For example, Marvel has New York, San Fransisco and Washington DC (poor souls). While DC has Gotham, Metropolis, Star City, Blüdhaven and Coast City. While there seems to be a New York, San Fransisco and so on some of these places seem to be DC's version of cities of our world. For example both Gotham and Metropolis are based on New York and seem to be located in the same general area... where New York usually is and both have a Statue of Liberty and a Central Park, etcetera, etcetera.
Not helping matters is the film adaptations which tend to combine locations due to budget reasons. For example The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Batman filmed scenes in New York AND Chicago while Superman has used NY almost exclusively.
So, where the hell is everything?
Personally I like to think that Gotham is located in Chicago, Metropolis is New York, Blüdhaven is Detroit and so on. I want to lean into the idea that the Earth of DC is a parallel universe to our own with the only exceptions being the capital cities of the world (Washington, London, Canberra you get the idea). This does lead into some interesting ideas because, as stated before, both Gotham and Metropolis have a Statue of Liberty but personally there is a joke my sister and I have had that in this world the creator the Lady Liberty had a rival who decided to make his own version the iconic statue called Lady Justice aka this beauty
I don't know I just like the idea.
But yeah this has always bugged me because sometimes it seems to have all the cities we know but then all the fictional cities are intended as stand ins for those same cities.
