almost all video game RPGs contain at least one such country, usually modelled after Japan. See Wutai.
* Other than the aformentioned Wutai, however, most Final Fantasy games are surprisingly good at inventing unrecognisably fantastic cultures aside from a few vague parallels. A noticable exception is Final Fantasy X 's more deliberately asian-like setting. ((Inaccurate, I posit. Final Fantasy V is very German (built on top of Egypt/Mesoamerica/Atlantis/whatever); Final Fantasy VI is Steampunk Italy with Chinese hermits and monks (and Doma's Samurai dynasty); Final Fantasy VIII is a Planet America; and Final Fantasy XII is the Roman Empire versus (maybe?) Moorish Spain/Soviet Russia, with Arabian Nights stuck in the middle... and it's set in Ivalice, which (in War of the Lions) is pretty much just England (with a little bit of France).))
* Some elements of the Middle East are notably present in Aht Urhgan, The Empire of Final Fantasy XI. San d'Oria also possesses many elements of Europe's middle ages.
o The Ogir-Yensa Sandsea of Final Fantasy XII is very obviously based on Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and Gulf War-era Iraq, with keffiyeh-wearing fish people running around executing sneak attacks on travelers, and giant rusting oil field tanks lying around, rendered useless due to terrorist activity and the invading country not wanting to waste any more time and money protecting them. It even has a a native who gets executed by the Culture Police -minded queen for being interested in something other than killing and religion!
. . .
The Warcraft Universe has a lot of these, which is particularly evident in their architecture:
. . .
* The tauren's culture is similar to western Native American tribes; some male Tauren even saw "How" when you greet them.
* The orcs are were originally a mix of vikings and mongols. However, after the Ret Con about them being Chaotic Good instead of Evil, they've gotten more and more of the positive cultural and architectural motifs connected to barbarians, their main city being a glorified camp site in a ravine, everything made out of animal hides and with spikes. There are also elements of Samurai Bushido in their battle culture, particularly in their "Victory or Death" philosophy.
* Jungle trolls speak with Jamaican accents, practice voodoo, do capoeira, and live in huts, while building giant Mesoamerican-style Temple cities and practicing human(oid) sacrifice.
* Forest trolls speak with hispanic accents, build giant Mesoamerican-style pyramids and have human(oid) sacrifice.
* Ice trolls use floating weapons, zulu shields and tiki masks to guards their houses, and build giant Mesoamerican-style/Babylonian Zigurats, while worshipping/killing animal gods, and practicing human(oid) sacrifice.
* The qiraji and some silithid have a sort of amalgamation of Egyptian and Mesopotamian architecture (most of the Silithid live in enormous hives).
* The night elves are an unholy mashup of Classical Greece, and Feudal Japan, with some Nordic elements as well. Fluted columns stand side by side with torii in many parts of their lands. Also, the style of dress of night elf male aristocrats greatly resembles Japanese court robes.
* The blood elves, on the other hand, have influences from the middle east. Their buildings often are adorned with geometric archways, rugs and floor cushions, and hookah pipes.
* The dwarves use of runes and their hairdos and braided beards seems inspired by the vikings. They talk with scottish accents and can do the Cossack dance, however.
* The Draenei have eastern European accents and Crystal Spires And Togas architecture.
* The pandaren have a psuedo-Chinese culture. They were originally styled as samurai, but this offended Chinese fans since pandas are their national animal (and the only place in the world where they're found in the wild).
* The Tuskarr, who live in the cold north, seem to be the walrus-ified version of the Inuit.
* And the Vrykul is clearly inspires by the old vikings, complete with giving their leaders swedish/norwegian names
* Come to think of it, it would be easier to have the voice actors just tell what nationality you want them to do
. . .
The map of Golden Sun's planet, called "Weyard," appears to be a very distorted version of Earth.
. . .
The various regions in Pokemon are based on various bits of Japan. The first region (Kanto) even has the exact same name.
* Some of the cities in the handheld games are also based on European locations, e.g. Sootoplis City is based on Santorini, Greece. The Orre region, from the Game Cube games, is based on, of all places, Arizona.
. . .
# In Avatar The Last Airbender is a somewhat different examples in that while the Air Nomads are based on Tibet, the Water Tribes the Inuit, the Earth Kingdom on Qing dynasty China, and the Fire Nation on a combination of Tang dynasty China and Imperial Japan, there are many subculture examples. For instance, Kyoshi Island is based off isolationist Japan and the Foggy Swamp Tribe is based on a combination of native South America and Mississippi River Delta. In the episode "Cave of Two Lovers", Zuko also met a girl named Song whose name and dress resembled that of traditional Korean culture. Later, Aang and Zuko meet the Sun Warriors, who are simply Incas with the serial numbers files off. So needless to say, a lot of different non-European cultures were included in Avatar.
* I thought the Foggy Swamp Tribe was based off of Vietnamese culture. They, at the very least, have Vietnamese names. ((The Hollow King, World of Warcraft (Trolls), Final Fantasy XI (Elvaan), Pax Aeternus, The Adventures of Rocky Swivel, Storm City (Minotaurs, Tiridians), Aredain (Koukia), Star Wars (Mandalorians, Coruscanti, Corellians, Gungans), Gensou Suikoden, Walkin' On Sunshine, SEVENTH SEA...))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheThemeParkVersion World Of Warcraft is a much smaller version of Azeroth and Outland than is generally depicted in the lore and in the previous games. While generally all the important details are there and in (mostly) the right places, all the continents are scaled down so as to not affect gameplay - creating the Theme Park Version of Warcraft. Funnily enough, it causes Sequel Displacement for the rest of the series.
* There are other things wrong. Places are missing, as is one of Azaroth's moons (Despite models of it appearing in Northrend Dungeons), Teldrasil looks like a humongous stump with a Forrest growing from it's remains rather then the thriving tree it is in lore... The list goes on.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IstanbulNotConstantinople In So You Want To Be A Wizard, the main character reads in her wizard's manual about "alternate earths where the capital of the United States was named Huictilopochtli or Lafayette City or Hrafnkell or New Washington".
* For that matter, it isn't specified whether all of these are actually Washington DC under different names. The capital could be located elsewhere. ((I don't know if this goes here, but: HEXICO (McTroit, Smexas, Hexico...); DIBALA SHIKARU, MUTHAFUCKA!! (Brokeland, New Jeridan...)))
. . .
Seventh Sea has thinly veiled Renaissance-Enlightenment pastiches of the British Isles (Avalon), France (Montaigne), Italy (Vodacce), the Middle East (the Crescent Empire), and so on and so forth through the major sectors of the Old World - there is no Africa or America except for an archipelago supposed to represent the Golden-Age-of-Piracy Caribbean. The Cathay sourcebook also revealed that Cathay was a seven nation empire composed of alternate India, China, Mongolia and every other East Asian country except Japan.
. . .
Dragon Warrior III's world map is based on the real world map, with locations having similar names to their real world counterparts. For example, Portoga is Portugal/Spain, Baharata is India, Isis is Egypt and Zipangu is Japan, among others.
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The Grand Theft Auto series has examples of these in most of its versions: The State of San Andreas (California and Nevada), containing the cities of Los Santos (Los Angeles), Las Venturas (Las Vegas), and San Fierro (San Francisco), there is also Liberty City (New York City) and Vice City (Miami).
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# Valkyria Chronicles has 'Gallia' (the Netherlands).
* Switzerland might be a better fit: it's implied all Gallians have militia training, and they have a history of neutrality in continental conflicts between The Empire and The Federation. ((REALLY? NOBODY'S gonna mention Arc the Lad?))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DaysOfFuturePast
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceRomans
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wutai Mizuho of Tales Of Symphonia. Lampshaded when one of the characters convinces the others that they'll be visiting The Theme Park Version of Feudal Japan, much to the irritation of the one character who's actually from there.
* There's also the hidden Ninja village of Tales Of Phantasia, which is Mizuho, 4000 years later. Note that this game is predominantly Norse in its mythology.
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The Edo plane in Sa Ga 2 (aka Final Fantasy Legend II), complete with a black market in "bananas" in the Bowdlerised localization. (In the original Japanese, it's opium.)
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# Rokkaku in Suikoden: a hidden ninja village that's oddly small even by RPG standards. Then again, they are ninjas, so maybe the player character only sees as much of the village as they want him to see.
* The series also has several other Japanese-looking and -sounding characters who explicitly have no connection to Rokkaku, with not even vague hints as to where they do come from. Some even live in the Medieval European Fantasy towns, with no other residents finding anything odd about this.
* At least in the first two games, there are certain towns that have a decidedly eastern style of architecture, while others are more western. Seems like quite a big difference for cities within the same empire/nation.
o Might be a little justification here. Suikoden's first game, perhaps not so much, but understandable since what may have been expected to be a one-off had to get all it could in. The second game takes place across several countries, each with a distinct culture. The United City States of Jowston are not the one nation.
# Kyo in SaGa Frontier, home to the Mind Magic dojo and at least one Opium Den. It's more like a drug factory run by a minion of the Big Bad
# Yamato in Valkyrie Profile.
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Super Mario Land has World 4.
((Fucking HELLO? Tokio in Terranigma/Tenchi Sozo? COME ON!!))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyKitchenSink The Matrix Reloaded sets the stage for a fantasy kitchen sink, but does not develop it.
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The entire Final Fantasy series draws on this, with gods and goddesses from just about every culture in the world, as well as the run of the mill robots, mummies, vampires, etc.
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# Shin Megami Tensei. YHVH and Vishnu have a tenuous alliance. Lucifer is buddy-buddy with Surt. Lilith and her succubi keep trying to get into the hero's pants. Loki was last seen poking Taira no Masakado in the eye with a sword he stole when Athena wasn't looking. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne stated unequivocally that one goddess wasn't real: the Christo-Roman-Wiccan goddess Aradia. But who's the one to tell you Aradia isn't real, you ask? If you're asking, you've not played enough. Aradia tells you this when you speak to her. Obviously.
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# Fall From Heaven, a Game Mod for Civilization IV, has every fantasy trope from orcs to dwarves to elves, with nations of wizards, vampires, ghosts, and pirates, a religion based on the worship of Eldritch Abominations, with other random like werewolves and jinn thrown in for good measure.
* Another mod, Fictionalization IV, has a similar mishmash of things from various fantasy tropes as well as superheroes, mecha, and other tropes from sci-fi.
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Family Guy. The underlying reality of the show is deliberately tenuous anyway.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeakingSimlish
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShiftingSandLand In keeping with the Wild West theme, practically all of Wild ARMs 3 takes place in a desert. You even have a sand cruiser rather than a ship.
* Sand rivers and ocean themed areas appear in most of the other games in the Wild ARMs series, as well.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceJews
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KillSat
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitleaoruqdnx?from=Main.ItsASmallNetAfterAll
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/The7thSaga
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AncientAstronauts
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BambooTechnology
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gotterdammerung The Lord Of The Rings ends with the beginning of the age of Man, with the last of the elves leaving for the land of the not-quite-gods (Valar); the backstory presents this as an ongoing process, with unnumbered years where the Valar coexisted directly with the world, three ages of ascendance for the elves, and then a slow dimming away, with Middle-Earth eventually becoming the world we know today. As such it is both Gotterdammerung (for the First and Second Ages) and The Magic Goes Away (for the Third).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdvancedAncientAcropolis
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Precursors
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Contact
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnyoneYouKnow
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SandIsWater
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostTechnology Nearly every early Final Fantasy game has some elements (6 and 7 as Lost Magic), usually just to give you a chance to dungeon crawl through a high-tech tower of some sort. No one ever thinks to pick up a dropped laser gun or study the tech for the betterment of the world, though.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackBox
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeglectfulPrecursors
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostColony Used in spades in Battlestar Galactica. The Twelve Colonies are lost colonies of Kobol, whose civilization was destroyed by a civil war between humans and Cylons. The Colonists spend much of the series looking for Earth, Kobol's other lost colony, before discovering that Turns out it's a nuclear wasteland as the result of another human-Cylon conflict. Ultimately, our Earth is revealed to be their lost colony which they settled on 150,000 years ago.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlebvh6quvp?from=Main.HumanitysWake The book Re Body, Robots kill us all, revive a human head, and set out to destroy some uplifted animals we had created.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceAmish
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TransplantedHumans One variation is that that's how we got to Earth, and the origin planet of humanity is somewhere else. This has become less common, however, as evidence that we're biologically related to other Earth species has become pretty hard to talk your way around.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GivingRadioToTheRomans Nimue Alban's situation in David Weber's Safehold series lacks time travel, but otherwise fits perfectly. Nimue (or rather a Ridiculously Human Robot with her personality) is awoken in the last human world of Safehold, which has been trapped in Medieval Stasis for almost a millennium thanks to its delusional founders. Nimue's objective is to undo this and bring humanity back into the era of space travel. Many details listed in the description are averted, since robots can't get sick, and Nimue has to learn Safeholdian English before she can venture out among its people.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MiningAccidentOnTroy This is Grasshopper's ending in Twisted Metal 2. She's an android in the shape of Calypso's late daughter, who was killed in a car accident. When she gets close to Calypso, her programming kicks in and she explodes. She does seem remorseful for killing Calypso, even crying and asking him to hold her when it happens.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RobotRollCall
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Panspermia
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceshipGirl
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InstantAIJustAddWater
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalFantasyVIII
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Xion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_XIII#Xion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Kingdom_Hearts#Ventus
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Eraqus
((Ein (Cowboy Bebop), Ine (Project A-ko), Nei (Phantasy Star II)))
((ENIX (AKIHABARA) IS THE NOBODY))
http://kingdomhearts.wikia.com/wiki/Yen_Sid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuji_Horii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Story (Final Fantasy, Lost Odyssey, Last Story... we get it.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Veitch