Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) was shot in Germany: Wonka's factory gates are a Munich gasworks, the Chocolate Room was built at Bavaria Studios, and the final flight over town is footage of Nördlingen.
The route follows the film in story order, from Bill's Candy Shop and Charlie Bucket's street to the factory gates, the Chocolate River set and the glass Wonkavator. Some pins mark only a street, and the Chocolate Room was a studio set.
The 1990 Western is set on the 1863 frontier and was filmed mostly in South Dakota: a Fort Hays set near Rapid City, the Badlands, the Triple U Buffalo Ranch and Spearfish Canyon. John Dunbar's journey from a frontier fort to a Sioux winter camp is rebuilt from real prairie and canyon.
The route follows the story's order and ends at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, named in the film's epilogue text. Several stops are film sets or private land, so pins mark the nearest real place.
Cast Away strands a FedEx troubleshooter on a Pacific island that is really Monuriki in Fiji, with a failed raft escape shot on Namotu. Its Memphis scenes draw on FedEx's real home base, and its opening and closing crossroads lie near Canadian, Texas.
The route follows Chuck Noland from a Moscow street off Red Square and the FedEx hub in Memphis to the two islands in Fiji, then back to the Texas Panhandle for the last scene. The island is never named in the film, so two stops are filming stand-ins.
When Harry Met Sally... begins with a drive out of the University of Chicago and settles into Manhattan, from the Washington Square Arch and Central Park to Katz's Delicatessen, where Sally makes her famous point.
The route follows the pair from graduation in 1977 to a New Year's Eve declaration at the Puck Building, with seven stops: Cobb Gate, the Washington Square Arch, the Loeb Boathouse, the Temple of Dendur, Katz's, Cafe Luxembourg and the Puck Building. Stops follow the film's scene order, not a single journey.
Rocky is set and largely filmed in Philadelphia: Rocky Balboa's Kensington home, the Italian Market on 9th Street, Pat's King of Steaks, the Art Museum steps and the Spectrum arena in South Philadelphia all appear in the 1976 film.
The route follows the story from the opening fight on 25 November 1975 to the New Year's Day title bout. The Spectrum is gone, and the fight itself was shot in Los Angeles.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout was filmed across Paris, London, New Zealand and Norway, from the Grand Palais and St Paul's Cathedral to the cliff of Preikestolen. Ethan Hunt chases stolen plutonium cores through real streets, rooftops and a fjord-side dream.
The route follows the film's order: the Paris gala and convoy chase, the London rooftop run, then the "Kashmir" finale, shot near Queenstown and on Norway's Pulpit Rock. The HALO jump was filmed in Abu Dhabi, so it has no stop.
Demon Slayer is set in Taisho-era Japan, and fans trace its real places from the Kamado shrines of Dazaifu and Beppu to Mt. Kumotori and Asakusa.
Tanjiro's story runs from Mt. Kumotori to the Infinity Castle, and the route follows the fan trail in story order: two Kamado shrines, the mountain where he burned charcoal, the boulder he had to cut, the wisteria park fans read as the Final Selection, Asakusa and Yoshiwara, Ginzan Onsen as the Swordsmith Village, and the Aizu ryokan whose lobby looks like the Infinity Castle. Most are working shrines, streets and businesses; visit quietly.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles runs from a Manhattan cab stand to Chicago, with Wichita and the train town played by Braidwood and South Dayton.
John Hughes's 1987 Thanksgiving comedy strands an uptight advertising executive and a shower-curtain-ring salesman in a blizzard, then sends them through a shared motel bed, a broken-down train, a burning rental car and a refrigerated truck. This route follows the journey from Park Avenue and LaGuardia to Lambert, Braidwood, Woodstock and the Loop station where Del finally tells the truth.
TBS's spy thriller VIVANT is set in the fictional Republic of Balka but was filmed in Mongolia, at Sükhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar and the Gobi's Bayanzag cliffs, then across Japan, from Kanda Myojin in Tokyo to Izumo Grand Shrine. Its Mongolian shoot alone ran two and a half months.
This route follows Nogi's story from Balka to Tokyo and back through Shimane, with stops in Mongolia and Japan. Some of the Japanese sets are offices and are not for visiting.
Morioh in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable is based on Sendai, Japan, the hometown of the creator Hirohiko Araki. Its place names come from real streets such as Kōtōdai and Jōzenji, and its coast from the area around Matsushima.
The route walks from Araki's birthplace through the park and tree-lined avenue that lend the town its names, to the Mediatheque that hosted the JoJo exhibitions, the Lawson that became OWSON, and the suburbs and coast that supplied Morioh's look. Morioh itself is fictional, so most stops are real names and real models, not scene locations.
Outer Banks is set on the fictional Kildare Island in North Carolina, but the first season was filmed around Charleston, South Carolina: Shem Creek, Lowndes Grove, Hunting Island and Secessionville stand in for the Cut, Figure Eight and the Pogues' harbor.
This route follows Season 1 from John B's Chateau and the Boneyard brawl to Tannyhill, the Redfield Lighthouse, Kiara's restaurant and the church bell tower where the story turns. Most stops are public waterfront, park or restaurant; the two houses are not open as regular attractions.
Stand by Me moves King's Castle Rock from Maine to Oregon: Rob Reiner shot the 1986 film in Brownsville, along the Row River railway and at a California trestle. Four boys walk out of town to find a missing boy's body, and the trip changes them.
This route follows the film in story order, from Brownsville's Main Street and the treehouse to the saloon and diner where the trip is set in motion, the Row River Trail bridge near Cottage Grove, a Junction City general store, the 80-foot trestle above Lake Britton and the Calapooia River bridge where the boys part. Most stops are in Oregon; the trestle is in California.
Gaidai's 1965 comedy was shot at Mosfilm and around Moscow, including the Moscow Power Engineering Institute and Vavilov Street, then in Odesa when autumn weather turned. Fans have since put Shurik and Lida in bronze in Ryazan and Krasnodar.
The film is three comic novellas about the student Shurik. The route follows where the film was made and the statues it left behind.
The 1972 film The Dawns Here Are Quiet is set at a railway siding in wartime Karelia but was shot around Syamozero, in the village of Syargilakhta and at the Ruskeala waterfalls. Based on Boris Vasiliev's 1969 novel, it follows five young women gunners and a sergeant major against sixteen saboteurs.
The route runs from the story's invented Siding 171 and Vop Lake to the real shores, village and waterfalls where Stanislav Rostotsky filmed in 1971. Note that the siding and the lake exist only in the story.
Home Alone's Kevin McCallister lives at a real three-storey house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois; his family's Christmas dash was filmed at Chicago's O'Hare, and Home Alone 2 sends him to the Plaza Hotel, Central Park and the Rockefeller Center tree.
The route follows both films in order, from the Winnetka house and the two churches where Kevin meets Old Man Marley to the Chicago buildings that stood in for Duncan's Toy Chest and the New York landmarks of the sequel. Every stop is a documented filming location; the house is a private home, so visitors should not disturb the residents.
In September 1978, an 18-year-old photographer named Reza Shirazi comes home to Tehran and is pulled into the last days before Black Friday. The developers built the game from interviews with forty Iranians who lived through the revolution and from photographs by Michel Setboun; the streets, the cinema hideout and the prison are real places, filled with a fictional cast.
This route follows the game's 1978 story in order, from a Hasanabad rooftop to the shooting at Jaleh Square, then ends in the Evin Prison interrogation that frames the whole game. It is a route through the city the game recreates, not a walking itinerary.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided opens in a half-built Dubai hotel, moves to a near-future Prague, and ends at a London summit. The game's city is a fiction: Prague is compressed into three invented districts, while Dubai's hotel and London's Apex Centre do not exist. But each stop stands on a real place, and this route follows the story from Dubai to the Vltava and the Thames, using the real cities, the real model for Golem City and the real Alpine range as anchors.
The six stops follow the main mission order, from the Dubai prologue through Prague, Golem City and the Swiss Alps to the London finale.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth sends Ichiban Kasuga to Honolulu. The developers rebuilt a compressed stretch of the city, from the sand of Aloha Beach to the markets of Chinatown, mixing real streets, shops and landmarks with renamed and invented ones.
This route follows that Honolulu from Waikiki into downtown: Waikiki Beach, the International Market Place, the Ala Wai Canal bridge, Ala Moana Center, Iolani Palace and Chinatown. Names and distances have changed — Anaconda Shopping Center stands in for Ala Moana, Aloha Beach for Waikiki — but most of the streets and buildings are recognisable. It is a tour of a real city as a game remembers it.
In the 1920s the Osage Nation drew oil wealth from beneath its Oklahoma land, and newspapers called the Osage the richest nation or social group on earth, man for man. Then they began to die — shot, poisoned, killed by a bomb in Fairfax — while local courts and guardians controlled the money.
This route follows the documented places of the Osage murders, from Mollie Kyle's Gray Horse and Pawhuska's Million Dollar Elm to the Fairfax bombing, a lawyer's body beside the railroad, and the trials at Guthrie and Oklahoma City. It ends at the Osage Nation Museum, which keeps the record in the tribe's own voice. Scorsese's 2023 film was shot in many of the same towns.
Sleeping Dogs sends an undercover cop into the Sun On Yee triad across a compact Hong Kong built from four real Island districts. The designers photographed the city for a week and then bent it to fit the story.
This route visits the four districts in turn, starting with Aberdeen, where the story opens. Pins mark whole districts, not mission sites: no source ties a specific mission to a street.
Hoenn is a world of volcanoes, islands and sea routes, and the games' own region is based on Kyushu, the south-western main island of Japan. Fans and reference writers have matched its towns and landmarks to real places across the island and the seas around it.
This route follows the story from Littleroot Town to the Sealed Chamber and sets each stop beside the place it is said to resemble. The region is inspired by Kyushu, not copied from it, so every pin is an outside reading of the map, not an official location.
The boy born on the Onon River became the ruler of the largest land empire in history. This route follows him from the steppe camps of Khentii, through the war that began at a border town in Kazakhstan, to the siege of Samarkand and a death in the middle of a campaign.
The sources disagree on his birth year, his birthplace and his grave. Where the Secret History of the Mongols gives a legend and other sources give the record, the stops say which is which.
At 21, Jack London sailed north in July 1897 to join the Klondike gold rush. He came home without gold but with scurvy and the stories that made his name: The Call of the Wild, "To Build a Fire" and more.
This route follows him from the beach at Dyea over the Chilkoot Pass, down the lakes and rapids of the Yukon, through a winter at the Stewart River to Dawson City, where his cabin still stands.
Finland's national epic was gathered, not invented: a country doctor named Elias Lönnrot walked into the forests of Karelia and wrote down what the old singers recited.
The route follows his collecting trips from 1832 to 1834, from Viena Karelia to his home at Kajaani and the first draft at Kuhmo, then visits three places the runes name: the Imatra rapids, the island of Saari and the Kemi river. The poem's geography is loose, so the last two pins are marked as guesses.
