...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Zeerust
- 1135 statements
- 210 feature instances
- 400 referencing feature instances
Zeerust | type |
FeatureClass | |
Zeerust | label |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust | page |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust | comment |
Something — be it a piece of technology, character design, outfit, vehicle or building — used to be someone's idea of futuristic. Nowadays it has, ironically, acquired a quaint sort of datedness to it: inevitably, it will be more reminiscent of the era the work came from. Also sometimes called "Retrofuturism". Think of mobile phones as a simple example. Once, they were large, cumbersome, and it was thought that they would only ever be available to the rich. Works from that era will tend to depict even a 'futuristic' phone as still no smaller or sleeker than a brick plugged into a suitcase. Next, when they became widely available and shrank dramatically as technology improved, for a while it was assumed they would keep getting smaller and smaller for portability; depictions of the future from this period will show people using tiny communication devices. The next real life trend would instead be broad, flat smartphones, which needed to have a large rectangular touchscreen while being thin enough to slip into one’s pocket. Any current depiction of the future featuring such slablike devices might also turn into a time capsule of the period it was made in, if and when flexible and foldable phones become commonplace. And so on. Sometimes the dated feeling is due to this sort of straight-line extrapolation of trends ascendant when the work was written into the (far) future. Sometimes the datedness is a bit more subtle. It's possible that the prediction turned out to be technologically or aesthetically accurate (or at least on the right track), but still fails because of the designer's implicit assumption that social values will be the same in the future as in their own time — as demonstrated in the page image. Often the datedness behind zeerusty designs lies in the attempt of the designers to 'improve' on the technology of their time, only to find out that more mundane designs are actually far more efficient if advanced engineering and craftsmanship are used on them. Note that this is not always a bad thing: often the dated vision of the future is a lot more imaginative than anything being attempted today, with more modern, 'realistic' depictions striking viewers as bland and boring precisely because of the authenticity. Another part of this often comes from a related issue: set, costume and prop designers have no choice but to depict the "future" with the materials they have on hand in their present day. When thin, molded glass and clear plastics aren't very readily available to you, you aren't going to put together a prop that looks like an iPhone fifty years before one exists; you're going to use hard black plastic, inexpensive chromed trim, a grill straight off a then-current telephone, and you're going to end up with a TOS communicator and you'll be satisfied with it because you have other things to work on. This can lead to some particularly hilarious moments when a long running franchise wants to produce a prequel or somesuch, but the set and prop design ends up looking different and more "properly" advanced simply because the designers of the new product have access to the fruits of decades of real-world technological progress. As such, when a Long Runner franchise is outflanked by the progress or direction of technology/aesthetics/societal values while it is still going on, but it is tied to its pre-established version of them, this may lead to Zeerust Canon over time. Sometimes Zeerust is deliberate. If a Retraux work presents a supposedly past vision of the future, or 20 Minutes into the Future (i.e. the present), it will inevitably invoke Zeerust or Raygun Gothic. Gets its name and definition from The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, a book of neologisms concocted by the two. Adams and Lloyd mostly used actual place names for their words — Zeerust's name is borrowed from a South African town, which in real life has nothing to do with the phenomenon. Compare The Aesthetics of Technology, Crystal Spires and Togas, I Want My Jet Pack, Hollywood History, Punk Punk, Steam Never Dies, Schizo Tech, Science Marches On, 20 Minutes into the Future, Raygun Gothic, Retro Universe. Contrast with New Weird. When the creators actually predict what the future holds correctly, then it's Life Imitates Art. |
|
Zeerust | fetched |
2024-04-19T18:02:15Z | |
Zeerust | parsed |
2024-04-19T18:02:15Z | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to AfterTheEnd: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Animusic: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to BoardsOfCanada: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to CassetteFuturism: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ComputerEqualsTapedrive: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Cyberspace: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to DVDCommentary: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Daltanious: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to DataPad: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to DistantFinale: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to DoctorSteel: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Fanservice: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to FlightOfTheConchords: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to FlyingCar: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to FoodPills: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to FutureMusic: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to HairMetal: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to HandWave: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to JetPack: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to MasterComputer: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to MissionControl: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Mooks: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Narm: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to NoNewFashionsInTheFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to NoPaperFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to PunnyName: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RaceAgainstTheClock: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RayGun: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RaygunGothic: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RetCon: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RetroRocket: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Revival: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RobotBuddy: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to RuleOfCool: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SchizoTech: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ScienceMarchesOn: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ScooterRidingMod: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SelfDeprecation: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SpaceZone: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to StarWars: Not an Item - CAT | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to StarshipLuxurious: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SteamPunk: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SteelyDan: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to StupidJetpackHitler: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to SubvertedTrope: Not an Item - CAT | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Tagline: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TechnologyMarchesOn: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheAlternet: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheEighties: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheNineties: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheSixties: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ThoseWackyNazis: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TimeMaster: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TinCanRobot: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TokenHuman: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Trinity: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TruthInTelevision: Not an Item - CAT | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to UnCancelled: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Uru: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ValuesDissonance: Not an Item - CAT | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to Vaporware: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to VideoPhone: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to ViewerFriendlyInterface: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to VirtualReality: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to WeWillNotHavePocketsInTheFuture: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to flyingsaucer: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to fridgelogic: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to invokedtrope: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to lampshadehanging: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingComment |
Dropped link to mundanemadeawesome: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
Zeerust | processingUnknown |
Daltanious | |
Zeerust | processingUnknown |
Trinity | |
Zeerust | processingUnknown |
Uru | |
Zeerust | isPartOf |
DBTropes | |
Zeerust / int_101df64 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_101df64 | comment |
Street Fighter 2010 (which came out a year before Street Fighter II made the franchise really popular) predicted that in twenty years, martial artists will be fighting aliens using performance-enhancing cybernetic suits and interdimensional warp gates. The year 2010 has come and there are still no cyborgs, no aliens, and interplanetary travel is nowhere near perfect yet. | |
Zeerust / int_101df64 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_101df64 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Street Fighter 2010 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_101df64 | |
Zeerust / int_1081aa34 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1081aa34 | comment |
Wipeout 2097/XL is a futuristic racing game released in 1997 and set a hundred years in the future. It made a serious effort to create a consistent future aesthetic◊ with its Designers Republic branding and licensed underground soundtrack, but unfortunately it was released on the verge of the minimalist iPod pastel style. The rounded 'computer' Fonts, bright primary colours and segmented digital displays now seem rather dated. | |
Zeerust / int_1081aa34 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1081aa34 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
WipEout (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1081aa34 | |
Zeerust / int_1212c9a3 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1212c9a3 | comment |
"Little Lost Robot": Bogert raises the possibility of using the station's computers to help analyze their problem, before concluding, "We can't use computers. Too much danger of leakage." In 1947, "computer" meant a human being employed as part of a team to do complex calculations by hand — Bogert is worried about news of the problem spreading if the secret is shared with more people. | |
Zeerust / int_1212c9a3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1212c9a3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Little Lost Robot | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1212c9a3 | |
Zeerust / int_128a792a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_128a792a | comment |
Gibson's Bridge Trilogy started showing this post-1999. Anyone else happen to remember a gloves-and-goggles-VR Internet coming into existence in the 2000s? Didn't think so. | |
Zeerust / int_128a792a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_128a792a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Bridge Trilogy | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_128a792a | |
Zeerust / int_12f6bcb | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_12f6bcb | comment |
The Futuristic Zone from The Crystal Maze has many early Nineties ideas of future technology, with good doses of Cyberpunk and Used Future, and lacking many of the technological advancements made since then. Fluorescent tube lighting, CRT screens and seven-segment displays abound, along with a talking computer. Because of this, when the series was given a full Revival in 2017 the Futuristic Zone was the only one of the four to be completely redesigned from scratch (now adopting Everything Is An I Pod In The Future), while the other three more or less used the same designs from the Nineties version. |
|
Zeerust / int_12f6bcb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_12f6bcb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Crystal Maze | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_12f6bcb | |
Zeerust / int_13d84dd9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_13d84dd9 | comment |
Astro Boy: Tezuka wanted his readers to be able to relate to the characters and setting, so he usually only added things like robots and spaceships when they were important to the story. Ultimately, though, this results in what looks like Schizo Tech, with ludicrously Zeerusty spacecrafts and intelligent robots that run on vacuum tubes existing in what otherwise appears to be mid-20th century Japan, even though the series is supposed to take place in the early 21st. There's an amusing bit of Lampshade Hanging of this in the introduction to one of the paperback collections, where a character complains to Tezuka, saying that since it's the future, he should be wearing Space Clothes instead of a threadbare old suit and living in a high tech space colony instead of a crummy one-bedroom apartment. Oddly enough, the subsequent remakes managed to be even more Zeerusty than the original. The 1980s version tried to depict a more futuristic world where technology was more integrated into modern life, with the result being that the technology's greater presence makes the show's datedness even more obvious and jarring to modern viewers. Even though they got the part about more people using computers right, the computers look totally anachronistic; the futuristic architecture and flying cars they use are often hideously impractical; and all the robots that don't look identical to humans look like a cross between old Kenner toys and outdated computer parts. The latest anime from the early '00s is more self aware about this and deliberately goes with an over-the-top retro-futuristic style similar to that used in the earlier Tezuka-inspired film Metropolis. In most ways this is an improvement, but sadly, it sacrifices most of the down to Earth charm that arguably helped make the original such a huge hit. |
|
Zeerust / int_13d84dd9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_13d84dd9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Astro Boy (Manga) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_13d84dd9 | |
Zeerust / int_16712475 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_16712475 | comment |
"The future" in The Jetsons seemed to mean "the 1960s, but with more Applied Phlebotinum". This was parodied hilariously in an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. |
|
Zeerust / int_16712475 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_16712475 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Jetsons | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_16712475 | |
Zeerust / int_17e1b994 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_17e1b994 | comment |
Project Blue Earth SOS purposely invokes this, since it's a throwback to '50s science fiction TV. The series takes place in an alternate version of the 1990s and the technology and setting is made to display this trope due to it being how someone from the 50s would imagine the 90s. | |
Zeerust / int_17e1b994 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_17e1b994 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Project Blue Earth SOS | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_17e1b994 | |
Zeerust / int_194eb14e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_194eb14e | comment |
Strikeforce: Morituri takes place in the late 21st century, yet at one point an alien invader surreptitiously passes a message to one of the heroes via videocassette. | |
Zeerust / int_194eb14e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_194eb14e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Strikeforce: Morituri (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_194eb14e | |
Zeerust / int_19ac6443 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_19ac6443 | comment |
Zot! features the world of the (then-)present day, and the Alternate History wherein every cool thing thought of in the early 20th century came true. | |
Zeerust / int_19ac6443 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_19ac6443 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Zot! (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_19ac6443 | |
Zeerust / int_1a21786a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1a21786a | comment |
Advice and Trust: In Chapter 8 Shinji and Asuka are watching laserdiscs. Laserdiscs. In 2015. Justified when the writer points out that technologic development in the original proper series never went past The '90s: Rei uses a bulky cell phone, Shinji a Walkman, and the children play a Sega console. | |
Zeerust / int_1a21786a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1a21786a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Advice and Trust (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1a21786a | |
Zeerust / int_1b13908a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1b13908a | comment |
Deliberately invoked in Chassis which is set in an alternate 1949, where World War II never happened and there are Flying Cars. | |
Zeerust / int_1b13908a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1b13908a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Chassis (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1b13908a | |
Zeerust / int_1c34acd2 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1c34acd2 | comment |
Rocketship Voyager is written In the Style of a 1950's science fiction magazine serial. The eponymous rocketship has a Master Computer that takes up an entire deck and has only recently been upgraded from vacuum tubes to transistors, and an 'Illusionarium'—a three-dimensional theatre with interactive couches that provide sound, touch and smell; coordinated with a cabinet-sized microcomputer that uses punched cards and is repaired with a soldering iron. | |
Zeerust / int_1c34acd2 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1c34acd2 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rocketship Voyager (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1c34acd2 | |
Zeerust / int_1c552432 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1c552432 | comment |
Parodied in the Inside Job (2021) episode "Buzzkill" when Reagan, Brett, and Rand travel to the moon and discover Buzz Aldrin's space colony. It is determined that once they managed to put their insatiable horniness aside, the moon colony was able to technologically develop at a significantly faster pace than our world has been able to. All of this high-tech equipment and super-sleek space fashion has a noticeable 1960s flair to it (including a whole lot of roller skates). This of course makes sense, given this team's arrival in 1969 and their lack of imposed capitalistic manufactured fashion trends; of course their styles and behaviors would develop outward from the standard '60s trends, that's about all they know. | |
Zeerust / int_1c552432 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1c552432 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Inside Job (2021) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1c552432 | |
Zeerust / int_1d1743d9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1d1743d9 | comment |
I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!! is a 1950s and 1960s Fest of this trope. | |
Zeerust / int_1d1743d9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1d1743d9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1d1743d9 | |
Zeerust / int_1f278ec5 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_1f278ec5 | comment |
Stubbs the Zombie takes place in the 1950s with what they believe will be futuristic technology. There are lots of flying cars, simplistic robots with bare-bones AI but no e-mail, Internet, etc. The game developers make the game seem futuristic... for the 1950s. | |
Zeerust / int_1f278ec5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_1f278ec5 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Stubbs the Zombie (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_1f278ec5 | |
Zeerust / int_222a8847 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_222a8847 | comment |
RoboCop (1987): It is amazing how they were able to build a fully functional cyborg, while still using floppy disks. Robocop's visual displays are also in monochrome. Even the computers used by the police station and OCP's corporate headquarters have pretty crappy graphics, although that may be because the setting of the film is a Crapsack World. Lastly, those Ford Taurus police cars looked very futuristic at the time, but not so much now. | |
Zeerust / int_222a8847 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_222a8847 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
RoboCop (1987) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_222a8847 | |
Zeerust / int_2250e67e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2250e67e | comment |
Star Trek: Enterprise really made things interesting, considering it is a modern Trek with modern designs yet is supposed to be set before the Original Series. It was a challenge to make their hand-held communicators bigger than modern cell phones yet smaller than the clunky boxes they used. The designers even said that in 40 years, the modern Trek will look like Zeerust (and they're probably right, as our ideas of what futuristic is is slowly shifting from sleek all-metal designs to bright, white, and very minimalistic). Plotwise, things haven't changed much either: one of the stock patterns of threat in ST: TOS is "Step 1: take away the communicators". Similarly, by 2005 or so, the stock pattern in all contemporary media is "Step 1: take away the cell phone." Most writers then and now haven't worked out how to create dire circumstance while having reliable mobile communication available (this is why Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't get cellphones until the last season). Lampshaded once in an episode; on encountering the classic Trek starship Defiant they gush at how futuristic it is. |
|
Zeerust / int_2250e67e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2250e67e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: Enterprise | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2250e67e | |
Zeerust / int_22d87fc9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_22d87fc9 | comment |
That '70s Show once had Red imagining what the future would be like, and it was filled with tongue-in-cheek Zeerust, such as jumpsuits and jet packs. The joke was that he imagined all that stuff would be available in the far-off year of... 1997. The episode first aired in 1999. | |
Zeerust / int_22d87fc9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_22d87fc9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
That '70s Show | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_22d87fc9 | |
Zeerust / int_25305527 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_25305527 | comment |
The .hack series, which was launched in 2002, is set in what is now considered an Alternate History where, at the turn of the millennium, a devastating computer virus that nearly destroyed the world led to the internet being fundamentally rebuilt following the computer industry being completely monopolized and the United Nations (now a superpower) declaring cybercrime a capital offense. By the year 2010, the internet is still fairly basic, and it would not be until much later (around the time of .hack//G.U., which takes place in 2017) that the internet began to vaguely resemble the one in the real world. | |
Zeerust / int_25305527 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_25305527 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
.hack (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_25305527 | |
Zeerust / int_25f39000 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_25f39000 | comment |
Used again by Heinlein in Between Planets with the added bonus that the protagonist (who is staying on a dude ranch in New Mexico) takes a call from the mobile phone mounted in his horse's saddle! | |
Zeerust / int_25f39000 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_25f39000 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Between Planets | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_25f39000 | |
Zeerust / int_263d08ee | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_263d08ee | comment |
The Tom Swift series of books (1910 or so) foretold some interesting developments, such as stealth airplanes (though in this case the stealth related to silence), television, and laser weapons. The Tom Swift, Jr. series of books (50s and 60s) also foretold some interesting developments including pocket calculators, space shuttles and space stations. | |
Zeerust / int_263d08ee | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_263d08ee | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Tom Swift | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_263d08ee | |
Zeerust / int_265dd90f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_265dd90f | comment |
In Earth 2 the audience gets to see inside the cockpit of the starship that will take the colonists to their new home. It's a very modern glass cockpit with displays everywhere, but they are all heavy bulky CRTs. | |
Zeerust / int_265dd90f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_265dd90f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Earth 2 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_265dd90f | |
Zeerust / int_2819aebd | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2819aebd | comment |
Mega Man (Classic): So, how about that 20XX, eh? Remember when that mad scientist (who looked like Albert Einstein) stole a bunch of robots from his coworker scientist (who looked like Santa Claus) to take over the world? Aren't you glad the Santa-scientist refitted his personal assistant robot to become a super fighting robot who went on to stop that madman? Several times? Don't look now, I hear some scientist in the Soviet Union is threatening a similar attack... Mega Man Battle Network eerily goes in and out of this - it was only set in 200x (Whereas the first game came out in 2001), yet it featured people still using cathode-ray tube monitors, physical disk drives, and they were just getting wireless connectivity right. Unfortunately the cyberterrorism didn't become this trope... |
|
Zeerust / int_2819aebd | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2819aebd | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mega Man (Classic) (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2819aebd | |
Zeerust / int_2a1c0056 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2a1c0056 | comment |
Back to the Future keeps its Eighties Zeerust for scenes set in that universe's 2015, but it also achieves this for its depiction of 2035 by taking the Zeerust established in Back to the Future Part II and adding Zeerust from The New '10s (i.e. Holographic Terminals everywhere and malls being replaced completely by online shopping), resulting in a sort of composite Zeerust. | |
Zeerust / int_2a1c0056 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2a1c0056 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Back to the Future (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2a1c0056 | |
Zeerust / int_2c9df9c5 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2c9df9c5 | comment |
Transformers: The Movie and the third and fourth series were set in the far-off year of 2005. The new characters all have 80s future-y alt-modes, although this can be excused as the Cybertronians having alien designs (why robots would transform into vehicles for people to drive is beside the point). The fact that Soundwave and Blaster still transform into cassette players, not to mention the fact that the Cybertronian personalities can be stored on five-and-a-half-inch floppy disks makes this trope very clear. Daniel Witwicky's outfit (a jumpsuit with his initials on it) falls right into Zeerust, too. Lampshaded by a 2005 Shortpacked comic. |
|
Zeerust / int_2c9df9c5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2c9df9c5 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Transformers: The Movie | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2c9df9c5 | |
Zeerust / int_2cd28570 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2cd28570 | comment |
Serial Experiments Lain's CRT monitors, 90s-like GUIs and BeOS. Also notable is the Dreamcast-like console seen in the OP animation, and the many computers that seem to be running some version of NeXTSTEP, the direct predecessor to OSX. Lain doesn't take place in the future, however, but in "Present day, present time! Hahahahaha!", ie. some kind of alternate reality that may or may not be turned into the world that we know at the end of the show. | |
Zeerust / int_2cd28570 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2cd28570 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Serial Experiments Lain | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2cd28570 | |
Zeerust / int_2cee002d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_2cee002d | comment |
Intentionally invoked in the happy futuristic scenes in Meet the Robinsons, as opposed to the hat-dominated Dystopia. The Neo-fifties look is heavily influenced by Walt Disney's own personal Zeerust from 50 years ago. | |
Zeerust / int_2cee002d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_2cee002d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Meet the Robinsons | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_2cee002d | |
Zeerust / int_302566f9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_302566f9 | comment |
The movie trailer of Astro Boy looks a lot like setting of Meet the Robinsons. | |
Zeerust / int_302566f9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_302566f9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Astro Boy | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_302566f9 | |
Zeerust / int_30450a9a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_30450a9a | comment |
Also employed deliberately (and very skilfully it has to be said) in Alien: Isolation. Everything in the game conforms to a "what somebody living in The '70s thought the future will look like" to keep consistency with the original film. So, computer monitors are bulky CRT-style systems that show text in green monochrome, other electronics have boxy and gray cases and audio recorders even still use magnetic tape, even though the setting is a space station. | |
Zeerust / int_30450a9a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_30450a9a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Alien: Isolation (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_30450a9a | |
Zeerust / int_30464d62 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_30464d62 | comment |
Airplane II: The Sequel features a deliberately Zeerusted moonbase (complete with inverted swooshy doors that don't make the noise, you make the noise at them to open and close them, and even the "Device with Lights That Move Back And Forth" seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and other places in the franchise). Of course the base commander is played by William Shatner at his overblown best. | |
Zeerust / int_30464d62 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_30464d62 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Airplane II: The Sequel | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_30464d62 | |
Zeerust / int_30a87a0a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_30a87a0a | comment |
Zig-zagged with Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. On one hand, it was a rare 20th century SF show that DIDN'T have CRTs, but used thin flat screens everywhere. Then again, it also had data being encoded on 3.5 inch floppy disks. | |
Zeerust / int_30a87a0a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_30a87a0a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_30a87a0a | |
Zeerust / int_30b255fb | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_30b255fb | comment |
In Supergirl story Adventure Comics #389, written in 1970, Brainiac, one of the greatest geniuses in the galaxy, stores information in cartridges. | |
Zeerust / int_30b255fb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_30b255fb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Supergirl (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_30b255fb | |
Zeerust / int_324ac40f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_324ac40f | comment |
Beneath a Steel Sky has this with the brightly coloured LINC-space, and VHS tapes still being used in the future. | |
Zeerust / int_324ac40f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_324ac40f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Beneath a Steel Sky (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_324ac40f | |
Zeerust / int_353bdeb0 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_353bdeb0 | comment |
The early Pip and Flinx novels are prone to this, although the series retcons much of it away in time. The first one has Flinx don a survival-kit belt that includes a supply of mini microfilm books on spools for his visit to an alien planet; in the second, he's kidnapped by a pervert who needs his psychic powers to guide an animated simulation within a "Janus jewel," the functions of which would be outclassed by your average 16-bit graphics program. | |
Zeerust / int_353bdeb0 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_353bdeb0 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Humanx Commonwealth | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_353bdeb0 | |
Zeerust / int_35ada324 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_35ada324 | comment |
Alien has been described (by the February 2014 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly) as "A world where the iPod never happened", owing to the clunky keyboard-and-toggle-switch control panels and cathode ray tube TV display monitors. What is ever weirder is the monochromatic nature of all the TV screens in the franchise — given the fact that already the first movie was filmed in color. | |
Zeerust / int_35ada324 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_35ada324 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Alien (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_35ada324 | |
Zeerust / int_36ee2abe | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_36ee2abe | comment |
Paranoia was designed to invoke this on purpose, to help make the end date of our civilization and the rise of Alpha Complex unclear. Buildings, pills and even the swooshing doors all invoke Zeerust, and then we get talk of cloning and genetics that suggests that mankind was actually 20 Minutes into the Future when the apocalypse happened. More like twenty minutes into the past, given Friend Computer's obsession with "commies". There's one adventure in which the commies involved are of the Chinese variety, but for the most part they're pretty clearly intended to be the Cold War Soviet type. Although this is a product of the game's origin (first published in 1984), it's easily future-proofed by the idea that the Computer has formed the wrong impression from its patchy historical records. |
|
Zeerust / int_36ee2abe | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_36ee2abe | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Paranoia (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_36ee2abe | |
Zeerust / int_3717ea4a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_3717ea4a | comment |
While we are in the DC Animated Universe, the idea of zeerust was deconstructed in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm; in a flashback, Bruce and Andrea are shown having a wonderful time visiting the Gotham World's Fair, with its lively and optimistic view of the future with standard things such as robot butlers. When the fair is revisited in the present, it is in ruins, seemingly paralleling Bruce and Andrea's future, and serves as the final battleground for the two former lovers and the Joker. | |
Zeerust / int_3717ea4a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_3717ea4a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
DC Animated Universe (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_3717ea4a | |
Zeerust / int_38dbd03d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_38dbd03d | comment |
Vampire Night is set in the modern-day France, but the setting looked like if they were in The French Revolution period. | |
Zeerust / int_38dbd03d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_38dbd03d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Vampire Night (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_38dbd03d | |
Zeerust / int_3b3649c0 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_3b3649c0 | comment |
Rhysling, the hero of the short story "The Green Hills of Earth", was blinded in a reactor-room incident aboard an interplanetary spaceship. Whereupon his crew mates "passed the hat," and he was dumped in a strange spaceport to earn a living by busking: the narrator (looking back from an even more remote future) admits that no one would have thought ill of Rhysling if he'd settled for simple begging, since "there was no way then to restore a man's sight"; in a future where planet to planet travel is routine, Heinlein failed to anticipate technological advancements that would increase employment opportunities for blind people. He also turned out to be a genius singer-songwriter, and would've made a fortune in our days. Unfortunately, the story was written good ten years before the concept of a rock star. In The '40s there weren't a snowball chance in hell that a washed out blind ship's mechanic could make it big in the entertainment business. Not to say that Rhysling wasn't famous — he was. He simply haven't had a penny out of his fame, and stayed a street busker to the end, though it might have do with his personal preferences. The book also seems to ignore something that existed as far back as the 1910s: Workmen's Compensation insurance where your employer (or their insurance company) has to pay you a weekly stipend (about 75% of your pre-injury salary) if you are unable to work as a result of an on-the-job injury, and even where they didn't have Worker's Compensation (as it was later renamed in the 1980s) you could still sue your employer for being injured, same as you can sue a store if you slip and fall due to it failing to keep the floors clean. | |
Zeerust / int_3b3649c0 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_3b3649c0 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Green Hills of Earth | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_3b3649c0 | |
Zeerust / int_3d22c68b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_3d22c68b | comment |
The 80s-style hair and fashion in Gundam ZZ (made in 1986). Take a look at Chara Soon and see what we mean. | |
Zeerust / int_3d22c68b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_3d22c68b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_3d22c68b | |
Zeerust / int_3e4d2391 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_3e4d2391 | comment |
Click Medic: The game is set in the then year of 2016 where mankind is at risk of dying of an illness thanks to a variety of diseases, but in real life, no such pandemic effected the whole world and it was not until late 2019 that the COVID-19 Pandemic started to take the world by storm. | |
Zeerust / int_3e4d2391 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_3e4d2391 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Click Medic (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_3e4d2391 | |
Zeerust / int_3fbb941b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_3fbb941b | comment |
Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: The author describes Sergei Brin of Google as "managing to look both futuristic and completely dated in his Google Glass headset." | |
Zeerust / int_3fbb941b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_3fbb941b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Sex Robots and Vegan Meat | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_3fbb941b | |
Zeerust / int_41d55d7a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_41d55d7a | comment |
The original Total Recall (1990), with its ridiculously bulky CRT-based videophones. | |
Zeerust / int_41d55d7a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_41d55d7a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Total Recall (1990) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_41d55d7a | |
Zeerust / int_42ffb88e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_42ffb88e | comment |
SCP Foundation SCP-2005: a group of artifacts built by aliens attempting to anticipate what future human technology would be like from watching out-of-date sci-fi. SCP-1122: an old-school "house of the future" display from the 50s that's fully functional and inhabited by people of said future. The twist is that any current technology introduced to them by outsiders replaces its equivalent in Zeerust-land... and causes them to grow increasingly depressed as their retro-but-idyllic world gets slowly overriden by cold harsh reality.note The picture used to illustrate SCP-1122 is that of the Xanadu house in Kissimmee, FL, itself an example of this trope, listed in the Real Life section below. |
|
Zeerust / int_42ffb88e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_42ffb88e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
SCP Foundation (Website) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_42ffb88e | |
Zeerust / int_43a9c333 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_43a9c333 | comment |
Cowboy Bebop revels in its Used Future / Anachronism Stew aesthetic, so it's not surprising that its computers look like they were cutting-edge in 1998 while interplanetary space travel using jump gates is commonplace. The show also features prosthetics that are virtually impossible to tell from the real thing (for example, Spike's bionic eye) yet the characters still use firearms that were manufactured over a century ago according to the series' timeline. The weaponry is possibly more of an example of Truth in Television, since there are many examples of this in real life. The Colt 1911 was invented in, you guessed it, 1911, but is still in widespread use in 2020. |
|
Zeerust / int_43a9c333 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_43a9c333 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Cowboy Bebop | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_43a9c333 | |
Zeerust / int_444871f2 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_444871f2 | comment |
Giants Series: Early on, a character uses a "briefcase computer" (laptop) to reserve a Flying Car...by looking up the phone number of a rental car place, manually dialing the number, calling the rental car company using the briefcase's built-in Video Phone, and talking to the attractive young woman at the other end. | |
Zeerust / int_444871f2 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_444871f2 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Giants Series | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_444871f2 | |
Zeerust / int_4505668c | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_4505668c | comment |
In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, published in 1966 but set in 2075, Major League Baseball pennants are still awarded to the team with the best win/loss record for each league. Just three years after the book was published, the leagues split into two divisions each, and the teams with the best records out of each division would play a best-of-five series for the title. Now there are three divisions per league, and the top team from each division plus a wild card team play for the pennant. | |
Zeerust / int_4505668c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_4505668c | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_4505668c | |
Zeerust / int_45501b8c | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_45501b8c | comment |
In Super Metroid, the Wrecked Ship is similar to something one would find in old sci-fi movies—especially the design of the walking bipedal robots. | |
Zeerust / int_45501b8c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_45501b8c | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Super Metroid (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_45501b8c | |
Zeerust / int_45854dfc | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_45854dfc | comment |
Starship Troopers: Unlike in the book, CRT monitors are prominent despite flat-panel monitors already having been invented and in production by the time the movie was made. | |
Zeerust / int_45854dfc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_45854dfc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Starship Troopers | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_45854dfc | |
Zeerust / int_46076f2a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_46076f2a | comment |
Yoshiyuki Tomino's Space Runaway Ideon faces the issue of its protagonist having perhaps the largest afro in anime. There is also the silliness of the alien race, the Buff Clan, wearing futuristic versions of Elvis Presley's wardrobe, which were apparently intentionally done as a semi-tribute to the over-the-top outfits worn by every evil overlord in the 1960s sci-fi B-movies. Elvis Presley's outfits in Real Life tended to border on Space Clothes anyway. | |
Zeerust / int_46076f2a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_46076f2a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Space Runaway Ideon | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_46076f2a | |
Zeerust / int_460f6c24 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_460f6c24 | comment |
The Planet of the Apes (2001) remake starts out on a futuristic spaceship, yet one from which trained apes are sent on scouting missions. Chimps did play a key role in old 1960s orbital exploration, but were only used to confirm that the space-borne environment wouldn't hamper the anthropoid brain or body, before human astronauts could take their place. Nowadays it's rodents, fish, and various invertebrates that are commonly sent into orbit, while far-flung surveying of the solar system is performed by robots: There's no point to launching apes anymore. | |
Zeerust / int_460f6c24 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_460f6c24 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Planet of the Apes (2001) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_460f6c24 | |
Zeerust / int_46e8d92 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_46e8d92 | comment |
Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: The only differences between 1962 video cameras and their 30th century equivalents is that the latter are considerably bulkier, more unwieldy, and have attached metal fins. | |
Zeerust / int_46e8d92 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_46e8d92 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Supergirl's Greatest Challenge (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_46e8d92 | |
Zeerust / int_48acf200 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_48acf200 | comment |
One of the worlds seen in the Gemini arc of Sequinox is a Flash Gordon-style 70s sci-fi set. Yes, it's specifically designed to resemble a shoddy, dated, tv serial. | |
Zeerust / int_48acf200 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_48acf200 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Sequinox (Podcast) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_48acf200 | |
Zeerust / int_49a0a477 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_49a0a477 | comment |
The Metaverse of Snow Crash resembles Second Life more than the internet (which is essentially what it turns out to be). Though it may be a case of Second Life Imitates Art, Phillip Rosedale explicitly claimed Stephenson's work as inspiration. Also, on a more political front, the United States has devolved into a series of franchises that each function as separate countries, and Japan (or "Nippon") is the undisputed leader in technology and business, as apparently the Japanese economic bubble never burst. It also features a real-time Google Earth, and a Wikipedia which requires one to pay for its information. | |
Zeerust / int_49a0a477 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_49a0a477 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Snow Crash | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_49a0a477 | |
Zeerust / int_49aad22d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_49aad22d | comment |
Let My People Grow!: Despite hailing from a technologically hyper-advanced civilization, Superman needs a computer which takes up a whole wall, two different monitors -one of them moved by a clunky mechanical arm-, and a headset to talk to the Kandorians via video-link. Superman builds a device capable of causing Brainiac severe mental discomfort and irritation. Said device is attuned to his electronic brain-waves, and its ultra-high frequency signal can find him anywhere in the universe. And it looks like a 70's beeper. |
|
Zeerust / int_49aad22d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_49aad22d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Let My People Grow! (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_49aad22d | |
Zeerust / int_4a6ef2c5 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_4a6ef2c5 | comment |
There are other examples in Space Battleship Yamato, but the craziest is Desler's use of a gold-colored mid-20th century earth telephone to argue with Starsha. Gamilon General Lysis composes his report on his first encounter with the Argo/Yamato on an alien typewriter. | |
Zeerust / int_4a6ef2c5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_4a6ef2c5 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Space Battleship Yamato | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_4a6ef2c5 | |
Zeerust / int_4ac1fa6f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_4ac1fa6f | comment |
The Island (2005) is mostly devoid of zeerust. It takes place in 2019 (released in 2005), where Los Angeles looks pretty much the same, except for efficient high-speed mass transit. Though the vehicles are pretty much all modern cars (no junkers). MSN runs a free database that allows you to look up anyone you need at booths, and the phones and computers are pretty much the same, albeit with more voice recognition software. However, for everything that is perfectly in place, something is off. The police have flying jet bikes with machine guns, tiny spider bots can enter someone's body through their tear ducts to act as a tracking device, and, of course, giant underground colonies where sentient clones are raised for the wealthy as organ banks. All this is supposed to come about in ten years?! The one thing that they almost got right was the video game that tracks movement, though the Xbox Kinect never really worked well with anything but dancing games. | |
Zeerust / int_4ac1fa6f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_4ac1fa6f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Island (2005) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_4ac1fa6f | |
Zeerust / int_4c394497 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_4c394497 | comment |
Lampshaded in the 2008 anime Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, where a character in 1991 boasts extensively about the cutting-edge advanced technology of her 486 PC. | |
Zeerust / int_4c394497 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_4c394497 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mnemosyne | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_4c394497 | |
Zeerust / int_4d238cb5 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_4d238cb5 | comment |
The "future" setting of RoboCop: The Series has 1.33:1 academy-ratio video screens, and CD-ROMs are used for video recordings and computer software, and 3.5" floppy disks are still used for transferring computer data. | |
Zeerust / int_4d238cb5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_4d238cb5 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
RoboCop: The Series | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_4d238cb5 | |
Zeerust / int_51c1e095 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_51c1e095 | comment |
TORG: The Nippon Tech realm, being set 20 Minutes into the Future, has its share of this trope. Not only are the computers hilariously underpowered for a "cyberpunk without the cyber" setting (e.g. "supercomputers" with 64-bit video co-processors and up to 256 MB of user memory), the Japan Takes Over the World aspects make the realm a product of the time it was released. | |
Zeerust / int_51c1e095 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_51c1e095 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
TORG (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_51c1e095 | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd32 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd32 | comment |
The original run of The Twilight Zone (1959) had a few episodes about space travel which had this mixed in with then-current tech. Episode "Third from the Sun" contained a shapely rotary phone and a spaceship that navigated with a suspended model of itself (as if to show orientation). | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd32 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd32 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Twilight Zone (1959) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd32 | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd8b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd8b | comment |
The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Mind of Simon Foster", memories can be transferred with ease in 1999. | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd8b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd8b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Twilight Zone (1985) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_53a0bd8b | |
Zeerust / int_54a7dc07 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_54a7dc07 | comment |
Space: 1999 was shot in 1975-76 and takes place in 1999. While the set design, spacecraft models and some props look quite futursistic even in 2022, other aspects practically scream "1970s" today. The main computer is pictured in a way typical of the time before the public was exposed to computers: it seems to be a sort of oracle that can solve any problem given enough input data. On the other hand, the input and output devices used by the computer are very primitive: enormous wall-mounted keyboards (with unmarked keys) that seem to require experts to operate (the fact some people spontaneously develop the capacity to input information on Computer at all — let alone at an insanely quick speed — is the first sign that something is not right on a couple of episodes), and output printed on narrow paper tape that has to be torn off and read aloud by an operator. Many shots of high-tech equipment featured the large, open-reel tape drives typical of 1970s computers (but in real life made obsolete long before 1999). On the same page, it's easy to notice that various "portable terminals" that appear throughout the series (such as for example on "Testament of Arcadia" ) are actually calculators of the type that were cutting-edge technology in 1975. When the crew is trouble-shooting the computer, Eagles or other equipment, they often remove circuit boards which were state-of-the-art in 1975, but look hopelessly old-fashioned today. The first season's beige, unisex uniforms with flared trouser legs, broad, shiny belts and platform boots seem very much like The Seventies today. |
|
Zeerust / int_54a7dc07 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_54a7dc07 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Space: 1999 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_54a7dc07 | |
Zeerust / int_55c5a085 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_55c5a085 | comment |
Abundant in Mazinger Z, evident in many of the vehicles and SuperRobots in the series. A case that stands out is an episode in which Baron Ashura captures and analyzes Aphrodite A, only for the disc with the data to be destroyed. It's a good thing the villains didn't have e-mail. Ironically, in another episode Ashura stored data in a sort of card that had to be inserted into a computer to display the information stored in it (effectively, an SD/Flash card).... | |
Zeerust / int_55c5a085 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_55c5a085 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mazinger Z | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_55c5a085 | |
Zeerust / int_567ff89 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_567ff89 | comment |
The 6th Day: The film opens on an XFL game. The XFL was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it American Football league, backed by Vince McMahon, which was meant to compete with the NFL. It ended so quickly that most people don't even remember it existed, yet it's featured in this movie's futuristic setting (even an attempt at reviving it in 2020 didn't last long). While cloning is nowhere near as advanced as in the film, nor did Ray Guns become a reality, the writers did make some accurate predictions on the smaller-scale tech, like Adam putting in an order for milk on his smart fridge, video phones (which sci-fi writers have hypothesized since at least the 1950s), driverless cars, and Adam's friend Hank has an A.I. girlfriend. This is not so surprising, since most of these are reasonable extrapolations from technology in the early 2000s. |
|
Zeerust / int_567ff89 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_567ff89 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The 6th Day | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_567ff89 | |
Zeerust / int_58f268b3 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_58f268b3 | comment |
"Lenny": The character who gets injured by the LNE-prototype is a computer, meaning a human being employed as part of a team to do complex calculations by hand. Because this story was written in the late 1950s, it also begins to use the word computer to mean an electric machine capable of complex processing. | |
Zeerust / int_58f268b3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_58f268b3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Lenny | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_58f268b3 | |
Zeerust / int_591aa39f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_591aa39f | comment |
Parodied in SNK's Metal Slug series, which takes place in a near future in which nearly all "futuristic" tech is intentional Zeerust, such as land battleships or pulp robots. In a related note, almost all of the "contemporary" tech is inexplicably World War II-era. | |
Zeerust / int_591aa39f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_591aa39f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Metal Slug (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_591aa39f | |
Zeerust / int_5c783167 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_5c783167 | comment |
Affectionately parodied in Megas XLR with the R.E.C.R.note Reverse-Engineered Collective Robot , a Humongous Mecha created in Area 51 back in the 50's with a design that looks like it was ripped from an early-cinema alien invasion flick. It went rogue after its cassette-track main computer interpreted everything around it as the enemy, but its weaponry and Energy Absorption powers made it more than a match for the titular giant robot. | |
Zeerust / int_5c783167 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_5c783167 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Affectionate Parody | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_5c783167 | |
Zeerust / int_5d354f8 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_5d354f8 | comment |
Red Dwarf had this quite a bit. Examples included the Cat's "cutting edge" very 90s fashion sense, and an episode where the crew watched triangular video tapes. This was amusingly lampshaded in the 2009 Reunion Show "Back to Earth", in which Kryten points out that DVDs became obsolete because everyone kept losing them. Apparently videotapes are "too big to lose." The basic plot of Timeslides hinges on the fact photographs are created using a chemical process that involves developing fluid. (And so, for that matter, does the entire premise of the series; Lister was put in stasis because he sent a photo of him and his illegal cat to be developed in the ship's lab.) In a subtle continuity nod, Lister is shown to have recorded a message to himself on a video tape in the Series X episode Fathers And Suns, despite it acting like he's operating a DVD or Blu-Ray player. The dispensing machines have been noticably redesigned from being integrated with the walls of the ship to being free-standing talking vending machines in Series X, complete with buttons. Taken further in Series XII, where they are shown to not all be identical and feature signs and typefaces resembling 70s and 80s vending machines. The "officer's quarters" that Lister and Rimmer occupy between Series III and Series V includes a microwave oven that's blatantly from 1989. Similarly, the exam room set in Series I appears to include film reels on a shelf. Holly's preferred form of locomotion in Series II is a large and unwieldly CRT monitor on caterpillar tracks. While the sets for Series I-V would attempt to hide the use of CRT monitors by building the walls and consoles around them, the sets for Series X-XII make it very obvious that the monitors are now LCD televisions mounted onto the walls. |
|
Zeerust / int_5d354f8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_5d354f8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Red Dwarf | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_5d354f8 | |
Zeerust / int_5e42de8e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_5e42de8e | comment |
His later works included bits as well. Stranger in a Strange Land implied data stored on magnetic tapes, missing the rise of hard disk drives. The tape recorder was powered by a tiny onboard nuclear reactor, and was described as "the size of a cigarette lighter," which likely meant the size of a Zippo, not the smaller disposable lighters used today. Essentially, it's a Zeerusted iPod. | |
Zeerust / int_5e42de8e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_5e42de8e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Stranger in a Strange Land | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_5e42de8e | |
Zeerust / int_60e46d26 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_60e46d26 | comment |
"Blobs!", a story in the first comic issue of MAD, features a future extrapolated from "the ancient year of 1952," when the "typical civilized house-wife" was just beginning to be surrounded by machinery. | |
Zeerust / int_60e46d26 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_60e46d26 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
MAD (Magazine) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_60e46d26 | |
Zeerust / int_6117815f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6117815f | comment |
Averted in an unintentional -and ironically funny- way in The One I Love Is.... In a chapter, Misato plays a DVD for Shinji. This fic was written in 1999-2000, and the author said in the afterword he guessed in 2015 there would be more advanced technology than DVD technology, but he didn't feel like making something up. As of 2015, purely digital storage is spreading, but DVDs still look like they have a few years left in them. | |
Zeerust / int_6117815f | featureApplicability |
-1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6117815f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The One I Love Is (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6117815f | |
Zeerust / int_6196490 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6196490 | comment |
While most of the technology in the Ghost in the Shell franchise remains futuristic and beyond our current capabilities (Ridiculously Human Robots, Invisibility Cloaks, Powered Armor etc.) there is inevitably some zeerust in the form of outdated flip phones (no smartphones in this fictional universe as of yet, despite ubiquitous computing) and computer terminals with physical keyboards (touchscreens don't seem to have come into use in 2029 either, even with time to make them more functional than today's touchscreens). GPS is also fairly primitive (although that is slightly more believable; GPS devices in the present day don't have the sharpest graphics either, since they're purely functional). The TV series shows that chatrooms are still popular when in Real Life they've mostly been superseded by social networking sites, although geekier types still use IRC. The "chatroom" is actually the production team's idea of what a 2channel-like website will look like come 2030. |
|
Zeerust / int_6196490 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6196490 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Ghost in the Shell (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6196490 | |
Zeerust / int_63597a00 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_63597a00 | comment |
The Adventures of Slim Goodbody: This sci-fi series was produced in the late 1970s, and it shows: B-1 is an advanced robot who could easily pass the Turing test, has the ability to walk around on his own, and can even recognize faces. However, he needs to have floppy media inserted into him regularly, or his programming out-and-out crashes. What floppy media is this? A cassette of magnetic tape. | |
Zeerust / int_63597a00 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_63597a00 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Adventures of Slim Goodbody | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_63597a00 | |
Zeerust / int_63fe06a0 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_63fe06a0 | comment |
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon features an unusually recent source period of futurism. The 80s/90s Cyberpunk action movie setting is replete with props that are then-modern technology with LEDs and neon lights stuck on, bogus computer Techno Babble, and seemingly post-processing added lasers. The cutscenes are meta-fictional by way of low resolution pixel art as was standard in video games made in that era. | |
Zeerust / int_63fe06a0 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_63fe06a0 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_63fe06a0 | |
Zeerust / int_66717abc | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_66717abc | comment |
Glory Hammer's second album, Space 1992: Rise of The Chaos Wizards starts with "In the distant future of 1992, war has returned to the Galaxy!" The album was released near the end of 2015. | |
Zeerust / int_66717abc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_66717abc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Gloryhammer (Music) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_66717abc | |
Zeerust / int_6744d821 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6744d821 | comment |
Parodied in The Owl House episode "Thanks to Them" with Cosmic Frontier, which uses an asthetic similar to that of Star Trek: The Original Series, yet was written in the 90s about the year 2008.note For the record, the episode was written and takes place in 2022. | |
Zeerust / int_6744d821 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6744d821 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Owl House | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6744d821 | |
Zeerust / int_694ab80 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_694ab80 | comment |
Batman Beyond has a number of examples: While the show correctly predicted the prevalence of cell phones in the future, the phones themselves look more like cell phones from the late 90s when the show was made. The creators even admit in one episode's commentary that they did not predict how cell phones would shrink. If it helps any, you can think of them as satellite phones (which have shrunk, but not nearly as much) instead. This goes double when they somehow continue to work at the bottom of those vast glass-and-steel canyons where the signal from an ordinary tower would be almost indistinguishable from background radiation. More to the point they were completely unable to predict smart phones and text messaging. note Text messaging actually did exist when the show first aired, but it was only used to a great extent at the time in Japan. As mentioned on other pages, America was extremely slow to adopt texting compared to Japan and Europe due to US carriers charging exorbitant prices for it (and an entire generation of children constantly getting grounded by their parents for running up the phone bill by texting). Additionally the prevalence of disk-based memory storage. Granted that USB Flash drives were just invented as the show was in production, only a few high-end memory 'cubes' were seen. While we are in the DC Animated Universe, the idea of zeerust was deconstructed in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm; in a flashback, Bruce and Andrea are shown having a wonderful time visiting the Gotham World's Fair, with its lively and optimistic view of the future with standard things such as robot butlers. When the fair is revisited in the present, it is in ruins, seemingly paralleling Bruce and Andrea's future, and serves as the final battleground for the two former lovers and the Joker. |
|
Zeerust / int_694ab80 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_694ab80 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Batman Beyond | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_694ab80 | |
Zeerust / int_69e78fe3 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_69e78fe3 | comment |
Lampshaded in one The Hero of Three Faces strip crossing Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Doctor has a plan that assumes Lt. Data can connect to a computer wirelessly, and Data says he doesn't have that ability for security reasons. The Doctor says it's more likely that Next Gen writers failed to predict wi-fi, and Data points out that the Doctor only claims to believe fiction planes work like that (rather than the writers having an imperfect vision of something more complicated) when he's wrong about something. | |
Zeerust / int_69e78fe3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_69e78fe3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Hero of Three Faces (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_69e78fe3 | |
Zeerust / int_69e7ea1 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_69e7ea1 | comment |
Blue Stinger is set in 2018, but the signage and advertisements makes it seem more like the late 80s/early 90s with a few technological advancements, such as handheld rail guns. | |
Zeerust / int_69e7ea1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_69e7ea1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Blue Stinger (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_69e7ea1 | |
Zeerust / int_6abf16c2 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6abf16c2 | comment |
The Big Finish Doctor Who audio The Destination Wars is a First Doctor story set in The City, which is a gleaming-spired metropolis with monorails and servitor robots, exactly what Ian and Barbara, from 1963, would expect the future to look like. However, it turns out to actually be a colony world of Human Aliens, rather than their own future. | |
Zeerust / int_6abf16c2 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6abf16c2 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Big Finish Doctor Who (Audio Play) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6abf16c2 | |
Zeerust / int_6ac55ec7 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6ac55ec7 | comment |
"S3 - Expedition To The Barrier Peaks", an early Dungeons & Dragons adventure that blended science fiction with fantasy, features PCs exploring the wreckage of a hyperadvanced spacefaring civilization's crashed colony ship. A ship, that uses microfilm in its library. | |
Zeerust / int_6ac55ec7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6ac55ec7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Dungeons & Dragons (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6ac55ec7 | |
Zeerust / int_6bdc1b01 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6bdc1b01 | comment |
The 1998 DC Comics crossover event DC One Million featured superheroes from the 853rd century traveling to the present day. As part of the crossover, DC used computer graphics to show how the world of the 853rd century would look - graphics which look more like they're from the late 20th century. | |
Zeerust / int_6bdc1b01 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6bdc1b01 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
DC One Million (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6bdc1b01 | |
Zeerust / int_6ce48246 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6ce48246 | comment |
The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show has an episode where Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy accidentally go into the future, (Judging by the title, 2000) It has rocket cars, giant wind up toys, and moving sidewalks. | |
Zeerust / int_6ce48246 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6ce48246 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6ce48246 | |
Zeerust / int_6ddef913 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6ddef913 | comment |
Dark Conspiracy, based on Twilight: 2000, was set similar to this. During the Greater Depression most of the technology and design went back to the fifties, unless you were a corporation, or the government, in which case it was set back to the early '90s. Excluding the invading aliens, who used brain tissue of organisms fitted with advanced computer chips. | |
Zeerust / int_6ddef913 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6ddef913 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Twilight: 2000 (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6ddef913 | |
Zeerust / int_6ef081fb | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6ef081fb | comment |
Minus Planet, a story by John D. Clark from 1937, has a huge one. The protagonist observes an anti-matter planet, compares his sightings with those of observatories on Mars and Venus, and works out that it's heading for Earth — with a slide rule. | |
Zeerust / int_6ef081fb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6ef081fb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Minus Planet | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6ef081fb | |
Zeerust / int_6f31e471 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6f31e471 | comment |
Heinlein's first written (1938) but last published (2003) novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs is chock-a-block full of Zeerust. Of main significance is a cross between a centralized library and a network that handles information and entertainment, but transmission is by speeding up analog signals which are recorded at home then slowed down to normal speed. That was actually used with wire recorders for a while during World War II by Allied spies to radio messages from Europe to the UK. What hasn't caught on is everyone lounging around stark naked at home, and most of the time in public. | |
Zeerust / int_6f31e471 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6f31e471 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
ForUsTheLivingAComedyOfCustoms | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6f31e471 | |
Zeerust / int_6f70ad52 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_6f70ad52 | comment |
Wasteland, a nearly-forgotten game of The '80s and the inspiration for Fallout, took place In The Distant Future Of... 1995, when the Cold War (oops!) reaches a breaking point and everybody gets nuked. Only a small portion of Nevada survives. So far as you know, anyway, since the precipitating event that started the nukes flying was the sudden, simultaneous and unexplained destruction of all communications satelites. While standard equipment is somewhere around the level of the Kalashnikov (the "AK-97," to be specific, a 50th anniversary update of the classic) you eventually wind up carrying around portable nuclear batteries to power your handheld ion cannons. | |
Zeerust / int_6f70ad52 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_6f70ad52 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wasteland (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_6f70ad52 | |
Zeerust / int_7110fae1 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7110fae1 | comment |
Lampshaded by more than one character when used as part of the character design of Chester in Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica, even leading to him being nicknamed "Fuglycool" by one character. | |
Zeerust / int_7110fae1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7110fae1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7110fae1 | |
Zeerust / int_718f3ed1 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_718f3ed1 | comment |
In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the downloadable "Nuketown 2025" map was redesigned from its original 1950s aesthetic to Zeerust incarnate. | |
Zeerust / int_718f3ed1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_718f3ed1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_718f3ed1 | |
Zeerust / int_727259ac | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_727259ac | comment |
Parodied on The Ren & Stimpy Show with the "Commander Hoek" episodes. | |
Zeerust / int_727259ac | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_727259ac | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Ren & Stimpy Show | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_727259ac | |
Zeerust / int_7291539d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7291539d | comment |
Invoked deliberately in Batman: Arkham City in the Wonder City levels/Maps. Built by Ras al'Ghul, only the central tower still rises aboveground, the rest (Along with the Wonder City Guardians) being buried belowground as Gotham was built over it. Backstory implies his early experimentation with a proto-Lazarus pit may have started the slightly insane tinge to Gotham citizens that reflects itself in its criminals. | |
Zeerust / int_7291539d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7291539d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Batman: Arkham City (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7291539d | |
Zeerust / int_73d7930f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_73d7930f | comment |
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," in which the crew time-traveled into the setting of the episode "Trouble with Tribbles," mined a lot of amusement out of the style differences of clothing, devices, and Klingons. While getting prepared for the mission, Dax makes appreciative comments about the "classic 23rd century style" of the equipment. | |
Zeerust / int_73d7930f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_73d7930f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_73d7930f | |
Zeerust / int_74059a6a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_74059a6a | comment |
The End of Eternity is about a secret organization which regularly changes the whole history of humankind, by combining Time Travel, Butterfly Effect and magical computers, powerful enough to calculate what the new reality will look like after the change made by a Butterfly of Doom. They also use... wait for it... punched cards. There's a partial implicit Hand Wave at the end of the story: we never saw our future, and that was the case already when the book was written in 1955: a minor change in 1932 led to a different course of technological development. | |
Zeerust / int_74059a6a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_74059a6a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The End of Eternity | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_74059a6a | |
Zeerust / int_74c659e6 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_74c659e6 | comment |
Deliberately invoked in Rocket Age. Since this is 1938 every human made screen is a CRT and punch card operated vacuum tube computers exist alongside more advanced versions, some of which even incorporate parts of Ancient Martian robobrains. | |
Zeerust / int_74c659e6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_74c659e6 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rocket Age (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_74c659e6 | |
Zeerust / int_76b8cb10 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_76b8cb10 | comment |
The Fallout series of RPGs embodies zeerust. Fallout is set in an Alternate History in which the Cold War was between the US and China, and ended in nuclear war. The pre-war USA was a Jetsons-esque future where it's the Fifties, but with ray guns, atomic cars and domestic robots. All computers have monochromatic monitors and run on vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Wasteland, a nearly-forgotten game of The '80s and the inspiration for Fallout, took place In The Distant Future Of... 1995, when the Cold War (oops!) reaches a breaking point and everybody gets nuked. Only a small portion of Nevada survives. So far as you know, anyway, since the precipitating event that started the nukes flying was the sudden, simultaneous and unexplained destruction of all communications satelites. While standard equipment is somewhere around the level of the Kalashnikov (the "AK-97," to be specific, a 50th anniversary update of the classic) you eventually wind up carrying around portable nuclear batteries to power your handheld ion cannons. Wasteland 2 splits the difference between the two through the simple means of having the same vision of the future as the original game (with some minor changes to accommodate the better graphics), comically exaggerated near-future apocalypse as seen from the late 80s, but being made in the early 2010s instead of the late 1980s, so it is deliberately retro-Zeerusty like Fallout. The Outer Worlds, which many fans consider to be a spiritual successor to Fallout has a twenties or thirties art deco style IN SPACE! |
|
Zeerust / int_76b8cb10 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_76b8cb10 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Fallout (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_76b8cb10 | |
Zeerust / int_7785278d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7785278d | comment |
In the BioShock series, the city of Rapture is all designed in a 1940s Art Deco style, somewhat behind the times even by 1960 when the game takes place. Even ignoring the ban on contact with the surface (outside of personally-invited new arrivals) and the unjustifiable expense of remodeling an underwater city, the "space age" designs of the '50s would have been a poor fit anyway. | |
Zeerust / int_7785278d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7785278d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
BioShock (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7785278d | |
Zeerust / int_791f9a4a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_791f9a4a | comment |
The original Bubblegum Crisis, released in 1987 and set in 2032, is similar: clothes and hairstyles are very 1980s; car-phones are common, but the hand-held ones are rare, meaning characters make calls from phone boxes with video screens, and the Soviet Union and East Germany still exist, at least in the very first OVA. However it is worth noting that even though they completely missed the Internet revolution, many of the mecha designs, especially the hard suits, still look very futuristic. | |
Zeerust / int_791f9a4a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_791f9a4a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Bubblegum Crisis | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_791f9a4a | |
Zeerust / int_7988cb68 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7988cb68 | comment |
Thought it might not be as obvious as some of the above example, Mass Effect is an intentional version of this trope, or was at least originally intended to be in the first game. The zeerust it evokes is not 1930s, 40s, or 50s, but rather 1970s and 1980s science fiction. The general colour palate is somewhere between A New Hope and Blade Runner. Take, for example, holographic displays in eye-killing 1980 orange monochrome, or luminous pink as a viable colour for armour. | |
Zeerust / int_7988cb68 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7988cb68 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mass Effect (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7988cb68 | |
Zeerust / int_7b0a9a70 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7b0a9a70 | comment |
Silent Running features robots that can understand human speech, yet take their programming from non-reprogrammable cartridges, which our (going mad from loneliness) protagonist has to write new software for, hand-solder the programmed chips onto the boards, and then insert into top-loading bays that wouldn't hold a NES cartridge steady. | |
Zeerust / int_7b0a9a70 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7b0a9a70 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Silent Running | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7b0a9a70 | |
Zeerust / int_7cf5a07 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7cf5a07 | comment |
Deliberately invoked in The Flash (2014) for Earth-2. Although the year is the same as on "our" Earth, the buildings and vehicles are Art Deco 1920s/1930s in appearance, most of the civilian fashions (especially women) look to be from the 1940s/1950s, and Jay Garrick's Flash costume looks like a 1930s/1940s pulp adventurer's with the leather jacket and a helmet design (stated to have originally been his father's combat helmet) taken out of American Army service prior to World War 2. However, an episode of Arrow on Earth 2 reveals that this world's Starling City is largely identical to Earth 1's Star City, implying that the aesthetic is limited to Central City. | |
Zeerust / int_7cf5a07 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7cf5a07 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Flash (2014) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7cf5a07 | |
Zeerust / int_7de8951a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7de8951a | comment |
In the original Traveller ship's computers start at one ton for the most basic, 2 program model. If you pay extra you can have an optical backup device. Later versions make it clearer that "tons" are neither a weight nor mass measurement for ship sizes, but a volume measurement, that of liquid hydrogen. This means your 1-ton ship's computer has a volume of a bit over fourteen cubic meters ... a cube almost two and a half meters on a side. Presumably this includes all the control wiring and interface hardware (keyboards, screens, servo motors to actually control the ship, etc.) and not just the computer proper, but still. | |
Zeerust / int_7de8951a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7de8951a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Traveller (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7de8951a | |
Zeerust / int_7e05b89f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7e05b89f | comment |
Aerobiz: Futuristic predictions of huge, 1000-passenger airliners and supersonic airliners traversing the globe seem almost quaint for someone who picks up the game now. | |
Zeerust / int_7e05b89f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7e05b89f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Aerobiz (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7e05b89f | |
Zeerust / int_7e4055b9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7e4055b9 | comment |
A decent amount of gear in The Splinter deliberately falls into this category. Most of the gear that fits this description is leftover from one of the many precursor races that have inhabited The Realm. | |
Zeerust / int_7e4055b9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7e4055b9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Splinter (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7e4055b9 | |
Zeerust / int_7ea4fd20 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7ea4fd20 | comment |
Wasteland 2 splits the difference between the two through the simple means of having the same vision of the future as the original game (with some minor changes to accommodate the better graphics), comically exaggerated near-future apocalypse as seen from the late 80s, but being made in the early 2010s instead of the late 1980s, so it is deliberately retro-Zeerusty like Fallout. | |
Zeerust / int_7ea4fd20 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7ea4fd20 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wasteland 2 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7ea4fd20 | |
Zeerust / int_7f640c58 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_7f640c58 | comment |
The Sims 2 has a whole interior design style based around Zeerust: the "futuristic" decor option added with the Pets expansion pack borrows its aesthetic from shows like The Jetsons and Lost in Space - basically, a '50s to '70s idea of what the 2000s might look like. It gets Lampshaded in the bios of the Kim family, whose home is the pre-made example of this style: they starred in a TV show set in the future that was cancelled once people realised that said future was rapidly approaching and looked nothing like the show. | |
Zeerust / int_7f640c58 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_7f640c58 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Sims 2 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_7f640c58 | |
Zeerust / int_81692f99 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_81692f99 | comment |
90s Star Trek does get points for managing reasonably well with most depictions of time travel to the 21st century (such as First Contact and the DS9 episode Past Tense. Most of the clothing was kept simple enough to look reasonably accurate to a real 21st century watcher, and there are references to the internet being more significant. | |
Zeerust / int_81692f99 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_81692f99 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_81692f99 | |
Zeerust / int_83d41855 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_83d41855 | comment |
While mostly set in a contemporary 1994-96, Gargoyles also features several forms of highly advanced technology...that somehow manage to fit their data on 3 1/2" floppy disks. | |
Zeerust / int_83d41855 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_83d41855 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Gargoyles | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_83d41855 | |
Zeerust / int_840a1985 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_840a1985 | comment |
Space Channel 5 is all about the 1960s Zeerust. The games' soundtracks are even dominated by the Big Band jazz that was popular during that era. | |
Zeerust / int_840a1985 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_840a1985 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Space Channel 5 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_840a1985 | |
Zeerust / int_845d388 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_845d388 | comment |
In The Planet Eater Trilogy, Brainiac's super-advanced space-ship uses radio transmission to monitor Superman's actions. | |
Zeerust / int_845d388 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_845d388 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Planet Eater Trilogy (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_845d388 | |
Zeerust / int_8a39c411 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8a39c411 | comment |
The Hyperion Cantos: Managed to predict relatively cheap ubiquitous use of the Internet in 1989, just one year after it was made accessible to commercial groups. On the other hand there are also Hard Boiled PIs. Even more, it predicted the iPhone. Yep. The Diskey is a small, ubiquitous device looking like a screen the size of a cigarette pack, but much slimmer, that you command by pressing icons that appear on it. It's used as a communication device, has a direct connection with the computer network and is your main way to access any medium. The cycle doesn't tell if you can shake it to skip tunes, or if it systematically falls apart by itself after three years use, though. |
|
Zeerust / int_8a39c411 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8a39c411 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Hyperion Cantos | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8a39c411 | |
Zeerust / int_8b55fd36 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8b55fd36 | comment |
The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series loves this trope more than life itself, especially with the Soviet side. | |
Zeerust / int_8b55fd36 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8b55fd36 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8b55fd36 | |
Zeerust / int_8ba4613a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8ba4613a | comment |
Mello in Death Note uses a uniquely designed flip phone that, according to the writers, was meant to look like what a cell phone might look like in the far-flung year of 2009 (the manga ended in 2006). The first generation of smartphones showed up in 2007, and by 2009, it would be pretty hard to imagine a rich guy like Mello sticking with a flip phone unless he had some kind of strong personal preference. | |
Zeerust / int_8ba4613a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8ba4613a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Death Note (Manga) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8ba4613a | |
Zeerust / int_8d625f8b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8d625f8b | comment |
The three Rama sequels (written by Gentry Lee, with Arthur C. Clarke contributing ideas) take place in the 23rd century, but we're still using analog tapes for museum tours, and somehow the internet has failed entirely to catch on to the point that they actually send TV reporters and newspaper correspondents on potentially dangerous deep-space missions instead of just letting the astronauts post on their blogs to tell the world what's going on. | |
Zeerust / int_8d625f8b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8d625f8b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rendezvous with Rama | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8d625f8b | |
Zeerust / int_8df5521b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8df5521b | comment |
Superman: In Supergirl story Adventure Comics #389, written in 1970, Brainiac, one of the greatest geniuses in the galaxy, stores information in cartridges. Let My People Grow!: Despite hailing from a technologically hyper-advanced civilization, Superman needs a computer which takes up a whole wall, two different monitors -one of them moved by a clunky mechanical arm-, and a headset to talk to the Kandorians via video-link. Superman builds a device capable of causing Brainiac severe mental discomfort and irritation. Said device is attuned to his electronic brain-waves, and its ultra-high frequency signal can find him anywhere in the universe. And it looks like a 70's beeper. The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: In this 1966 story, Luthor brings about a revolution in planet Lexor by introducing scientifical marvels which could not be dreamed up by 1960s' Earth's science. Said super-advanced high tech includes bulky, non-wireless headphones. In The Planet Eater Trilogy, Brainiac's super-advanced space-ship uses radio transmission to monitor Superman's actions. Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: The only differences between 1962 video cameras and their 30th century equivalents is that the latter are considerably bulkier, more unwieldy, and have attached metal fins. |
|
Zeerust / int_8df5521b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8df5521b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Superman (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8df5521b | |
Zeerust / int_8f4ee60f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_8f4ee60f | comment |
Back to the Future: Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale wanted to avoid dealing with the future for this very reason, as they couldn't know what the future would really be like. However, when the ending of the first film left them with no choice (as they didn't originally write the ending with a sequel in mind), they made 2015 basically a cleaner and more colorful version of 1985 with a generous dose of Applied Phlebotinum (computerized waiters, flying cars, and weather control) thrown in. It was meant to be humorous, though; the writers knew the date was close enough that a majority of viewers would reach it in their lifetime and they most likely weren't going to hit the bullseye when it came to making predictions, so they just tossed in whatever fun "futuristic" ideas they had. Back to the Future Part II was one of a few 80s movies and TV series that had incredibly ubiquitous fax machines in the near future. The alleyway recycling center with huge cubes of shrinkwrapped laserdiscs awaiting processing was utterly hilarious. For as much as it got wrong, though, the film actually got quite a few things right, such as widescreen TVs, video conferencing, targeted personal advertising, video games that don't require the use of hands, tablet computers, 3D movies returning to prominence (just not holographic movies yet), and (perhaps most famously) a Major League Baseball team in Miami and, while a year off, Cubs finally winning the World Series. | |
Zeerust / int_8f4ee60f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_8f4ee60f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Back to the Future (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_8f4ee60f | |
Zeerust / int_9009562f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9009562f | comment |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time has the Neon Night Rider level that takes place in a futuristic city with hoverboards as a mode of transportation while zipping across a highway that is floating above the city, similar to what you would see in F-Zero. The year the level takes place in? 2020 (the game was released in 1992). Despite the year having already passed, there is nary a hoverboard, a floating highway, or a futuristic styled skyline in sight. As one GameSpot article says best, "We could've had hoverboards. Instead, we got COVID." | |
Zeerust / int_9009562f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9009562f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9009562f | |
Zeerust / int_90b916ba | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_90b916ba | comment |
One episode of Batman: The Animated Series deals with an inventor who has secluded himself in his own little Tomorrow-Land. It does look heavily Zeerust, but then, most "modern" buildings and fashions in that series tend towards the early 20th century, so who knows how they see it. | |
Zeerust / int_90b916ba | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_90b916ba | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Batman: The Animated Series | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_90b916ba | |
Zeerust / int_90e2f673 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_90e2f673 | comment |
BattleTech has a hint of Zeerust with comically oversized targeting computers (similar to the Traveller example). In addition, the "future history" of the game was written in the 1980s and featured the Soviet Union remaining a power in international politics well into the 21st century. This history has been reprinted, but not updated, in later editions of the game, so that it references events that should now be in our past. | |
Zeerust / int_90e2f673 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_90e2f673 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
BattleTech (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_90e2f673 | |
Zeerust / int_91cf7917 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_91cf7917 | comment |
Foundation Series: The stories were initially written in The '40s, and popular understanding of computers and space travel make for some embarrassing predictions, mixed with some surprising guesses at miniaturization and synthetic music. The embarrassingly dated ideas include space travel with fossil fuels, microfilm and hard-copy newspapers as the peak of information storage/distribution, and human-performed calculation for all interstellar navigation. Revisiting the series thirty-plus years later allowed him to include more modern predictions, such as an autopilot that performs course corrections independently, personalized data-mining algorithms, and factors to make a City Planet function, like yeast farms, geothermal power/heat, and graviton-based propulsion. | |
Zeerust / int_91cf7917 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_91cf7917 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Foundation Series | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_91cf7917 | |
Zeerust / int_91f441b4 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_91f441b4 | comment |
In The Rolling Stones (1952), the eponymous Stone family finally tire of space travel and decide to go home and settle down for assorted reasons, including that it is high time the oldest daughter got married. Said daughter is all of twenty years old. | |
Zeerust / int_91f441b4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_91f441b4 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Rolling Stones (1952) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_91f441b4 | |
Zeerust / int_938e19ec | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_938e19ec | comment |
An episode of Fraggle Rock has the inventor Doc trying to develop a radio that can get signals from the other side of the world. You just know Jim Henson would have loved what the Internet can do. | |
Zeerust / int_938e19ec | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_938e19ec | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Fraggle Rock | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_938e19ec | |
Zeerust / int_95226eb6 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_95226eb6 | comment |
Cyberpunk: A game released in the late '80s/early '90s (first edition was released in '88, second in '90) depicts portable computers ("cellular cyberdecks") as massive, expensive, and unwieldy. While taking place in 2013/20. The stats for the cyberdecks were listed in real life units: one top-of-the-line model had a massive 256 MB of RAM and ran at a blazing 100 MHz. Also, according to the depictions in the game material, the most popular kind of music in the Future is basically an updated version of Hair Metal with cyberpunk-themed lyrics. One sourcebook, Live and Direct, compares 2020 indie rockers to "the rap artists of the past", implying that the latter was just a passing fad. The name "Adam Smasher". When the original game was written, atom smashers were the new cutting edge in high-energy tech and advanced research, and the Punny Name probably felt cool and futuristic (and fitting for a Psycho for Hire). In 2020, when atom smashers are regular pieces of scientific hardware, and everyone calls them "particle accelerators" instead, the name, while still fitting for a cruel villain, makes him sound more like a cheesy bad guy from a Saturday morning cartoon. |
|
Zeerust / int_95226eb6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_95226eb6 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Cyberpunk (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_95226eb6 | |
Zeerust / int_976efc02 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_976efc02 | comment |
Often invoked in Mystery Science Theater 3000, as a lot of the movies were cheap '50s and '60s sci-fi films like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Fire Maidens from Outer Space. One of their most notable shorts, "Design for Dreaming," set at a General Motors Motorama during the '50s, featuring a "futuristic kitchen" that can instantly bake and frost a cake with candles at the push of a button, and a number of highly impractical concept cars for the "electronic highway of the future." Lampshaded, of course: | |
Zeerust / int_976efc02 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_976efc02 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mystery Science Theater 3000 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_976efc02 | |
Zeerust / int_97abe183 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_97abe183 | comment |
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius is set in the Zeerust-styled town of Retroville, and Jimmy's futuristic inventions have a charming Buck Rogers quality about them. And in a strange contrast, the entire show is pretty modern 3D animation. So you get a Buck Rogers-esque mind control device that looks remarkably realistic, even though it appears to be a toy. In retrospect (no pun intended), he probably intended it that way. Lampshaded one time when Jimmy invented a robot version of his mom while she was away, and later commenting that she was replaced by some psycho robot with a hideous, 1950s hairdo. |
|
Zeerust / int_97abe183 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_97abe183 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_97abe183 | |
Zeerust / int_988629da | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_988629da | comment |
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Khan's followers look like the entourage of a hair metal band, with Khan himself resembling an elderly version of Cutter from Elfquest. The computers look pretty 80s too, although they're at least better than those in Star Trek: The Original Series. In the novelization, one of the Regula 1 scientists complains that a portable computer doesn't have enough memory for his "fifty meg"note It's not specified whether he means megabits or megabytes game. Star Trek later introduced the fictional unit of "quads" to describe computer capacity in order to avoid looking dated. On the DVD Commentary, Nicholas Meyer talks at great length about how dated the way David wears his sweater is, citing it as an example of how "all works of art are inevitably products of their time". |
|
Zeerust / int_988629da | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_988629da | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_988629da | |
Zeerust / int_996edf24 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_996edf24 | comment |
Wonder Woman Vol 1: In issue 7 the Magic Sphere is used to view a possible future for the year 3000. Among other things a bracenote hand cranked drill is used, effectively dating the comic to before the widespread use of the electric drill. (They had been invented in 1889, but were not yet widespread). | |
Zeerust / int_996edf24 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_996edf24 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wonder Woman (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_996edf24 | |
Zeerust / int_9a7088bc | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9a7088bc | comment |
Just about anything from Star Trek: The Original Series, which has not dated well with its depiction that control panels in the 23rd century are hundreds of buttons and flashing lights. The Star Trek: The Original Series Remastered undertaking does, on occasion, fix some of these, to the annoyance of purists. | |
Zeerust / int_9a7088bc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9a7088bc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: The Original Series | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9a7088bc | |
Zeerust / int_9b1c2acd | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9b1c2acd | comment |
The film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, directed by François Truffaut in 1966, features zeerust aplenty, notably a propeller-powered monorail commuter train (which was an actual French prototype at the time, but was never developed), antique-looking vehicles, interactive wall-mounted television sets (though wall-mounted TVs actually would be a thing), and payphones with a weird design. Explained in that this was one of the first films where the director deliberately went for a Schizo Tech look. Also, the jetpacks at the end. | |
Zeerust / int_9b1c2acd | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9b1c2acd | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Fahrenheit 451 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9b1c2acd | |
Zeerust / int_9b7e31d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9b7e31d | comment |
Thunderbirds is supposed to be set in the year 2065, 100 years in the future according to the time of production. The Thunderbird vehicles themselves, particularly 1 and 2, are based on aircraft and prototypes that were state of the art at the time the series was produced; TB 1 on the MiG 19 and 21, along with a series of X-planes, and 2 on experimental lifting-body aircraft. And of course everything high-tech has clicky panels, big shiny microphones and chrome plated chrome. Things like internet, mobile phones, iPads, etc. are not present at all in the futuristic world of the Thunderbirds. | |
Zeerust / int_9b7e31d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9b7e31d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Thunderbirds | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9b7e31d | |
Zeerust / int_9d41fc3b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9d41fc3b | comment |
Invoked with many of Gru's gadgets and vehicles in Despicable Me, in order to emphasize how behind the times he is. His car, for instance, looks like a "futuristic" tank taken straight out of sci-fi from The '50s. In contrast, Vector's tech is much more up-to-date for 2010 standards. | |
Zeerust / int_9d41fc3b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9d41fc3b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Despicable Me | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9d41fc3b | |
Zeerust / int_9ff4a8d9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_9ff4a8d9 | comment |
In the Godzilla film Destroy All Monsters (released in 1968), the year is 1999. Rocket men, aliens that look like people, Mind Control signals, knockout gas, a nation devoted to containing monsters; must've been what Y2K was distracting us from. | |
Zeerust / int_9ff4a8d9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_9ff4a8d9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Godzilla (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_9ff4a8d9 | |
Zeerust / int_a183d57f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_a183d57f | comment |
Many episodes of Futurama parodied this by having futuristic technology that was already outdated in some way, such as interactive cinemas with monochrome newsreels. And then making them holographic. The Jetsons-style "floating hoops around everything and everyone" is considered retro in the manner of a nostalgia cafe or disco. The creators Hand Wave any technology that seems outdated by claiming things have moved erratically since civilization was destroyed (twice) between 1999 and 2999. For example, the wheel is lost technology in the Futurama world. Bender in "Proposition Infinity": It's worth noting that the series took its name from an exhibit at the 1939 New York World Fair, those fairs being notorious real life examples of this trope. Futurama also plays this trope straight in that many episodes feature 'futuristic' takeoffs on then-current technology, which start looking unironically outdated over time. A 2000 episode about the Internet includes a joke about how it took Prof. Farnsworth years to logon to AOL (AOL!), for example. "Kidnappster" (a pun on Napster.com) is another good one - by the time "I Dated a Robot" (the episode featuring Kidnappster) aired, Napster itself was on its last legs, having endured a lawsuit from the government over copyright violations (it would shut its doors later that year). The nature of Internet file-sharing was already starting to evolve beyond Napster by this point. In another episode Amy uses a magnifying glass to operate a minuscule cellphone; Similarly, when Leela sees Amy coughing, she asks her sympathetically "aw, have you swallowed your cellphone again?"; cellphones had been getting smaller and smaller by the early 2000s but the advent of touchscreen smartphones reversed this. In yet another episode, Fry is taken to a museum to see the complete archive of world literature written so far, which consist of two DVDs, labelled "Fiction" and "Non-fiction" (DVD being the early 2000s standard medium for storing data). When it was Un-Cancelled it often ignored and/or Retconned its previous "canon" and introduced technologies, ideas and memes relevant at the time of its production, as well. |
|
Zeerust / int_a183d57f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_a183d57f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Futurama | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_a183d57f | |
Zeerust / int_a4420d22 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_a4420d22 | comment |
The modern-day Venture compound in The Venture Bros. is practically built on Zeerust, from the X-1 (nuclear powered superjet) to the punch card sleeping beds, to the moving walkways, etc... Justified in that "Rusty" Venture is not a very good scientist, and is mostly coasting on minor updates to or repackaging of the inventions of his father, who was very much a 1960s Adventure Scientist. He built the X-1, which was cutting edge 50 years previously, and the Venture compound looks like a '60s rendition of the World of the Future. | |
Zeerust / int_a4420d22 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_a4420d22 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Venture Bros. | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_a4420d22 | |
Zeerust / int_a5a0dd85 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_a5a0dd85 | comment |
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World posits a Dystopia where humans with drastically reduced mental capabilities are engineered in a complex of labs... To be elevator operators. Lampshaded in the final chapters, when Mustapha Mond claims that many institutions deliberately use archaic and inefficient technology in order to ensure that there are always jobs for the lower castes. There's also a moment where they use a card catalog. It is also specifically stated at one point that all games and sports are heavily regulated, and that no new game will be approved unless it uses at least as much equipment as the most complicated one currently in existence (in order to boost the consumption of goods) | |
Zeerust / int_a5a0dd85 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_a5a0dd85 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Brave New World | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_a5a0dd85 | |
Zeerust / int_a8729c90 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_a8729c90 | comment |
The Fairly OddParents! had an episode that actually lampshaded this trope called "Future Lost", in which Timmy discovers one of his father's old sci-fi comic books that supposedly takes place in the "far off" future of the year 2000. Timmy notes that what's in the book is very different than the real early twenty first century. He then makes a wish making the Zeerust world of that book come to life. | |
Zeerust / int_a8729c90 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_a8729c90 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Fairly OddParents! | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_a8729c90 | |
Zeerust / int_ab4f6c9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ab4f6c9 | comment |
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. In a Happy Flashback, Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont are shown having a wonderful time visiting the Gotham World's Fair, with its lively and optimistic Raygun Gothic view of the future like flying cars and robot maids. Bruce takes a liking to a Cool Car that looks a lot like his future Batmobile, but in the present the Fair is a derelict wreck that's used as a battleground between Batman and the Joker. | |
Zeerust / int_ab4f6c9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ab4f6c9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ab4f6c9 | |
Zeerust / int_ab6d3fba | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ab6d3fba | comment |
The Paratime series is full of this. Everybody Smokes like a chimney, there are Tin-Can Robots everywhere and best of all the ridiculously advanced Home Timelines uses index cards and charts, and tables with models too, and exchanges information by fax. Also women are called 'girls'. | |
Zeerust / int_ab6d3fba | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ab6d3fba | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Paratime | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ab6d3fba | |
Zeerust / int_ac731e5b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ac731e5b | comment |
The Death of Lightning Lad shows that, in the year 2963, newspapers come out in microfilm format. Also, the Legion uses a ridiculously complex analogue wall clock. | |
Zeerust / int_ac731e5b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ac731e5b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Death of Lightning Lad (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ac731e5b | |
Zeerust / int_ad20e006 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ad20e006 | comment |
Wonder Woman (1975): In "Time Bomb", the time travelers, Adam Clement and Cassandra Loren, wear silvery clothes and computers all have big consoles complete with lots of levers and colored buttons. The Earth is a series of domed cities. All of which is very reminiscent of a 1950s view of future. | |
Zeerust / int_ad20e006 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ad20e006 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wonder Woman (1975) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ad20e006 | |
Zeerust / int_ae369c06 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ae369c06 | comment |
In A Clockwork Orange, Alex plays Beethoven's 9th Symphony on a microcassette tape, which looked pretty futuristic in the 1970s, but never caught on, and was replaced by the far superior compact disc. | |
Zeerust / int_ae369c06 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ae369c06 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
A Clockwork Orange | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ae369c06 | |
Zeerust / int_ae3eb4b8 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ae3eb4b8 | comment |
Watching Max Headroom in The '80s we all thought to ourselves, "Shit this looks futuristic!" Nowadays when we watch it, we think "Shit this looks '80s!" The video technology, the graphics, the clearly '80s look of everything (well, it was the trope namer for 20 Minutes into the Future). On the other hand, some of its "predictions" are more accurate than those of most other fiction of the time: It seemed to know about the upcoming internet epidemic, the only difference being that exactly the same thing was done with computers instead of TV sets. | |
Zeerust / int_ae3eb4b8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ae3eb4b8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Max Headroom | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ae3eb4b8 | |
Zeerust / int_afc86b0a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_afc86b0a | comment |
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game falls under this, imagining that the internet would primarily be a think tank for the world's smartest people and that everyone would use online newspapers. | |
Zeerust / int_afc86b0a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_afc86b0a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Ender's Game | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_afc86b0a | |
Zeerust / int_b212951e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_b212951e | comment |
The Outer Worlds, which many fans consider to be a spiritual successor to Fallout has a twenties or thirties art deco style IN SPACE! | |
Zeerust / int_b212951e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_b212951e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Outer Worlds (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_b212951e | |
Zeerust / int_b3788a5d | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_b3788a5d | comment |
Done deliberately in Space Station 76, a 2014 black comedy in the style of a "realistic" space setting as imagined in the late 20th century, like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Cops. Lots of beige walls, brightly coloured switches, clunky robots, crystal holograms, and old-fashioned attitudes to gender and sexuality. | |
Zeerust / int_b3788a5d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_b3788a5d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
2001: A Space Odyssey | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_b3788a5d | |
Zeerust / int_b6cb9396 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_b6cb9396 | comment |
Costume designs from Lost in Space. Everything from Lost in Space, such as the laundry machine that spits out neatly folded, plastic-wrapped clothes. | |
Zeerust / int_b6cb9396 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_b6cb9396 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Lost in Space | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_b6cb9396 | |
Zeerust / int_ba3d2748 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ba3d2748 | comment |
Intentionally used in The Incredibles to give a timeless or time lost feel. It works rather well, especially when combined with that "Apple Store" sleek design. | |
Zeerust / int_ba3d2748 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ba3d2748 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Incredibles | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ba3d2748 | |
Zeerust / int_bafe0888 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bafe0888 | comment |
Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, Zenon: The Zequel, and Zenon: Z3, take place from 2049-2054... as writers from 1999-2004 imagined it would be. The first film got some ribbing from Doug Walker over references to a "President Chelsea Clinton" and boy bands still being the biggest thing in music in the future. | |
Zeerust / int_bafe0888 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_bafe0888 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Zenon | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bafe0888 | |
Zeerust / int_bb55a676 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bb55a676 | comment |
Legion of Super-Heroes: In the 1970s, the book introduced new costumes for its team of 30th-century teenage heroes. Most memorable: Phantom Girl, whose new costume was a white bell bottom jumpsuit. The Death of Lightning Lad shows that, in the year 2963, newspapers come out in microfilm format. Also, the Legion uses a ridiculously complex analogue wall clock. |
|
Zeerust / int_bb55a676 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_bb55a676 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Legion of Super-Heroes (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bb55a676 | |
Zeerust / int_bb8d2f1a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bb8d2f1a | comment |
Subverted in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels, particularly the first one where Arthur, new to space, sees a spaceship and is impressed by how it looks so future-y. Ford, an alien who's been across space and time, is aghast by how garish and out-of-date it is. Life, the Universe and Everything also drops a lead lampshade on the in-setting zeerust of the 'ultra-modern' courtroom where the Warmasters of Krikket were tried for attempting to destroy the rest of the universe, mentioning that this was 2 million years ago, "when ultra-modern meant lots of stainless steel and brushed concrete". Remember the book came out at a time when people still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea. | |
Zeerust / int_bb8d2f1a | featureApplicability |
-0.3 | |
Zeerust / int_bb8d2f1a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bb8d2f1a | |
Zeerust / int_bcb32dc6 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bcb32dc6 | comment |
Shadowrun: This is the case with the entire first three editions of the game. Since the game was set 20 Minutes into the Future, every few years they would need to reboot the game to keep ahead of growing technology. For the hacker type class, the original series had deckers that would have to literally plug a wire into the back of their head to go virtual. Later on, everyone has augmented-reality goggles or a wi-fi computer in their head. Many fans, however, are not as happy with this change however, as the zeerust present in the original gave it its cyberpunk charm. | |
Zeerust / int_bcb32dc6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_bcb32dc6 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Shadowrun (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bcb32dc6 | |
Zeerust / int_bcf946dd | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bcf946dd | comment |
Timecop, was released in 1994 but the future sequences were set in 2004. In that 2004, they had self-driving, voice-activated cars that looked like spaceships, and some sort of cartridge music player instead of tapes or CDs. Widescreen TVs a few years early, too! The music player was a Sony MiniDisc player, which was new in 1994 and thought by some to be the next big thing in audio, replacing cassettes and CDs. | |
Zeerust / int_bcf946dd | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_bcf946dd | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Timecop | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bcf946dd | |
Zeerust / int_bd886ad | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_bd886ad | comment |
This was parodied hilariously in an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. | |
Zeerust / int_bd886ad | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_bd886ad | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_bd886ad | |
Zeerust / int_be03a5ee | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_be03a5ee | comment |
In the Left Behind book Kingdom Come, technology doesn't really advance much beyond the level of the 2000s throughout the course of the Millennial Kingdom, as fax machines and printers are still in use by the time the Kingdom ends and the old earth is replaced with the new earth. The final book of the series was written and published in 2007. | |
Zeerust / int_be03a5ee | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_be03a5ee | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Left Behind | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_be03a5ee | |
Zeerust / int_c0d295c4 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c0d295c4 | comment |
Team Fortress 2 (since it takes place in its own alternate universe that evokes spy fiction popular in the sixties and seventies) has a bit of this in its level design, such as the mysterious Doomsday Device featured in Nucleus and the giant missile launcher in Gravelpit. In addition, the buildings of the Engineer class are retro-futuristic as well. The Dr. Grordbort weapons invoke this trope, similar to their real-life models (except in the game they actually work) |
|
Zeerust / int_c0d295c4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c0d295c4 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Team Fortress 2 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c0d295c4 | |
Zeerust / int_c18bfdae | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c18bfdae | comment |
Blade Runner, which was made in 1982, thought that in the year 2019 we'd have flying cars, skies so choked with pollution that you never see the sun, off-world colonies, implantable memories and androids so lifelike that we'll need detailed personality tests to distinguish them from the real thing... All the while with Video Payphones still in use. The sequel Blade Runner 2049 adds elements from the three decades between movies, but it's still that movie's future. | |
Zeerust / int_c18bfdae | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c18bfdae | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Blade Runner | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c18bfdae | |
Zeerust / int_c3a1c8f8 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c3a1c8f8 | comment |
UFO (1970) is from 1970 and takes place in 1980, but has very little in common with the real '80s. The design of basically everything in the series practically screams "late 1960s" or "late 1960s vision of the future", making it an orgy in Zeerust. In the episode "Court Martial", a computerized encoding device uses handwritten data entry, but it's actually a security precaution. Handwriting samples of personnel authorised to use the device are stored in its memory, and compared against the message written on the input card. |
|
Zeerust / int_c3a1c8f8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c3a1c8f8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
UFO (1970) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c3a1c8f8 | |
Zeerust / int_c43df4d8 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c43df4d8 | comment |
Doctor Who: The show has had some problems with this due to its exceptionally long run. Under various excuses, the new series has "modernized" such Zeerusted elements as the TARDIS interior (which has, on a few rare occasions, had a deliberately Steampunk look), the Cybermen, and the sonic screwdriver, though not the Robot Buddy K-9, designed in The '70s. In "School Reunion", a lampshade was hung on the latter: The new series console rooms have been "organic/coral", "relatively shiny and futuristic for the 2010s", and "glowing crystals". The console itself, in its first two versions, had a thrown together old fashioned scrapheap look, with bicycle pumps and hot-n-cold taps replacing random parts. TARDIS interiors are justified in that they're fully customisable by the user, and if they look out of date it's simply because the user wants it that way. On the other hand, modern Who may have Zeerusted itself in the future by referring to the interior looks as the "desktop theme". One of the Eighth Doctor books had the TARDIS crew landing on a city based on these concepts, with foodstuff pills, antigrav beds, a "supercomputer" full of tapes and whatnot. The problem? No civilization in the entire Universe ever created this city... It turns out a Time Master had once been helped by a group of kids from The '60s and granted their wish to see the future they'd seen in comics and movies. Since no future ever fitted with their expectations, he created the city for them. Remarking on all of the Sixties Zeerust would be pointless, but a few more jarring examples: In "The Keys of Marinus", Ian and Barbara remark that they can't tell what colour the alien world is from the TARDIS's screen, which may be a little confusing to modern viewers used to colour televisions. To be fair, modern viewers might get a hint from the fact the serial was filmed in black and white. "The War Machines" is made of this, since it is about an extremely powerful computer in the Post Office Tower in the 1960s. The scientist who shows it to Dodo remarks "this may not be the biggest computer, but it is probably the most advanced", the computer is able to hypnotise people, it makes the humans build the most ridiculous Tin-Can Robot weapons, it has prominently mounted tape reels, someone describes it as 'a machine that can think!' as computers were a new concept, it makes tape grinding and spool noises and prints out ticker tape, and it also uses 60s beliefs of what the Internet would be like (being able to communicate with computers all over the world by literally calling them up with telephones)... even the non-standard title text is very, very dated. On the bright side, it does take place in 1960s London, so the theme is appropriate. The Mondasian Cybermen, when compared to their modern day counterparts, should be Narmy relics of Zeerust. Except, of course, for the fact that they're a secret medical project, kept from the people aboard a Generation Ship suffering a Time Dilation in the grip of a black hole, until they're tricked into the operating room to have painful surgery conducted on them that robs them of their humanity and leaves them in crippling pain. They're in constant agony, and their doctors and nurses could not care any less, seeing as how their preferred method of treatment for the pain is to turn down their voice boxes. And companion Bill Potts has just been lured into the Conversion Theatre. |
|
Zeerust / int_c43df4d8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c43df4d8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Doctor Who | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c43df4d8 | |
Zeerust / int_c487221e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c487221e | comment |
Men in Black: In a strangely modern example, K shows J a tiny disc, explaining: "it'll replace CDs soon." Back then, it looked like the logical next step in audio recording medium. But with the invention of the MP3, it seems we skipped that "micro-disc" step. The trope is then used intentionally in the third movie, with the 1969 MIB headquarters (as well as many of the aliens inside) having a very Zeerusty look. | |
Zeerust / int_c487221e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c487221e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Men in Black | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c487221e | |
Zeerust / int_c5637317 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c5637317 | comment |
Muppet Babies parodied this, when Baby Piggy claimed that the future would be "just like now, only more... futurely!" | |
Zeerust / int_c5637317 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c5637317 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Muppet Babies | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c5637317 | |
Zeerust / int_c5f50eb4 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c5f50eb4 | comment |
The original Contra, being a Rambo/Commando/Alien pastiche, stars a pair of musclebound commandos fighting against an alien army in the jungle. The game is set in the year 2633 according to the Japanese canon, but despite the presence of improbable weapons and bases, there's no real reason to suspect that the game is actually set in the future. Because of this, the localization actually claimed that the game was actually set in the present when they brought it to America. This continued until they decided to keep the futuristic setting for Contra III: The Alien Wars and even then the city where the game starts, as well as the car in the first level, looks late 80s - early 90s. | |
Zeerust / int_c5f50eb4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c5f50eb4 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Contra (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c5f50eb4 | |
Zeerust / int_c6f7e804 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c6f7e804 | comment |
Blake's 7 The computers are hardwired, and Avon hacks them by rewiring their circuits instead of reprogramming their software. The word 'online' refers to the computer being switched on, not connected to a network. When a computer crashes while analyzing a plague in "Killer", they can't access another because it's physically located outside the quarantined zone. The Federation is organised by a single Master Computer with dumb terminals rather than a distributed network. Carnell boasting that he beat "the best chess computer available" six times in a row in "Weapon" now makes him look ridiculous. "The Harvest of Kairos" features a spaceship closely resembling an Apollo lunar module that looked zeerusty even when it was first broadcast in 1980. In fairness, this is the least of that episode's problems. |
|
Zeerust / int_c6f7e804 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c6f7e804 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Blake's 7 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c6f7e804 | |
Zeerust / int_c7a12984 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_c7a12984 | comment |
In the adventure series of Back to the Future: The Game, Marty finds himself at a science expo in 1931. The expo predicts that, fifty years from then, there will be machines that make artificial rain and sun, and vast underground cities. Marty, from fifty-five years later (and had... er, will have seen even further into the future in the movies) snarks that he hasn't been to that timeline yet. | |
Zeerust / int_c7a12984 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_c7a12984 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Back to the Future: The Game (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_c7a12984 | |
Zeerust / int_cbad9b62 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_cbad9b62 | comment |
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a Space Opera that features absolutely no noteworthy computers during its entire run. The novels were first written back in the 1970s. Its pilot movie was shown in cinemas in 1988. By the time the series had finished airing in 1999, current technology had outrun them completely, with super computers the like of which the author Yoshiki Tanaka could have never imagined during the inception of his masterpiece. | |
Zeerust / int_cbad9b62 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_cbad9b62 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Legend of the Galactic Heroes | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_cbad9b62 | |
Zeerust / int_ccc80720 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ccc80720 | comment |
My Life as a Teenage Robot uses a visual style akin to Pie-Eyed classic toons and is set in a near-future setting with very Zeerust aesthetics. | |
Zeerust / int_ccc80720 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ccc80720 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
My Life as a Teenage Robot | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ccc80720 | |
Zeerust / int_cd494cc4 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_cd494cc4 | comment |
The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: In this 1966 story, Luthor brings about a revolution in planet Lexor by introducing scientifical marvels which could not be dreamed up by 1960s' Earth's science. Said super-advanced high tech includes bulky, non-wireless headphones. | |
Zeerust / int_cd494cc4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_cd494cc4 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_cd494cc4 | |
Zeerust / int_cdfaa180 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_cdfaa180 | comment |
Myriad Song was intentionally designed that way. Everything's analog, the concept of "digital" was lost when the Syndics enslaved the galaxy. Nuclear batteries are a common power source. And the most common Energy Weapon is called a "raygun pistol" and looks straight out of a sci-fi flick from the first half of the 20th century. | |
Zeerust / int_cdfaa180 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_cdfaa180 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Myriad Song (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_cdfaa180 | |
Zeerust / int_ce50887e | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ce50887e | comment |
Dragon Ball: Appears in both intentional and unintentional forms. Intentional examples are vehicle designs that have a militaristic, World War II type of appearance to them. Unintentional ones would be the use of VHS tapes and CRT televisions, as well as a more "flashing-light circuitboard and wires" look to any unique tech, such as Bulma and Dr. Gero's inventions, that is distinctively 80s. This was considered modern at the time the story was written, but nowadays it provides a unique aesthetic when mashed into the traditional Chinese aspects. | |
Zeerust / int_ce50887e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ce50887e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Dragon Ball (Manga) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ce50887e | |
Zeerust / int_cfd91008 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_cfd91008 | comment |
While hardly free from this trope, Eighth Doctor Adventures tend to be a bit less overt about it, mainly because they were generally a bit more niche and didn't try to chase the zeitgeist quite as much as the New Adventures did. | |
Zeerust / int_cfd91008 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_cfd91008 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Eighth Doctor Adventures | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_cfd91008 | |
Zeerust / int_d0f995a5 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d0f995a5 | comment |
Moonbase 3 takes place in 2003, a time when the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, China and Brazil all have moonbases. A European manned probe to Venus is discussed at some length in "Achilles Heel". | |
Zeerust / int_d0f995a5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d0f995a5 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Moonbase 3 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d0f995a5 | |
Zeerust / int_d432a439 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d432a439 | comment |
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, written in 1887, portrays the U.S. in the year 2000 as a "socialist utopia" — actually a top-down military dictatorship. Bellamy's descriptions of credit cards and the Internet, however, were surprisingly spot-on, if primitive. It should be noted, however, that Bellamy failed to imagine even radio, let alone television. The main entertainment in the year 2000 was sitting around in your living room listening to music piped in over telephone wires. While this may suggest the infrastructure of the internet, the absence of any wireless technology (e.g., radio) is striking. Also, the automatic retractable awnings over the sidewalks is highlighted as an impressive technology which was no doubt feasible when the book was written. |
|
Zeerust / int_d432a439 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d432a439 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Looking Backward | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d432a439 | |
Zeerust / int_d531b6f7 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d531b6f7 | comment |
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) is chock-a-block full of Zeerust — not surprising, given that that was the point of the whole exercise. There is a 1930s submersible with a radio-imager that can send pictures back to the Airborne Aircraft Carrier, giant bipedal robots wreck New York, and the hero's plane can go underwater. The entire movie is pretty much Rule of Cool and must be set entirely between 25 August 1939 and 1 September 1939 because The Wizard of Oz is in theaters (released 25 August 1939) but Germany hasn't yet invaded Poland (1 September 1939). | |
Zeerust / int_d531b6f7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d531b6f7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d531b6f7 | |
Zeerust / int_d54b59cc | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d54b59cc | comment |
Demolition Man, which was an example of late 20th century Zeerust despite being a retelling of Brave New World, which was 1930s Zeerust. | |
Zeerust / int_d54b59cc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d54b59cc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Demolition Man | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d54b59cc | |
Zeerust / int_d8555a95 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d8555a95 | comment |
The Evil Within 2: Mobius intentionally designed the setting of their Lotus-Eater Machine to a utopian version of a 20th-century suburb, despite taking place in the late 2010's, because the culture obsolescence would help them maintain control of the test subjects. It worked too well when a 20th-century horror movie wraith started killing everyone, turning their corpses into the mooks working for the villains. | |
Zeerust / int_d8555a95 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d8555a95 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Evil Within 2 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d8555a95 | |
Zeerust / int_d868a4e8 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d868a4e8 | comment |
Pluto, an Ultimate Universe remake of Astro Boy by Naoki Urasawa, stakes out a comfortable middle ground here. Most of the robots look like bigger & better versions of ASIMO, modern conveniences that are just now starting to catch on like debit cards and flash-drives are ubiquitous, Holographic Terminals are fairly common and most of the automobiles look like larger versions of modern Smart Cars. On the other hand Urasawa has restored some of the more domestic 20th-century touches that gave the original its charm. Ordinary things like houses, cafes and flowershops look pretty much like they always have. He also manages to throw in a few bits of retro-futurism that are even sillier than the original, such as high-tech-looking skyscrapers so huge that they can fit entire gated communities onto their roofs. | |
Zeerust / int_d868a4e8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d868a4e8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Pluto (Manga) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d868a4e8 | |
Zeerust / int_d9c602eb | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_d9c602eb | comment |
South Park: The episode Go God Go has Cartman get frozen and wake up 500 years in the future. The 26th century is filled to the brim with intentional Zeerust (including a Robot Buddy and Space Clothes), making it all look like a bad '70s sci-fi flick. With reference to the intro sequence to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. (There are some unique touches, such as otters apparently having developed sentience, and darts that cause your head to swell up and explode when they're fired into your neck.) The episode "Goobacks" shows time-travelers from the future arriving in present-day South Park; they have dark pink skin, are completely bald, and speak a strange, guttural, almost "choking" language. Their culture is portrayed as a twofer parody of minority ghetto inhabitants and retro visions of the future: traveling around in "low-rider" hovercars while their stereos play what sounds like a combination of synth-pop and hip-hop. |
|
Zeerust / int_d9c602eb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_d9c602eb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
South Park | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_d9c602eb | |
Zeerust / int_daff6a21 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_daff6a21 | comment |
There's something of a meta, in-universe example in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. The character Vizor/Dark Glass(es) is from two-hundred years in the future, as are several other characters, such as the Three Emperors of Illiaster. Many of these cards have by now been released as cards for the trading card game. Aside from the universe-destroying time paradox this has inevitably caused, the cards...don't stack up to what Power Creep would dictate. On the other hand, in-universe, their energy-bladed duel disks were introduced to the series with Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. | |
Zeerust / int_daff6a21 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_daff6a21 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_daff6a21 | |
Zeerust / int_dbb31d3c | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_dbb31d3c | comment |
Any of Tex Avery MGM Cartoons exploring and spoofing how future technology would improve many things, such as cars, television, household appliances, and even farms; this is known as the "Of Tomorrow" series (one of the running gags in two of the cartoons was the "mother-in-law" getting something bad). These shorts were parodied in the Ren & Stimpy episode "The House of Next Tuesday", which deliberately played with the trope for all it was worth. |
|
Zeerust / int_dbb31d3c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_dbb31d3c | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Tex Avery MGM Cartoons | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_dbb31d3c | |
Zeerust / int_dbbc2e43 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_dbbc2e43 | comment |
The 1978 radio show Alien Worlds took place in the 2020's, but dates itself because the episode "Resurrectionists of Lethe" makes a passing mention of Richard Nixon that implies that he lived an unusually long life, when in real life he'd pass away in 1994. | |
Zeerust / int_dbbc2e43 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_dbbc2e43 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Alien Worlds (Radio) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_dbbc2e43 | |
Zeerust / int_dc25de3f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_dc25de3f | comment |
Towards the end of Portal, the player character gets a chance to visit some of the observation rooms seen in earlier stages. The computers at Aperture Science appear to be at approximately the PC/XT or PC/AT level, right down to having monochrome (amber) displays. In a facility capable of building the portal gun, and GLaDOS. | |
Zeerust / int_dc25de3f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_dc25de3f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Portal / Videogame | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_dc25de3f | |
Zeerust / int_e179ec3a | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e179ec3a | comment |
Played with in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series - in a Time Travel plot, the version of the future Sherman is trapped in is exactly like The Jetsons (in fact, the narrator outright says so), though the fic was uploaded sometime around 2005 or 2006. | |
Zeerust / int_e179ec3a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e179ec3a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Calvin & Hobbes: The Series (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e179ec3a | |
Zeerust / int_e28573ba | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e28573ba | comment |
Sometimes, characters in Electric Wonderland use technology that feels dated even for the year of the respective comic's release. The cartoonist reportedly hopes that this will prevent references that will date in the future from sticking out. | |
Zeerust / int_e28573ba | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e28573ba | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Electric Wonderland (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e28573ba | |
Zeerust / int_e5c5bc22 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e5c5bc22 | comment |
The actual biotech in GURPS Bio-Tech (2007) remains plausibly futuristic. However, some of the in-universe commentary is taken from discussion groups with names like "alt.bio.upgrade.samurai" and "sci.bio.posthuman.rant". Yes, apparently the 22nd century's bleeding-edge Bio Punks are still using Usenet. | |
Zeerust / int_e5c5bc22 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e5c5bc22 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
GURPS (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e5c5bc22 | |
Zeerust / int_e5c93c13 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e5c93c13 | comment |
Miitopia's Nimbus region, set high up in the air, evokes this style in its architecture and its Flying Cars. | |
Zeerust / int_e5c93c13 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e5c93c13 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Miitopia (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e5c93c13 | |
Zeerust / int_e66a25a9 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e66a25a9 | comment |
Rifts and Heroes Unlimited by Palladium Books haven't really moved past The '80s in their vision of the future: We Will Use Lasers in the Future. Bionic augmentation is the go-to for transhumanism, and while genetic engineering exists, it's not the new nuke by a long shot. Computers are big and bulky, unless they're robot brains. In Rifts, this has become a part of the setting's idiom, but it feels a little jarring in Heroes Unlimited, which is ostensibly set in the modern world. | |
Zeerust / int_e66a25a9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e66a25a9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rifts (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e66a25a9 | |
Zeerust / int_e69e53ea | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e69e53ea | comment |
In Have Space Suit – Will Travel, there are colonies on the Moon and the hero wins a used space suit in a contest... But the contest is held by the sole sponsor of a (typical) live TV program (a soap company), as in bar soap for washing clothes. By hand. By housewives. Even when Heinlein wrote it, most of his readers were probably too young to remember that. On top of that the chronically unemployed town ne'er-do-well, "Ace" Quiggle, hangs out at the drugstore soda fountain. Drinking chocolate malts. | |
Zeerust / int_e69e53ea | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e69e53ea | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Have Space Suit – Will Travel | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e69e53ea | |
Zeerust / int_e6e85a39 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e6e85a39 | comment |
A curious example appears in Strange Days, which was filmed in 1995 and set in a futuristic Cyberpunk dystopia all the way in 1999. While obviously the mind-recording technology that formed the centerpiece of the movie's plot has never shown up, the main character's voice-transcribing answer machine is also not exactly the way that particular technology developed. Neither was Los Angeles quite the decaying urban nightmare just seconds away from exploding into all-out civil warfare in 1999. The fashions are also quite a bit more Cyberpunk than what really went down. You also have to wonder, with the rise in population of file sharing since 1999, why recorded memories aren't swapped online rather than illegally traded on discs by hand. This would have put Lenny out of a job. | |
Zeerust / int_e6e85a39 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e6e85a39 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Strange Days | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e6e85a39 | |
Zeerust / int_e7e37776 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e7e37776 | comment |
Part of Firefly's charm is how a lot of the "future tech" weapons look like old fashioned guns. This is exemplified in the episode "Trash", where the antique, high-tech laser gun shown looks like an oversized Star Wars blaster. More contemporary (In-Universe) laser weapons are still quite boxy, and fall into the Awesome, but Impractical category, running off quickly-depleted batteries. Well, it's a Space Western. | |
Zeerust / int_e7e37776 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e7e37776 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Firefly | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e7e37776 | |
Zeerust / int_e83f2e67 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e83f2e67 | comment |
Tez One from Bad Robots is designed to look like a fifties era toy robot. | |
Zeerust / int_e83f2e67 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e83f2e67 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Bad Robots | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e83f2e67 | |
Zeerust / int_e863cc41 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e863cc41 | comment |
Mega Man Battle Network eerily goes in and out of this - it was only set in 200x (Whereas the first game came out in 2001), yet it featured people still using cathode-ray tube monitors, physical disk drives, and they were just getting wireless connectivity right. Unfortunately the cyberterrorism didn't become this trope... | |
Zeerust / int_e863cc41 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e863cc41 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mega Man Battle Network (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e863cc41 | |
Zeerust / int_e89f120b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_e89f120b | comment |
Mobile Suit Gundam: Practically every iteration bears some vestiges of the era in which it was made, despite the fact that most series occur some time around the 22nd-24th Century. The bellbottom-esque uniform pants on the 1979 original series. The 80s-style hair and fashion in Gundam ZZ (made in 1986). Take a look at Chara Soon and see what we mean. In the same anime one of the characters in a scene is listening to music on a Walkman. The prominence of boxy desktop computers in Gundam Wing (made in 1995). The majority of UC Gundam series have the ubiquitous appearance of floppy disks, even ones made during the age of Compact Discs and Laserdisc, like Gundam 0083 and The 08th MS Team. According to The 08th MS Team, the Apsalus, a flying weapon of mass destruction, uses the same hard- and software components as a mid 1990s desktop PC, such as a 6X86MX CPU from the long-defunct manufacturer Cyrix. Along with DirectX6, you can kinda tell why the first two versions of the Apsalus ended up crashing. G Gundam has a scene where Master Asia holds up a floppy, claiming it contains vast amounts of information. The theatrical recap trilogy of Zeta Gundam, which extensively uses footage from the 1985 TV series, adds laptops and more futuristic computer displays, in an attempt to renew the futurism. |
|
Zeerust / int_e89f120b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_e89f120b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mobile Suit Gundam | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_e89f120b | |
Zeerust / int_ea3d3f82 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ea3d3f82 | comment |
Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man holds up surprisingly well for a novel written in the '40s, mainly by circumventing or just not directly addressing most potentially Zeerusty subjects. However, there's only one computer in the book: It's the size of a room and prints the results of its calculations on paper tape. Despite this, its legal verdicts are weirdly intuitive. | |
Zeerust / int_ea3d3f82 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ea3d3f82 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Demolished Man | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ea3d3f82 | |
Zeerust / int_ecba79f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ecba79f | comment |
Panopticon Quest acts to counter this element in canon Mage: The Ascension by updating the aesthetics and traits of the Technocracy. | |
Zeerust / int_ecba79f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ecba79f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Panopticon Quest (Roleplay) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ecba79f | |
Zeerust / int_ecdb8a03 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ecdb8a03 | comment |
Caravan Palace's mascot bot is based on old scifi robots, and is used on all three album covers (and is even shopped from an existing image◊ on their debut album) and the music videos for Rock It For Me and Suzy. The music video for Mighty also consists of several clips of robots both new and old | |
Zeerust / int_ecdb8a03 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ecdb8a03 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Caravan Palace (Music) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ecdb8a03 | |
Zeerust / int_ed4a44cf | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ed4a44cf | comment |
Logan's Run could not look more 1970s if it were set in a disco (bits of it were). | |
Zeerust / int_ed4a44cf | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ed4a44cf | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Logan's Run | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ed4a44cf | |
Zeerust / int_ee8cea0b | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ee8cea0b | comment |
In Headlander, you wake up from cryosleep as a disembodied head in the future. Or at least what a person living in the 1970s' thought the future would be like. | |
Zeerust / int_ee8cea0b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ee8cea0b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Headlander (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ee8cea0b | |
Zeerust / int_ef076a36 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ef076a36 | comment |
Star Trek: Voyager managed to experience the onset of zeerust during its run; the eponymous ship's desk-mounted flat-panel displays were pretty good at first, but by the end of the series they were looking distinctly clunky. The show also had some fun itself with Zeerust, with a crew member who enjoyed acting out the Show Within a Show adventures of Flash Gordon-esque "Captain Proton". | |
Zeerust / int_ef076a36 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ef076a36 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: Voyager | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ef076a36 | |
Zeerust / int_f01bdca3 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f01bdca3 | comment |
Eva, written in The '80s, takes place in an unspecified future where holograms are commonplace and scientists have just figured out how to copy neurons. The protagonist communicates using a text-to-speech keyboard... which uses samples stored on discs. | |
Zeerust / int_f01bdca3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f01bdca3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Eva | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f01bdca3 | |
Zeerust / int_f1360d68 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f1360d68 | comment |
G Gundam has a scene where Master Asia holds up a floppy, claiming it contains vast amounts of information. | |
Zeerust / int_f1360d68 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f1360d68 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Mobile Fighter G Gundam | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f1360d68 | |
Zeerust / int_f326adbf | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f326adbf | comment |
Khan's followers look like the entourage of a hair metal band, with Khan himself resembling an elderly version of Cutter from Elfquest. | |
Zeerust / int_f326adbf | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f326adbf | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
ElfQuest (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f326adbf | |
Zeerust / int_f37a1662 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f37a1662 | comment |
Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling, has a computer-net dominated future — of fax machines and BBS (bulletin boards, for those too young to remember. The pre-WWW ancestor of the forum). Still, with just a few changes in wording, it could very easily become a believable 20 Minutes into the Future, as it does predict many plausible consequences of information technology. | |
Zeerust / int_f37a1662 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f37a1662 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Islands in the Net | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f37a1662 | |
Zeerust / int_f4be4bdc | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f4be4bdc | comment |
In Starman Jones and other stories, FTL Travel is accomplished with the help of books containing table after table of pre-computed values — seemingly no electronic storage or look-up at all. The books didn't just contain look up tables for functions — they also contained the tables for converting between decimal and binary, as all the values had to be converted into binary before being entered into the computer by toggling switches to set the binary values, then reading the binary values from the display lights and converting them back into decimal to make them human readable. This last is particularly strange, as computing devices that did decimal I/O with internal conversion for binary internals had existed for at least a decade when the novel was written. | |
Zeerust / int_f4be4bdc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f4be4bdc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Starman Jones | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f4be4bdc | |
Zeerust / int_f74b5f80 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f74b5f80 | comment |
Babylon 5: A computer search that would take less than a second by Google takes several hours on B5 - enough time for the results to arrive too late. Needing to find non-military people in person or by word of mouth is definite Zeerust in a modern world where it's impossible to avoid overhearing at least one "where are you?" cell phone call a day. Especially since both cell phone-equivalent technology and telepathy (which would make the question completely moot) were available to at least the main characters throughout the run of the series. Apparently, the wrist-mounted cell-phone-like communicators ubiquitous among the main characters were a classified military technology and unavailable to the general public. One episode featured an individual known as a 'Vicker' whose job it was to record events (including thoughts and experiences transmitted telepathically) onto a data crystal inserted directly into a port in his brain. While the technology itself is plausible by the 23rd century, 'Vicker' was explained as a phonetic pronunciation of 'VCR', a recording technology that would become obsolete less than five years after the series made its first run. Multiple characters are shown reading Universe Today, a print newspaper. Although one episode goes out of its way to demonstrate that readers can select articles of interest and print the paper on demand, changes in the newspaper industry and the advent of portable e-readers since the series aired mean that the appearance of an actual newspaper in the series is starting to look almost quaint even by today's standards. So when was the last time your computer (or even your television) showed you static "snow" when the signal dropped? Happens on Babylon 5 all the time. For that matter, while they do have touch screens, the interfaces are ridiculously blocky, over-sized and colorful, almost looking like a child's computer game from the 80s. This is most prominently on display in the fourth-season finale The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, nearly the entirety of which is actually a series of recordings being watched by a man thousands of years in the future. The GUI of his recording program looks horrifically tied to the early 90s. (Granted, some of it may be so that the viewer can parse it at a glance, but it's one of those things you notice on repeat viewings.) Speaking of television screens: It obviously did not occur to the creators that general-use video monitors would shift to the 16:9 aspect ratios. In the B5 timeline, all screens are in the old 4:3 format. They imagined a self contained space station, but not a 16:9 screen, especially since ones in personal quarters are shown being used for recreation and television equivalents. |
|
Zeerust / int_f74b5f80 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f74b5f80 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Babylon 5 | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f74b5f80 | |
Zeerust / int_f96e5d92 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f96e5d92 | comment |
Also in his 1990 novel A World of Difference, set on a larger, inhabitable fourth planet (called "Minerva" instead of Mars), the 1st expedition's photographer lugs along an entire photography lab to print out all the pictures taken. | |
Zeerust / int_f96e5d92 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f96e5d92 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
A World of Difference | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f96e5d92 | |
Zeerust / int_f9742e61 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_f9742e61 | comment |
Dragonriders of Pern shows a bit of this: apparently, when we achieve faster-than-light interstellar travel and Turing-level artificial intelligence... we will be using DOS again. | |
Zeerust / int_f9742e61 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_f9742e61 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Dragonriders of Pern | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_f9742e61 | |
Zeerust / int_faeff512 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_faeff512 | comment |
Outlaw Star: In The Demon of the Water Planet, the old man who hired the crew to go get sunken treasure hands Jim a floppy disk. | |
Zeerust / int_faeff512 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_faeff512 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
OutlawStar | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_faeff512 | |
Zeerust / int_ff9ab17f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ff9ab17f | comment |
Brunching Shuttlecocks beat The Onion to the punch by years, mocking the slogan by saying they'd like to see a Star Trek episode where Picard tells a replicator "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. No, wait, make that Dippin' Dots." | |
Zeerust / int_ff9ab17f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ff9ab17f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: The Next Generation | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ff9ab17f | |
Zeerust / int_ffc6c28f | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ffc6c28f | comment |
Starship Troopers has a couple that stand out. Early in the novel the narrator comments that their pilot made a course correction "by hand and eye" because the computers couldn't do such a thing; today, we would expect the computer to fly the ship with exacting precision. Later, when Rico is off to Officer's Candidate School, he (and others) must take actual hard-bound textbooks for additional study; even today, such is almost always digital and certainly would be on even a future spacecraft. | |
Zeerust / int_ffc6c28f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ffc6c28f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Starship Troopers | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ffc6c28f | |
Zeerust / int_ffc9bcc1 | type |
Zeerust | |
Zeerust / int_ffc9bcc1 | comment |
Soylent Green. The film is set in 2022 but there is a police callbox. | |
Zeerust / int_ffc9bcc1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Zeerust / int_ffc9bcc1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Soylent Green | hasFeature |
Zeerust / int_ffc9bcc1 |
The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
Copyright of DBTropes.org wrapper 2009-2013 DFKI Knowledge Management. Imprint. - Thanks to Bakken&Baeck for hosting. Contact.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.