History Main / FailedFutureForecast

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' predicts a decidedly dystopian '84 that did not come to pass. Not that we wanted it to anyway. Although it did predict iPods and flatscreen [=TVs=]. And the NSA's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A warrant-less surveillance of everything on the internet]]. It wasn't specifically said that the book takes place in 1984 (Winston explicitly says he's ''not sure'' what year it ''really'' is) -- Orwell simply flipped the last two digits of the year it was published (1948). The book was originally to be called "The Last Man in Britain"; a trace of this remains when O'Brien tells Winston that "if you are a man, then you are the last man". And given Big Brother's ability to lie about ''everything'' to the point of altering the definition of "truth," [[FridgeBrilliance there's no way for anyone in-story to be sure what year it is, either.]]

* ''Literature/LookingBackward'' The book correctly predicts the invention of radio, credit cards and skyscrapers but strikes out for the social changes, predicting the US and most of the West would become socialist states.
* Hector Bywater's ''Literature/TheGreatPacificWar'' was actually written as fiction (it was published in 1925, the war in the book takes lasts from 1931 - 1933), but the naval conflict in the book had so many similarities to the actual Pacific war that happened soon after that it now seems like an alt-history novel.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Space Odyssey'' was pretty hilarious in this regard; along with [[FailedFutureForecast the Soviet Union lasting well into the 2000s]], Apartheid in South Africa continued into the 2030s, when it ended in a revolution that kicked the white ruling class out. Apartheid-related predictions were often a bit off in this way, due mostly to outsiders imagining some sort of centuries-long, deep-seated race war, whereas it was a recent and quickly dated policy which was mostly prolonged because it somehow wound up as a part of Cold War politics. As soon as the policy was put up to a vote, it was rejected by overwhelming numbers.

** In ''Film/{{Predator 2}}'', it was predicted that [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture by 1997]] Los Angeles would decay into a dystopian CrapsackWorld with drug gangs in open war with each other, as well as the police, using military-grade hardware and body counts seemingly in the thousands. The police themselves show elements of being an occupying force in their own city and Harrigan himself refers to his beat as "the war." Based on the high crime rates of L.A. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this didn't seem too far-fetched circa 1990, but fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century and we see that Los Angeles, while still not a utopia, has far lower crime rates than it did at the time the film was made. Ironically, it was in the next year that they started to fall.

** The war outlined in ''Literature/RedStormRising'' is purely conventional with no nuclear or chemical weapons causing massive civilian casualties, making an immediate postwar return to the status quo more plausible. Lampshaded by the US ground forces commander in Europe during the ceasefire talks; his Soviet counterpart points out that "both sides can still lose" if NATO advances into the USSR itself. Also, the novel ends with the ceasefire; the survival of an oil-starved and war-weakened Soviet Union in the aftermath is open to the reader's interpretation.

*** The beginning of "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E12TheRoyale The Royale]]" has Picard sitting at his computer console trying to confirm Fermat's Last Theorem as he briefly waxes philosophical to Riker that after 800 years and after all their advancements, no one has managed to decipher it. Apparently, nobody told him that Andrew Wiles figured it out in 1995. This would eventually get referenced in the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E25Facets Facets]]", when Dax says one of her previous hosts had the best approach to proving it since Wiles.

* ''Series/CaptainScarletAndTheMysterons'': In "Lunarville 7" (1967), the Lunar Controller refers to "man's first successful landing on the Moon, back in the 1970's". The writers clearly thought that NASA's ambition to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade would not be realized, but they were wrong.

* ''Series/CaptainScarletAndTheMysterons'': In "Lunarville 7" (1967), the Lunar Controller refers to "man's first successful landing on the moon, back in the 1970's". The writers clearly thought that NASA's ambition to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade would not be realized, but they were wrong.

%%** Creator/IsaacAsimov's novels have RidiculouslyHumanRobots, but no personal computers and (in most novels) even no television.

* A major plot point of ''Literature/{{Eon}}'', the Greg Bear novel written in 1985 and set in the early 21st century, is that the USSR still exists [[spoiler:and the Third World War breaks out between it and the USA]]. On the other hand [[spoiler: the plot makes extensive use of the concept of parallel worlds and alternate histories, which handwaves the problem away: The story is not taking place in our timeline]].

* Jerry Pournelle's ''Literature/CoDominium'':
** A world government evolved out of cooperation between the US and USSR in the 1990s. When the real 1991 came around, Pournelle retconned the timeline so the [=CoDominium=] was founded in 2000. Not to mention also adding a Soviet coup to reestablish the USSR [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture 20 minutes into the future]], which had collapsed in reality.

* In ''Literature/{{Eon}}'' from ''Literature/TheWaySeries'', the book ends with [[spoiler:Patricia escaping from The Way to an alt-earth where the Ptolemy dynasty never fell, and is now a member of a Mediterranean federation.]] The asteroid ship ''Thistledown'' also hails from an alternate universe, one where the Industrial Revolution took place in East Asia rather than Europe. It was written in 1975 and did not anticipate the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the U.S.S.R. In this reality 2005 has come and gone without a nuclear war.

* OverpopulationCrisis: Despite what doomsayers would tell you, our population growth is slowing down and we produce more food than ever; however, other challenges, like global warming, disease, violence, biodiversity loss, pollution, and excessive resource extraction remain.

* ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire'' claims nuclear fission power fell into disuse following the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979. Chernobyl is conspicuously not mentioned, despite having been far worse, since it occurred shortly after the book was published.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' predicted that the Russian Federation would be a major world power by the time the games take place.

* [[[VideoGame/MassEffect]] Predicted that the Russian Federation would be a major world power by the time the games take place.

* The original ''VideoGame/GhostRecon'' predicted an ultranationalist party gaining power in Russia and launching an invasion of the Republic of Georgia to annex it in 2008, which quickly escalates into essentially WorldWarIII as NATO intervenes in their subsequent attempts to do the same to other former Soviet satellites like Lithuania; while Georgia and Russia did get into a war in 2008, it did not escalate into the larger conflict that is the focus of the game[[note]]Throughout the 2010's and 2020's, Russia did use military action to reclaim some of the territory it had lost during the collapse of the [=USSR=] from its neighboring newly formed independent states, but not to the extent suggested by the game[[/note]]. Its expansions likewise predicted the death of UsefulNotes/FidelCastro in 2006 and a second Eritrean/Ethiopean War in 2009. While the first has since come to pass (albeit ten years late and without democratic elections as a result) there has still been no new war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

* In ''Film/{{Underground}}'', a group of Serbian war refugees is duped into spending 20 years below ground making weapons to fight the Nazis, being told that the war continues to rage above their heads. When a few escape, they're quite confused.
* This is what Creator/BillyWilder's ''Film/OneTwoThree'' suffered from. Originally a light-hearted comedy with {{Dirty Comm|unists}}ies, it became a massive case of having to be DistancedFromCurrentEvents when the UsefulNotes/BerlinWall was built (during filming!). Before August 1961, people could cross the border between West and East Berlin quite easily - which millions of East Germans used to move to the golden west. The movie was based on this premise and suffered when the wall was built.
* ''Film/PlanetTerror'', the leader of the infected soldiers claims ''his'' team had already killed bin Laden, but the circumstances would've embarrassed his superiors, so they kept it quiet. ''Grindhouse'' was released in 2007, a few years before Bin Laden's actual death in 2011.
* ''Film/BladeRunner2049'' does not drop many of the ones from the first film as a deliberate attempt to maintain its aesthetic of the first film. This means JapanTakesOverTheWorld, the USSR still exists, a huge Creator/{{Atari}} neon in Los Angeles...
* ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'': By 1997 the United States has become a totalitarian dictatorship, and Manhattan Island is a penal colony.
* The sequel, ''Film/EscapeFromLA'', predicted that in 2000 a massive earthquake would separate a chunk of California from the mainland, creating a new island, which also became a penal colony. This was followed by the president moving the capital to Lynchburg, Virginia, making his term lifelong, and reshaping the US into a puritanical hellhole where things like alcohol, cigarettes, and premarital sex are crimes worthy of the death sentence. The main plot itself takes place in 2013.
* ''Film/TheManWhoSawTomorrow'', a 1981 SpeculativeDocumentary about UsefulNotes/{{Nostradamus}}, has become an amusing example of this trope. [[BlatantLies Apparently, we're in the late stages of World War III right now, New York City is a radioactive crater, Ted Kennedy was the Democratic presidential candidate a while back,]] and [[MissedHimByThatMuch Loma Prieta's Quake of '89 happened in '88.]] {{This Is the Part Where}} we explain that Nostradamus typically made his predictions so vague as to be interpretable six ways from Sunday in a successful bid to stay off the ChurchPolice's radar.
* Averted in ''Film/AGoodDayToDieHard'', which includes a scene where John [=McClane=] and a friend talk in an NYPD shooting range with a picture of President Obama in the background. The film was released in 2013 but filmed prior to the 2012 presidential election. Therefore a second version of the scene was shot with a picture of Mitt Romney in the background as insurance in case of a Republican victory.
* ''Film/RoboCop1987'', set at some unclear future date after 1987, implies that the UsefulNotes/ColdWar is still going on, with references to SDI and the MX missile. The latter, which became the Peacekeeper, has now been scrapped. References are also made to the South African apartheid government which is not only still in power (albeit reduced to a single city-state), but actively threatening to deploy a NeutronBomb against insurgents, thus promoting them from racist assholes to cartoonish supervillains (although, in RealLife, they did have nukes).
* ''Film/SoylentGreen'' predicts that by 2022, New York City will have a population of over 40 million people and that overcrowding, global warming, and food shortages will turn the entire planet into a barren, dystopian wasteland where humans are forced to eat the deceased to survive. As of the real 2022, NYC's population still hasn't reached nine million, and obesity from overeating is a common ailment in much of the world, especially the US. Note also that, based on the age and life experience of Creator/CharltonHeston[='s=] character, the film's dystopia couldn't have come into existence any later than the 1980s, and this is a film that was released in 1973. This is actually consistent with then-current population-bomb projections, which made the mistake of failing to take the Green Revolution into account.
* ''Film/TheRunningMan'': Although reality TV was a huge thing when the film took place around 2017-2019 (unlike the book, which is set in 2025), no one is putting condemned criminals on live game shows to fight to survive.

* ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters'', released in 1968, guessed that by 1999 humanity would have a base established on the moon and the technology needed to keep nearly a dozen {{kaiju}} in containment on a small chain of islands. Some films in the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' universe depict technology even more advanced than that already existing in the 1960s, but continuity was never the franchise's strong point.
* ''Film/DeathRace2000'' presents the turn of the millennium as a barbaric period where millions of people gather around their televisions to gleefully cheer on racers as they run over and kill innocent pedestrians to earn points. [[Film/DeathRace The remake]], released in 2008, predicted that by 2012 the economy would have collapsed so severely that prisons would become massively overcrowded, making it profitable for prisoners to compete in lethal races.

* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' intended to predicted TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt without success... Although one could make the case that it was just Creator/RolandEmmerich using the silly "Mayan prophecy" mumbo-jumbo [[RuleOfCool to cram as many natural disasters as he could into one film]].
* ''Film/SplitSecond1992'': This dystopian sci-fi action movie predicted that London would become partially flooded by 2008 as a result of GlobalWarming, giving the monster in the film a place to hide in the mass of abandoned buildings and subway stations. Suffice it to say, this prediction was a bit off.
* ''Film/DemolitionMan'': An especially weird case. Released in 1993 (so not long after the L.A. riots, which undoubtedly informed a lot of its themes), it predicted that Los Angeles would turn into a criminal-run hellhole by 1996 and that convicts be turned into {{human popsicle}}s.

* The ending of ''Film/MemoriesOfMurder'' assumes that [[spoiler:by 2003, the Hwaesong serial murderer would still be at large.]] But in September 2019, the murderer was identified via DNA evidence as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Choon-jae Lee Choon-jae]], who had already been imprisoned since 1994 (with his original death sentence being commuted to life imprisonment) for murdering his sister-in-law in a similar fashion.

* The story of ''[[Anime/BlueCometSPTLayzner SPT Layzner]]'' features students from both sides of the Iron Curtain traveling to the moon together on the equivalent of a field trip. At least it actually predicts that the conflict between both sides will end, just much slower than it actually did. Also, the potential end of this Cold War is the stated reason that the ''aliens'' show up in the first place, to take over the world before the two sides work together well enough to take over their planet, which they have no idea exists in the first place.

* ''Manga/ZeroZeroNineOne'' the anime takes place in an alternate world where the Cold War continues... because the original manga was made in the 1960s and used the Cold War.

* ComicBook/MartianManhunter was originally from a thriving and prosperous Mars. After space probes found Mars to be barren, a RetCon was introduced to explain what had happened to J'onn's people.
* A 1986 issue of ''ComicBook/SwampThing'' took place during the temporal distortion period of the ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths. Amidst the dinosaurs and aliens is a 1997-model car, which the artist renders as something out of ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons''. In the actual nineties, car designs leaned toward a much more streamlined and conservative direction.

* In the comic ''ComicBook/Camelot3000'', Myth/KingArthur and Myth/{{Merlin}} are resurrected and their knights reincarnated in the year 3000. Almost nothing has changed politically since the 1970s or early 80s, except that there are now four power blocs. The USA has a UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan-esque president who dresses as a cowboy and carries authentic sixguns. The USSR is led by Comrade Yazof, a Brezhnev lookalike; China is led by Chairperson Feng (a lady Mao); and Africa by The Supreme Rakma, an Idi Amin type. Apartheid also still exists, and Gawain is reincarnated as a black South African. And this is ''after'' a nuclear war that blasted man back to the medieval period. It also has Sir Tristan's angsting about being reincarnated as a woman, even though her reborn lover Isolde seems quite content to contemplate a lesbian relationship, and sex reassignment surgery is bound to be as routine as a tummy-tuck by that era if Tristan is really not happy.

* An early issue of ''Comicbook/UltimateXMen'' featured the X-Men foiling a plot by the Provisional IRA. At the time, the 1998 Peace Agreement was still young, and many suspected it might not hold. It did, and the Provisional IRA destroyed its last weapons and ceased to exist some time around 2005.
* ''Comicbook/AmericanFlagg'' dances on the verge, but still manages to fall into this pit, though it falls very gracefully. The sight of ultra-capitalist Soviets and "Stalinland" theme parks fifty years in the future (in a mid-to-late 80s comic which ended just as the Berlin Wall fell) seems ''almost'' like a foreshadowing.
* In early ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' comics, the Soviet Union is depicted as surviving into the 22nd century, having been renamed as the 'Sov Blok', and is depicted as the main villain in the Apocalypse War storyline. In later comics, it enters a Glasnost period, before reverting back to its previous militaristic self, although it uses the Judge System instead of being communist. By extension, this occurs in other strips which take place in the shared universe, such as ''ComicBook/HarlemHeroes''.
* In IDW's ''[[ComicBook/TheTransformersMegaseries Transformers: Escalation]]'', much of the plot during the second half or so consist of the Decepticons trying to stir up conflict between the Soviet Union and a breakaway republic called Brasnya. This was written in 2006. They started referring to Russia (and Brasnya as a "former Soviet republic") from issue 5 onward, and Simon Furman [[WordOfGod admitted]] the Soviet references in the earlier issues were errors.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Kamandi}}: The Last Boy On Earth'', the map of the UpliftedAnimal-controlled [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] Earth shows that Siberia is now the "Communi-Bear Silo State". Human civilization has collapsed ''entirely'', but Russia is still communist.

* This is why Comicbook/BlackWidow was {{Retcon}}ned into possessing [[OlderThanTheyLook slowed aging]]. Marvel wanted to keep her Cold War ties and her back story as a Soviet super spy without having to retroactively make her appear decades older.
* ''ComicBook/{{Grendel}}'' has the USSR still existing in 2120, at which point the simultaneous assassination of both its Premier and the US President at a summit ignites WorldWarIII. (After this, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more, but [[AfterTheEnd neither does most of the USA]].)
* ''ComicBook/Armageddon2001'': In ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' Annual #3, Superman destroys the nuclear arsenal of several nations in 2001, including the Soviet Union. The USSR was dissolved only months after this crossover event was published in 1991. In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' Annual #3, President Superman is attempting to negotiate peace in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland in 2001 but the parties aren't cooperating with either him or each other. In reality, UsefulNotes/{{the Troubles}} are seen as having ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, something which was unforeseeable in 1991.

* In the author's notes of ''FanFic/HarryPotterBecomesACommunist'', it's repeatedly predicted that capitalism will be overthrown by the year 2020.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'':
** Has a brief mention of the IRA declaring a ceasefire in the far future (after 2300). This already happened in real life, in 2005, 2 years before Gundam 00 was even announced, however, the organisation that declared a ceasefire was the "Real IRA", presumably some sort of spiritual successor, although there is an actual "Real IRA".
** Same with the Sri Lankan Civil War. In the series, Celestial Being did an intervention to stop the war... which basically just ended in 2009. But it's one of those wars that may or may not come back with new force after a few years, depending on whether the Sri Lankan government is magnanimous in victory and helps the Tamils get back on their feet and addresses the grievances that caused the conflict.

* ''Anime/{{Macross}}'': The original ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' was broadcast in 1982 but featured an alternate history of humanity after 2009 when humans and aliens fight a devastating war over a transforming mecha battleship. It's beyond 2009 now, and we haven't even fought [[Anime/MacrossZero World War III]] and built mecha like they did in the series[[note]]nobody's complaining about that first one though...[[/note]] -- we're behind schedule, in other words.
* In ''Manga/TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'', an ad for a cryogenic storage company in the 80s promises that [[Film/EscapeFromNewYork by 1997, Manhattan will be a maximum-security prison]], [[Film/BladeRunner off-world colonies will be established by 2019]], and [[TechnologyMarchesOn the billionth Betamax will be sold in 2052]].
* ''Manga/GhostInTheShell'':
** The Soviet Union is still going in 2030, though revisions and reprints made after 1992 by Shirow Masamune himself changed this to reflect their downfall. The establishment of the Soviet Union still existing in the future was made in the ''Manga/{{Appleseed}}'' series during the 80s. ''Ghost in the Shell'' is a sister series that takes place almost a century before ''Appleseed'', but was written in the early 90s.
** There were some other mess ups in-universe that were mostly corrected. There was a WorldWarIII during the mid-90s, and a Non-Nuclear [[WorldWarWhatever World War IV]] in 2019-2020, and the United States was separated into three countries after a civil war that took part during World War IV (of which most of the main characters are veterans).[[note]]The American Empire AKA Imperial Americana makes up the largest part of the country, with all the states east of New Mexico, south of South Dakota, and south of the New England area, including Washington D.C. The still democratic United States of America was reduced to the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. The New England states, California, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii became the socialist Ameri-Soviet Union (revised to the Russo-American Alliance after 1992).[[/note]] And as a side note, Berlin was mostly bombed to pieces in the latter two wars.
* The story of ''[[Anime/BlueCometSPTLayzner SPT Layzner]]'' features students from both sides of the Iron Curtain traveling to the moon together on the equivalent of a field trip. At least it actually predicts that the conflict between both sides will end, just much slower than it actually did. Also, the potential end of this Cold War is the stated reason that the ''aliens'' show up in the first place, to take over the world before the two sides work together well enough to take over their planet, which they have no idea exists in the first place.
* ''Anime/TransformersSuperGodMasterforce'' refers to Ginrai traveling in West Germany; ''Masterforce'' was made in 1988 but set some time after 2011.

* ''Anime/AngelCop'' suffers from this as it takes place under the belief that the Japanese economy would continue to grow; instead, the economic bubble popped in the mid '90s.
* ''Anime/GoLion'' started with Earth being destroyed in World War III, when the east and west finally launched their missiles at each other in 1999.

* In ''Anime/OtakuNoVideo'', made in 1991, the Iron Curtain still exists and Gorbachev is still in power in 1997.
* In ''Manga/{{AKIRA}}'', set in 2030, a Soviet Navy helicopter transports scientists to an American aircraft carrier.

* An example is the 1980s series ''The Zone'' by James Rouch about WorldWarIII in Europe.

* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': Zig-zagged during the December 12, 1998 episode hosted by Creator/AlecBaldwin, which had Baldwin experiencing YetAnotherChristmasCarol during the show's opening monologue, with then-new castmember Creator/JimmyFallon appearing as the "Ghost of Hosts Future", telling Alec that he was given a prediction that he would become famous and host the show on December 12, 2011. [[WritersCannotDoMath That date was actually a Monday, not a Saturday]], [[HilariousInHindsight although he would indeed host SNL that week on December 17, 2011]]. The sketch also stated that Music/{{REM}} was the musical guest for the episode Fallon hosted. In reality, REM broke up earlier that year. This is possibly inverted during the Weekend Update segment where a joke is made about a potential presidential run by Donald Trump, basically scoffing at the idea, only for him to win in 2016.

*** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E12TheHighGround The High Ground]]", Data casually mentions that a series of terrorist attacks led to the reunification of Ireland into a single state in 2024. At the point the episode was released (1990), a peace treaty was seen as utterly ''inconceivable'', and many believe the only way for that to happen would be for the United Kingdom to collapse. Of course, reunification in full has still not happened, but time will tell whether this prediction will come true depending on how Brexit goes. Incidentally, the reference to Ireland being reunited due to terrorism led to this episode being banned on British television for years afterward. It was finally shown on the BBC in 2007. It has never been shown on Irish television. With unionist parties winning fewer Northern Irish seats than pro-reunification parties in the 2019 general election, it’s looking like Star Trek may actually have been slightly late in its prediction. It still wouldn’t be right about the terrorism.[[note]] we hope. The episode doesn't specify ''who'' the terrorists are, and there has been a significant rise in right wing terrorism in the UK, Europe, America, and around the world in the early 2020s, meaning the possibility of terror attacks from without Ireland is back on the table sadly.[[/note]]

** Given a later episode's reference to a clash between Batman and Ra's al Ghul as "The Near-Apocalypse of '09", [[AlternateHistory that seems to have been exactly what happened]].

* ''Film/TheManWhoSawTomorrow'', a 1981 SpeculativeDocumentary about UsefulNotes/{{Nostradamus}}, has become an amusing example of this trope. [[BlatantLies Apparently, we're in the late stages of World War III right now, New York City is a radioactive crater, Ted Kennedy was the Democratic presidential candidate a while back, and Loma Prieta's Quake of '89 happened in '88.]] {{This Is the Part Where}} we explain that Nostradamus typically made his predictions so vague as to be interpretable six ways from Sunday in a successful bid to stay off the ChurchPolice's radar.

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed Space Seed]]" caused several issues, chief among which, the episode states the Eugenics Wars occurred in the 1990s. There were a couple of attempts to fix this one. ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]''[='=]s [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E16DrBashirIPresume "Dr. Bashir, I Presume"]] claims that it actually happened later sometime, while a series of books suggests that they were "secret wars" where the actual historical events were being manipulated from behind the scenes. The ''ComicBook/StarTrekKhan'' comic book just says "screw it, we're going all in" and actually has Khan ''destroying Washington D.C. and Moscow'' in 1992, making it straight-out {{alternate history}}, which is probably better. In ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'', the pilot episode moved the Eugenics Wars from the 1990s to taking place sometime in the first half of the 21st century, leading to World War III by the middle of the century (also mashing it up with a newly invented "Second American Civil War").\\

* "[[CatchPhrase You will.]] And the company that'll bring it to you: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJcABbtvtA AT&T."]] Many of the technologies shown in this 1993 ad campaign exist today, but a lot of them are brought to us by Google, not AT&T. CRT monitors, sending a ''fax'' from a tablet, and VideoPhone booths are hilariously dated concepts.

* Creator/JerryAhern's epic pulp/men's adventure series ''The Survivalist'' begins with the Soviets invading Pakistan to try to stabilize Afghanistan during their occupation of it, which starts a nuclear war. The series continues with post-Apocalyptic schemes between the US and the USSR continuing to dominate the main plotline, including a ''fleet'' of Space Shuttles and some serious Soviet Superscience.

* An early version of "The Great Politics Mess-Up" was the use of "Prussian" stock foreign characters is scifi stories set in TheFuture (e.g. the Seetee stories by Creator/JackWilliamson) long after UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} had been split up and absorbed by communist countries that had little interest in maintaining the institutions that created that [[KaiserReich stereotype]] in the first place.

** In an episode someone tests to see if Buck is who he says he is by making a pop culture reference to the 20th Century. Today, UsefulNotes/OJSimpson's image as "The Juice" has fallen out of public consciousness. And when one thinks of O.J, it's about something completely different. In Buck's defense, he was frozen in 1987, years before O.J's FallFromGrace.

** Several UNIT stories produced in both the 70s and the 80s also mention the "end of the Cold War" but still have a USSR. This combines The Great Politics Mess-Up with the UNIT dating mess-up, since UNIT stories were notoriously vague and contradictory as to whether they were TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture or ThePresentDay.

* Lampshaded at the end of the 1952 novel ''Literature/{{Limbo}}'' by Bernard Wolfe. His novel is set in a fictional post-WWIII 1990s that maintains racial segregation, sexual discrimination, and UsefulNotes/ColdWar rivalries in a world of automated factories, rocket planes and nuclear-powered artificial limbs.