History Main / TwoDecadesBehind

** Similarly, whenever Calvin is show riding in the family car, he's only strapped in with a two-point seatbelt. The three-point seatbelt was invented in 1959 and became standard practice in the backseat by the late 1970s. He should have also been in a booster seat, which were made standard by the early 1980s and were already widespread in the United States by the time the comic began.

* A common criticism of Creator/DCComics's ''ComicBook/New52'' (2011) is how much it reminded some readers of the early 1990s [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]]. The talent on most ''New 52'' books was and remains heavy on 1990s stalwarts like Creator/JimLee, Creator/ScottLobdell, Creator/FabianNicieza, Creator/BrettBooth, and even Creator/RobLiefeld. Special mention should go to Creator/GeorgePerez, whose work on "World's Finest" didn't look so hot due to his clearly not taking modern digital inking and coloring into account. Not to mention incorporating Creator/{{Wildstorm}} characters into the DC Universe, such as Zealot, Voodoo, Fairchild and Grifter.

* Russian animator Yuri Norshteyn has been producing a stop motion adaptation of ''The Overcoat'' since 1981 using hand-drawn cut-outs and sets along with a traditional animation camera using real film. By the time production stretched into the 2010s, cut-out animation had transitioned into UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash, and the film cameras needed to make the movie were long obsolete, with the film development lab in Moscow he was using having gone under nearly 20 years prior. He refuses to make the transition to computers, as he wants to complete the film using the same process he's been using for years. As of 2017, the film is still in production and Yuri Norshteyn is considered the last animator to produce animation using pre-digital methods and technology.

* Spoofed with the Robin Sparkles videos in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', which were supposedly from the mid-1990s [[{{Retraux}} but look as if they were made in 1986]]. Robin explains that "TheEighties didn't come to {{Canada|Eh}} until 1993." The gag continues in a later episode, where Robin is credited in Canada with having invented {{Grunge}} as a genre... in 1996.

** For a pre-teen girl who was canonically born in 1999, [[Characters/GravityFallsMabelPines Mabel Pines]]' cultural tastes are notably late-twentieth-century. She's a big fan of Sev'ral Timez, a nineties-style boy band performing in 2012 ("[[LampshadeHanging Aren't they that boy band that came a decade too late?]]"), she sings eighties songs on karaoke night, she dresses up as a power-suited businesswoman when she gets a chance to run the Mystery Shack, and one of her favorite movies is an old VHS of the ridiculously eighties ''[[ShowWithinAShow Dream Boy High]]''. Explained by series creator Creator/AlexHirsch basing many aspects of the show on his own childhood in TheNineties, and Mabel in particular on his twin sister.

* Deliberately subverted in "ComicStrip/PhoebeAndHerUnicorn." In a GoComics comment on a strip focusing on Phoebe's parents and their enthusiasm for video games, Dana Simpson, the cartoonist, pointed out how many comic strip parents seem very dated (see the "ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes" examples above) because cartoonists usually base them on their memories of their own parents. That meant that parents in these strips seemed to be a generation removed from current-day parents. To avoid this, Dana based Phoebe's parents on some of her gamer-geek friends who had children.

* Deliberately subverted in ComicStrip/PhoebeandHerUnicorn. In a GoComics comment on a strip focusing on Phoebe's parents and their enthusiasm for video games, Dana Simpson, the cartoonist, pointed out how many comic strip parents seem very dated (see the ComicStrip/CalvinandHobbes examples above) because cartoonists usually base them on their memories of their own parents. That meant that parents in these strips seemed to be a generation removed from current-day parents. To avoid this, Dana based Phoebe's parents on some of her gamer-geek friends who had children.

** Another season 2 episode, "The Internet", features a character whose been working in tech support since the 1980s. This is evident when he tries to help Gumball and Darwin with their computer, as he's unaware of how to block pop-up ads and sends emails through the disk drive. He even tries to delete the Internet by deleting the web browser, before throwing the whole computer away in the trash. The fact that the character is a floppy disk reinforces this trope.

* Mocked in [[http://www.shortpacked.com/comic/a-6 a strip of]] ''Webcomic/{{Shortpacked}}''.

** This trope is discussed in the article, "[[http://www.cracked.com/article_19753_7-ridiculously-outdated-assumptions-every-movie-makes.html 7 Ridiculously Outdated Assumptions Every Movie Makes]]". The example that most fits this is #2, which discusses how high school pranks are often seen as extremely funny in movies, but in real life nowadays students will get arrested for less. Pre-Columbine, the pranks would not have been perceived this way. But even pre-Columbine, there was far less tolerance for high school pranks than how media makes it to be. This is due mostly to the birth of the Self-Esteem Generation (basically anybody born from about 1975 to 1995 was a part of this), the various child/teen-related social issues that sprung up during the '80s (AIDS, molestation, etc.), and the fact that by about 1980, school teachers could no longer enforce physical punishment on students. In fact, one of the central points of ''Film/DazedAndConfused'' (made in 1993) is to glorify the comparable freedom teenagers had during the mid-'70s.

* You're not going to understand half the jokes in ''ComicBook/ScottPilgrim'' unless you're familiar with early video game titles for the UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem & the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis. This was a common critique of TheMovie.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' originally featured a UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem [[ConsoleCameo in the player character's bedroom]], which was already pretty indicative of the games' lengthy stint in DevelopmentHell--the Japanese version released the same year as the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64, and the American version two years later, by which point the console was basically abandoned. However, it's the first VideoGameRemake, ''VideoGame/PokemonFireRedAndLeafGreen'', that really falls into this territory: the player character now owns a UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem, an ''older'' console that was 20 years old at that point. This was likely a deliberate throwback, as the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance itself could play NES games, and the same generation's ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'' had the player own the then-modern UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube. Regardless, ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndEevee'' took the step of updating it to the contemporary UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch instead.

* Understandable due to the Walt Disney Company's longtime moral standards, but on the early '90s Disney-aired (but Canadian-produced) children's show ''Series/UnderTheUmbrellaTree'', Iggy the Iguana, a fan of rap music, was still listening to relatively innocent '80s-style rap (think Music/TheBeastieBoys) in 1991, even though gangsta rap was rapidly gaining popularity by that time. Since the show began production in 1986, this can easily be dismissed.

* In episode 5 of ''Anime/APlaceFurtherThanTheUniverse'', it's revealed that Megumi lent Kimari her video game console... [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation an original PlayStation]] that's almost a decade older than she herself is. (Everyone has smartphones, so it apparently takes place in the 2010s or later.)

* ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'' had this issue during the entire first run of books. Set-ups that were rare or unique in the mid 1980s, such as Claudia having her own land line (making it possible for the sitters to not tie up another house phone during meetings), became more mainstream through the 1990s. Characters frequently made references to older media from author Ann M. Martin's youth (like Stacey's favorite movie being ''Film/MaryPoppins'') and no references to any media more modern than that occur, despite the characters being teenagers in the [[ComicBookTime entirety of the 1990s]]. Fashions that were popular in the late '80s and early '90s remain through the series, despite Stacey and Claudia being touted as the most up to date on fashion as the two "coolest" members. (Stacey's hair remains permed even as big curly perms fell out of fashion.) The characters also continue to use Claudia's personal landline for their calls and have to meet in person at one house during a set time to be able to schedule their clients properly, and using computers is almost never mentioned. This is kept all the way through to the end in 2000, even as more modern media and technology came into play. The [[Series/TheBabySittersClub2020 2020 series]] updates the setting and character references and have the teen girls use online databases to keep their club notes and create schedules for each other, but embraces the landline phone's anachronism by having their club phone be a retro phone that takes calls via VOIP.

** For a pre-teen girl who was canonically born in 1999, Mabel Pines' cultural tastes are notably late-twentieth-century. She's a big fan of Sev'ral Timez, a nineties-style boy band performing in 2012 ("[[LampshadeHanging Aren't they that boy band that came a decade too late?]]"), she sings eighties songs on karaoke night, she dresses up as a power-suited businesswoman when she gets a chance to run the Mystery Shack, and one of her favorite movies is an old VHS of the ridiculously eighties ''[[ShowWithinAShow Dream Boy High]]''. Explained by series creator Creator/AlexHirsch basing many aspects of the show on his own childhood in TheNineties, and Mabel in particular on his twin sister.

* When American Family Studios produced the Christian animated series ''Ryan Defrates: Secret Agent'' in 2017, they chose to officially release the show [[DirectToVideo one episode at a time on DVD through their website]] before it was picked up by the Christian streaming service Jellytelly. While it's still common in TheNewTens for some movies to skip television and cinemas for a DVD release, producing a TV series specifically for the straight-to-video market had fallen out of favor by the late 2000s as many studios found it easier and more profitable to release their shows through streaming services and [[WebVideo the general web]].

** Despite being set in a far future, and despite the fact that UsefulNotes/RichardNixon and Spiro Agnew have been dead since the 1990s and UsefulNotes/HenryKissinger is no longer politically active, the series constantly pokes fun at these politicians from the 1970s, as if there haven't been other mockable politicians around ever since.

* The abandoned 4th season of the Hungarian cartoon ''Animation/MezgaCsalad'' is a layered example. Its two completed episodes feature the characters from the original 1968 season, still inexplicably the same age (at least a few of them got a wardrobe update), trying to buy their first home computer and discover the digital world. This was already a dated topic by the end of the 90s when home [=PCs=] became widespread, but the episodes are from 2005. Worse, since this ill-fated {{revival}} was still helmed by the original writers (who at the time were in their 60s and 70s), the humor and general style of writing seemed to be stuck in the mid-1900s, with lazy puns like mistaking a computer mouse for a living one and even a [[AsianBuckTeeth buck toothed]], yellow skinned, slant eyed, [[AsianSpeekeeEngrish heavily accented]] racist Chinese caricature who wanted to [[AsiansEatPets eat the family dog]] (for what it's worth, such jokes [[ValuesDissonance were very common and topical]] even during the 2000s as Eastern Europe experienced an influx of Asian businesses and immigrants). This out of touch thinking also lead to the series' cancellation. The creators insisted on expensive, hand drawn traditional animation that was simply unfeasible in the country at the time even with digital tools, as [[Creator/PannoniaFilmStudio their studio]] had been on a massive downward spiral since 1990.

* As the [[LongRunner long running]] Swedish comic ''ComicStrip/NittioettanKarlsson'' is mostly written by those who were [[WriteWhatYouKnow conscripts themselves and makes use of their experiences in the comic]], things such as fashion and technology tend to be a decade or two behind the current year. Or course, there are some things that [[GrandfatherClause never change no matter how old the comic gets]].

->''"Does anyone else our age even listen to 90s music? Or it is just mostly 30-year-olds who tend to write characters in our age group?"''

* The ''Literature/BabySittersClub'' had this issue during the entire first run of books. Set-ups that were rare or unique in the mid 1980s, such as Claudia having her own land line (making it possible for the sitters to not tie up another house phone during meetings), became more mainstream through the 1990s. Characters frequently made references to older media from author Ann M. Martin's youth (like Stacey's favorite movie being ''Film/MaryPoppins'') and no references to any media more modern than that occur, despite the characters being teenagers in the [[ComicBookTime entirety of the 1990s]]. Fashions that were popular in the late '80s and early '90s remain through the series, despite Stacey and Claudia being touted as the most up to date on fashion as the two "coolest" members. (Stacey's hair remains permed even as big curly perms fell out of fashion.) The characters also continue to use Claudia's personal landline for their calls and have to meet in person at one house during a set time to be able to schedule their clients properly, and using computers is almost never mentioned. This is kept all the way through to the end in 2000, even as more modern media and technology came into play. The [[Series/TheBabySittersClub2020 2020 series]] updates the setting and character references and have the teen girls use online databases to keep their club notes and create schedules for each other, but embraces the landline phone's anachronism by having their club phone be a retro phone that takes calls via VOIP.

* The 1992 debut album, ''Generation Terrorists'', for the Manic Street Preachers featured a [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness distinct glam rock/metal sound]] despite the genre having already died out on the radio by then. However the album still managed to turn in a profit from the indie crowd because of its dark themes and punk-rock edge.

* Creator/ChuckECheese kept running the ''same'' commercials from the early 1990s until ''very'' late in the 2000s. And Chuck was still in his [[TotallyRadical not-fooling-anyone skater drag]] until 2012, when he was finally given a much-needed makeover.
* The ''incredibly'' '80s commercials for the toy Skip-It remained on TV from the late '80s all the way through the '90s.

* [=LifeCall=], (Also known as Life Alert) had aired this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQlpDiXPZHQ commercial]] since the late eighties with minor changes to the script. Like with the [=MarineLand=] example, modern versions do exist and air on TV, but the earlier versions from the 80s and 90s managed to keep airing well into ''[[TheNewTens the mid 2010's]]''.
* In the Chicagoland area, there is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fM5K5jK840 this commercial]] for Victory Autowreckers, which was filmed in the ''very'' early 1980s and continued airing on television well into the 2000s. For those who lived in Chicago during the 80s and 90s, this is a commercial they know by heart. It was finally [[https://youtu.be/tsBrlDMRGGI updated]]--in 2016.
* Tootsie Roll Industries has their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rHeD5x2tI Tootsie Roll Pop commercial]] that dates back to ''[[ExaggeratedTrope 1970]],'' and still gets aired to this day. Ever wonder how many licks it takes? It has bewildered many people alike for over ''fifty'' years now. The company later made an online series based on the commercial in 2016.

* An intentional seasonal example: The "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" Hershey's kiss commercial has run every year since 1989, only getting a widescreen facelift in the early 2010's. This is done so that the Hershey company doesn't have to spend its advertising budget on new commercials for the holidays, and can use the money on employee bonuses instead.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Blondie}}'':

* In ''VideoGame/BioShock'' and ''VideoGame/BioShock2", which are set in the 1960's, the denizens of Rapture have considerably dated guns, such as Webley revolvers and Spencer 1882 shotguns. The latest firearms in the game are Thompson submachine guns, which, despite their use in WWII, were designed in the 1920's.