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Comment by chrisbrandow | Hacker News Reader

Even crazier, there's a company that built a fake town right in the middle of a real town!

https://www.universalstudioslot.com/backlot

Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam has four "metropolitan" (Berlin/Paris/New York/London) streets: https://www.studiobabelsberg.com/en/backlots/metropolitan-ba...

Yep, there are several in LA: Warner has two. Sony has one. Paramount has one. There is one outside the city too.

If you go hiking about four miles into the santa monica mountains, you can visit the M*A*S*H set and see some of the left over trucks and some historical markers.

Yep, that's Paramount Ranch for those interested. There's not much left of it after the last fire that went through there though (Woolsey fire I think it was).

Paramount ranch is different, you can drive there. The mash site you park in the malibu creek recreation area and hike into it. I don’t think it was hit but even if it was the metal trucks would be fine in a grassland fire.

;-)

The Courthouse Square part of that backlot is the same courthouse from Back to the Future, with a different paint job and some aesthetic tweaks so that it can be used in other filming without being distractingly recognizable.

I see those sets constantly and always annoy the wife commenting on them.

It was in the Twilight Zone episode "Where is Everybody?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khvo6TH-DXc

I remember watching it more recently and when he runs down the alley I wondered if he was going to buy that almanac.

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