Hey, wait! I know that!

[Mistral]

In film, tv and print authors sometimes slip bits and pieces of our world into theirs. Pick something you noticed, tell us whether it took you out of the story or made the whole creator's universe more believable and, of course, clarify the association with our world...


I'm thinking of Universe Today, a variation on USA Today newspaper, showing up in Babylon 5. It totally made me feel like it was a link to our world, like Babylon 5 awaits in our future. Other than Sinclair's speech about the end of the Earth, I don't think anything in B5 gave more of a sense of continuity than that. Except, maybe, the picture in Garabaldi's quarters...

 

[Fist McStrongpunch]

Zima also exists in B5.

 

[marillion]

Ok.. Not Sci-Fi related, and perhaps not exactly what the OP was looking for, but in the movie "Sunshine Cleaning" with the adorable Amy Adams (growwwl), there's a scene that takes place in a small restaurant called "Lucky Boy"... This is a small hamburger joint in Albuquerque that specializes in Chinese food.. Yes, go figure..

I eat there fairly often and their egg foo yung burger is amazing.. Having an entire scene shot there made the movie very real to me, as I could point to little little things within the restaurant that were very familiar to me..

More to the point, the scene in 2010 where Roy Schiedner is sucking on a Budweiser out of a Capri-Sun-like pouch (respect it!) made me chuckle.

 

[Brikar99]

In "Surrogates," someone is chased through what we're told is Dorchester, but it was filmed in Lynn (roughly 20 miles north) outside my office. Beyond not being a very good movie, my familiarity with the area kind of pulled me out of it, since it's blatantly obvious to ME that it's not Dorchester.

 

[sojourner]

I actually dislike when the author/creator of a work does something like this. Too often it comes off as forced. One that I remember, though it doesn't annoy me that much, was when Timothy Zahn added hot chocolate to Star Wars. I can't remember what book it was in, but I remember that scene. Easter eggs are fine. Nods and winks to the "camera" annoy me.

 

[shivkala]

Well, it's pretty obvious that there were Ikeas on Caprica, judging by the interior design of the Battlestar Galactica. They even used the frak mirrors from Ikea for shaving! I'm not sure it made the world of Galactica more believable, though, given the ending, I guess all of those Ikea products were made before and all of those Ikea products will be made again.

 

[captcalhoun]

seeing a Humvee in BSG put me off ever watching it. it's set way the fuck off in deep space and they are using fucking HMMWVs!!!

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Mars Today in Total Recall

http://blog.syracuse.com/future-news/2009/10/future_newspapers_total_recall.html

 

[Rii]

In Herbert's Dune novels, the various pointers to the Face Dancers having derived from Islam and Ix from Asia. And yeah, I totally buy it. They could've come from anywhere, but they did come from somewhere. The nature of human cultural evolution over thousands of years makes even the most seemingly orthogonal connections eminently plausible.

 

[backstept]

Mars Today in Total Recall

http://blog.syracuse.com/future-news/2009/10/future_newspapers_total_recall.html

heh
I live in Syracuse


what gets me is in Star Trek when it seems like all great literature stopped after 20th century Earth
a lot of people seem to be fascinated by 400 year old popular history

 

[marillion]

In Herbert's Dune novels, the various pointers to the Face Dancers having derived from Islam and Ix from Asia. And yeah, I totally buy it. They could've come from anywhere, but they did come from somewhere. The nature of human cultural evolution over thousands of years makes even the most seemingly orthogonal connections eminently plausible.

Off topic, but +1 for the AV... That was a great scene!

 

[jadcox@mindspring.com]

I have always hoped to see a Dippin' Dots stand in a Star Trek movie, so that the sign can call it the "Ice Cream of the Present."

 

[Sephiroth]

Ok.. Not Sci-Fi related, and perhaps not exactly what the OP was looking for, but in the movie "Sunshine Cleaning" with the adorable Amy Adams (growwwl), there's a scene that takes place in a small restaurant called "Lucky Boy"... This is a small hamburger joint in Albuquerque that specializes in Chinese food.. Yes, go figure..

I eat there fairly often and their egg foo yung burger is amazing.. Having an entire scene shot there made the movie very real to me, as I could point to little little things within the restaurant that were very familiar to me..

More to the point, the scene in 2010 where Roy Schiedner is sucking on a Budweiser out of a Capri-Sun-like pouch (respect it!) made me chuckle.

That place on Constitution? I was allways afraid to go there

 

[mimic]

There was an episode of 'Supernatural' about H. H. Holmes - I had read Erik Larson's book on the guy, so when the named one of the inmates of a Philadelphia prison as Mudgett I said 'that's H. H. Holmes!' at nearly the same time as the characters.

 

[Sephiroth]

speaking of Albuquerque, almost the entirety of Terminator Salvation was filmed in the Albuquerque area, the desert scenes were done in the desert next to the film studio, the car chase was shot on the road leading to the studio, (I'd pass by the area everyday on the way home) up to the bridge, which is the Taos bridge (my great uncle was the foreman for the project) and the river that Marcus falls into, as well as the river in the Marcus/John Connor scene is the Rio Grande

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The opening of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was filmed not five minutes away from where I saw the film. Weird to be driving down the same road as Ironhide!

The airport in Scent of a Woman was supposed to be NYC I think, but it was clearly Newark.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Ok.. Not Sci-Fi related, and perhaps not exactly what the OP was looking for, but in the movie "Sunshine Cleaning" with the adorable Amy Adams (growwwl), there's a scene that takes place in a small restaurant called "Lucky Boy"... This is a small hamburger joint in Albuquerque that specializes in Chinese food.. Yes, go figure...

Reminds me of this weird restaurant that pops up on Roswell occasionally. It's called Senor Chow's. The decor is Chinese but the waitresses wear traditional Mexican dresses.

what gets me is in Star Trek when it seems like all great literature stopped after 20th century Earth
a lot of people seem to be fascinated by 400 year old popular history

On kinda that vein, it reminds me of some DS9 (or was it Voyager?) episode where the writers came up with a brilliant excuse for one character to give important historical exposition to another, "21st century history was never my strong suit. Too depressing."

I like those moments in movies where you see how America at large is reacting to events because they'll cut to a scene of Jay Leno or someone mentioning it in their late night monologue. I remember Jay Leno's joke in Contact, "Apparantly these aliens have been watching old Earth TV broadcasts from the 1930s. Just imagine how disappointed they're gonna be if they're Cubs fans."

Then there was the brief clip of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in Kick-Ass. (I could tell the movie wasn't really working for me when I wished that I could just watch the remainder of that Craig Ferguson episode instead of watching the rest of the movie.)

 

[Trekker4747]

One that comes to mind is the S5 opener for "Enterprise" where some propaganda footage is shown of the alien/Nazi menace in 20th century Earth and there's a shot of Times Square showing a Pepsi Billboard.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

One real life location I've been to was Casa Bonita, a cheesy Mexican restaurant in Denver. The restaurant looks pretty much exactly the same as it does in the South Park episode "Casa Bonita" (where Cartman tricks Butters into thinking that a meteor destroyed South Park just so Cartman can go to Kyle's birthday party at the eponymous restaurant). They've got cliff divers, puppet shows, Black Bart's Cave, and little flags on the tables to summon the waitress, just like in real life.

Then there's the Cetacean Institute in Star Trek IV. Except that, in the movie, it's supposed to be in Sausalito. IRL, it's the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, which is in totally the opposite direction.

 

[sojourner]

One that comes to mind is the S5 opener for "Enterprise" where some propaganda footage is shown of the alien/Nazi menace in 20th century Earth and there's a shot of Times Square showing a Pepsi Billboard.

There's a Fifth Season!?!?!