History Main / LongRunnerTechMarchesOn

* ''[[Manga/KocchimuiteMiiko Kocchimuite, Miiko!]]'' The series frequently referencing years passing per volume due being serialized monthly, and it's been running since late eighties. It has the technology, appliances, clothing, pop-culture references and inclusion of societal and current issues updated as appropriate to the year the chapters were written on.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Blondie}}'''s family has been around for decades, and (as noted on the main page) has stayed the same age since the 1940s. However, the family now owns a flat-panel LCD screen and keyboard, presumably attached to a computer of some sort. And a bit of changing values, too: Whereas Blondie was a simple housewife early in the comic, in the '90s she finally got her own job, running a business no less (as a caterer).

* The Franchise/MarvelUniverse is actually more prone to this than DC, which {{Cosmic Retcon}}s its continuity every couple of years nowadays, making it so that whatever 1940s Batman or Superman stories that currently still count might have happened last year. Marvel has it particularly bad with those characters -- [[Franchise/SpiderMan Peter Parker]], [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]], [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Reed Richards]] -- who work with fantastic technology, the earliest issues of whose comics involved technology which often wasn't so fantastic 10 years ago or so, when the ComicBook/FantasticFour took their ill-fated space flight to the Moon (to beat the Russians), and contemporary Marvel continuity began. A prime example? Reading the original Iron Man appearance, one might be amused to discover that the secret to his suit's power was "highly miniaturized transistors", and he had a phone built into the suit... with a rotary dial on the chest.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBusRidesAgain'' prides itself on having updated science and tech info compared to [[WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus its predecessor]], which aired thirty years earlier. Interestingly, the reboot canonically takes place one year after the original series, and the episode about fossils confirms that it takes place in 2017. This carries the implication that [[ComicBookTime Walkerville went from floppy disks in 2016 to the Internet and social media only a year later.]]

* ''Film/MissionImpossibleFilmSeries'': The first ''Film/MissionImpossible'' (1996) featured the then-current computer technology of the mid-90s. As the franchise went on, computer technology upgraded with it, such as ''Film/MissionImpossibleGhostProtocol'' (2011) and ''Film/MissionImpossibleRogueNation'' (2015) prominently featuring tablet [=PCs=] and other smart devices.

* ''Anime/YuGiOh'' The Original series started out with Battle Boxes, eventually advanced into Duel Arenas, then eventually the Duel Disk. The duel disk technology used in every sequel is based on the technology at the time they're aired in, comparable to how smartphones became sleeker, affordable, more high tech, and much more compact in every generation. Dialled UpToEleven in the Darkside of Dimensions movie, as Kaiba Corp have not only invented complete virtual reality arenas with virtual opponents, but Kaiba develops a pod that lets him travel between dimensions to reach the Afterlife. For reference, the movie is set a mere six months after the end of the manga; a manga that lasted maybe a school year long tops and began with Yugi and Jonouchi lending VHS tapes to one another.

* ''Anime/YuGiOh'' The Original series started out with Battle Boxes, eventually advanced into Duel Arenas, then eventually the Duel Disk. The duel disk technology used in every sequel is based on the technology at the time they're aired in, comparable to how smartphones became sleeker, affordable, more high tech, and much more compact in every generation.

* ''ComicBook/ArchieComics''. The characters don't age, but the technology is always up-to-date. It's not something that's just quietly slipped in either; a strip in the late 80s saw Veronica replacing her record collection with CD's, and in a later one Archie's parents reminisced about the days of dial-up.

* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', the teenage main cast has gone from landline phone extensions in bedrooms to flip phones to smartphones.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The technology in the early episodes definitely reflected that the show took place around the same time they were produced, the start of the 90s. Bart used a typewriter to write a paper in an early episode, and the kids in the series played video games on what appeared to be a SNES/NES mashup. Later episodes reflected the 2000s/2010s period, though it took until the show's 2009 HD conversion for the family to have a flatscreen rather than the dials-and-rabbit-ears cabinet TV they had. It gets even more bizarre in an episode where Homer remembers his teenage times which happened in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS19E11That90sShow That '90s Show]]"; Homer mentions VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog as his idol. The show started two years before the first Sonic the Hedgehog game so the game should be a novelty even for Bart.
* Likewise, post-uncancellation, ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'' was 'updated' with the latest Eye-Phone and more recent scientific gadgets and theories about TimeTravel and Evolution, which didn't exist in 1999 in RealLife. In one episode aired in the early 2000s, Amy's cell phone is shown to be humorously tiny -- the real-life trend at the time was to make cell phones as small as possible and this was the logical progression. In the 2010s, however, the focus shifted towards touchscreens, which led to cell phones getting much ''larger'' than they were in the 2000s.

** Not to mention, Marvel's use of ComicBookTime isn't ignored in the stories. Every so often, a story from decades ago will be referred to as having been five or 10 years ago. Hank "Beast" [=McCoy=] was in his late teens in the sixties and celebrated his 30th birthday in the nineties. The technology seen and real-world events referenced in the Silver Age that are later established as recent would seem to set all things Marvel in a version of the late seventies that happens to have smartphones and such ([[FridgeBrilliance perhaps due to having people like Peter, Tony, Reed, and Hank hanging around.]] Maybe [[ReedRichardsIsUseless Reed Richards isn't useless]] after all...?)

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' original run had BambooTechnology versions of the latest 1960s gadgets, such as "Polerock" cameras. ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstonesStoneAgeSmackdown'' has equivalents of 2015 technology such as "shellphones". Notably, while previous movies had progressed both technology and the age of the younger characters, this is set in the Stone Age version of TheNewTens while still having Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm as babies.

* ComicStrip/{{Blondie}}'s family has been around for decades, and (as noted on the main page) has stayed the same age since the 1940s. However, the family now owns a flat-panel LCD screen and keyboard, presumably attached to a computer of some sort. And a bit of changing values, too: Whereas Blondie was a simple housewife early in the comic, in the '90s she finally got her own job, running a business no less (as a caterer).

* ''[[WesternAnimation/InvaderZimEnterTheFlorpus Enter the Florpus]]'', the BigDamnMovie of ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' which aired in 2019 (nearly 20 years after the original series ran and ended) now features smartphones and apps, and a joke about how no one reads newspapers anymore, all of which wouldn't have been possible when the show was first on the air. Similar references and jokes have also been present in the ''Zim'' [[ComicBook/InvaderZimOni comic series]], which began publishing in 2015 and once dedicated a whole issue to Zim and GIR getting obsessed with binge-watching a show.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' has been around since the late 70s, and in recent strips, the old, bulky tv has been replaced with a thin, flatscreen, and many current gags involve smartphones.

* One of the early installments of the animated series of ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}'' showed the title character learning about the use of a bulky old model desktop computer. Flash-forward to 2020 and he is video-conferencing with his friends with Daddy's help in a book about the UsefulNotes/CovidPandemic, but is still just a "[[NotAllowedToGrowUp kid who's 4]]."

* One of the early installments of the animated series of ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}'' showed Caillou learning about the use of a bulky old model desktop computer. Flash-forward to 2020 and he is video-conferencing with his friends with Daddy's help in a book about the UsefulNotes/CovidPandemic, but is still just a "[[NotAllowedToGrowUp kid who's 4]]."

* The [[WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016 2016 revival]] of ''Franchise/ThePowerpuffGirls'' turns the girls' hotline into a cordless phone and an app on their individual smart phones.

* The original ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' series, written in the 90s, uses era-appropriate technological references; for example, ''Literature/WhyImAfraidOfBees'' mentions an "electronic bulletin board" and ''Literature/TheCuckooClockOfDoom''. On the other hand, the ''Goosebumps [=SlappyWorld=]'' series, which started coming out in TheNewTens, sees characters frequently using smartphones, tablets, video games, and social media. In a bizarre twist, the ''original'' series was also re-released in the 2010s, with the technological references from those books updated as well.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBusRidesAgain'' canonically takes place one year after [[WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus the original series]], and the episode about fossils confirms the former takes place in 2017. This can be interpreted as meaning Walkerville went from floppy disks in 2016 to the Internet only a year later.

* The original ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' series, written in the 90s, uses era-appropriate technological references; for example, ''Literature/WhyImAfraidOfBees'' mentions an "electronic bulletin board" and ''Literature/TheCuckooClockOfDoom'' has a character mentioning using an encyclopedia to research for their homework. On the other hand, the Goosebumps SlappyWorld series, which started coming out in TheNewTens, sees characters frequently using smartphones, tablets, video games, and social media. In a bizarre twist, the ''original'' series was also re-released in the 2010s, with the technological references from those books updated as well.

This is a SubTrope of ComicBookTime, {{Long Runner|s}}, and TechnologyMarchesOn. Sister Trope to NotAllowedToGrowUp, and WebcomicTime where the passage of time in-universe does not keep up with the span of publication in real life. See also {{Zeerust}}, where a "futuristic" design element is outdated by the real-world march of technology, materials science, aesthetics and/or social values, and CosmeticallyAdvancedPrequel, where a chronologically-earlier instalment in a series looks ''more'' modern than its predecessor(s) due to advances in [=VFX=]. Compare UnintentionalPeriodPiece.

* Also naturally a part of the longest-running film series of them all, ''Film/JamesBond.'' James Bond starts the series with the classic "gadgets from Q" - weapons and espionage tools disguised as everyday objects like watches and pens. In ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' we get our first phone - mobile phones were still fairly rudiemntary in 1998 so this one still mostly functions as a "bland everyday object with cool spying features". By ''[[Film/CasinoRoyale2006 Casino Royale]]'' Bond is mostly using his phone as a regular phone, as with phones getting more powerful and the world of espionage moving increasingly into virtual spaces, normal phones are by this point just really useful things for spies to be using.