History Main / RetroUniverse

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' continues this trend by making it a bit of an AnachronismStew. Modern innovations like cell phones, video games, and the internet are around, but a lot of the buildings, cars, and characters have decidedly retro vibes. There's very little consistency in this regard, as one episode will have modern clothing and tech, while the next will have fedora-clad gangsters shooting at Batman with Tommy-guns. Though despite this retro vibe, the show definitely has modern social values. Nobody ever comments on the races of minority heroes like ComicBook/{{Firestorm}}, ComicBook/BlueBeetle and ComicBook/TheAtom, nor the genders of characters like Comicbook/{{Vixen}} and ComicBook/BlackCanary.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'' is ambiguous in its setting - the fashions suggest 1940s/50s, but locomotives from the 1820s through to the 1970s appear. Modern architecture exists, but at the same time there seem to be steam locomotives working the railways of wherever-the-Mainland-is. A flashback to Duck's younger days depicts people in Victorian costume standing in front of a building from the 1940s and one to Hiro's past puts him in Tokugawa-era Japan, even though his class of locomotive was built during the Second World War.

* The IDW ''ComicBook/JemAndTheHolograms'' comics are obviously set in the contemporary time period; however, the setting still has 80s style stuff like absurdly bright colored clothing and records instead of [=CDs=] or digital music. It could be seen as TruthInTelevision, as in the early 2010s dyeing your hair [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair unusual colors]] is popular and vinyl is regaining popularity.

* In 2000, [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Metropolis]] was changed into a futuristic version of itself. It didn't stick.

* ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' seems to be set in some kind of an eerie cross between the 1950s and the 1980s because the FramingDevice is an old woman telling about her life as a teenager in the 50s to her grandchild in the 80s. How she aged so fast, however, is anyone's guess.

* ''Film/KnivesOut'' is a downplayed example. It's set more or less around the same time it came out (2019), with characters engaging in timely conversations about ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'' and the Trump presidency, but the costumes and even the font choices all suggest the 1970s, as befits a GenreThrowback to classic MysteryFiction.

* ''Film/KnivesOut'' is a downplayed example. It's set more or less around the same time it came out (2019), with characters engaging in timely conversations about ''Theater/{{Hamilton}}'' and the Trump presidency, but the costumes and even the font choices all suggest the 1970s, as befitted its GenreThrowback status as a riff on classic MysteryFiction.

* ''VideoGame/StubbsTheZombie'' takes place in the 50s, but the technology is much more advanced, similar to the ''Fallout'' series

** The setting has this ''internally'', as well. We're informed the 1970s aesthetic was intensely stylish 20 years ago and is now [[DiscoDan a complete embarrassment]], as [[DiscoSucks happened after the 70s in our world]], yet the decor (particularly in the Whirling-in-Rags) and most other characters' fashion choices, even ones stated to be stylish (such as Klaasje's silver flared catsuit and the punk look of the [=SKULLs=]), are all still planted in the late 70s. This stagnation is implied to be because of the economic and cultural devastation inflicted upon Revachol, meaning no new aesthetic ideas are happening.

** The city of Revachol mixes 1970s aesthetics and technology (plus a few technologies that never were) with an early 19th-century French aesthetic. For instance, the police wear highwayman-style cloaks instead of raincoats on patrol, Kim's sports car looks more like a stagecoach, and the streetlights are styled after hurricane lamps.
** The setting has this ''internally'', as well. We're informed the 1970s aesthetic was intensely stylish 20 years ago and is now [[DiscoDan a complete embarrassment]], as [[DeaderThanDisco happened after the 70s in our world]], yet the decor (particularly in the Whirling-in-Rags) and most other characters' fashion choices, even ones stated to be stylish (such as Klaasje's silver flared catsuit and the punk look of the [=SKULLs=]), are all still planted in the late 70s. This stagnation is implied to be because of the economic and cultural devastation inflicted upon Revachol, meaning no new aesthetic ideas are happening.

** The city of Revachol mixes 1970s aesthetics and technology (plus a few technologies that never were) with an early 19th-century French aesthetic. For instance, the police wear highwayman-style cloaks instead of raincoats on patrol, Kim's sports car looks more like a stagecoach, and the streetlights are styled after hurricane lamps.
** The setting has this ''internally'', as well. We're informed the 1970s aesthetic was intensely stylish 20 years ago and is now [[DiscoDan a complete embarrassment]], as [[DeaderThanDisco happened after the 70s in our world]], yet the decor (particularly in the Whirling-in-Rags) and most other characters' fashion choices (especially Klaasje's silver flared catsuit and the punk look of the [=SKULLs=]) are all still planted in the late 70s. This stagnation is implied to be because of the economic and cultural devastation inflicted upon Revachol, meaning no new aesthetic ideas are happening.

* The city of Revachol from ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'' mixes 1970s aesthetics and technology (plus a few technologies that never were) with an early 19th-century French aesthetic. For instance, the police wear highwayman-style cloaks instead of raincoats on patrol, Kim's sports car looks more like a stagecoach, and the streetlights are styled after hurricane lamps.

* ''Film/{{Penelope}}'' has modern technology and (mostly) modern costumes, but the architecture and interior design look like the early 20th century with a fairy-tale twist.

** Paricularly notable in ''[[Comicbook/GrantMorrisonsBatman The Return of Bruce Wayne]]'' #5, which is supposedly set just after the Wayne murders, so probably around the 1990s, but is ''conceptually'' set a decade before ''Comicbook/DetectiveComics'' #27, in a world of art deco architecture, double-breasted suits and fedoras (with the one exception being Nichols Carter's smiley face t-shirt). The only explanation given is "retro is in this year".

* ''[[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutron The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius]]'' take place in the city of Retroville, which follows the trope.

* An odd example in ''VideoGame/DeadSpace3''. While the other two games are pretty much straight examples of a SciFi setting, the third takes place on, or in orbit of, a planet filled with ruins left behind by the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces ([[BalkaniseMe a political entity that apparently no longer exists as of the time of]] ''Dead Space 3'') 200 years earlier. The Sovereign Colonies technology and designs seem rather more primitive than the more "modern" examples seen in the earlier games. [[OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture Their computer technology seems to be rather dated]], many of their doors need to be opened manually, [[NoPaperFuture they use a lot more paper than is common in later time periods]], they have black and white photographs on the walls (possibly due to aging, or the low light levels), the advertisements for the fictional drink called "Peng" which appear in Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are done in a cyber punk style, showing an attractive woman dressed in futuristic clothes, where as the advertisements for Peng from the Sovereign Colonies era however show women in a more 1950s pin-up style, similar to old school Coke ads.

* ''VideoGame/Prey2017'' takes place in an alternate universe where JFK survived the assassination and used his administration (in the 1960's) to build an alien research facility in space, but after they fucked up and a containment breach killed an entire research team, the whole station was quarantined, extra-locked, and generally abandoned[[note]]It's implied that in any universe where JFK's head ends up like a victim of Scanners, the knowledge of the Typhon project is lost to obscurity in America while the U.S.S.R. quietly claims the Typhon organisms for themselves, presumably containing it more effectively... [[FridgeHorror of course, with the fall of the Soviet Union, all those containment crews have been slowly losing their funding up to right now...]][[/note]] until [[MegaCorp TranStar]] bought the whole station at a discount. As a result, most of the aesthetics and core hardware is still 1960's, though there are some shades of CassetteFuture with 1980's music and D&D sessions.

* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' has the USA fall into civil war, the eventual victors being the highly conservative, anti-technology Northern Confederacy/Victoria. This leads to a society where modern architecture is torn down in favor of neocolonial styles, computers and television are unheard of... and the armies of Victoria ride to battle in [[AnachronismStew cold fusion-powered zeppelins]] armed with "fields" that prevent guns from working.

* ''Paradise Hills'' is set at least a few decades into the future, in a world where holograms and flying cars are a fact of life. The flying cars, however, look like they came out of TheForties save for having hoverpads instead of wheels, and the rich hold parties that look like early 20th century debutante's balls.

* The first ''VideoGame/MetalGear1'' vaguely resembles the 1940s, with a sepia palette, WWII-looking tech, WWII-era weapons (other than the science fiction ones), and the overall look of a 1940s prison camp (barbed wire, attack dogs, etc). Gray Fox has 1940s fighter pilot facial hair. This is probably because the primary influence on the game was ''Film/TheGreatEscape'', set in the 40s. The manual gives the date of Operation Intrude N131 as "19XX", meaning it could take place in the past as well; although it's worth pointing out that Diane has a Patrick Nagel-type 80s look, and the presence of Dr. Pettrovich and Ellen suggest we're some point in the ColdWar. Not until ''VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake'' came out, with a strong futuristic aesthetic, was ''Metal Gear'' placed in [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture 1995]].

* The same can be said of ''ComicStrip/TheBroons'' and ''ComicStrip/OorWullie'', except they started in the ''thirties''. This sometimes gets lampshaded; in one Halloween strip Wullie declares he's going to go guising as in a home-made scarecrow costume and have a turnip lantern, and his friends are baffled, because they're going to go trick-or-treating in bought pop-culture costumes and have pumpkin lanterns, and Wullie doesn't sound like he's from this century.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* The current writer and artist team on ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'' have embraced this trope. While still nominally set in the present day, various elements -- most notably the police cars -- look they belong to the 1980's at the latest. Since the strip has been running since the 1930's, and includes both a cast of characters and props introduced at different points all through those decades, this seems like a reasonable [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall acknowledgment]] of ComicBookTime.
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* ''Series/IAmNotOkayWithThis'' isn't explicitly set in TheEighties like its Creator/{{Netflix}} stablemate ''Series/StrangerThings''; modern cars are sprinkled amidst older ones, the characters use smartphones, [[UsefulNotes/HighDefinition HDTVs]], and modern computers with flash drives, and TheNineties are referred to as being in the past. However, the setting and aesthetic of the show are still heavily evocative of the time period, from the color palette to the music to the downplaying of modern technology to [[Film/It2017 Sophia Lillis]] playing the protagonist. Justified by it being set in a [[FlyoverCountry small, rural, working-class town]] that is [[TwoDecadesBehind behind the times]], while Stanley's collections of UsefulNotes/{{V|CR}}HS tapes and vinyl records are due to him being a retro enthusiast.

* 2007's Get Up! By Global Deejays and Technotronic is an example of a song from the [[TurnOfTheMillennium 2000s]] that draws heavily from [[TheEighties 1980s]] and [[TheNineties 1990s]] electronica, both in its sound and in the fashion and imagery in its [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4JNpmLPvcY video]].

* The 1986 anime ''Anime/MapleTown'' appears to be set sometime in the [[http://i.imgur.com/ZKwfaft.jpg late 19th and early 20th centuries]]. While the work appears to be set in a country and village reminiscence of countrysides in The Netherlands and Germany.

When it's implied or even shown that the rest of the world is LikeRealityUnlessNoted outside of a zone of weirdness, this trope can be a sign that you're in LovecraftCountry, [[SouthernGothic the Gothic South]], {{Cloudcuckooland}}, a QuirkyTown, or an UncannyVillage. Just pray its not StepfordSuburbia.