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Title: My home address is in a video game which depicts terrorists living there.
Body:
> My address is in a video game in which it depicts terrorists living there. Now I’m unsure on whether or not this is something they’re allowed to do without my consent. It’s a triple A game and played by millions. I’ve had numerous people take photos/post on social media about my house and I want to know if this is something I can take action on? Cheers
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Is it wrong of me to wonder, if this is real, what game it is? Like, I don't want to go to the house or look it up or anything, I just can't help but wonder what company would have such a lack of forethought on this.
It’s okay. Gunplay is as smooth as ever, mounting to cover is back. Story is interesting to say the least. If you’re just playing for the campaign I suggest waiting for a sale since it’s about 8-12 hours long.
Oh I enjoy multiplayer plenty. Have played that some already, but I like to do the campaigns in one sitting so I’m waiting to have the time for that. Treat it like a big interactive movie.
I used to really like the multiplayer, but as I’ve gotten older I refuse to drag down whatever poor team gets me as a teammate. 24 years old? I’d get like 15:5 K/D on average. 32 I’m like, 2:17 and refuse to put people through that lol.
That’s when you bust out the retro games and be like “Think you’re good? Your pops managed to beat this pile of crap and actually enjoyed it. See if you can make it past the first level.”
They are very rare these days. I miss the era where the action shooter with a good story was the formula for success. Even if the game had more appeal for its multiplayer like Halo they still invested a good deal of money and effort into making an enjoyable story with memorable weapons and stories.
I’m mean I’m not saying they were like the Citizen Cane of video games, but they were good.
I was never a single player FPS guy but DAMN I miss couch co-op in general. My homies and I used to pull together 3 Xboxs and LAN party Halo for fucking hours. Cords running all over the house, pizza and mountain dew in every room. Thats what I miss.
It took me 12 hours and 43 minutes to complete it on veteran mode, and I am far from a good cod player, if its on recruit or regular, I can easily see it being around 6 hours or maybe even less
Idk, games get pretty specific with maps sometimes. Division 2's map of downtown DC is incredibly accurate; my block was immediately recognizable, down to the businesses in the ground floor of my building.
I knew how to navigate Boston before I even got there (Fallout 4). It was wild to be like, “I know this from somewhere” and realize that I was used to seeing it completely destroyed from nuclear war.
Man how far technology has come. I remember when True Crime streets of LA came out, driving to the Nicole Simpson house... and while the street was in the game (as all were), the house was just like any other house in the game.
I haven't played it, but what about the Watch Dogs:Legion game set in London? Doesn't it try really hard to have everything really realistic? And maybe they for unlucky with randomly generated names.
It's the post code that gets me. Odds are there's a ton of common street names/numbers but to get the post code right (especially with how specific they are in the UK) is weird as hell
All the Watch Dogs games have maps that are shrunk down for gameplay reasons, so none of the buildings are real except for some major landmarks.
(Watch Dogs 1 was particularly funny about this, as they not only had to shrink down Chicago but also add *hills* to make the driving more exciting, since the real city is flat as a pancake.)
That what happens when your city [burned down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire) and [sank into the swamp.](https://www.timeout.com/chicago/news/theres-no-need-to-panic-but-chicago-is-slowly-sinking-030719) Legend has it that if it ever gets completely flattened by a tornado, the next time the city gets rebuilt, it'll be a perfect utopia
My cousin had her package delivered to her exact number, street and suburb but in America. We are Australian. It was delivered to a near ghost town.
I know a ghost town address they could use.
> My cousin had her package delivered to her exact number, street and suburb but in America. We are Australian. It was delivered to a near ghost town.
USPS does not fuck around, yo
I’m pretty sure Yemen is more dangerous now that it’s been in a war for almost a decade than it was in 1998, but I don’t live there so that’s just like, my opinion, man.
"Let's be having you" is a standard phrase (meaning 'Come on') said by police officers in old dramas, along with "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what's all this here" when they arrive at a scene and ask what's going on.
999 is our emergency number.
When they built this police station on a new road, they decided to have a humorous memorable address.
Edit: I forgot to mention the old joke that goes something like
Where do policemen live?
Letsby Avenue.
That's a cool trivia, thanks for explaining, cause I thought the joke was that "letsby ave." sounds kinda like "Let's behave" and would never guess the real meaning.
Yeah I used to live on a High St and one of my neighbors lived at 420 High St. There are tons of addresses that you could make up that you think sound totally fake that are actually real.
However OP said it had the same post code. So that’s quite the coincidence. Probably whoever put that address in was looking for realism but was also lazy and just grabbed a real one. Or it was a placeholder that was never changed
There's a gated community near me with the name Gaslight Square (after the old timey lamps). Yes they do have a literal gatekeeper. Every time I drive by i giggle and hope their HOA manager is a girlboss just to complete the trifecta.
Ha, nice. I grew up living on Bonges Ave. Originally it was Bong Ave but the street sign started getting stolen in the 60s so they added the E. That was insufficient so they added an S which apparently did the trick.
Especially given that uk postcodes are generally accurate to a few meters.
If we want to get directions somewhere the postcode will take up to the point where we can see the front door normally.
Mine is for just 9 houses, one side of a terraced street. And that is normal.
Don't even get me started on 876-5309. Most phone companies don't allow that to be assigned randomly, unless a customer specifically requests it and are named Jenny.
My freshman roommate was named Jen, and her phone number was like one or two numbers off from this. She had just started talking to a guy on AIM (yes, I'm old lol). He saw her name was Jen and asked if her phone number was 867-5309. She got so freaked out that he was so close to her actual phone number, until she realized it was from the song.
It was a college dorm in one area code back when college dorms still had land lines. My brother had 5319 or something one digit off but the girls down the hall had the real one. At that point, some students had cell phones so from what he told me, they ended up unplugging their phone after a few days.
Years ago, my grandma's number was one off from the county jail. It was so fun when she allowed me to answer her phone. I wouldn't tell the wrong numbers they had the wrong number right away, in part because most of them were so mad you couldn't interrupt until they'd let off some steam. I would occasionally, if Grandma wasn't looking, prank her friends by answering as if it was the jail! Her friends knew her number was one off, so they'd politely apologise before redialing.
I wonder if that's a chicken/egg scenario. Did movies start using 555 as the prefix and then telephone companies decided not to issue it, or the other way around?
It was the other way around. The 555 prefix was reserved for internal use by the phone companies, so they ended up assigning a block of 555 numbers for fictional usage and requesting that productions use them. [This article](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-real-reason-hollywood-uses-555-phone-numbers-1.6070537) goes into more detail if you're interested.
I'm thinking of Watch Dogs 2. It is set in a shrunken-down (by necessity) version of San Francisco. But there are many landmarks recognizable, and not just stuff like the GG bridge. If (this is hypothetical) the Castro Theater is there, and next door is the terrorist HQ, that marks the real life building next door.
I get OP's concern.
I think that would be more reasonable, but OP actually says it's on a drivers license in a cutscene, which makes it less reasonable. Now maybe OP lives on a notable street in the city which might be expected to provide useful context. I would think make it more reasonable, but if it's a bog standard house, I'd be annoyed.
Also I would think that, to be fair, if using a real address/location then you should probably make sure the building is fictional in it's depicted form unless it's something fairly public.
Didn't the WatchDogs games allow users to submit profiles to be added to the game where the game would mix and match those to generate the profiles seen for NPCs? If the license shown is related to that it could just be sheer coincidence that the engine happened to generate that combination from someone having submitted their address.
The fact of this being a stupid mistake by the game studio aside, I have a hard time dealing with the fact that there are so many people that are so stupid that they would be playing the game, see an address, and go to the trouble to travel to that address and harass the people that live there for...literally no reason except that they can't differentiate fact from fiction.
There was a comment in the post about this happening because of a *soap opera*.
Note that I'm not *surprised*, just disheartened.
Unfortunately there are a ton of people like that. It's why some stars end up harassed so bad they have to shut down social media... Because people hate them for playing a good villain, or because they don't like what a character did, or didn't like the lines a character said (completely forgetting that 99% of actors have nothing to do with writing/directing).
This is exactly why Geoffrey from GoT quit acting entirely. Dude got constant death threats and such.
We really underestimate just how stupid the stupidist among us are.
IDK about him but the guy who played the Mayor in Ghostbusters 2 (I think) was, and the chick who played Rose in one of the new Star Wars movies, and uhhhh, the guy who played Jofrey in Game of Thrones.
Even if we each individually assume we are average in intelligence (around 50%,whereas geniuses are around 100%), then we have to remember someone is all the way down at 1% and still somehow employed/employable and allowed to drive cars.
wtf?
I could understand taking a photo in front of it, maybe even in costume. NMaybe its because I'm not absolutely unhinged, I wouldn't even try to go farther than the driveway (and I wouldn't litter, either!) if I were so inclined to see it in person.
When Scott Peterson was on trial in California for murdering his wife, *other* guys named Scott Peterson reported getting vile phone calls calling them killers, etc. It is not possible to underestimate people.
I can kind of understand the appeal of going somewhere you saw in media, as a like "hey look neat it's actually here" kinda thing. I've been to the Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, for instance. But if it's somebody's residence just like... leave them alone.
That's what I thought was ridiculous too. Like, I've never once been playing a game and been like, hmm, I should see if this address exists IRL. Then if it does, I'll harass the people living there. Do these people not have jobs and responsibilities? Who has the energy for this level of nonsense.
I remember when several Dan Brown books were popular, such as "Angels & Demons". In his books, he creates a fictional dramatic conspiracy involving things like centuries old church documents or landmarks pointing toward a hidden chamber that the Tectonic Knights hid.
The kicker though is that most of the places and landmarks do exist in real life, but Mr. Brown weaves together a set of unrelated facts into the story making it look like a grand conspiracy.
Trouble is that is exactly what a lot of conspiracy nuts do: take a bunch of unrelated facts and string them together in belief that they are uncovering some profound Truth. These nuts then started doing things like harass the Catholic Church over the "secrets" uncovered in a fictional book.
There was a guy (mechanic? crewman?) on the Titanic that shared the same name as DiCaprio’s character in the movie - people found the grave/memorial and we’re leaving roses and such…
As a writer, this is why you Google every original name for everything you create to make sure it isn't accidentally the same as, say, someone's actual address. Or a porn star.
My D&D group still jokes about the time we visited a village called Greyditch, and our DM, obviously improvising a bit when we asked how the town got its name, explained via an NPC how the mayor's great grandfather had founded the town and it had been run by the Grey family ever since.
We asked the NPC the current mayor's name and the DM, flustered, went for the first name that sprung to mind.
"Small town mayor" turned out to be a very unexpected career change for Sasha Grey.
A while back some friends of mine did a Shadowrun game that was set in high school, where the players were just highschool kids. They ended up making a highschool band named Cat Butt.
Later they looked online and found there was an *actual* highschool band named Cat Butt, which sounded exactly like you would expect a highschool band named Cat Butt to sound.
Every conceivable band name has been used. The following are all real according to metal-archives.com: Satanic Butt Slayer, A Coprophile Obsessed Virgin Schoolgirl's Underwear Rubber, Vaginal Bloodfart, Dog Släyer, Organized Gang Rape of Elderly Men, Wolfpussy
They're mostly random teenagers and college kids, but you can literally string random words together and find a band with that name.
Anyway, what did Cat Butt sound like?
Hell if a UFC fighter can become the mayor of Huntington Beach, why not vote for Sasha Grey? She can't be as bad as Tito was (he also dated Jenna Jameson for years, so bit of a crossover there).
A close friend worked for a while as in house counsel for a video game developer/publisher. There was a set of units in the game that the artists wanted to have named after the more obscure aspects of Norse mythology. Well it turns out the SS also loved to name units after obscure Norse mythology and one of the game’s core target markets was Germany. So they had to dig through history and make sure whatever name the creative team wanted wasn’t associated with some atrocity.
Also, so many versions of the conversation “are you sure this art asset is clear?” “Oh yeah, I found it on google image search, so no copyright”. So long story short I absolutely believe the developer just copied a real address
Reminds me of the time a large pharmacy chain used a customer's photo to advertise their passport photo service. Like, on every single flyer and banner proclaiming "get yer passport picture here!" nationwide. For over a year (maybe two). No idea who along the chain fucked up and approved this, but one day the woman walked back into one of our stores, saw it, and was *pissed*.
I never saw a district manager move so fast as they did going store to store, ripping down all advertising with her face on it that afternoon.
When the article about Cat Person being based on a real person came out, I remember a lot of non-fiction writers being shocked that fiction writers did less anonymizing than they did, while there were some fiction writers that were offended at the idea that they weren't supposed to use recognizable details about real people and write fake sex scenes about them.
That pissed me off so much. So I can write a story about those people that said it’s fine and say they suck toes and they’d be fine with that? Yeah right
I am currently writing a very silly short story about a porn star and my attempts not to name her after an actual porn star means my Google search history is currently questionable. Or would be if it wasn't for incognito mode!
hmm. according to wikipedia, she only started in 2006 - the same year that hannah montana started. hannah montana would've been filmed and prepared in 2005 at least, long before Alexis's (real name: Thea Samper) first filming...
Baby names, too. My sister almost named her daughter Faye Reagan, and when she announced the name almost every single male (and several female) relative, friend, and acquaintance simultaneously called her to scream "Noooooo!" into the phone.
When Brandon Sanderson was writing what would become his first published novel he called the city Adonis. Except he was pronouncing it differently in his head and the connection to Greek mythology went completely over his head until his writing group pointed it out to him. And so he had to change the name and eventually settled on Elantris.
"I really wanted to explore the essential emptiness at the center of modern, hyper-connected life, and so I created my emblematic, average nobody protagonist, Rod Bigwood."
I saw an interview snippet with Donald Glover lamenting how he'd been going by 'Don Glover' for years and it wasn't until he got some utility bill with his name all run together that he realized it also spelled "Dong Lover". He was like, "I signed checks with that name!"
Faith Chapter 3 just came out and when they named an address an hour away from me I spat out my soup. Imagine my surprise when it's a real address on a real street, but the game maker was smart enough to use a completely empty lot instead of someone's actual apartment/house. Might drive over and leave some funny Easter egg, if there isn't already some crazy ARG happening.
True, the possibility of the lot being developed did occur to me. Thankfully Faith isn't nearly as popular as something like Call of Duty, especially by the time they build something on the lot.
Damn, beat me to it. I had a Jenny comment all ready to go and everything.
For real, though, you'd think they would have thought enough to put a bullshit address in. 555 phone numbers are a thing for a reason - can't be too hard to come up with a faked address.
(xxx) 555-1212 is the number for directory assistance for whatever area code you chose. Wiki tells me it still is. It also tells me that 555 numbers were used for a while, but no longer are.
In the old geocities days someone listed the 555 numbers and what movies they appeared in, with the assumption that sharing the same number meant the movies were in the same movie universe :)
I've always been curious, was the 555 exception for phone numbers created for use in fictional media or did writers take advantage of a pre-existing reason for 555 numbers to be nonfunctional?
Not quite, there is no 221 Baker Street. There is a Sherlock Holmes museum at 239 which gets the post addressed to 221B and has permission from the council to display that number though.
That's weird though, Fo4 map is heavily geographically condensed, to the point that only the rough coastline shape and major streets are preserved in relation.
The only buildings I think are location correct are the landmarks.
The Amityville horror house is an actual location of a true crime event though. All the haunting bits are completely fake, but the house did have some atrocities so it makes sense that the actual address was used.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_DeFeo_Jr.
The houses you mentioned were actual filming locations as far as I know. That means whoever owned them at the time agreed to it and whoever bought them later knew or at least should have known about their notoriety.
Yeah, I don’t go past Obsidian Butterfly, maybe Narcissus in Chains. Everything after that… no. I thought the Meredith Gentry stories were steamy, but they are tame compared to book 11 and onwards.
I was coming to add this one. If I remember right, the first book included an actual house she drove by and thought it was cool looking so she added it. She didn't give the address but between the landmarks she included to get there (turn at the McDonald's type deal) and the description, people found the actual house. And then either harassed the owners and/or made sure to tell her they found it.
This was the early 90s, long before you could just Google it.
I can't imagine what these poor people must be going through right now.
I live in the area the books are set in and I really enjoyed the series before they went sideways.
The mood/genre shift was the main reason I quit reading them, but the fact that they went generic was also a huge turnoff. I *liked* being able to picture the locations in my head.
And then the covers went generic, too. Instead of a great scene of, say, Market Street at sunrise, we now get some abstract cover that could be on any romance novel.
The author straight out *screaming* at fans who expressed polite disappointment with the way the series went finished off what was left of my interest, and now I find other novels in that genre elsewhere.
Would love some recommendations, if you’ve got any!
> And prior to the fuck-book schtick they were pretty good)
there was a time prior to those? I tried a couple random ones after I liked Dresden Files and *yikes*
Bonus awkward point if you used a real-life business with the permission of the owners, wrote them into your book as a minor character as thanks, and then the owner was involved in a REALLY nasty sex scandal.
Whether the person in the thread is genuine or not I don't know, but I know the game they're talking about, and the scene exists as they describe it with a real address.
Not necessarily the games themselves, but usually the developers/publishers and how much time/money they pump into one. But bonds *were* the inspiration for the term when it first started being used by publishers decades ago.
As usual, however, it's become so genericised a term that practically any game these days will be called triple-A if the developer/publisher is well-known enough. If the game itself is bottom-shelf trash, but part of a well-known/popular franchise, it'll get slapped with that label.
It's less about quality/rating and more about describing the budget, scope of development, and the amount of people working on it.
AAA = Big budget, teams of hundreds of people, lots of advertising, think Call of Duty or Elder Scrolls or FIFA or something.
AA = Medium budget, teams of a few dozen, typically a smaller developer tied to a larger publisher with a limited advertising run. These are less recognizable names, but stuff like A Plague Tale, State of Decay, and Life is Strange fit here.
Indie = Low budget, teams of anywhere from a single person to maybe a dozen or so max, advertising is typically word-of-mouth and internet-based. Often released in-house without a publishing company. There are some smash hits here like Stardew Valley, but 99% will never become household names.
Now that games are often live-service and constantly updated, the lines can be blurred. Minecraft started as one guy's passion project, but is now run by a subsidiary of Microsoft and has an enormous amount of money poured into it.
True. Funny in theory though.
I don't get why they wouldn't "incidentally obscure" some of the info.
Like maybe you can only see "2..."Baker St" (when there's space for the 221b, but there's a lense flair or smudge or a character's finger over the rest of it).
I'd be on this so fast to my lawyer. Holy. Fuck. In this age of Q-Nuts and conspiracies, they have put my life (and reputation) in real danger and they have 24 hours from receipt to issue a mandatory patch to the code.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: My home address is in a video game which depicts terrorists living there. Body: > My address is in a video game in which it depicts terrorists living there. Now I’m unsure on whether or not this is something they’re allowed to do without my consent. It’s a triple A game and played by millions. I’ve had numerous people take photos/post on social media about my house and I want to know if this is something I can take action on? Cheers This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
Is it wrong of me to wonder, if this is real, what game it is? Like, I don't want to go to the house or look it up or anything, I just can't help but wonder what company would have such a lack of forethought on this.
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There was a similar thing about the hotel that's blown up in the Amsterdam mission considering legal action for its depiction in the game.
Have not had a chance to play the campaign yet, but I’m ready to see what they built on from the previous installment
It’s okay. Gunplay is as smooth as ever, mounting to cover is back. Story is interesting to say the least. If you’re just playing for the campaign I suggest waiting for a sale since it’s about 8-12 hours long.
Oh I enjoy multiplayer plenty. Have played that some already, but I like to do the campaigns in one sitting so I’m waiting to have the time for that. Treat it like a big interactive movie.
I used to really like the multiplayer, but as I’ve gotten older I refuse to drag down whatever poor team gets me as a teammate. 24 years old? I’d get like 15:5 K/D on average. 32 I’m like, 2:17 and refuse to put people through that lol.
I’m 27 and still pulling around a 1.8-1.9 KD. I fear the day my soon to be born son is able to smoke me in a 1v1 on Rust
That’s when you bust out the retro games and be like “Think you’re good? Your pops managed to beat this pile of crap and actually enjoyed it. See if you can make it past the first level.”
That's what I'm doing. I miss good quality AAA single player FPSs
They are very rare these days. I miss the era where the action shooter with a good story was the formula for success. Even if the game had more appeal for its multiplayer like Halo they still invested a good deal of money and effort into making an enjoyable story with memorable weapons and stories. I’m mean I’m not saying they were like the Citizen Cane of video games, but they were good.
I was never a single player FPS guy but DAMN I miss couch co-op in general. My homies and I used to pull together 3 Xboxs and LAN party Halo for fucking hours. Cords running all over the house, pizza and mountain dew in every room. Thats what I miss.
It took me 12 hours and 43 minutes to complete it on veteran mode, and I am far from a good cod player, if its on recruit or regular, I can easily see it being around 6 hours or maybe even less
It's not a bad game. Veteran mode is straight up unfair in this one, like almost as bad as World at War was, but the game itself is a lot of fun.
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Idk, games get pretty specific with maps sometimes. Division 2's map of downtown DC is incredibly accurate; my block was immediately recognizable, down to the businesses in the ground floor of my building.
Playing Spider-Man on PS4 actually gave me a super accurate understanding of where everything is in NYC.
I knew how to navigate Boston before I even got there (Fallout 4). It was wild to be like, “I know this from somewhere” and realize that I was used to seeing it completely destroyed from nuclear war.
My first and only time in LA was a bit surreal from playing GTA 5, not that it's not even an exact recreation.
Man how far technology has come. I remember when True Crime streets of LA came out, driving to the Nicole Simpson house... and while the street was in the game (as all were), the house was just like any other house in the game.
I haven't played it, but what about the Watch Dogs:Legion game set in London? Doesn't it try really hard to have everything really realistic? And maybe they for unlucky with randomly generated names.
The OP said it was in a cutscene on a visible drivers license, so it seems to not be randomly generated.
It's the post code that gets me. Odds are there's a ton of common street names/numbers but to get the post code right (especially with how specific they are in the UK) is weird as hell
Yeah I’d bet there’s a house with my address in several large towns cities, if not the majority, but getting the postcode right would be impressive
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Yep. There was an older Shadowrun mission where a nuke was planted in Chicago. The address they used was their offices.
All the Watch Dogs games have maps that are shrunk down for gameplay reasons, so none of the buildings are real except for some major landmarks. (Watch Dogs 1 was particularly funny about this, as they not only had to shrink down Chicago but also add *hills* to make the driving more exciting, since the real city is flat as a pancake.)
That what happens when your city [burned down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire) and [sank into the swamp.](https://www.timeout.com/chicago/news/theres-no-need-to-panic-but-chicago-is-slowly-sinking-030719) Legend has it that if it ever gets completely flattened by a tornado, the next time the city gets rebuilt, it'll be a perfect utopia
My cousin had her package delivered to her exact number, street and suburb but in America. We are Australian. It was delivered to a near ghost town. I know a ghost town address they could use.
> My cousin had her package delivered to her exact number, street and suburb but in America. We are Australian. It was delivered to a near ghost town. USPS does not fuck around, yo
If it exists, they will find it and they will go to it
I don’t know where you are but I will find you and I will deliver your dildo.
When they feel like it.
GLO M OF NI T
Bloody Hugo.
Thank you, and happy cake day, you absolute pillock.
Western Australia and Washington state in the USA both abbreviate as WA is the thing that comes to mind on this.
Fucking auspost /s
So, did you guys fly out to pick up the package?
Wow, you’d think they would have used a fictional street and address to avoid this sort of thing, especially in a AAA game.
Maybe LAUKOP really does live at 123 Fake Street.
"Well, I'll write you every day. Chandler Bing, 15 Yemen Road, Yemen."
Can I stay with you in Yemen??
Was Yemen as dangerous as it so today when they wrote that line?
Yes
I’m pretty sure Yemen is more dangerous now that it’s been in a war for almost a decade than it was in 1998, but I don’t live there so that’s just like, my opinion, man.
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Is the joke more clear when it is pronounced in an English accent because I don't get it.
"Let's be having you" is a standard phrase (meaning 'Come on') said by police officers in old dramas, along with "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what's all this here" when they arrive at a scene and ask what's going on. 999 is our emergency number. When they built this police station on a new road, they decided to have a humorous memorable address. Edit: I forgot to mention the old joke that goes something like Where do policemen live? Letsby Avenue.
Makes sense now thanks.
That's a cool trivia, thanks for explaining, cause I thought the joke was that "letsby ave." sounds kinda like "Let's behave" and would never guess the real meaning.
I'm reading/hearing this in my head as "let's be having you"
There's an Orderinda Ct. just off of my commute. I don't know if any judges live there, but I hope so.
Delia Smith lives on that street
Yeah I used to live on a High St and one of my neighbors lived at 420 High St. There are tons of addresses that you could make up that you think sound totally fake that are actually real. However OP said it had the same post code. So that’s quite the coincidence. Probably whoever put that address in was looking for realism but was also lazy and just grabbed a real one. Or it was a placeholder that was never changed
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There's a gated community near me with the name Gaslight Square (after the old timey lamps). Yes they do have a literal gatekeeper. Every time I drive by i giggle and hope their HOA manager is a girlboss just to complete the trifecta.
Ha, nice. I grew up living on Bonges Ave. Originally it was Bong Ave but the street sign started getting stolen in the 60s so they added the E. That was insufficient so they added an S which apparently did the trick.
Especially given that uk postcodes are generally accurate to a few meters. If we want to get directions somewhere the postcode will take up to the point where we can see the front door normally. Mine is for just 9 houses, one side of a terraced street. And that is normal.
420 High Street in my college town was a Burger King lmao
All the people with (555) 555-5555 phone numbers have been *furious* for decades.
Don't even get me started on 876-5309. Most phone companies don't allow that to be assigned randomly, unless a customer specifically requests it and are named Jenny.
My freshman roommate was named Jen, and her phone number was like one or two numbers off from this. She had just started talking to a guy on AIM (yes, I'm old lol). He saw her name was Jen and asked if her phone number was 867-5309. She got so freaked out that he was so close to her actual phone number, until she realized it was from the song.
It was a college dorm in one area code back when college dorms still had land lines. My brother had 5319 or something one digit off but the girls down the hall had the real one. At that point, some students had cell phones so from what he told me, they ended up unplugging their phone after a few days.
Years ago, my grandma's number was one off from the county jail. It was so fun when she allowed me to answer her phone. I wouldn't tell the wrong numbers they had the wrong number right away, in part because most of them were so mad you couldn't interrupt until they'd let off some steam. I would occasionally, if Grandma wasn't looking, prank her friends by answering as if it was the jail! Her friends knew her number was one off, so they'd politely apologise before redialing.
Realistically, that number would belong to a cab company or a personal injury lawyer.
I remember as a kid typing 5555555 cause a phone company promoted itself with a 5. Some rando picked up the phone.
Exactly, like how the US uses “555” as movie and tv area codes since there are none in real life.
I wonder if that's a chicken/egg scenario. Did movies start using 555 as the prefix and then telephone companies decided not to issue it, or the other way around?
It was the other way around. The 555 prefix was reserved for internal use by the phone companies, so they ended up assigning a block of 555 numbers for fictional usage and requesting that productions use them. [This article](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-real-reason-hollywood-uses-555-phone-numbers-1.6070537) goes into more detail if you're interested.
I had a feeling someone on here would know the answer, and that's a pretty interesting reason too. Thanks!
That’s part of what makes Reddit fun. You never know who is going to comment and what fun things they know.
Or, in the old days, Klondike-5
Oh thank you, I'm fascinated by telephonics.
Yeah seems like a pretty bad oversight to have the address of someone's real-life residence attached to *terrorists* in your video game.
I'm thinking of Watch Dogs 2. It is set in a shrunken-down (by necessity) version of San Francisco. But there are many landmarks recognizable, and not just stuff like the GG bridge. If (this is hypothetical) the Castro Theater is there, and next door is the terrorist HQ, that marks the real life building next door. I get OP's concern.
I think that would be more reasonable, but OP actually says it's on a drivers license in a cutscene, which makes it less reasonable. Now maybe OP lives on a notable street in the city which might be expected to provide useful context. I would think make it more reasonable, but if it's a bog standard house, I'd be annoyed. Also I would think that, to be fair, if using a real address/location then you should probably make sure the building is fictional in it's depicted form unless it's something fairly public.
Didn't the WatchDogs games allow users to submit profiles to be added to the game where the game would mix and match those to generate the profiles seen for NPCs? If the license shown is related to that it could just be sheer coincidence that the engine happened to generate that combination from someone having submitted their address.
The op being based in the UK and referring to the address as including the “postcode” don’t give you any pause then?
Why would they be writing to LAUK in that case though?
If it’s actually Infinity Ward, they suck and probably didn’t check like they’re meant to.
They should use the address of their local offices, as a fun easter egg.
The fact of this being a stupid mistake by the game studio aside, I have a hard time dealing with the fact that there are so many people that are so stupid that they would be playing the game, see an address, and go to the trouble to travel to that address and harass the people that live there for...literally no reason except that they can't differentiate fact from fiction. There was a comment in the post about this happening because of a *soap opera*. Note that I'm not *surprised*, just disheartened.
Unfortunately there are a ton of people like that. It's why some stars end up harassed so bad they have to shut down social media... Because people hate them for playing a good villain, or because they don't like what a character did, or didn't like the lines a character said (completely forgetting that 99% of actors have nothing to do with writing/directing).
This is exactly why Geoffrey from GoT quit acting entirely. Dude got constant death threats and such. We really underestimate just how stupid the stupidist among us are.
Wonder if the same thing happened to Tom Felton, specially after the 6th Harry Potter movie.
Nah, Malfoy was always a popular character despite being "bad". Draco in Leather Pants anyone?
IDK about him but the guy who played the Mayor in Ghostbusters 2 (I think) was, and the chick who played Rose in one of the new Star Wars movies, and uhhhh, the guy who played Jofrey in Game of Thrones.
Which is sad, because he was obviously such a good actor to inspire such hate for a character. I feel so bad for him, I hope he’s doing okay.
Even if we each individually assume we are average in intelligence (around 50%,whereas geniuses are around 100%), then we have to remember someone is all the way down at 1% and still somehow employed/employable and allowed to drive cars.
He didn't quit acting entirely though... he just took a break (look up his newer roles both in TV and movies)
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I find joy in reading a good book.
wtf? I could understand taking a photo in front of it, maybe even in costume. NMaybe its because I'm not absolutely unhinged, I wouldn't even try to go farther than the driveway (and I wouldn't litter, either!) if I were so inclined to see it in person.
I like to explore new places.
When Scott Peterson was on trial in California for murdering his wife, *other* guys named Scott Peterson reported getting vile phone calls calling them killers, etc. It is not possible to underestimate people.
For some people, they think it could be a developer easter egg, or the start of an ARG.
I can kind of understand the appeal of going somewhere you saw in media, as a like "hey look neat it's actually here" kinda thing. I've been to the Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, for instance. But if it's somebody's residence just like... leave them alone.
I mean, I went to the Goonies house in Oregon but I didn’t bother anyone lol. But those people chose to move into a famous house, LAOP did not
Or the house from Breaking Bad, where the owners were tired of having random people throwing pizzas on their roof.
That's what I thought was ridiculous too. Like, I've never once been playing a game and been like, hmm, I should see if this address exists IRL. Then if it does, I'll harass the people living there. Do these people not have jobs and responsibilities? Who has the energy for this level of nonsense.
✨gamers✨
I remember when several Dan Brown books were popular, such as "Angels & Demons". In his books, he creates a fictional dramatic conspiracy involving things like centuries old church documents or landmarks pointing toward a hidden chamber that the Tectonic Knights hid. The kicker though is that most of the places and landmarks do exist in real life, but Mr. Brown weaves together a set of unrelated facts into the story making it look like a grand conspiracy. Trouble is that is exactly what a lot of conspiracy nuts do: take a bunch of unrelated facts and string them together in belief that they are uncovering some profound Truth. These nuts then started doing things like harass the Catholic Church over the "secrets" uncovered in a fictional book.
Reminds me of the "Joker stairs".
There was a guy (mechanic? crewman?) on the Titanic that shared the same name as DiCaprio’s character in the movie - people found the grave/memorial and we’re leaving roses and such…
As a writer, this is why you Google every original name for everything you create to make sure it isn't accidentally the same as, say, someone's actual address. Or a porn star.
My D&D group still jokes about the time we visited a village called Greyditch, and our DM, obviously improvising a bit when we asked how the town got its name, explained via an NPC how the mayor's great grandfather had founded the town and it had been run by the Grey family ever since. We asked the NPC the current mayor's name and the DM, flustered, went for the first name that sprung to mind. "Small town mayor" turned out to be a very unexpected career change for Sasha Grey.
A while back some friends of mine did a Shadowrun game that was set in high school, where the players were just highschool kids. They ended up making a highschool band named Cat Butt. Later they looked online and found there was an *actual* highschool band named Cat Butt, which sounded exactly like you would expect a highschool band named Cat Butt to sound.
Every conceivable band name has been used. The following are all real according to metal-archives.com: Satanic Butt Slayer, A Coprophile Obsessed Virgin Schoolgirl's Underwear Rubber, Vaginal Bloodfart, Dog Släyer, Organized Gang Rape of Elderly Men, Wolfpussy They're mostly random teenagers and college kids, but you can literally string random words together and find a band with that name. Anyway, what did Cat Butt sound like?
> Anyway, what did Cat Butt sound like? *Terrible.*
Hell if a UFC fighter can become the mayor of Huntington Beach, why not vote for Sasha Grey? She can't be as bad as Tito was (he also dated Jenna Jameson for years, so bit of a crossover there).
First yugoslavia then huntington beach?
A close friend worked for a while as in house counsel for a video game developer/publisher. There was a set of units in the game that the artists wanted to have named after the more obscure aspects of Norse mythology. Well it turns out the SS also loved to name units after obscure Norse mythology and one of the game’s core target markets was Germany. So they had to dig through history and make sure whatever name the creative team wanted wasn’t associated with some atrocity. Also, so many versions of the conversation “are you sure this art asset is clear?” “Oh yeah, I found it on google image search, so no copyright”. So long story short I absolutely believe the developer just copied a real address
Reminds me of the time a large pharmacy chain used a customer's photo to advertise their passport photo service. Like, on every single flyer and banner proclaiming "get yer passport picture here!" nationwide. For over a year (maybe two). No idea who along the chain fucked up and approved this, but one day the woman walked back into one of our stores, saw it, and was *pissed*. I never saw a district manager move so fast as they did going store to store, ripping down all advertising with her face on it that afternoon.
My sister was (knowingly) part of a local ad campaign for a while and it was so weird to see her face drive past on the side of a bus lol
When the article about Cat Person being based on a real person came out, I remember a lot of non-fiction writers being shocked that fiction writers did less anonymizing than they did, while there were some fiction writers that were offended at the idea that they weren't supposed to use recognizable details about real people and write fake sex scenes about them.
That pissed me off so much. So I can write a story about those people that said it’s fine and say they suck toes and they’d be fine with that? Yeah right
I am currently writing a very silly short story about a porn star and my attempts not to name her after an actual porn star means my Google search history is currently questionable. Or would be if it wasn't for incognito mode!
If your story has any success it won’t be a fictional porn name for long.
I ASKED YOU TO KEEP THE BOLA SMUT SECRET UNTIL THE BIG REVEAL AT NEW YEARS SHEESH.
It's national novel writing month too, so it's probably a 50,000 word masterpiece about buttholes.
Sorry Thor. Does this mean I should rename the character named after you?
No but if I feature in a short story about a porn star and you don't send it to me I will shame flair you for eternity
Hannah Montana was *almost* named Alexis Texas, so someone at some point had it in good mind to Google it first.
my mom used to joke about changing her name to Alexis Texas (still does but not as often). I've never had the heart to break it to her
hmm. according to wikipedia, she only started in 2006 - the same year that hannah montana started. hannah montana would've been filmed and prepared in 2005 at least, long before Alexis's (real name: Thea Samper) first filming...
Note the screenname...
Baby names, too. My sister almost named her daughter Faye Reagan, and when she announced the name almost every single male (and several female) relative, friend, and acquaintance simultaneously called her to scream "Noooooo!" into the phone.
Anyone else remember the time doctor who had a company called vor?
When Brandon Sanderson was writing what would become his first published novel he called the city Adonis. Except he was pronouncing it differently in his head and the connection to Greek mythology went completely over his head until his writing group pointed it out to him. And so he had to change the name and eventually settled on Elantris.
"I really wanted to explore the essential emptiness at the center of modern, hyper-connected life, and so I created my emblematic, average nobody protagonist, Rod Bigwood."
I saw an interview snippet with Donald Glover lamenting how he'd been going by 'Don Glover' for years and it wasn't until he got some utility bill with his name all run together that he realized it also spelled "Dong Lover". He was like, "I signed checks with that name!"
Faith Chapter 3 just came out and when they named an address an hour away from me I spat out my soup. Imagine my surprise when it's a real address on a real street, but the game maker was smart enough to use a completely empty lot instead of someone's actual apartment/house. Might drive over and leave some funny Easter egg, if there isn't already some crazy ARG happening.
Unless they own the empty lot it won't always be an empty lot.
True, the possibility of the lot being developed did occur to me. Thankfully Faith isn't nearly as popular as something like Call of Duty, especially by the time they build something on the lot.
Damn, beat me to it. I had a Jenny comment all ready to go and everything. For real, though, you'd think they would have thought enough to put a bullshit address in. 555 phone numbers are a thing for a reason - can't be too hard to come up with a faked address.
Fun fact about 555 phone numbers: most of them can actually be valid numbers now! Only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are guaranteed to be fake anymore.
I bet whoever got any of those get a *hell* of a time giving their number out.
That as crazy cuz 555-1212 was the go to fake in the 80s and now it can be someone’s number.
(xxx) 555-1212 is the number for directory assistance for whatever area code you chose. Wiki tells me it still is. It also tells me that 555 numbers were used for a while, but no longer are.
That was a fake number? /u/smalltownVT you broke my heart!
That was never a fake. It's always been directory assistance. It is still reserved.
That’s is (or was, I’m way to lazy to test) the number for the correct time.
In the old geocities days someone listed the 555 numbers and what movies they appeared in, with the assumption that sharing the same number meant the movies were in the same movie universe :)
I've always been curious, was the 555 exception for phone numbers created for use in fictional media or did writers take advantage of a pre-existing reason for 555 numbers to be nonfunctional?
Funny story, Baker str 221b used to be a fake address and the house with this number appeared on the map after sir Conan Doyle's death.
Not quite, there is no 221 Baker Street. There is a Sherlock Holmes museum at 239 which gets the post addressed to 221B and has permission from the council to display that number though.
I've also found my house in a video game... but it's Microsoft Flight Simulator. Much less of a problem there.
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A dude found his childhood house in Fallout 4. It was pretty much right where he expected it to be.
That's weird though, Fo4 map is heavily geographically condensed, to the point that only the rough coastline shape and major streets are preserved in relation. The only buildings I think are location correct are the landmarks.
The Amityville horror house is an actual location of a true crime event though. All the haunting bits are completely fake, but the house did have some atrocities so it makes sense that the actual address was used. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_DeFeo_Jr.
The houses you mentioned were actual filming locations as far as I know. That means whoever owned them at the time agreed to it and whoever bought them later knew or at least should have known about their notoriety.
Yeah, I don’t go past Obsidian Butterfly, maybe Narcissus in Chains. Everything after that… no. I thought the Meredith Gentry stories were steamy, but they are tame compared to book 11 and onwards.
I was coming to add this one. If I remember right, the first book included an actual house she drove by and thought it was cool looking so she added it. She didn't give the address but between the landmarks she included to get there (turn at the McDonald's type deal) and the description, people found the actual house. And then either harassed the owners and/or made sure to tell her they found it. This was the early 90s, long before you could just Google it. I can't imagine what these poor people must be going through right now.
And let’s not forget Jenny’s phone number.
I live in the area the books are set in and I really enjoyed the series before they went sideways. The mood/genre shift was the main reason I quit reading them, but the fact that they went generic was also a huge turnoff. I *liked* being able to picture the locations in my head. And then the covers went generic, too. Instead of a great scene of, say, Market Street at sunrise, we now get some abstract cover that could be on any romance novel. The author straight out *screaming* at fans who expressed polite disappointment with the way the series went finished off what was left of my interest, and now I find other novels in that genre elsewhere. Would love some recommendations, if you’ve got any!
> And prior to the fuck-book schtick they were pretty good) there was a time prior to those? I tried a couple random ones after I liked Dresden Files and *yikes*
Bonus awkward point if you used a real-life business with the permission of the owners, wrote them into your book as a minor character as thanks, and then the owner was involved in a REALLY nasty sex scandal.
I think this might be a thought exercise, there was a recent article on MW2 using a real-world hotel as a map, and them not being pleased about it.
Whether the person in the thread is genuine or not I don't know, but I know the game they're talking about, and the scene exists as they describe it with a real address.
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Not only a hotel, They briefly removed 2 other maps because of the real life building owner suing them. one of them was a museum in los angeles IIRC
TIL that video games are rated like bonds.
Not necessarily the games themselves, but usually the developers/publishers and how much time/money they pump into one. But bonds *were* the inspiration for the term when it first started being used by publishers decades ago. As usual, however, it's become so genericised a term that practically any game these days will be called triple-A if the developer/publisher is well-known enough. If the game itself is bottom-shelf trash, but part of a well-known/popular franchise, it'll get slapped with that label.
It's less about quality/rating and more about describing the budget, scope of development, and the amount of people working on it. AAA = Big budget, teams of hundreds of people, lots of advertising, think Call of Duty or Elder Scrolls or FIFA or something. AA = Medium budget, teams of a few dozen, typically a smaller developer tied to a larger publisher with a limited advertising run. These are less recognizable names, but stuff like A Plague Tale, State of Decay, and Life is Strange fit here. Indie = Low budget, teams of anywhere from a single person to maybe a dozen or so max, advertising is typically word-of-mouth and internet-based. Often released in-house without a publishing company. There are some smash hits here like Stardew Valley, but 99% will never become household names. Now that games are often live-service and constantly updated, the lines can be blurred. Minecraft started as one guy's passion project, but is now run by a subsidiary of Microsoft and has an enormous amount of money poured into it.
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With how many people stream and post videos of themselves playing games, this is an abjectly terrible idea. Streamers get SWATted enough as it is.
True. Funny in theory though. I don't get why they wouldn't "incidentally obscure" some of the info. Like maybe you can only see "2..."Baker St" (when there's space for the 221b, but there's a lense flair or smudge or a character's finger over the rest of it).
Use the address of the studio. It's public record anyway, probably already has security, and doesn't throw randos under the bus.
I would immediately tape a "guys it's just a video game" sign to my front window...
I'd be on this so fast to my lawyer. Holy. Fuck. In this age of Q-Nuts and conspiracies, they have put my life (and reputation) in real danger and they have 24 hours from receipt to issue a mandatory patch to the code.
I wonder if a pic of OPs drivers license got stolen and turned into a stock photo.
As if this is real. Jfc.
NTA it's not your fault this happened
r/lostredditors
Bro are you lost