This has been brought up a couple times. But I think it deserves its own thread. We are actually in Capital City, USA not the "Mega City."

We can see this twice in the file that the Machines have on Thomas Anderson.

First on the front page where it lists his place of birth. (I highlighted the part)

Then we can see it again on his passport. Which means he is currently living in Capital City. Not that he was just born in Capital City and Moved to the Mega City. (once again, I highlighted the part)

So, I personally think we should all start calling it Capital City. Anyone have else have any thoughts on this?

Eh... I don't think we should take either of those documents too seriously, now that I look at them. I'm not familiar with US passports, but surely one of the dates in second image (11th, 12th and 13th of September '01) has to be his birthday. And that seems to conflict with the first image's 11th of March 1962.

Archangel wrote:

Rarebit, I noticed in the movies, according to the file the Machines had on Neo in the first movie, that the city was called Capital City. What was the reasoning behind calling it Mega City in the game rather than Capital City?

"Capital City" is shown as his place of birth, not place of current residence.

"Mega City" was I think a name of convenience, possibly thought up by someone in Marketing. I don't really consider it to be the name of the city in the game. Dunno if you've noticed, but that term hasn't appeared in any new mission for ages now, and story characters don't use it in Live Events. Generally they just say "the city."

EDIT: hm, maybe not by Marketing, since it appears as a label on a reference map from production of the later movies. Still, I think it was just a generic handle. The movies are generally very careful not to use names for their locations, except for things like street names in the simulation, which could be in any North American city, and I think the W's had their reasons for doing that.

EDIT x: by the way, if people want to discuss this further, please do it in a separate thread, rather than spamming this one; the Matrix Universe forum would be a good spot.

I'm gonna go with PS1ON on this one. It would make sense that they decided on the name Mega City after the first movie, seeing as how they called it Capital City in the document Agent Smith had.

I'd rather go with what the Wichowski's decided on, than just a split-second scene shown in the first movie.

Procurator wrote:

Eh... I don't think we should take either of those documents too seriously, now that I look at them. I'm not familiar with US passports, but surely one of the dates in second image (11th, 12th and 13th of September '01) has to be his birthday. And that seems to conflict with the first image's 11th of March 1962.

According to UK passports which seem to have the same if not very similar layouts the 11th and 12th are the Valid from and expiry dates I believe, thus the 13th should be the birth date.

Props such as these usually fly under the radar when it comes to filming especially if they aren't going to get a lot of screen time. With today's technology available to the home enthusiast, Film-makers should really start to make sure that every single little detail is correct, especially on films such as this.

Megacity is a real world term which applies to two or more cities whose "urban sprawl" have met, pushing their suburbs together and eliminating any rural areas between them.  Conrac has figured out exactly how many square kilometers the four available districts cover and I'll try to get figures from him soon.  If you are going to compare square kilometers available between MxO and other MMOs, you'd best remember that a lot of the Megacity is vertical, especially in downtown.  Count the surface area of every available floor in every building in the Megacity, and I'd make a reasonable wager that we're bigger than most MMOs.  I read somewhere that MxO's Megacity is bigger than the combined five boroughs of New York City.  The "greater Toronto area" of Canada is often referred to as Megacity, as are other areas mentioned below.


Link

From the Wikipedia entry for megacity: A megacity is usually defined as a recognized metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people.[1] Some definitions also set a minimum level for population density (at least 2,000 persons/square km). Megacities can be distinguished from global cities by their rapid growth, new forms of spatial density of population, formal and informal economics, as well as poverty, crime, and high levels of social fragmentation. A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge upon one another. The terms conurbation and metroplex are also applied to the latter. The terms megapolis and megalopolis are sometimes used synonymously with megacity. The term metacity is also sometimes used to describe cities with more than 20 million people.


This is a page from a Reloaded set book showing the highways north of Megacity where the Mona Lisa Overdrive chase took place.  By the time Reloaded was in production, the brothers had settled on the term Megacity. (note the date, which looks like November 12, 2001)

 

I always considered the term "Mega City" as an adjective rather than the noun(the city)