Notes on the Geography of the Arrowverse, Vol. 1

Opening Remarks

A little while ago I made a project out of documenting everything there is to know about the geography of the Arrowverse. Every map, GPS coordinate, or address that flashed on the screen must be recorded. Every offhand remark and newspaper article of relevance must be transcribed. These facts are all compiled into a very long spreadsheet, which also tracks each entry's credibility, both in- and out-of-universe. Suffices to say, this is a very big project.

I was making pretty good progress for a while, and the first couple of seasons of Arrow flew by pretty fast. Year 3 gets harder, though. Arrow season 3 is quite a bit less fun to watch than season 2, and I have to split my attention with The Flash and Constantine. It's near-ish the end of that year where I've stalled. I'll pick it up again eventually I'm sure, but for the time being I might as well share the more interesting findings I've made so far.

Without further ado, here are some very obscure observations about the geography of the Arrowverse. (I've saved the best for last, by the way.)

Star City

Let's start with an obvious question: where in the world is dear old Star City? Let's start broad and narrow it down.

• It's fairly self-evident that Star City is somewhere on the West Coast of America (boat trip to China, sun setting over ocean, etc.).
• A plane ticket at A1x20 19:46 indicates a commercial flight from Starling City to Shanghai as taking ~12 hours. This is consistent with flights out of the Northwest U.S. Any flight east or south of Seattle takes longer.
• A newspaper article at A2x18 2:22 discusses Iron Heights Prison in the context of "prison overpopulation in the Northwest." (The article also mentions Bludhaven and Keystone as the sites of nearby prisons. Bludhaven makes sense; Keystone does not.)
• At A2x10 15:17, Maya Resik's medical bill puts Starling City in a state with postal code NE. In real life, there is no state with postal code NE.
• An SCPD letterhead at A1x15 16:07 explicitly places Starling in Washington state (postal code WA).

• It snows very rarely in Star City. The only instance I've recorded so far is A1x09 41:36 where it snows around Christmas-time. This is consistent with the climate of the Seattle area, where it is likely to snow lightly for just a few days every year.
• A screen at a Starling train station at A2x21 37:44 lists Seattle and Spokane as the departure points of trains arriving in Starling.

That all paints a pretty clear picture: Star City is somewhere on the Pacific coast of Washington state.

I have come across two maps, so far, that specifically mark the location of Star City in the world. The first, at 3x02 26:08, places Starling City in pretty much exactly the same location as real-life Seattle. The other, at 3x09 11:35, puts Starling somewhere in Iowa. Yeah... way off. That map is dubious anyways, though, since it marks real-life cities like San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, Washington D.C., and Nairobi hundreds of miles away from their true locations.

Central City

And Central City, then? Where could that be?

• A CCPD letterhead at F1x09 15:14 places Central City in Washington State (postal code WA). The letterhead is clearly reused from the SCPD one shown above, with only very minor modification. This seems clearly wrong. Someone screwed up (in a very minor way that no one but me has probably ever noticed or cared about).
• A Central City Circuit Court search warrant at F1x09 20:18 places Central City in Missouri (postal code MO). This makes way more sense.
• At 1x12 32:59, a convict tips off Barry about a robbery: "It's a TDK and money transfer truck coming in from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis." This places Central City in the St. Louis zone of the Eighth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses the eastern half of Missouri and the southern half of Illinois.

• At 1x04 17:42, a museum guide says, "It wasn't until 1852, when the Transcontinental Railroad laid their tracks through this thriving cattle town...." In reality, the Transcontinental Railroad didn't begin construction until 1863, and its terminus was Omaha, Nebraska (so it didn't go through Missouri). However, the railroad network that connects to Omaha was indeed built in Missouri in the 1850s, so this all kinda checks out.

Voila! There's 3 independent pieces of evidence corroborating that Central City is in eastern Missouri. We also know that there's a big river running through Central City (it shows up on all the maps and in establishing shots of the city). Perhaps it's the Mississippi? Could be. Or one of its tributaries.

Star City--Central City

So far so good. But do these locations for Star City and Central City reconcile with each other?

• A train station sign at A2x22 7:55 indicates that a non-stop train ride from Starling to Central City takes 2 hours and 10 minutes.
• At F1x01 31:24, Oliver says to Barry, "Something tells me you didn't just run 600 miles to say hi to a friend."

In reality, the distance from Seattle, Washington to St. Louis, Missouri is over 2000 miles. The fastest trains in the world don't average higher than 150 mph (and there are certainly no high-speed trains crossing the U.S.). So... these don't really check out.

I'm sure I will find a lot more pieces of evidence in this category over the rest of the seasons. For example, Barry's running Oliver and Diggle to intercept Cayden James in "The Devil's Greatest Trick" implies that he is able to run from Central City to Star City very fast... like in a matter of minutes.

Blue Valley

Blue Valley finally got mentioned overtly in Flash season 4 (as a place where Wally spent some time and apparently fought Starro!). The city was referenced way before that, though in Arrow season 2.

At A2x05 3:20, if you crank the volume way up, you can just barely make out the basketball commentator on Oliver's TV: "Blue Valley is really having problems containing the Rockets." The Rockets are, of course, Starling City's basketball team.

Markovia

Markovia first gets name-dropped in A1x03. As Oliver reads Deadshot's INTERPOL file, he tells us in voice-over: "He's killed all over the world. Chicago, Markovia, Corto Maltese." As he says this right around 7:14, he pulls up a map on his computer screen--part of Deadshot's file, no doubt. The map has a couple dozen markers distributed around the globe, presumably marking the locations of Deadshot's known activity. Indeed, there is a mark at Chicago. There are 2 marks in South America, but, unfortunately, neither one looks like it would be the island of Corto Maltese. There are 3 marks in Europe that could be Markovia.

It's worth noting that this map graphic was frequently reused on the Arrowcave computers over the next couple years. However, never again do we see someone actually open the map. My interpretation is that Team Arrow just kept Deadshot's file open in the background a lot... for some reason. (The truth is, this graphic was never meant to be associated with Deadshot specifically. It is just a generic map to fill the screen.)

So we need a little more information before we can choose between the 3 European marks on Deadshot's activity map. That info comes in A2x16 when the Suicide Squad visits Markovia. Throughout the episode (at 14:33, for example), the German language is used on Markovian signs. Now that we know Markovia is a German-speaking country, we can narrow its probable location to the part of Europe where German is spoken. So, I grabbed the map below from Wikipedia.

Now, combining this with our previous knowledge, it is clear that Markovia must be the third European mark from the left on INTERPOL's map. That would put the country right around the vertex of Austria, Slovenia, and Italy. Eureka!

One more tidbit about Markovia: at A2x16 17:26, we get a very fleeting glimpse of a Markovian license plate. For one, the plate reveals that Markovia is a member of the EU, and that its United Nations-assigned international license plate country code is "M" (in real life, "M" is for Malta). There's also a tiny rendering of a Markovian flag on the plate! As far as I know, that flag is never visible anywhere else. The flag's colors (green and yellow) are clearly inspired by Geo-Force's classic costume from the comics. Obscure trivia!

Smallville?!? (on Earth-1)

This one's really very fun. I don't know of anyone else on the Internet who has spotted this, either. At A2x21 37:44, Thea is trying to get out of Starling City by train (Deathstroke's Siege rather ruins her day). For just a handful of frames, you can make out a few words on a screen listing arriving trains. Up above, I pointed out that Seattle and Spokane are listed. Central City is also listed. But there is one more, very mysterious city name. Take a look:

If you squint you eyes just right, I'm 80% sure it says "Smallville." Yup, Smallville. Weird, right? Smallville's supposed to be in Kansas, not Washington state. And there's no way that a train running from Kansas to Washington would be labeled by the name of a tiny little town like Smallville. So just a nonsense Easter egg, I guess. And to this day, Smallville has never again been referenced on Earth-1 (as far as I know). So this is the one and only indication of Smallville's existence on Earth-1. Cool!

Closing Remarks

Anyways, I have no idea if anyone cares about all this. I for one, though, find these geographical Easter eggs quite fun. In theory, the long-term goal of my project is to reconcile all the contradictory facts I collect and synthesize the data into some maps and stuff. That's really far away, though. It may never happen. For now, it's just little stuff like I've listed above that makes the project fun.

So what do you think? What are your favorite little-known Easter eggs in the Arrowverse? Let me know in the comments.

Hope you enjoyed!
Phillip