History Main / MagicFloppyDisk

* The limited disk space was spoofed in some Creator/{{Sierra}} adventure games - self-spoof, actually, as many of their games in their golden age fit on well over half a dozen floppies. Most spoofing of all was ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest IV'' (1991); the plot was based upon a future civilization finding the ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry IV'' missing floppies (itself another in-joke), and attempting to play them on their MasterComputer, with disastrous results. In another scene, the protagonist can go in a future game shop, and find a copy of ''[[VideoGame/KingsQuest King's Quest]] 48'', which boasted a 12GB size. (There was once upon a time a review that criticized ''King's Quest VI'' (1992) for using too much disk space. It required... 20MB) Finally, the very end required the player to download an entire personality on a 3½" floppy disk (pictured above) that had lots of other stuff on it too. Some of that "other stuff" includes a game called "Stunt Flyer" and a "Brain Tools" program. Incidentally, the main supercomputer seen before has Space Quest IV installed, and deleting that promptly closes the real thing that you're playing.

** Of course, it also has the Big Bad downloading the entire contents of an immense server farm onto a laptop hard drive, so it's not so much averting this trope as updating it to slightly less obsolete technology.

* In ''Series/RedDwarf'', a sci-fi comedy show taking place on a futuristic mining vessel, people still use videocassettes...except they're triangular. It is explained in the 2009 Easter special that [=DVDs=] have become outdated by videos, since videos have one precious advantage--you can put them back in the box with minimal risk of breaking them.
** Plus they're bigger, and thus harder to lose.

* In ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', Zefram Cochrane keeps his tunes of some kind of green plastic disc the size of a mini DVD. Given that he does not use any menus to select music, "Magic Carpet Ride" might be the only song on it. Long way to regress AfterTheEnd...

* Carefully analyzed in ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', where a minor character (a hacker) uses floppy disks. Thousands, because of all the data. It's mentioned that he was paranoid, and [[LampshadeHanging that it's ridiculous]]. But it did save the data from an attacking hacker who probably hadn't even seen a floppy drive in his life. In {{cyberspace}}, filesharing is shown by a DigitalAvatar of a floppy, which is fully acceptable because that small icon in your word processor that reads "Save" is a floppy disk as well.

* Done intentionally in ''Literature/ThirteenReasonsWhy'' by Jay Asher. He says in a question and answer in the back of the book that he made Hannah record her suicide notes on a tape specifically to avoid [[TechnologyMarchesOn technology marching on]] and thus making an UnintentionalPeriodPiece. Tapes are outdated, but not so outdated that people wouldn't know what they are. This also serves as a minor plot point, with Clay having to borrow a Walkman from one of his friends in order to listen to the tapes.

* Justified, then immediately inverted, in ''Webcomic/CommanderKitty''. The crew is surprised to see massive server farms in Zenith's base, but figure that it's pretty logical, considering that's housing the data for [[spoiler:the minds of about half of all the galaxy's inhabitants]]. They aren't prepared when [[spoiler:they open up, revealing themselves to contain the physical ''bodies'' of those inhabitants--the minds are stored on a single flash drive.]]

** Likewise, video editing programs will usually have a film projector or a reel of film as their icons, when these fell out of common use outside movie theaters once the VCR was invented.

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation literally has [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-335 150 Magic Floppy Disks]] that contain ''The entire internet''. Only the first twelve [[TheInternetIsForPorn contain pornography]], though, which shows something of an unusual optimism on the part of the writer.

* Averted in ''Series/Dollhouse'' where entire brainscans of humans were loaded onto a hot-swappable 3.5" hard disk drive, of indeterminate capacity. Given the near-future timeframe of the show, these could plausibly hold many terabytes of information.

* {{Justified|Trope}} in ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'', where Strong Bad actually prefers older computers, so he does use floppies, although he thinks the 3½" ones are hard disks. He's expressed a preference for the "big, floppy" kind (5¼ inchers), but he is upset that he needs to ''fold them up'' to get them in the new computers. A typical email EasterEgg is the title of an old, often obscure game featuring prominently on the floppy disk storage box next to Strong Bad's computer. Curiously, some of them (such as ''Relentless'', American name for ''LittleBigAdventure'') were never released on floppy disks. (Considering Strong Bad's character, the world he lives in and that all of these disks have handwritten labels, it might just be that he's playing pirated copies.) Others filled multiple diskettes, but there's no sign on the disk shown that it's part of a set - a more literal case.

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* In ''Series/RedDwarf'', a sci-fi comedy show taking place on a futuristic mining vessel, people still use videocassettes...except they're triangular. It is explained in the 2009 Easter special that [=DVDs=] have become outdated by videos, since videos have once precious advantage--you can put them back in the box with minimal risk of breaking them.

* Averted in ''Series/Dollhouse'', where entire brainscans of humans were loaded onto a hot-swappable 3.5" hard disk drive, of indeterminate capacity. Given the near-future timeframe of the show, these could plausibly hold many terabytes of information.

* Averted in [[Dollhouse]], where entire brainscans of humans were loaded onto a hot-swappable 3.5" hard disk drive, of indeterminate capacity. Given the near-future timeframe of the show, these could plausibly hold many terabytes of information.

** ''Film/TheRecruit'', released in 2003, also uses USB drives. However it also doesn't get things completely correct as it treats them like some super-technology that can be used to steal data from computers secured with no floppy disks or CD-ROM drives. OK they may not have been that common in use in 2003, but still you'd think the ''CIA'' would get an idea. Furthermore FridgeLogic kicks in when you realize that these supposedly super-secured computers aren't if they have [=USB=] ports (the U in which stands for "universal" i.e. works with lots of stuff) with no restrictions on them.

Not only that, but such older technology that appears will inevitably be jacked to the gills and capable of things it can't/couldn't do in real life. The [[PlayfulHacker Hacker]]/[[TheCracker cracker]] character of a show usually has them, if only because they tend to be a fan of SchizoTech, which makes them look more out of place. If he's such a world-class computer expert, why is he using technology that's now over two decades old? Most newer machines do not even ''have'' built-in floppy drives. However, it's still used, because [[ViewersAreMorons even the oldest and most computer illiterate viewer]] [[SmallReferencePools at least knows what a floppy disk looks like]].

* A variant occurs in ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', where [[spoiler: [[Nazi EvilGenius Emile Zola, one of the bad guys from the first movie, is revealed to have had his [[BrainUpload consciousness uploaded to a computer]]]]...a 1970's computer. While the requisite storage capacity is at least somewhat justified by the computer having [[ComputerEqualsTapeDrive loads and loads of tape drives]], processing power and speed is another matter; it's highly unlikely that a computer of that vintage would be fast enough to emulate a human brain, which we can't do even with modern computers. Also, tape has notoriously slow access times, which would make quick thinking all the more difficult.

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'', being made in Japan mid-TheNineties, uses the much, much cooler-looking than floppies [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_disc MO disc]], which still have the same basic recognizable shape. In the NintendoGameCube remake, these MO discs were inserted into ''customized Game Cubes''.

Japan's love of technology usually means anime will feature whatever computer media is popular that year. That comes with its own problems, notably {{Zeerust}} -- for example, ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' (''and'' the current series of movie remakes) seems to suggest that DAT cassettes will be popular for portable audio in 2015 again (when it never really took off to begin with).

* Carefully analyzed in ''GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', where a minor character (a hacker) uses floppy disks. Thousands, because of all the data. It's mentioned that he was paranoid, and [[LampshadeHanging that it's ridiculous]]. But it did save the data from an attacking hacker who probably hadn't even seen a floppy drive in his life. In {{cyberspace}}, filesharing is shown by a DigitalAvatar of a floppy, which is fully acceptable because that small icon in your word processor that reads "Save" is a floppy disk as well.

* As a TakeThat EasterEgg, Mac OS X since Leopard displays [=PCs=] on a network as beige CRT monitors showing a Windows 3.x/Windows 9x Blue Screen Of Death. Leopard was released in October 2007, when both beige monitors and the Windows 9x line had been obsolete for several years.
* Back in the days of cassette audio players some enthusiasts made cassettes with infinite length of music. Inside the cassette had a small AM receiver and a recording head or a small magnetic loudspeaker to transfer the signal. Rewinding the cassette tuned it to different stations.
* [[WhenIWasYourAge Once upon a time]], a T1 line was considered the be-all end-all high-speed Internet connection. To this day, many people still gush about a T1 line as if it's something to aspire to obtaining, when in reality, they were only capable of around 1.5Mbps - far slower than the data connection available to even a low-end cellphone in 2015.

* {{Once upon a time|WhenIWasYourAge}}, a T1 line was considered the be-all end-all high-speed Internet connection. To this day, many people still gush about a T1 line as if it's something to aspire to obtaining, when in reality, they were only capable of around 1.5Mbps - far slower than the data connection available to even a low-end cellphone in 2015.

* {{WhenIWasYourAge|Once upon a time}}, a T1 line was considered the be-all end-all high-speed Internet connection. To this day, many people still gush about a T1 line as if it's something to aspire to obtaining, when in reality, they were only capable of around 1.5Mbps - far slower than the data connection available to even a low-end cellphone in 2015.

* The limited disk space was spoofed in some Creator/{{Sierra}} adventure games - self-spoof, actually, as many of their games in their golden age fit on well over half a dozen floppies. Most spoofing of all was ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest IV'' (1991); the plot was based upon a future civilization finding the ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry IV'' missing floppies (itself another in-joke), and attempting to play them on their MasterComputer, with disastrous results. In another scene, the protagonist can go in a future game shop, and find a copy of ''[[VideoGame/KingsQuest King's Quest]] 48'', which boasted a 12GB size. (There was once upon a time a review that criticized ''King's Quest VI'' (1992) for using too much disk space. It required... 20MB) Finally, the very end required the player to download an entire personality on a 3½" floppy disk (pictured above) that had lots of other stuff on it too. Some of that "other stuff" includes a ''copy of the game itself''. If you try to delete it, the game will quit without warning.