The 50 Coolest Fictional Cities

Some of the most fantastic places only exist within the pages of books, the frames of films, the panels of comics, even the lyrics of songs. You can't buy a plane ticket to any of these cities. You can't drive there in your car. You can only catch glimpses by watching your favorite show, or rereading your favorite novel.

Some of these places are so thoroughly imagined by their creators, you forget they aren't real. Some leave gray spaces that only your imagination can fill in. And as cool as some of these may be, there are a handful you wouldn't want to be caught dead in. In that way, the pages of a comic or your computer's monitor are about as close you want to get. Regardless, they all leave their mark on the individuals who wander their streets.

Here are the 50 coolest fictional cities.

RELATED: Green Label - The 10 Fictional Locations We Want to Visit in Real Life

50. Basin City

First Appeared: Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special (April, 1991)
Founding Father: Frank Miller
Notable Residents: Marv, Dwight McCarthy, Nancy Callahan, the Roark Family

Somewhere in the American west lies Basin City, best known as Sin City. Like other American cities, Sin City has a number of neighborhoods—the Docks, the Projects—but unlike the city you're from, Frank Miller's creation boasts a neighborhood run by prostitutes. The police won't venture there as part of a shady agreement (the only kind possible in a place of high-contrast black and white, with occasional spurts of blood red and greasy yellow). Funny that this underbelly turned upwards only comes in b&w. In a pulpy world such as this one, everything is shades of gray, every man and woman a little bit of a coward, a hero, and a monster.

49. King's Landing

First Appeared: A Game of Thrones (1996)
Founding Father: George R. Martin
Notable Residents: Aegon

It's actually a dirty, smelly city, no place you'd look forward to traveling to, but it is the home of Aegon and his castle, the Red Keep, where he sits on his throne made from the blades of his defeated enemies. He keeps them as sharp as he wishes so as to always be on guard as a ruler, and it serves as a litmus test for would-be kings. Those who are cut by the throne are considered unfit to rule and sent out. All of this is impossibly badass.

48. Thugz Mansion

First Appeared: "Thugz Mansion" (2002)
Founding Father: Tupac Shakur
Notable Residents: Tupac Shakur, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X

Heaven wasn't enough for 'Pac, so he imagined his own. He populated it with fallen idols of black culture—Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Billie Holiday—and called it Thugz Mansion. And in his humility he asked that we remember to save a place for him. How could we not? He fashioned the place himself; he holds the position of honor at the dinner table. We may never see it, but surely he's there.

47. Hillwood

First Appeared: Hey Arnold! (Episode 1, "Downtown as Fruits/Eugene's Bike," October 7, 1996)
Founding Father: Craig Bartlett
Notable Residents: Arnold, Gerald, Helga, Stinky

Part Seattle, part Portland, and part NYC, Hillwood is a city's city. Craig Bartlett captures the jazz, the stoop life, the over-the-shoulder breathers, and the secret rooftop oases of uban living. There's a great deal of history packed into this kid's show, and Arnold is a great collector of city stories, the same way that Helga is a great collector of Arnold's chewed gum.

46. Shermer, Ill.

First Appeared: Sixteen Candles (1984)
Founding Father: John Hughes
Notable Residents: John Bender, Ferris Bueller, Samantha Baker, Gary Wallace, Wyatt Donnelly

In the 1980s, many of your favorite film characters would have hailed from this fictional North Chicago suburb. And because we've embraced nostalgia for that decade with our whole hearts, many of your favorite film characters probably still hail from Shermer. This is the stereotypical suburb where the Breakfast Club came together, where Ferris had his famous day off, where Sam Baker kissed the impossibly dreamy Jake Ryan over a burning birthday cake. Also, where two geeks built Kelly LeBrock. In Shermer, dreams come true. In America, more often they don't — LeBrock gets fat, a filmmaker dies of a heart aattck, and Judd Nelson can't find his career anymore. No wonder how many of us choose Shermer over reality.

45. Eerie, Ind.

First Appeared: Eerie, Indiana (Episode 1, "Foreverware," September 15, 1997)
Founding Father: José Rivera and Karl Schaefer, with Joe Dante
Notable Residents: Marshall Teller, Simon Holmes

In the very first episode of the short-lived live-action children's show, main character Marshall Teller discovers that his neighbors stay young by sleeping in tupperware beds. Mind you, this is the first episode. From there, things only become weirder. Eerie is the city every amateur Encyclopedia Brown wishes they'd grown up, a place where every mystery is solved in 30 minutes and no real danger is possible, even when you're dealing with a retainer that can read dogs' thoughts.

44. The Citadel

First Appeared: Mass Effect (2007)
Founding Father: Casey Hudson and Preston Watamaniuk
Notable Residents: Commander Shepard, Joker, Liara, Kiadan, Archangel

Though most non-gamers know Mass Effect for its heavily publicized but hella anti-climactic sex scene (alien sideboob, anyone?), everyone that stepped into the immersive world of this sci-fi RPG remembers the Citadel, the massive space station shaped something like a pentagram. Its population comes in at a whopping 13.2 million. We'd certainly like to dirty it up with some properly hardcore extraterrestrial sex (yes Katy Perry).

43. The City

First Appeared: The City of Lost Children (1995)
Founding Father: Gilles Adrien and Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Notable Residents: Krank, One, Miette

Most Americans came to the whimsical style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet via his film Amélie. This film came earlier, and offers a grungier take on the fantastic than the viewer of Amélie might think the director capable of. Reveling in the cartoonish and the grotesque, the City in The City of Lost Children is part post-apocalyptic nightmare, part fairy-tale gone wrong, part steampunk circus cityscape, and all magic. Seldom do you see such an imaginative place onscreen.

42. Sunnydale, Calif.

First Appeared: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Episode 1, "Welcome to the Hellmouth," March 10, 1997)
Founding Father: Joss Whedon
Notable Residents: Buffy, Angel, Willow, Xander, Giles

Beautiful Sunnydale is a lovely little town. They have forty-some churches, a UC branch university, a small number of high schools, a zoo, a museum, and a whopping twelve Gothic cemeteries. This may have something to do with the fact that Sunnydale is located on a Hellmouth and is a bridge between this reality and the next. Which is to say that it is a hunting ground for supernatural beings. A barrel of fish, if you will. But that's what makes it such an exciting place to live, hang out at the magic shop, stab vampires with stakes, go to the high school football game with your crush, etc.

41. Metropolis

First Appeared: Action Comics #16 (September 1939)
Founding Father: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Notable Residents: Superman, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor

Comics' god Frank Miller summarized it best when he said, "Metropolis is New York in the daytime; Gotham City is New York at night." In fact, this is a sentiment that can be applied to the sensibilities of the two superheroes who represent these respective cities. A Hercules-type with Midwestern values, Superman was always the sunnier counterpoint to the bi-polar Batman. He's not human. He's too good. But you know where this is going, and really we can't put it any better than Bill does in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Metropolis will always exist in a spotless bronzed age, whereas Gotham is perpetually gloomy. Hold that thought: We have something to add after all. Metropolis is Bloomberg's New York. Gotham City is Koch's.

40. Dark City

First Appeared: Dark City (1998)
Founding Father: Alex Proyas, David S. Goyer, and Lem Dobbs
Notable Residents: John Murdoch, the Strangers

Yo, you wanna talk German expressionism mixed with a lil' bit of that Gilliam flavor with a dollop of Philip K. Dick on top? Then you gotta be talking Dark City. We'll join in, because we're part of the cult around this cult classic. When we're feeling moody, we like to imagine that we're floating in a city in the vast reaches of outer space, a city trapped in a film noir, a city run by Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The dude from Flatliners is there, except now he's a doctor. And a man with sleepy eyes who didn't kill any women is going to teach us how to move things with our minds. We always knew it could be this bright in a place that doesn't experience daytime.

39. Venusville

First Appeared: Total Recall (1990)
Founding Father: Philip K. Dick, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Gary Goldman, and Paul Verhoeven
Notable Residents: Benny, Melina

We know what you want to hear so we're just going to get it out of the way: triple-breasted Martian whores. Venusville has 'em. Mars' red light district got bombarded with so much radiation that many of the denizens are freaks too ugly to look upon. The trade off is that some of the women now have three breasts.

38. Houstatlantavegas

First Appeared: "Houstatlantavegas" (2009)
Founding Father: Aubrey Graham
Notable Residents: Sad strippers, Anonymous customers, Drake

It's a city of the mind, Houstatlantavegas, a place where all the strippers cry real tears in between shifts but their mascara never runs. Where Drake will always be melancholy, a Prince Hamlet for today, staring at his own reflection in the mirror and seeing a life projected back at him that he's not entirely comfortable with. Success is rotten. He's shifting from foot to foot in the strip club's bathroom, everything blurry around the edges and bright like neon from the lean. He's going to walk back out there and tell her how much she means to him. Still, he can't help himself; he imagines the event like a scene from a movie and he can't help but critique all the performances, his own especially. So he stands there, paralyzed, Aubrey Graham as Drake and his reflection in the bathroom mirror. She's trapped in Houstatlantavegas, but if she can accumulate enough scratch she can leave. In Drake's shoulders and eyes you can read the expression of someone who cannot make the same claim about his own exit from the prison he himself has erected.

37. Bedrock

First Appeared: The Flintstones (Episode 1, "The Flintstone Flyer," September 30, 1960)
Founding Father: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Notable Residents: Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty

The only thing cooler than enslaving dinosaurs into being your household appliances is when those very dinosaurs get to complain the entire time. This weirdly misogynistic take on The Honeymooners is nevertheless a creative wonder in the way it re-imagines family life. Dinosaur steaks, records made from rocks, bowling alleys where everything is made of rocks. Well, it's all either rocks or dinosaurs, but it's a playful take on the '50s indulgence in technology and possession that also highlights all the discord that existed within relationships during a time when it was less acceptable than ever to be unhappy. One of these days, Wilma, you'll be treated like a person!

36. New Vegas

First Appeared: Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
Founding Father: Josh Sawyer, John Gonzalez, Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, and Travis Stout
Notable Residents: Benny, Mr House, Caesar, Genral Lee Oliver

Unlike the beautiful, crumbling world of Fallout 3, New Vegas is a city that experienced minimal damage and minimal mutation. That said, it's no picnic here. This is 2281 and the Mojave Dessert is now the even harsher Mojave Wasteland. There are three factions fighting for control of the Strip like insects crashing a lightbulb: the enormous but rupturing New California Republic, the local slavery-like forces of Caesar's Legion, and a mysterious army of robots controlled by someone named Mr. House. You must fight to control the three major landmarks of this new world, the Hoover Dam, Nellis Airforce Base, and the solar energy plant. It all looks great.

35. South Park, Colo.

First Appeared: South Park (Episode 1, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe," August 13, 1997)
Founding Father: Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Notable Residents: Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny, Mr/Mrs. Garrison, Chef, Butters

In the same way that Springfield was a way to talk about the changing times of the '90 and 2000s in a classic family sitcom format, South Park is the perfect town to talk about the taboos and outrageous topics of the same time period in a very adult (and also very childish) manner. The show's popularity probably stems from the city's ability to house whoever and whatever issue they want, and the crew of elementary school students who have no problem traveling all over the world, making small time trouble, sometimes going as far as the White House. The residents of the town have certainly become one of the funniest aspects of the show, and the city, now in it's fifteenth season, has too many landmarks to name.

34. London Below

First Appeared: Neverwhere (Episode 1, "Door," September 12, 1996)
Founding Father: Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry
Notable Residents: Door, the Marquis de Carabas

This British television series from the early '90s (or, even better, its subsequent novelization) works on a brilliant concept, which finds Gaiman imagining London Below. People in London Above don't see people from their subterranean counterpart and vice versa. And what's even more interesting, London Below shares many of the landmarks, only with a more fantastic and plauful bent. Knightsbridge is an actual bridge swarmed in darkness from the souls swallowed therein. There are floating markets, trains without schedules, rat people, and a bridge leading to an angel located within the British museum. London Below is an expansive tribute to London, while injecting it with a new vitality and purpose.

33. Hill Valley, Calif.

First Appeared: Back to the Future
Founding Father: Robert Zemeckis
Notable Residents: Doc Brown, Bif, Marty McFly,

The town where the word "motherfucker" almost became weirdly personal, Hill Valley is an amalgamation of nostalgia for the '50s, a place where people have swell hair, drink malts, get married after the dance, and then were completely over taken by a guy in an orange vest, whose hip Van Halen riffing, skateboard jumping, no-guff-taking attitude saved his family from the mediocrity they seemed destined for. Will you save us, Marty McFly?

32. Silent Hill

First Appeared: Silent Hill (1999)
Founding Father: Keiichiro Toyama
Notable Residents: Harry Mason, James Sunderland, Harry Townshend, Disturbing nurses, Soiled pants

Never go to Silent Hill, a town of cults, home to some of the scariest public buildings in existence. The main characters who explore this ever-expanding town of relentless evil and perversion are always regular anymen. They're never adept at combat, have very few weapons at their disposal, and have the distinct disadvantage of having to live through the psychological delusions of the city's inhabitants and sometimes their own, too. These delusions change the run-down town into a blood-and-rust-covered sacrifical alter, or some sort of hidden level of Hell, that serves to deeply affect players of the game in a way that is essentially unparalleled. Though we hear it's a nice vacation town.

31. Heaven

First Appeared: Bible
Founding Father: God
Notable Residents: No one is too sure—St. Peter keeps his book very closed

Everybody says this place is pretty nice, but we're all, "Eh. Whatevs."

30. Vice City

First Appeared: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
Founding Father: Rockstar North
Notable Residents: Las Cabrones, the Haitians, Colonel Cortez, the Vercetti Crime Family

As the number of shirts and afghans and cars that are painted with his face can attest to, Scarface has touched the hearts of the world, making this video game a no-brainer. Rockstar really hit it out of the park when they combined that shining citizen with their groundbreaking GTA series. Vice City has everything—the affluent beaches, a glitzy downtown, the slums, the parks, islands that open up the more involved you become in the syndicate. Driving around Vice City, listening to your all-'80s playlist, it's hard not to want to awkwardly (but forcefully) woo Michelle Pheiffer and fall asleep on a pile of coke.

29. Wellsville

First Appeared: The Adventures of Pete & Pete (Episode 1, "The King of the Road," November 28, 1993)
Founding Father: Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi
Notable Residents: Pete Wrigley, Pete Wrigley, Ellen Josephine Hickle, Artie (the Strongest Man in the World)

The Twin Peaks of children's television, the setting of the batshit Adventures of Pete & Pete will always be the small suburban town we wished we'd grown up in. It wasn't so different from our childhood upbringings, just exaggerated in the correct ways. It's like, instead of being molested by the creepy dude who lived next door and wore too-tight striped shirts, we'd have been best friends with him; he would've been the strongest man in the world. Instead of keeping our heads down and doing what our parents said, we would have gone out and had the dude behind the mall give us that forearm tattoo. We would've spent the night in the school and had adventures. It would've been beautiful. Or, isn't it beautiful to think so, at least?

28. The Island

First Appeared: Lost (Episode 1, "Pilot—Part 1," September 22, 2004)
Founding Father: Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof
Notable Residents: Sawyer, Jack, Kate, Smoke Monster, Hugo, John Lock, Ben Linus

Few other cities on this list can claim to be an island, but then it's not really a city, and it's kind of a living being more than an island, and then of course there's the truth that it's not really a place at all. What it really is, is the engrossing mess of contradiction, coincidence, and magic that kept so many tuning in every week to have their emotions messed with and ultimately released. Along the way, there were polar bears, smoke monsters, underground facilities, end of the world buttons, a submarine, a pirate ship, and a bottomless pit. Oh, and there was some philosophy. And hella amounts of sexual tension.

27. Hogsmeade

First Appeared: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997)
Founder: J.K. Rowling
Notable Residents: Aberforth Dumbledore, Madam Rosmerta

The only all-wizard village in Britain, Hogsmeade is accessible to Hogwarts students starting in their third year (which is when the books really hit their stride). Zonko's Joke Shop and Honeydukes are two popular destinations, for gags and butterbeer, respectively. Fun fact: One Valentine's Day Harry went to Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop with the foxy Cho Chang. Not fun fact: Potter laid no pipe with Chang. It's like, that ginger-haired witch is aight, but why not Chang? Does Harry have something against Asians? We're just saying.

26. Castle Rock, Maine

First Appeared: The Dead Zone (1979)
Founding Father: Stephen King
Notable Residents: Johnny Smith, Cujo, Thad Beaumont, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, Polly Chalmers

As his career has progressed, Stephen King has obsessively knit together most of the fictional places spread across his prolific output. Castle Rock, though, remains a central point, a capitol, if you will, among the terrible places King's characters find themselves battling in. A small town packed with secrets, Castle Rock has been the setting for The Dead Zone, Cujo, and Needful Things, as well a number of short stories. It first appeared on screen in the adaptation of King's masterful novella "The Body"; you know it as Stand By Me.

25. Atlantis

First Appeared: Plato's Timaeus and Critias (360 B.C.)
Founding Father: Unknown
Notable Residents: Really Unknown

Atlantis first appeared in Plato's dialogues and was relatively unused until the past few hundred years. Atlantis was supposedly a fierce naval power who dominated the seas until one day they found themselves deep within it. The reality of the city was debated and even mocked in its time, and people took little stock in the idea of the sinking city. Then, in the 16th century, British philosopher Francis Bacon (not to be confused with the painter) re-invigorated the city as a symbol for a possible utopian society. Atlantis has been taken into the lexicon and mythology readily, inspring many people's fantasies—of being a fish-person.

24. New New York

First Appeared: Futurama (Episode 1, "Space Pilot 3000," March 28, 1999)
Founding Father: Matt Groening
Notable Residents: Fry, Leela, The Professor, Amy, Zoidberg, Bender, Hermes

No one really thought that the the city of New New York would ever live up to Springfield as a conduit to talk about (and therefore make fun of) every topic possible. But in a lot of ways, Futurama has surpassed The Simpsons (it's still funny). Because of their vantage point in the future, the writers of Futurama get the incredible privilege of deciding what will stay and what will go, and in the process get to invent suicide booths, alien races, master globetrotter mathemeticians, a theme park on the Moon, a mutant community in the sewers, bachelor chow, time travel machines, de-aging tar pits, college-attending monkeys, a solution to our trash problems, and all of it with a well-tempered cast of memorable characters at their disposal.

23. Arkham

First Appeared: "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1933)
Founding Father: H.P. Lovecraft
Notable Residents: Herbert West, Randolph Carter, Daniel Upton, Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee

Without Lovecraft's weird take on New England via Arkham (as well as a number of other fictional places that, while still memorable, are not as significant), you wouldn't have Castle Rock. In fact, virtually every horror story to take a small town as its setting is a little indebted to H.P. Lovecraft and, by extension, Arkham. Home to the famous Miskatonic University, Arkham is an "ancient, mouldering, and subtly fearsome town," a place plagued by child murders, and central to the writer's Cthulu mythos, which has been further developed by generations of writers after the notoriously troubled creator died in 1937. Based on fragments of detail offered across a number of tales, Arkham exists somewhere north of Boston. It's a great place to lose your mind.

22. Whoville

First Appeared: Horton Hears a Who! (1954)
Founding Father: Dr. Seuss
Notable Residents: Cindy Lou Who, the Grinch, Augustus Maywho

Whoville is one of the few cities within the Dr. Seuss universe that accumulates any sort of detail—enough detail, in fact, for it to appear in two separate books, each with very different stories to tell. Whoville sits on a speck that rests in a flower, in the case of Horton, or on a snowflake, in the case of the Grinch. Because the city is mobile in this way, it remains extremely variable and subject to all sorts of conditions. Whoville features a mountain on one side, where the Grinch and his dog Max reside. It's a city known for the kindness of its inhabitants, especially Cindy Lou Who, who makes the Grinch's heart swell. And also the mayor of Whoville, who organizes the citizens to shout loud enough to prove to the jungle animals that their city exists, no matter how small it is.

21. Bluffington

First Appeared: Doug (Episode 1, "Doug Bags a Nematoad," August 11, 1991)
Founding Father: Jim Jinkins
Notable Residents: Doug, Porkchop, Patti, Skeeter, Roger, Beebe

Bluffington is the land of dreamy adolescence. Brought to you by the wild and often insecure imagination of one Douglas Yancey Funnie (why would he not go by Yancey?), Bluffington seems to know no limit when expressing the manic thoughts of your favorite journaling, banjo-sporting eleven-year-old. Days at the middle school, nights at the Honker Burger, listening to the Beets on the radio, battling bad grades, being in love with Patti Mayonaise, surviving Roger Klotz—there's such sweet nostalgia in all of it. Doug is as delightfully ineffectual in real life as he is brazenly adventurous in his imagined life, and somewhere in between this show captures a hazy beauty similar to The Wonder Years, but for a later generation.

20. The City

First Appeared: Brazil (1985)
Founding Father: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown
Notable Residents: Sam Lowry, Jill Layton, Archibald "Harry" Tuttle

Terry Gilliam possesses one of the most unique eyes in contemporary cinema, and Brazil is his undisputed masterpiece. The unnamed city that serves as the film's setting is a marvel of retro-futurism, fascism by way of the Three Stooges, Nineteen Eighty-Four slipping on a banana peel and tumbling down a strange rabbit hole. It makes tangled bureaucracy and overcrowding painfully literal through the city's architecture. Gilliam is a cartoonist above all else, and Brazil is oftentimes like a cartoon come to life. By taking on that third dimension, the cartoon becomes grotesque and warped. The idiosyncratic look of the film inspired Tim Burton's Batman, the neo-noir look of Dark City, and the French bufoonery of Jeunet's City of Lost Children. Everything comes back to Brazil.

19. Myst

First Appeared: Myst (1993)
Founding Father: Robyn and Rand Miller
Notable Residents: Atrus, Sirrus, Achenar

Myst is the name of a mythical island whose only inhabitants live in books. Which is a romantic way of saying it's a library. There are three books on the island, each of which is literally inhabited by one of the three residents. Your slow and arduous task is to collect their missing pages in order to set them free, except that each soul has an agenda of its own. Considering when this was made, the ability of this knick knack laden island to envelop the player is astounding, and is precisely why the game continues to be ported to this day. It was the best-selling PC game of all-time before The Sims showed up.

18. Emerald City

First Appeared: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Founding Father: L. Frank Baum and W. W. Denslow.
Notable Residents: The Wizard, Pastoria

Though the walls of the Emerald City are green as anyone walking down the yellow brick road can see, like so many things involving the Wizard, it is more or less an illusion. The residents are made to wear green spectacles that are said to protect them from the overwhelming brilliance of their radiant city, but in actuality simply make everything green. It is said that when the Wizard arrived near the Emerald City that he was stunned by how green everything appeared and that this was his inspiration for the whole place. But it is later found out that the Wiz didn't build the Emerald City at all, but took it from Pastoria years prior. Either way, the look of the tall, metal gold-and-green city is so captivating that the place manages to strive through all of the books and reside in the cultural imagination resiliently, despite being surrounded in half-truths and lies.

17. Bikini Bottom

First Appeared: SpongeBob SquarePants (Episode 1, May 1, 1999)
Founding Father: Stephen Hillenburg
Notable Residents: SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, Squidward Tentacles, Mr. Krabs, Sandy Cheeks

How cool is nuclear testing? Mad cool. How cool is it that below the surface of Bikini Atoll, the island made famous for "hosting" the first tests of nuclear bombs, there's a city called Bikini Bottom, home to SpongeBob SquarePants? Madder cooler. Modeled after Seattle (!), Bikini Bottom is an undersea city that makes you realize just how dumb the Snorks were. To think that there were generations raised on that milquetoast garbage instead of the surreal hijinks committed by anthropomorphic forms of sea life in BB. We love SpongeBob for being brave enough to let the floor drop out on the weirdness factor. Put your pen down on a timeline of animated shows for children and you can draw a straight line from Ren & Stimpy to Rocko's Modern Life to SpongeBob.

16. Hell

First Appeared: Bible
Founding Father: Satan
Notable Residents: Judas, Cain, Julius Caesar

Why is Hell so much more interesting than Heaven? Heaven, where everything is fine, seems so boring in comparison. But Hell, the place of endless inventive suffering seems so full of life (what makes you feel more alive than pain and suffering?). After all, it was devised by a consumate schemer whose cunning and charm traps so many within his walls. It is worth mentioning that Dante wrote a trilogy about the three kingdoms (heaven, hell, and purgatory) but only one gets mentioned throughout literature, translated over and over again, and tattooed all over brooding people's flesh. And also, every good reader knows that in Milton's Paradise Lost, the most interesting character is Satan, not God.

Image: Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), Pieter Bruegle the Elder

15. Yoknapatawpha County

First Appeared: Sartoris (1929)
Founding Father: William Faulkner
Notable Residents: The Sartoris Family, the Compsons, the Bundrens, Joe Christmas, the McEacherns, Thomas Sutpen, Horace Benbow

Yoknapatawpha County is the well-explored landscape of the master of modernist Southern tomes. Based upon the greater county of Oxford Mississippi, this northwestern area is bounded on the north and south by rivers, and features an extensive hill country in its eastern parts. But geography aside, this is the landscape of some of the most intense, difficult, and heartbreaking fictional lives ever taken to paper. Faulkner expertly used his county to talk about the problems of modern life, of racism, of suffering, of mental health, and of the extent of man's compassion.

14. Neverland

First Appeared: Peter and Wendy (1911)
Founding Father: J.M. Barrie
Notable Residents: Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Tinker Bell

Neverland is essentially the coolest island possible. First off, this is where fairies live, and while that may not sound like a good foot to start with, these fairies sprinkle a magic dust which allows you to fly. There are pirates, the Piccaninny tribe, abandoned castles, mermaids, mazes, and endless adventure. All this, and it is possible, as the Lost Boys can attest to, to choose not to grow up (like Tom Waits has always wanted) and enjoy it forever.

13. Mordor

First Appeared: The Fellowship of the Rings (1954)
Founding Father: J.R.R. Tolkein
Notable Residents: Sauron, Shelob

There's certainly no city quite like it. Known as the Dark Land or the Land of Shadow, Mordor is suffocatingly unique. It is described as a dying land not yet dead, filled with low scrubby trees, withered mosses, and briars and brambles aplenty. And yet Mordor is home to the most undeniably intimidating monuments of power and evil. Sauron's headquarters is like the evil CIA (or just the CIA, depending on who you talk to) of Middle-earth. His eye sits on the tower of Barad-dur, ceaselessly staring out over the lands, unblinkingly taking in all information that leads him to the Ring. Behind him, Mt. Doom churns and swells with the same undying heat that originally forged the Ring and now waits expectantly for its return. The Black Gate and the Tower of Teeth help to keep the riff raff out of this well-run organization, with a terrifying sucess rate.

12. Mt. Olympus

First Appeared: Greek mythology
Founding Father: Zeus
Notable Residents: Athena, Ares, Aphrodite—that whole crew.

So actually it is a beautiful mountain in Greece that you can visit, but you sure as hell won't be shaking hands with Zeus when you get there. The gods settled in their nest on high after defeating the Titans (which isn't as hard as it used to be, these days). They decided on a ruling body of the 12 gods of the Pantheon, though there was no real hierarchy after Zeus and each god was prone to the same pride and bickering that man was. However, Mt. Olympus was a sweet pad, where no wind or rain ever came, just a clear sky to do some ruling over and accept your sacrifices day in, day out. We're also assuming they were fed grapes all day, though no writing exists to corroborate this.

11. Halloween Town

First Appeared: The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)
Founding Father: Tim Burton
Notable Residents: Jack Skellington, Oogie Boogie, Sally, the Mad Scientist

Though the Pumpkin King may be bored with Halloween Town at the start of the film, that doesn't make it in any way boring. Halloween Town is an homage to the behind-the-scenes production of everything that makes people afraid. Run by their charming and handsome leader, Jack Skellington, this city depicts Tim Burton working at full force. Mad scientists with removable brains, clowns with tear away faces, a boogie man made of bugs, and the idea of a town who is responsible for spreading fright make up so much of the charm of this widely-loved claymation film. Who wouldn't want to work in such a tight knit community of terrorizers? Let's face it, Halloween Town makes Christmas Town look like Thanksgiving Town.

10. Metropolis

First Appeared: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Founding Father: Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou
Notable Residents: Freder, Maria, the Sexy Robot

Metropolis is the most expensive silent film ever made, clocking in at 5 million Reichsmark ($15 million today). And it wasn't so because of the outrageous contract fees of its actors. The city of Metropolis is a marvel to this very day. Its tower of Babel (based on a Brueghel painting) is a piece of artwork on its own, not to mention the iconinc M-Machine with its dastardly clock-hand controls that make the workers dance while they work (and also probably somehow caused Devo), which morphs into the volcano monster, Moloch, who accepts workers as sacrifices. Every set of the film is gorgeous, from the pump room to the catacombs where Maria gives her empowering speech to the skyscrapers where Freder's father ruthlessly rules. This is the foundation for every dystopian film to come.

9. Rapture

First Appeared: BioShock (2008)
Founding Father: Ken Levine
Notable Residents: Frank Fontaine, Andrew Ryan, Dr. Bridgette Tenenbaum

Sure, it's full of splicers, genetically mutated junkies who want nothing more than to shout terrifyingly misplaced notions (just like Alzheimer's patients) at you while ripping you limb from limb. But Rapture is also an engineering marvel. Unlike another underwater city on this list, this one is supposed to be there. Full of a society of people refusing the harsh truths of the post-war world they inhabit, and instead trying to splinter off into a faction of productive and happily deluded individuals who spent the rest of their days in an underwater paradise, Rapture, of course, doesn't work out, but it makes for a wonderfully designed social experiment. Each new wing speaks to some new element of the human condition, and the specific ways in which each falls apart are tragic and captivating. Add some little girls with big syringes and their man-o-war-wearing guardians and this world becomes an obsessive pleasure to reveal. The '20s and '30s aesthetic mixed with the alternate history makes this the most successful and well-made steampunk game in existence.

8. Los Angeles

First Appeared: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
Founding Father: Philip K. Dick, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, and Ridley Scott
Notable Residents: Rick Deckard, Gaff, Rachael, Dr. Eldon Tyrell

Some pieces of art begin with a real place and re-imagine that place so thoroughly that it exists completely outside the scope of the actual location which was its impetus. The Los Angeles in Blade Runner is the best example of this. Even people who have never seen Blade Runner have, in some way or another, seen the Los Angeles of 2019 as imagined in 1982. The huge moving advertisement of the geisha, the spinner cop cars, the pyramid-looking Tyrell Corporation HQ—these images are as much apart of the popular imagination as the Emerald City. Any slick science fiction film that came in its wake owes everything to the film's striking neo-noir imagery. Hell, it extends beyond film, too. Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein wouldn't exist without Blade Runner. We could continue, but it's just come on the television, and we're watching things you wouldn't believe...

7. Valhalla

First Appeared: Norse mythology
Founding Father: Odin
Notable Residents: Odin, Thor, and quite a fierce and drunk army

In battle, the Valkyries ride through and pick out who will die and take them to one of two places. Half will go to Frejya's afterlife field, and the other will be led to the Hall of the Slain, Odin's enormous palace in Asgard. There they will become Einherjar, and when they are not training and preparing for the ultimate world-ending battle of Ragnorak, they are brought mead by the Valkyries. Outside Odin's hall sits a golden tree and epic stags and goats graze on the foliage. The ceiling of his hall is thatched with golden shields. This place is the ultimate dojo.

6. Cloud City

First Appeared: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
Founding Father: George Lucas (with Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan)
Notable Residents: Lando Calrissian

The home of the most pivotal scene in the Star Wars trilogy is also a visually-captivating fantasy world. Excluding the dealings within, the city's backdrop set the very high standard that the final film had to live up to for its climactic scenes. The infinite hull in the middle of the building where Luke loses his hand has become the sort of setting later films would desperately try to top. The clouds make the most surreal backdrop to Luke's tortured face as he holds on to the metal rod and his wits. A background that serves to foreshadow the realization and the change that will soon take place within him. And straight up just the coolest place to land your ship in all of the Star Wars Universe (you know Lando throws a crazy party).

5. Midgar

First Appeared: Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Founding Father: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Notable Residents: Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Sephiroth

Industrial cities don't get any more epic than this. From the first shots of the game you understand that Midgar embodies the unchecked monster of industrial progress as it battles the lifeforce of the very planet it mines.Though Cloud and company will travel all over the globe, to casinos and junk heaps and shanty towns, there is no question that Midgar is the heart of FFVII, one of the best video games ever made, and the city's corruption is emblematic of the struggle of the entire experience.

4. Twin Peaks, Wash.

First Appeared: Twin Peaks (Episode 1, "Pilot", April 8, 1990)
Founding Father: David Lynch and Mark Frost
Notable Residents: Dale Cooper, Laura Palmer, Bob, Ben Horne

The single most unnerving small town ever created springs from the mind of David Lynch and Mark Frost. The city seems to creep ever slowly from it's original handful of locations to introduce more and more dirty secrets of the citizens therein (One Eyed Jacques, The Shut-In's Greenhouse, the cabin in the woods). But Lynch, in classic form, makes the Double R Diner the real heart of the town, where the pie is fantastic and the coffee is black as the midnight on a moonless night.

3. Wonderland

First Appeared: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, 1865)
Founding Father: Lewis Carroll
Notable Residents: The Hatter, the Mock Turtle, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts

Alice follows a particularly dapper and well-spoken rabbit down a seemingly small hole in her yard and ends up in a hall of doors. Doors which lead to Wonderland, an absolutely nonsensical place, filled with wonderful anthropomorphic creatures whom Alice tends to scare off by either talking about her cat, or growing to twice their size mid-conversation. Though most of the characters tend to threaten and alienate her, Wonderland is still a magical land of potions and cakes where scale and logic take a back seat to frenzy and wonder, and the results are unforgettable.

2. Gotham City

First Appeared: Batman #4 (Winter 1940)
Founding Father: Bob Kane and Bill Finger
Notable Residents: Bruce Wayne, the Joker, Harvey Dent, Commissioner Gordon

There are so many reasons Gotham City ranks among the coolest of all fictional cities. They're reasons you could list by name dropping dudes like Jack Nicholson, Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton, Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, Frank Miller, etc. But above all those names stands one: Robert Sylvester Kelly. Of all the fictional cities on this list, only one can claim a musical tribute from the genius we know as R. Kelly. Though "Gotham City" was recorded for the Batman & Robin soundtrack, easily the worst of the Batman films, it still counts as a success. Because R. Kelly recorded it. "A city of justice," Kelly sings, "A city of love." "We all need it, we can't live without it." Yes.

1. Springfield

First Appeared: The Simpsons (Episode 1, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," December 17, 1989)
Founding Father: Matt Groening
Notable Residents: Homer, Ned Flanders, Apu, Comic Book Guy—too many to list

Is there really any fictional city that has been more developed, more lifelike, funnier, more far reaching and topical? All this and the place is drawn by hand (mostly by Koreans). The joke has traveled through seasons that Springfield, one of the most common city names in the U.S., could be in any state. Though there are many hints that it might be in Illinois, Springfield is a city with no allegiance to any state, and the only rivalry one with their neighboring city of Shelbyville that sets them even further off the map. Springfield has everything from multi-level malls (with left-handed novelty stores) a Nascar track, celebrity homes, a tire fire, a river with three eyed fish, an (almost) jumpable gorge, an endless slew of festivals, and a certain Evergreen Terrace. It's also home to characters we've come to love like our own awful family members.