Entertainment today feels incredibly interconnected, spanning from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to TV series that surprisingly share the same universe. However, this idea isn’t as new as it seems and doesn’t just relate to shared characters or events. From its foundation, film and television have heavily relied on studio lots and their various sets. While movies have gradually moved away from this practice, TV shows frequently continue to share production spaces.

A common example is sitcoms utilizing the same soundstage sets. These sets retain their basic structure but undergo several modifications between shows. Additionally, some shows share outdoor settings, ranging from simple facades for quick shots to elaborate, constructed towns on studio lots utilized across multiple TV series over time. Sometimes these reused sets are easily recognizable due to minimal alterations, whereas other times, they are so significantly revamped that only a keen eye or insider knowledge would reveal the reuse. 

It’s important to clarify that this discussion strictly pertains to manmade indoor and outdoor sets found on studio lots, rather than actual locations like schools, offices, or hospitals that various shows may use for filming.

One of the more recognizable living rooms in television history is the one in the Conner household, first used in “Roseanne” and then carried over into follow-up show “The Conners.” In fact, great pains were undertaken to ensure that the living room — and that iconic couch with the knitted blanket thrown over the back of it — was recreated as accurately as possible when “Roseanne” came back in 2018, as fans would’ve immediately noticed any major changes. (This in spite of the show having originally ended 21 years prior.)

Among the untold truths of “Mike & Molly,” the Chuck Lorre-produced 2010 sitcom that helped to give Melissa McCarthy that final push into being a mainstream household name, is that it used the “Roseanne” set. A fair amount of redecorating happened of course, and some walls were shifted a tiny bit, but it’s easy to see if you really look at it. Of course, that probably made it all the more difficult to get the set back to looking like the Conners’ house again for “Roseanne”‘s return, and all the more impressive with how well they achieved that goal. 

Despite being two distinctly different flavors of sitcom on rival networks and only spending a single season on the air at the same time, there is still a connection between “Full House” and “Friends” you likely never knew. Given the context here, it’s obvious that they shared a set of some kind. But that might be a little bit befuddling given that “Full House” took place in a large single-family home while “Friends” was primarily set in adjoining loft apartments separated by a public hallway. In fact, it’s that hallway that brings the two shows together. 

The set used for the often hilarious hallway scenes on “Friends,” the communal space between the apartments of Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc), and Monica (Courteney Cox) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), is the same set that served as the upstairs hallway of the Tanner home on “Full House.” Rather than being the connecting space between apartments, on “Full House,” the set was the space between the bedrooms of Danny (Bob Saget), D.J. and Stephanie (Candace Cameron & Jodie Sweetin), and Michelle (Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen). On “Friends,” the staircase at the back of the set was inferred to lead downstairs to the lower floors of the apartment building — while on “Full House,” those same stairs instead connected the two main levels of the Tanner home.

There are a lot of shows where the city in which they are set is deeply woven into the show’s identity. “Seinfeld,” for instance, couldn’t have taken place anywhere but New York City, and the show rarely goes more than a few minutes without reminding you of that fact. Ditto for “Ally McBeal” which, like many David E. Kelly-created shows, very much wears its Boston setting on its sleeve. With that in mind, it’s easy to assume that any sets shared by the two shows are nondescript indoor ones that don’t otherwise pinpoint a geographical location. 

In fact, the set that both shows used was indeed an outdoor set. More specifically, a facade of a row of Brownstone homes that is located at Universal Studios in Hollywood — far away from the setting of either show — was often used in both shows for outdoor scenes where characters are walking through a residential neighborhood. Given that many large cities have Brownstone homes, and those homes are often grouped together, it wouldn’t betray the setting of most shows or movies that take place in a large American urban area to use that set for outdoor walking scenes. 

What do you do when you need to film a fantasy episode that takes place in the oval office of the White House? Well, if you’re “Smallville,” you just pop on over to the set of “The West Wing” and borrow their oval office set for a couple of hours. That’s what happened for the Season 1 “Smallville” episode “Hourglass” where Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) is shown a vision of a future where he becomes President of the United States. 

When Lex is seen standing in the oval office in the vision, it’s indeed the same one that was on “The West Wing.” It’s not as though the real oval office is regularly loaned out for filming TV shows. And why construct a whole new one when there is perfectly good set already available? Granted, “Smallville” was typically filmed in Vancouver, so that meant moving production to Burbank, California for those scenes. But it’s still a lot cheaper than building an entire set for some quick shots or using green screen effects — which were still a bit shoddy in 2001, especially with what a network TV show had to spend. 

When considering what shows you should watch if you love “Desperate Housewives,” the obvious choices are ones that focus on soapy drama and whose ensembles are predominately female. But you might also consider “The Munsters,” the spooky sitcom from the 1960s that Rob Zombie loved so much he eventually rebooted it as a Netflix film in 2022. While the two shows seemingly couldn’t be more different, they in fact share a very specific connective tissue.

Wisteria Lane, the neighborhood that served as the backdrop for the various tawdry goings-on in “Desperate Housewives,” is actually a set known as Colonial Street contained within the Universal Studios backlot in Hollywood. The set also happens to feature the Munster Mansion from “The Munsters,” which can even be seen from time to time in the background of outdoor scenes in “Desperate Housewives.” It’s no longer quite so dusty, creepy, and decrepit, of course. 

Colonial Street has also been used for “Good Girls,” “Bel Air,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Knight Rider,” and many other TV shows — as well as numerous films — over the nearly 100 years since its initial construction. 

Things lined up quite nicely when “Wizards of Waverly Place,” the magical Disney Channel sitcom starring Selena Gomez, ended production. At least, it worked out for fellow Disney Channel show “Jessie,” because it allowed for “Jessie” to take over the set that “Wizards of Waverly Place” was no longer using. There may have been a significant amount of interior redecorating that had to happen, and even some smaller structural adjustments. But the house occupied by the Russo family from “Wizards of Waverly Place” was indeed the same set that served as the penthouse where Jessie was employed in “Jessie.”

As for the 2024 sequel show, “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place,” eagle-eyed fans seem pretty convinced that it is on the same set used for another Disney revival show — “Raven’s Home,” which followed on from the classic “That’s So Raven.” Of course, what we can gather from all this is that pretty much all Disney shows shared sets, or at least studio spaces, which isn’t at all surprising. 

Among the many reasons that fans fell head over heels in love with “Gilmore Girls,” beyond the adorable dynamic of the mother/daughter pair that the show was built around, was its setting. Stars Hollow may have its flaws — primarily, residents that are little to into each others’ business, which is partly why Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) wanted to get away from it to begin with. But that is more than made up for by the cute, quirky outdoor decor, gorgeous homes, and charming town square.

Stars Hollow is the kind of place that you’d be hard-pressed to actually find in real life. And indeed, it doesn’t actually exist, and was constructed on the Warner Bros. studio lot. Given that it was a modest production on the WB (and later, the CW), there clearly wasn’t an entire fake town built just for “Gilmore Girls.” And moreover, it wasn’t all torn down when “Gilmore Girls” first ended. Warner Bros. put it to use again a few years later for “Pretty Little Liars,” with some alterations that turned Stars Hollow, Connecticut into Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Landmarks like the gazebo in the town square, as well as multiple residential and commercial spaces, are easy to identify between the two shows. 

Not only was the fake town that became Stars Hollow used after “Gilmore Girls,” but it got plenty of use before it as well. Among the most notable examples is the classic historical drama “The Waltons,” whose home was later repurposed as the Dragonfly Inn on “Gilmore Girls.” However, that history isn’t quite so cut and dry.

The building in question wasn’t actually the original Walton house. That one had previously burned down in 1991 during a massive Warner Bros. studio fire that ended up causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage — as well as destroying an iconic piece of television history. Given that there were still various “Waltons” TV movies and specials being made, a new version of the house had to be built to use for those productions. And it’s the rebuilt house that is the one that eventually became the Dragonfly Inn, which was used not only in the original “Gilmore Girls” series but also featured heavily in the 2016 Netflix revival miniseries “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” 

Of all the pairs of shows on this list, “The X-Files” and “The Mindy Project” might be the frontrunner for shows that couldn’t be more different than one another. The former was a sci-fi series about aliens and government conspiracies, and the other, a workplace rom-com. However, “The Mindy Project” was set in New York City, and the various assignments of FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) often brought them to said city. And that overlap means they had the opportunity to share sets.

Specifically, a fake street set at Universal Studios designed to resemble New York City, where outdoor scenes of both shows were filmed. It stands to reason that said street was probably also used for various outdoor shots of “Seinfeld,” given it’s at the same studio. But only the brownstones in particular have been confirmed to have been used in “Ally McBeal,” so the four shows can’t all be officially declared to have shared a set. However, the aforementioned faux NYC street does have at least one more well-known show that’s been confirmed to have filmed outdoor scenes there — the medical drama “House.” That’s three very different shows all being filmed on the same set. 

The most common approach for TV shows that have a lot of scenes that take place in schools is to film at a real school. Torrance High School in Torrance, California, for instance, has been used for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Medium,” and “90210.” Meanwhile, L.A.’s Balboa High School stood in for the fictional schools in “7th Heaven,” “Arrested Development,” “My So-Called Life,” and “Lizzy Maguire.” But there are shows that spend so much time in a school and need extra flexibility that shutting down a real school isn’t feasible, so a fake school set needs to be constructed.

Bayside High from “Saved by the Bell” is one such show, with some of it being filmed at a real high school in L.A. As it turns out, that same school also served as a Bayside High from a different show — “That’s So Raven.” The two shows share a writer, so the Bayside connection was deliberate. But much of “Saved by the Bell” was actually filmed on a set in front of a live audience, meaning that a facsimile of the real high school had to be constructed. That worked out nicely for “That’s So Raven,” which then got the opportunity to use the same set that was a replica of the same real high school. 

To be fair, the vast majority of “Everybody Loves Raymond” wasn’t actually filmed on the same set as groundbreaking sitcom “All in the Family.” It was only the pilot for “Everybody Loves Raymond” that used a redecorated version of the Bunker house. That’s a common practice for pilots, as it allows for a cheaper and easier way to test out of if the show is even worth pursuing before anyone goes through all the trouble of building brand new sets. 

But the reason we included this example, and not the many others like it, is that the pilot for “Everybody Loves Raymond” shot on the “All in the Family” set actually served as the show’s first official episode. Oftentimes, such a pilot is only for internal studio use, after which a proper first episode is filmed for air — one that uses the sets that are to be the permanent ones. The fact that the “All in the Family” set still lives on in the legitimate first episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” forever solidifies the connection between the two acclaimed sitcoms. 

It doesn’t typically make lists of the best episodes of “Star Trek: The Original Series” — and in fact, is sometimes specifically called out by fans as one of the show’s lesser episodes — but Season 1’s “Miri” is noteworthy for fans of television history for a very interesting reason. When the crew are exploring a desolate planet that is seemingly modeled after Earth, they walk around a town that has a very classic American South feel. And it’s not just the vibes that make it seem so familiar — those shots were filmed in the same set that served as the fictional Mayberry of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Despite the lofty ambitions of “Star Trek,” CBS didn’t exactly throw piles of cash at the production. Not that any shows back then were particularly expensive affairs anyway. But “Star Trek” was constantly needing to find ways to save money and to cut corners to justify its existence in the face of struggling ratings. And in this case, that meant using an existing fake town set to serve as the surface of a distant planet. In fact, there wasn’t even a significant amount of effort put into hiding the fact that it was Mayberry, with recognizable businesses like Floyd’s Barbershop visible in some shots.