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.
The Lizzie Borden murders happened in 1892 at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, now the Lizzie Borden House; her trial followed in New Bedford and she is buried in Fall River's Oak Grove Cemetery.
The route follows the case from the house where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed, to the June 1893 trial that ended in acquittal, to Maplecroft, the Providence shoplifting accusation of 1897 and the family plot where Lizzie was buried in 1927. The Providence and New Bedford pins are city-level; the exact trial building and store are not pinned.
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.
Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna's Hofburg, married at the Palace of Versailles, played at country life in the Petit Trianon and was held in the Conciergerie before her execution on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
This route follows the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa from the Habsburg palaces of Vienna to the royal court of France and the guillotine, in six stops you can still visit.
The Shawshank Redemption was filmed mostly in Ohio: Shawshank State Prison is the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, the opening trial is the Wyandot County Courthouse in Upper Sandusky, and the final beach is on Saint Croix.
The route follows Andy Dufresne from his trial to the Mansfield prison, the woodshop where Red hears Figaro, Brooks's halfway house and the Caribbean beach that stands in for Zihuatanejo.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was born at Linlithgow Palace, married at Holyrood Palace, was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle and was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.
The route follows her life from the cradle to the scaffold: the murder of David Rizzio, the stand-off at Carberry Hill and her escape across Loch Leven. Several of the sites can still be visited, though Fotheringhay is now earthworks and a few remains.
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.
Quigley Down Under is set in Fremantle, Western Australia, but it was filmed in the Northern Territory and Victoria: Alice Springs, Apollo Bay and Warrnambool.
This route follows the sharpshooter from the dock to the Outback ranch, the desert and the coastal town to the final wharf. Warrnambool played Fremantle, so the Western Australia stop marks only the real port the story names.
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.
Final Fantasy XV's Insomnia is based on Shinjuku in Tokyo, Altissia on Venice, while Lestallum is loosely reminiscent of Cuba. This route follows the story from the royal capital through the road trip to the water city.
It visits Shinjuku and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Old Havana, the Riva degli Schiavoni and St Mark's Basilica. The Havana link is only a loose comparison by the developers.
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.
Battlefield 3 is set in Tehran, Paris and New York, and Battlefield 4 in Shanghai and the Kunlun Mountains. The campaigns follow Marines from Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan to a nuclear plot that ends in Times Square.
The route follows the two campaigns in story order across six real places, from Mehrabad Airport in Tehran to central Shanghai. Most stops are city-level pins, because the games name cities rather than streets.
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.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) was filmed at Cobstone Windmill near Turville in Buckinghamshire, at Cap Taillat in the South of France, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.
The route follows the film from the Potts family's windmill home to the beach picnic, then on Caractacus's story to Vulgaria, with the castle of Baron Bomburst as the finale. Several pins are approximate because the guides name an area, not a spot.
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.
Hitchcock's The Birds is set in Bodega Bay, California, and filmed there too: the harbor, the Tides Wharf restaurant and the schoolhouse in nearby Bodega are all real places you can find on the map.
The route starts in San Francisco's Union Square, follows Melanie Daniels across the bay to the Brenner farm, and ends with the crows at the schoolhouse and the diner siege. Some Bodega Bay scenes were shot on a studio set, so the pins mark the real places the film borrowed.
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.
