Radiator Springs is Route 66: Pixar's Cars town borrows its shape from Seligman, Arizona, the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook and the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock.
The route follows the old highway west from Galena, Kansas — where the truck that became Mater still stands outside a restored service station — through a stone café in Stroud, Oklahoma, the Cadillac Ranch in Texas, and the Arizona motels that gave Radiator Springs its look. The town itself is fictional; every stop is a real Route 66 landmark the Pixar team used.
The Vampire Diaries' Mystic Falls is Covington, Georgia, where the clock tower, the Mystic Grill, Elena's house and the Lockwood Mansion are real places about 35 miles east of Atlanta.
The route follows the show around Covington's square and Floyd Street, north to the demolished Glenridge Hall that served as the Salvatore boarding house, and east to Oxford College, which played Whitmore. Most stops are public streets or a working restaurant; the grand houses are private and seen from the road or on a tour.
8 Mile was filmed on location in Detroit: the trailer park in Warren, the New Center Stamping Plant, the Penobscot Building and the Shelter.
The route follows Jimmy Smith Jr. from his mother's trailer to the rap battles at the Shelter. It takes in the parking garage inside the old Michigan Theatre, the demolished Chin Tiki club and the empty lot where Cheddar Bob shoots himself. Some sites are gone; the Shelter and the Penobscot still stand.
The 1990s sitcom Mr. Bean was filmed across London, Sussex and the south coast: the Surbiton street used for his flat, Stanmer Church, Peacehaven beach, Battersea Park and Clarence Pier. On screen he lives at Flat 2, 12 Arbour Road, Highbury; the front door was filmed in Surbiton.
This route follows the episodes from the 1990 pilot to the 1995 golf sketch: eight stops through a Henry Moore sculpture, a Kingston market, a Southsea hotel room and a runaway golf ball. Most are public places; the Surbiton house is a private home, so it is one to see from the street.
Chainsaw Man is a late-1990s Tokyo where devils are real, and the anime's model streets run from Nerima Station to the phone booth and stairs of Kanda in the Reze Arc film. Denji, a teenage Devil Hunter, joins the government's Public Safety Division under Makima, and the 12-episode first season (2022) sends him and Power through Nerima. The 2025 film moves the story to Kanda: Denji meets Reze, a Bomb Devil hybrid, beside a Jinbocho phone booth, and she works at a café in Sarugakuchō.
This route follows the documented model spots in story order, from Nerima Station and a footbridge in the season finale to the phone booth, the Aoi Building, the Onnazaka stairs and the café fans call Futamichi. Most are working streets and businesses; visit quietly.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? was shot almost entirely in Mississippi, from Leland's handcar railway to the Canton square and the Yazoo City bank. The baptism lake outside Vicksburg and the closing shot at Edwards are here too. Three convicts break out of a chain gang in 1937 and go looking for a buried treasure before the valley is flooded.
This route follows the film from the blind prophet on the handcar to the barn that burns, the radio session that makes the Soggy Bottom Boys famous, the sirens at D'Lo Water Park, the Canton rally and the Vicksburg gala, and ends at the Edwards crossing that closes the picture.
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.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was filmed in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and Malta, with Aït Benhaddou as Troy, Favignana as the goat island and the Aeolian Islands as Aeolia.
Matt Damon's Odysseus spends twenty years getting home. His crew is eaten by a Cyclops, crushed by Laestrygonians and sent to the underworld; Calypso keeps him on Ogygia, and Ithaca is full of suitors when he finally washes ashore.
This route follows the film's locations in story order, from the fall of Troy to the castle above Favignana that served as Ithaca. Every stop is a real place, but the mythical islands and monsters are not.
A Nightmare on Elm Street sets Springwood, Ohio, on a leafy Los Angeles street: Nancy Thompson's house at 1428 North Genesee Avenue, Glen's across the road, John Marshall High School as the protagonists' school and a shuttered 1927 jail standing in for the police station. Wes Craven shot the film in 32 days on about $1.1 million, and the two houses still look very much as they did in 1984.
The route follows the film from Nancy's bad morning at school through the police station, Rod's funeral, the sleep clinic and Glen's last night, and ends at the house where Nancy turns the nightmare around. Two stops are private homes and the school is a working campus, so most of it is seen from the street.
Scream's Woodsboro is a fictional California town, but the 1996 film was shot in Glen Ellen, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Sonoma and Tomales.
This route follows eight of those places in story order, from Casey Becker's house and Sidney Prescott's bedroom to the school, the town square, the video store and the Tomales house where the killers are unmasked. Several stops are private houses, so see them from the street; the square and the community center are the public ones.
Bayside Shakedown is set in Tokyo's fictional Wangan Precinct, and its real home is Odaiba: Fuji Television's headquarters, the island and the Rainbow Bridge that gives the second film its title.
The police comedy began on Fuji TV in 1997, the year the network moved to Odaiba, then a half-empty district. This route follows the show from the studio to Tokyo Teleport Station, the shot-in-Shiomi precinct and a Kyoto road junction that doubled for the bridge.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was filmed around Austin in the summer of 1973, and its main sites can still be visited: Bagdad Cemetery in Leander, the Last Chance Gas Station in Bastrop, and the Quick Hill farmhouse, now Hooper's restaurant in Kingsland. This route follows the film from the grave-robbing opening to Sally's escape on a Round Rock road, then ends inside the house where Leatherface's family sat down to dinner.
Tobe Hooper shot the $140,000 film on 16mm over 13 days, using a real farmhouse, a working gas station and a country cemetery instead of sets. Temperatures reached 110°F during the shoot.
Friday the 13th (1980) was filmed at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick, New Jersey, with Blairstown's Main Street, the Moravian Cemetery in Hope and the Blairstown Diner standing in for the town and countryside around Camp Crystal Lake.
The film was shot in and around Hardwick, Blairstown and Hope in autumn 1979, mostly at a working Boy Scout camp on Sand Pond. This route follows Annie's hitchhike into town, the counselors' night at camp, Steve Christy's evening at the diner and Alice's final struggle on the lakeshore.
The Fast and the Furious (2001) turned real Los Angeles places into Dom Toretto's world: Dodger Stadium, Bob's Market in Echo Park, the house on East Kensington Road and Neptune's Net in Malibu.
This route follows nine of those places in story order, from the opening test at Dodger Stadium to the final race on Terminal Island, with a detour to Race Wars at San Bernardino. Some are working shops, homes or airport ground; the film's streets are still the draw.
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.
The 2003 road movie Bumer opens in Moscow, in Pechatnikov Lane and on the Savvinskaya and Berezhkovskaya embankments, and runs out of town to Raduzhny and Kolomna, where its provincial scenes were shot.
Four car thieves flee Moscow in a stolen BMW and the film follows them from the capital's embankments down to a small town. The pins are approximate: they follow reported filming spots, not exact frames.
The Goonies is set in Astoria, Oregon, where the Walsh family's foreclosure sends Mikey and Data into the attic and out to Cannon Beach. The film used the old Clatsop County Jail, the Flavel House, the real house at 368 38th Street, Ecola State Park, Haystack Rock and Goat Rock Beach in California.
This route follows the Goonies from the jailbreak through the Goon Docks, the museum, the bike ride to Ecola, the Fratelli hideout and the underground ship to the final beach.
Office Romance (1977) is set in Moscow, and its statistical office is assembled from three places: the Petrovka 3/6 facade, Mosfilm studio sets and a rooftop in Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane.
Eldar Ryazanov's comedy follows a shy statistician and his stern boss, with a city chosen carefully to show who lives where.
This route visits the film's real locations, the studio where the office was built, and the homes and station that give each character a place in Moscow.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was shot across Los Angeles and beyond in 1990 and 1991: the Sixth Street Bridge, the Santa Monica Place mall, the Bull Creek spillway and the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana all appear in the film.
This route follows nine of those real places in story order, from the biker bar where the T-800 picks up its clothes to the steel mill where it dies. Some have vanished — the Sixth Street Viaduct was demolished and the Corral Bar is now a library — and one is in Fremont, not Los Angeles at all.
Jaws was filmed on Martha's Vineyard, which stood in for Amity Island: Edgartown, State Beach and the Jaws Bridge.
Steven Spielberg began shooting there on 2 May 1974, using the island's whaling town, its barrier beaches and the little Chappaquiddick ferry as the summer resort the shark terrorises. This route follows the film from the opening bonfire at South Beach to the last shot off Cape Poge Light. In between are Brody's beach-closing signs at Water and Main, the Kintner attack at Joseph Sylvia State Beach, the shark's run under the American Legion Memorial Bridge into Sengekontacket Pond, Quint's vanished workshop at Menemsha and the open water between Oak Bluffs and East Chop where the Orca hunts.
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.
The Driver series began in 1999 as a car-chase game and grew into a tour of real cities: Miami, Los Angeles and New York in the first game, Havana, Las Vegas and Rio de Janeiro in Driver 2, Nice and Istanbul in Driver 3, and a fictionalised San Francisco in the 2011 sequel. Tanner's undercover work runs from a Miami parking garage to a presidential car, a Rio climax beneath Christ the Redeemer and the Golden Gate Bridge.
This route follows the series city by city, from Ocean Drive's Art Deco hotels to the Las Vegas Strip and the Bosphorus. Some stops are city-level pins because the games recreate whole urban areas rather than single buildings; only Christ the Redeemer and the Golden Gate Bridge are pinned exactly.
Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West cross the American West from Colorado Springs and Denver to Yellowstone and drowned San Francisco. A thousand years after the old world fell to Faro's machines, Nora outcast Aloy travels to uncover what destroyed it.
This route follows both Horizon games from the red rocks above Colorado Springs to the drowned streets of San Francisco, pairing each stop with the real landmark behind it. Guerrilla compresses the map — in-game locations are not exactly where they are in the real world — so the pins mark real stand-ins, not exact game coordinates.
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.
