For like 90 percent of all movie locations, the most interesting thing that happened or will happen there is that someone once shot a movie in that place (unless you think "Rob Lowe had sex with the catering lady on this backlot" counts as interesting). In fact, most directors have to work really hard to make regular places look cool and intriguing. And we said "most" because other times, the real story behind the location is so crazy and fascinating that it completely dwarfs anything that a coked-up Hollywood screenwriter could come up with. For instance ...

5 Skyfall -- The Abandoned City Is Real, and More Evil Than a Bond Villain

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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As part of a continuing effort to make the lair of every James Bond villain as ridiculous as possible, the bad guy in Skyfall operates out of an abandoned city on an island, complete with crumbling buildings and objects eerily left behind. Why is it abandoned? Why would a master hacker live there? Because it's a movie, and because shut up. This is also the place where the villain shoots and kills a girl who has a glass of scotch on her head.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

"What a waste of good scotch." -James Bo... wait, he actually says that in the movie.

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But while the close-ups were shot on a set, you're seeing a very real place in the distant shots: the Japanese island of Gunkanjima, which once housed over 5,000 people, and now houses zero.

Engineering and Technology Magazine

In 2011, it got recognized as that year's Japanese city with the fewest public gropings (only five incidents).

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The city served as a coal mining base for almost a hundred years. In the 19th century, Mitsubishi (before they started making cars for Jackie Chan) used to run boats from Nagasaki to the island so workers could dig coal, until they realized that they could save a lot of money by just putting the miners and their families in concrete blocks on the island itself. Some 5,250 miners squeezed onto a 16-acre island, making it the most densely populated independent place on Earth, ever -- the equivalent of placing the entire world's population in Maine.