Where Was Bones Filmed? Every Major Shooting Location Explained

Make no bones about it: Fox's "Bones" uses more than a little movie magic to make its Washington, D.C. setting come to life. The long-running procedural series about geeky forensic anthropologist Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel), instinct-driven FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz), and the love they forge while looking at rotting human remains is a quintessential D.C. show. It's got everything you'd expect from a story set in the U.S.' capital, from federal agency shenanigans to the death of a state senator to an episode featuring a very memorable (and very nasty) sniper-related kill.

Despite all the Washington D.C. indicators sprinkled throughout the show, "Bones" was actually filmed on the opposite coast of the North American continent. From the FBI Headquarters building to the Jeffersonian Institute (a clear stand-in for the Smithsonian), the team behind "Bones" recreated artificial versions of East Coast locations over 2,000 miles away from the city that serves as their inspiration and real-life home.

The vast majority of "Bones" was shot in Los Angeles, which might be why the show doesn't feature as much bad weather as you might expect for an East Coast-set story. Most of the show's version of D.C. was recreated on the famed Fox lot in Century City, according to sources like Entertainment Weekly.

"Because Bones is set in Washington, D.C., but filmed in Los Angeles, one of our main challenges is to avoid seeing palm trees or any other signs of being in Southern California," the "Bones" production team told EW in a trivia-filled interview in honor of the show's 100th episode. In the same article, they also noted that the studio sets were so real that they became home to some non-fictional critters, including a hungry squirrel named Mr. Sweets (after John Frances Daley's doomed fan favorite character, naturally) and "the prettiest and friendliest cat on the Fox lot."

Even the easily recognizable exterior shots of "Bones" were mostly captured in the greater Los Angeles area, with the Natural History Museum often filling in for the Jeffersonian Institute according to TV Insider. Per the site's reporting, the University of Southern California's Wallis Annenberg building, the current home of the California Science center, also stood in for parts of the bone-filled Jeffersonian campus. The two buildings are located right next to one another in downtown Los Angeles, and you can easily glimpse them if you pop over the BMO Stadium (another next door neighbor) for a concert or sporting event.

One major "Bones" two-parter did take place on location, with the cast and crew travelling to the United Kingdom for the fourth season premiere. The two-hour episode "The Yanks in the U.K." sees Bones giving a lecture at Oxford and Booth rubbing elbows with the detectives of Scotland Yard. Their getaway gets serious, though, when an American heiress is found dead in the Thames river. The episode is best remembered for the introduction of romantic rivals for both Booth and Brennan, and for part one's classic "the butler did it" conclusion.

It's not, however, remembered for its gloomy English weather. "We might have [had] 15 minutes of rain the whole time," Deschanel told IGN after filming the episode. "It was gorgeous weather and London in the summertime when you have good weather [...] there's nothing better." The actor also commented on the friendly pub culture of the city, the bright summer nights, and the crowds of local fans who gathered to watch scenes being shot. "It's very unusual," Deschanel said of the chance to briefly move the show from the Fox lot to another continent, "and believe me, I realized how lucky we are when we were there."

"Bones" is currently streaming on Hulu.