Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the real Dorset and Wiltshire under invented names: Puddletown becomes Weatherbury, Bere Regis becomes Kingsbere, and Stonehenge keeps its own name in Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
The route starts at Hardy's birthplace cottage and his house Max Gate, then follows his novels to the real villages and ancient sites behind them: Puddletown, Maiden Castle, Bere Regis and finally Stonehenge. Hardy himself called Wessex a "partly real, partly dream-country", so some pins mark the area rather than one building.
Batman Begins was filmed on Iceland's Vatnajökull glacier, at Mentmore Towers and Cardington in England, and on the streets of Chicago, including Lower Wacker Drive and the Franklin Street Bridge. Gotham City is a patchwork of real places.
This route follows the story from the League of Shadows in "Bhutan" to Wayne Manor, the Tumbler chase and the Narrows, with the real site behind each scene.
Grigori Rasputin's story runs from the village of Pokrovskoye to Saint Petersburg's Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Peterhof and the Yusupov Palace on the Moika, where he was killed in December 1916.
The route follows the peasant who became the tsar's controversial confidant: his birthplace, his first steps in the capital, his meeting with Nicholas II, the murder, the bridge where his body was found and his burial at Tsarskoye Selo. Much about his death is disputed, and the stops say so.
Top Gun (1986) is set at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego and was filmed there, in Oceanside, at Kansas City Barbeque and at NAS Fallon in Nevada.
This route follows Maverick and Goose from the Miramar flight line to Charlie's house in Oceanside, the piano bar where they sing "Great Balls of Fire", the Nevada skies of the dogfights and North Island, where the sequel Top Gun: Maverick puts its school. Miramar, Fallon and North Island are active military bases.
Groundhog Day is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but it was filmed almost entirely in Woodstock, Illinois, around the town square and the Opera House.
A weatherman arrives for the real February 2 festival and wakes up to the same day again and again. The route follows the film from its Pennsylvania setting to the Woodstock square, the diner, the hotel tower, a railway museum and the quarry where the cliff scene was shot.
Henry VIII's six marriages played out in a handful of English palaces: Greenwich, Hampton Court, Whitehall, the Tower of London and Hever Castle, plus Peterborough Cathedral and Syon Abbey. Follow where he was born, where his wives lived, and where two of them ended.
This route takes seven stops from Henry's birth in 1491 to Catherine Howard's last months in 1542, and says what you can still visit today. Several Tudor buildings have gone, so those pins mark the site.
Max Payne 3 is set in São Paulo, Brazil, with scenes in Hoboken, New Jersey, a yacht attack on the Panama Canal and an ending in the state of Bahia.
Max, a retired NYPD cop, leaves New York for a security job with the wealthy Branco family in São Paulo, and a kidnapping pulls him into the city's favelas. The route follows the story from Hoboken to São Paulo, the Panama Canal and Bahia. It contains spoilers.
The game names cities and regions rather than streets, and its favela is invented, so the pins are approximate.
Gran Turismo, Forza and Assetto Corsa race on real circuits: the Nürburgring Nordschleife, Spa-Francorchamps, Monza, Le Mans, Suzuka and Laguna Seca.
This route lists six tracks you can drive in racing games, with what each game does with them and the real circuit behind the screen. Game appearances differ by title and year.
Rainbow Six Siege borrows from the real world: the Consulate map echoes the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London, Favela is based on Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, and Mok Myeok Tower is loosely based on Lotte World Tower in Seoul.
The route follows five places in the order Ubisoft brought them to the game, from a London townhouse to a Moroccan Kasbah and the Detroit of the story campaign. Most maps are inspirations, not copies, and the pins mark the real place that inspired each one, or only its city or country.
Battlefield V sends you to Narvik in Norway, Tobruk in Libya, Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, Rjukan in Norway and the Nijmegen railway bridge in the Netherlands, all real places of the war.
The game's prologue jumps between fronts, and the "Nordlys" war story follows a Norwegian resistance fight over heavy water. This route lines up those settings with the real history of each place. Only the places named in the game's own plot summary are included.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Modern Warfare II (2022) are set in real cities such as London, Saint Petersburg, Amsterdam and Chicago, plus Moldova and Georgia, alongside invented countries.
The route follows the campaigns in story order: the attack on Piccadilly Circus and the Camden Town raid, the trail through Saint Petersburg, Baurci and Borjomi, then the courier chase in Amsterdam and the finale in Chicago. Invented countries are left off the map, and the pins mark each real city or town, not a mission's exact setting.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and its sequels Modern Warfare 2 and 3 are set in real cities, from Pripyat and Rio de Janeiro to Washington, D.C., New York, Hamburg, Paris, Prague and Dubai.
This route follows the story of Price, Soap and Makarov across eight settings. The games' levels are invented layouts, so most pins mark the city rather than a mission spot.
Call of Duty: Black Ops sends CIA operative Alex Mason from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Vorkuta gulag, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Huế in Vietnam and Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.
Mason's story is told in flashbacks from an interrogation room, in order, from April 1961 to 1968. This route follows seven real places behind the campaign, and what happened at each one in real history. The game's levels are fiction, so most pins are approximate. Spoiler notice: the last stop reveals the campaign's twist.
The Exorcist is set in Georgetown, Washington DC, and opens in the ruins of Hatra in northern Iraq. The real Exorcist Steps, Healy Hall and Lauinger Library are on the Georgetown campus, and a hospital on Roosevelt Island stood in for a Washington scene.
The route follows the film from Merrin's dig at Hatra to the MacNeil house and the stairs where Father Karras falls.
Twister is set in Oklahoma, and was filmed there at Fairfax, Kaw Lake, Wakita and Guthrie before the finale moved to Eldora, Iowa. Storm chasers Jo and Bill race tornadoes across the plains.
This route follows the story from the opening farm to the F5 climax. Several stops are towns rather than single sites, and the Eldora finale house is private.
The English Patient was filmed in Tunisia and Italy: desert scenes near Tozeur, Nefta and Chott el Djerid, and the wartime monastery at Sant'Anna in Camprena near Pienza in Tuscany.
Contains story spoilers. The route follows the film's Italian settings, then its desert story: Hana's frescoes at Arezzo, a Venice hotel standing in for Cairo, the Cave of Swimmers and Almásy's camp. Some desert sites need a guided trip.
The Silence of the Lambs is set in Virginia, Baltimore and Memphis but was filmed largely in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the FBI Academy at Quantico, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall as real stops.
This route follows Clarice Starling from her FBI training to Lecter's cell and the hunt for Buffalo Bill. Two sites are private or gone, so the map marks them with a caveat.
Footloose (1984) is set in the fictional town of Bomont, Utah, but it was filmed in real Utah County towns: Payson, American Fork, Provo, Vineyard and Lehi, where the Lehi Roller Mills hosts the famous prom.
The route follows the film's story from church and high school to the honky-tonk, the steel-mill dance and the prom night. Some sites have changed: the Provo drive-in and bar no longer stand, so those pins are approximate.
The Roswell UFO incident of July 1947 began on a ranch near Corona, New Mexico, and ran through Roswell Army Air Field, Fort Worth and Wright Field in Ohio. The official explanation was a Project Mogul balloon.
This route follows the debris from the Alamogordo balloon launch to the Hangar 18 legend and the International UFO Museum in Roswell. Several stops are approximate, because the sources do not name exact spots.
The RMS Lusitania was torpedoed on 7 May 1915 11.5 nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, on a voyage from New York to Liverpool. This route follows her final journey through Liverpool, New York, Kinsale and Cobh.
It starts at Cunard's home port, moves to Pier 54 in New York, then to the Old Head of Kinsale and Cobh, where the survivors and the dead were brought and where a memorial now stands. Several stops are approximate because the ship went down at sea.
The Via Francigena is the medieval pilgrim road from Canterbury Cathedral through France and Switzerland to St Peter's in Rome, recorded by Archbishop Sigeric around 990. This route follows it from Canterbury over the Great St Bernard Pass to Lucca, Siena and Viterbo.
Sigeric's return trip ran to 80 stages of about 20 km each, some 1,700 km in all. Pilgrims still walk it today. Stops are landmarks on the route, not proven overnight stays.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 was filmed at the Dartford Crossing, Lavenham, Hardwick Hall and Freshwater West, with the Forest of Dean as its story setting.
This route follows the film's road-movie plot from the Death Eaters chase to Godric's Hollow, the frozen pond, Malfoy Manor and Shell Cottage. Two stops are approximate; each says why.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was filmed at London's Millennium Bridge, Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, Fort William in Scotland, Norway's Rauma Line and the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.
The route follows the 2009 film's scenes in order, from the bridge collapse that opens it to the sea cave where Harry and Dumbledore hunt a Horcrux. Hogwarts Express shots even left the UK for snow in Norway.
Most spots are real places you can visit; the cave interior itself was computer-generated.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was filmed on the River Thames, in Westminster Underground station, at the Glenfinnan Viaduct and in Glen Etive in the Scottish Highlands.
The route follows the film in order: the Order's night flight over London, Harry's walk to his hearing at the Ministry of Magic, the Hogwarts Express in the Highlands, the empty glens of the aerial shots and the Thestral flight to the Ministry over the Thames. Interiors were built at Leavesden Studios in Watford, so only the exteriors can be visited.
