History Main / TwoDecadesBehind

* ''Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon'': This ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' Franchise/MonsterVerse fanfiction has no reference to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic or social distancing, despite mainly taking place in 2020 and being written during that year. Possibly {{justified}}, since this ''is'' set in a world where {{Kaiju}} emerged from slumber in mid-2019 and had a {{terraform}}ing effect on the Earth's ecosystems.

*** The channel has yet to air shows such as ''WesternAnimation/ElinorWondersWhy'', ''Series/DonkeyHodie'' and ''WesternAnimation/AlmasWay'' despite airing promos for them, with the newest show on there being ''WesternAnimation/XavierRiddleAndTheSecretMuseum''.

* In episode 5 of ''Anime/APlaceFurtherThanTheUniverse'', it's revealed that Megumi lent Kimari her video game console... 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.)

* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in ''Marilyn Monroe: Her Shoe and Me'' by Howard G. Allen in which Creator/MarilynMonroe explains how she has affairs with other men and her husband Arthur Miller has affairs with other women. She then goes on to say "We have a [[EthicalSlut very open marriage]].". She was married to Arthur Miller from 1956-1559 and the term "open marriage" wasn't used until TheSeventies.

* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] on ''Series/{{MASH}}''; while the show was set in the '50s, the attitudes and fashions (that hair!) of the characters was much more reflective of the '70s, when the show was filmed.[[note]]This perhaps lampshades the fact the war the show's makers ''really'' wanted to portray was Vietnam - but TV producers vetoed this as being too soon. American viewers in the early 1970s would have had no doubt ''which'' controversial Asian war was being satirized with extremely black humor, which added to its popularity.[[/note]]

* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNKq5uDywk#t=17m43s this scene]] from the [[TheEighties 1987]] MadeForTVMovie ''Deadly Care'' which is [[TheSixties set during the sixties]], Creator/CherylLadd mentions her distaste for [[CarpetOfVirility hairy men]] and acknowledges that a guy "has a great butt". [[CarpetOfVirility Hairy men]] didn't fall out of favor until the [[TheSeventies the late seventies]] and [[EstrogenBrigade girls and women]] didn't start fixating on men's butts until [[TheEighties the early eighties]].

** There are numerous references to media from the mid-20th century that have since fallen into relative obscurity, and would've been unlikely for Calvin to have heard of in the mid 80s to mid 90s, such as ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedtime_for_Bonzo Bedtime for Bonzo]]'', ''Literature/DickAndJane'', ''Film/TheBlob1958'', ''Film/SongOfTheSouth'', and ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(How_Much_Is)_That_Doggie_in_the_Window%3F How Much is That Doggie in the Window?]]''.

* This is explored in the ''Franchise/ToyStory'' series. In the original ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'', Andy is a boy who's obsessed with cowboys. While not impossible for a boy in the 1990s, this is something more associated with the cowboy fad of the first half of the 20th century. Likewise, Woody gets displaced by a space-age character, which is what happened when sci-fi became big in the early 1960s. The sequel ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'' rolls with all of this. Woody actually ''is'' an old toy dating back several decades. He's based off an old 1950s show called ''Woody's Roundup''. The show was canceled on a (possible) cliffhanger because kids became more interested in sci-fi than westerns thanks to the Space Race (Stinky Pete sums it up by citing Sputnik as the reason for the show's abrupt ending).

** Appeared in some comics of the 1990s, with some of Bruce Wayne's high-society friends still saying "old boy" and other faux-British expressions, even though it hadn't been fashionable to say such things since the 1930s at the latest. Of course, since Wayne is a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and his friends are largely [[UpperClassTwit Upper-Class Twits]], this was probably just [[RuleOfFunny satire]].

* It's not uncommon for illustrated children's books to look twenty or thirty (or more!) years out of date. One relatively recent example is the ''Literature/PigeonSeries'', in particular the volume ''Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late'', in which the pigeon's owner is headed to bed himself, and is wearing an old 1920s style floppy night cap and ''carrying a candle''. This series began in 2003, and this book is the second volume!

* Take a look at your own grandparents. If they haven't gone completely casual for the sake of comfort or safety, they probably dress about 20 years out of date. (Their casual wear is probably outdated as well.) In TheEighties, many grandmothers wore polyester dresses that looked more suited to TheFifties or TheSixties. The [[DiscoDan aging Casanova who dons a polyester Disco suit]] (complete with chest medallions) before going out on a date is also a common image from media of that era. In the 1920's, it was common in movies to portray old women wearing clothing with long skirts that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1890s. Before the age of television or the movies, fashions dispersed ''very'' slowly. It wasn't uncommon in Renaissance Europe for people out in the countryside to dress in fashions that were about 20 years behind the clothing worn by people at court.

** ''ComicBook/BatmanFortunateSon'' -- the infamous one-shot comic [[TheNewRockAndRoll where Batman is revealed to hate rock music]] -- just-as-infamously has a pretty loose grasp on what "{{Rock}}" music even is. Despite the fact the comic was released and takes place in 1999, a vast majority of discussion of the genre refers specifically to classic RockAndRoll from TheFifties (Music/ElvisPresley, Music/TheBeatles, Music/BuddyHolly, etc.), and at the most featuring a Music/SidVicious {{expy}} in a PunkRock. The main plot is driven by the extended breakdown of a "rockstar" in the present day, there's no mention of any {{Grunge}}, HeavyMetal, or any form of rock music past TheSeventies.

** Barry the Bear is [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed based on]] Music/BarryWhite.
** Everyone uses 8-track tapes for music, and disco is still popular. In one episode, the beavers get a #1 disco hit... in the ''late 1990s.''

* This is explored in the ''Franchise/ToyStory'' series. In the original ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'', Andy is a boy who's obsessed with cowboys. While not impossible for a boy in the 1990s, this is something more associated with the cowboy fad of the first half of the 20th century. Likewise, Woody gets displaced by a space-age character, which is what happened when sci-fi became big in the early 1960s. The sequel ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'' rolls with all of this. Woody actually ''is'' an old toy dating back several decades. He's based off an old 1950s show called ''Woody's Roundup''. The show was canceled on a (possible) cliffhanger because kids became more interested in sci-fi than westerns thanks to the Space Race (Stinky Pete sums it up by citing Sputnik as the reason for the show's abrupt ending).

* This is actually the plot for the 2019 television movie ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLifeStaticCling'' as the title character [[ItMakesSenseInContext has been stranded in space for 20 years with his friends]] and, upon his return, becomes alienated by how [[FishOutOfTemporalWater drastically different and advanced society has become]] since the '90s.

* Children's and {{Young Adult|Literature}} books from the 1980s and early 1990s sometimes feel this way. In many cases, the social mores seem more in line with the 1950s-1960s than the time in which the books take place. For example, many books from that time period will have characters shocked by divorce, or have people be shocked by a mother working outside the home.
* It's not uncommon for illustrated children's books to look twenty or thirty (or more!) years out of date. One relatively recent example is the ''Literature/PigeonSeries'', in particular the volume ''Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late'', in which the pigeon's owner is headed to bed himself, and is wearing an old 1920s style floppy night cap and ''carrying a candle''. This series began in 2003, and this book is the second volume!
* Although the works of Creator/PGWodehouse are best known for (and indeed written during) their GenteelInterbellumSetting, Creator/GeorgeOrwell pointed out that their depictions of aristocracy and the class system make his stories fit much more in TheEdwardianEra when Wodehouse himself came of age, rather than the 1920s or 30s in the aftermath of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the war]] that destroyed the noble class.
* As [[https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys Orwell notes]], 1930's young adult literature in Britain was quite deliberately 3 or even 4 decades out of date, being both capital C politically Conservative and just "the status quo really shouldn't change" conservative.
* ''Literature/TheFirstMenInTheMoon'', believe it or not. It was written in 1901, which is long after astronomers knew for certain that the Moon is an airless, lifeless world. Many assume that it was written thirty or forty years earlier, not just because of its portrayal of the Moon, but also because of confusion with Creator/{{Jules Verne}}'s ''Literature/FromTheEarthToTheMoon'', which really was written in the 1860s.
* ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'' came out in the 2010s, but uses leet-speak and gamer culture tropes that were already beginning to show their age in 2003. It may also seem generally weird that in a story set in a pop-culture immersed 2045 everyone is obsessed with the 80s, with the most recent references being from the late 90s, but the story actually takes some time to justify it: it's explained early on by the main character to be the result of everybody obsessing over the hobbies and passions of a deceased eccentric billionaire who was himself obsessed with the pop culture of his teenage years. The reason poring over these old shows, movies, music, and video games is so popular is because he set up his last will and testament to leave everything (his massive fortune and legal control of the immersive VR world that everybody uses constantly) to somebody who can find and solve the clues he's hidden in it, which are all based on detailed knowledge of this pop culture.
* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid: The Long Haul'' (2014): At one point in the book, the Heffleys lock their keys in the car. This isn't possible with electronic locking systems, which have been mainstream in American cars since the 1990s, and the car's curved body shape indicates that it was not made before then.

* ''VideoGame/MetalGear'''s vision of TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture (and even TheSixties and TheSeventies, to some extent) is mostly based on late Eighties and Nineties sci-fi movies - things like ''Film/TotalRecall1990'', ''Series/MaxHeadroom'' and ''Film/BladeRunner''. The visual aesthetic, the fashionable clothes and body types (not to mention [[EightiesHair the hairstyles on the men]]), the politics, the themes, the {{Shout Out}}s and the sense of humour are all based on that tradition. Part of this is ZeerustCanon and is why ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' moved away from the aesthetic a little, but ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' goes back the other way and invokes it as deliberate {{Zeerust}}.
* The Phillips CD-I game ''VideoGame/HotelMario'' played a lot like a simple '80s arcade game. When WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd reviewed it he said it probably would've gotten better reception if it had come out ten years earlier (it came out in 1994).
* Similarly, by many accounts ''VideoGame/DukeNukemForever'' could have been a fine game if it had actually come out when it was supposed to (constant shifting of ''when'' that was notwithstanding). Instead, it features gameplay design elements (not to mention references) that by its 2011 release were almost a decade old even at most recent.
* Though set in the 1990s and released in 1994, the world of ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' still bears more resemblance to the Eighties. No one seems to have personal computers, some of the language (in the English version) falls into TotallyRadical territory, and Ness's attire isn't all that different from that of [[VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings his predecessor Ninten]], whose game actually was set and made in the Eighties; most other characters' attire is also quite Eighties-like.

* Although ''VideoGame/Persona4'' explicitly takes place in [[NextSundayAD 2011]], the game has something of a charmingly-lame retro vibe to showcase how rural and rustic [[CityOfAdventure Inaba]] is -- most of the characters seem to still own cheap CRT [=TVs=] (although the rise of high-definition [=TVs=] is a minor plot point, particularly when one character's family upgrades to an HD set in ''VideoGame/Persona4Arena''), buildings have subdued, brownish color schemes, and there don't seem to be any computers in town at all. This manifests itself for the audience too, with the synth-heavy J-rock soundtrack and the bright yellow interface. WordOfGod said this was [[http://globegander.tumblr.com/post/70037353506/p4-official-design-works-records-chie-satonaka inspired at least partially]] by Chie and her attire, a bright green jersey jacket decorated with tacky pins. This is also a deliberate contrast to the ultramodern big city Tatsumi Port Island from the [[VideoGame/Persona3 previous installment]].

* Impossible to avoid in ''VideoGame/SpyroReignitedTrilogy'', which features a remake of a game from 1999 with changes to some designs but none of the script. Hunter still acts like the TotallyRadical TurnOfTheMillennium DumbJock stereotype he was in the original. He also still gives his birth year as '75, which put him in his mid-20s at the time the game first came out but now makes him seem like a mid-40s ManChild.
* ''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.

* ''Webcomic/MenageA3'', and its {{spin off}} ''Webcomic/StickyDillyBuns'', are about casts of twenty-somethings - whose musical tastes (and chosen styles when they play music themselves) tend towards things like GlamRock and Classic Rock, despite claims that one lead character is a "punk rock chick". Some characters might just have retro tastes, but this seems to be a consistent pattern. Likewise, at least one character references TV shows such as ''Series/ThreesCompany'', ''Series/MagnumPI'', ''Series/{{Columbo}},'' and ''Series/{{Kojak}}''. It's a reasonable guess that the writers are older than their characters. Gisele Lagacé, the author of both comics, was once part of a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLGQI1rDjHU glam rock band herself]].[[note]]She's the one with the guitar and black EightiesHair.[[/note]] A strong case of WriteWhatYouKnow.
* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' it's been long established that Molly (an artificial creature less than a year old) educated herself through any books, TV shows, or what have you that she could get her hands on, and thus peppers her speech with references to works from throughout history - but a disproportionate number of them seem to be from the Eighties. It is finally explained that Bob obsessively videotaped shows throughout his childhood, and that he still has that old VHS collection in the basement. Molly has watched countless hours of this stuff, [[SuperIntelligence much of it at high speed.]]

* While ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'' is set in contemporary times, you'd think it was set in TheSeventies.

* The ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' are TotallyRadical, as well as bodacious, awesome, tubular and like, cowabunga, dude. This may be a GrandfatherClause, though. In later adaptations, Michelangelo is the only one who's still Totally Radical, and the others usually mock him for it. In ''WesternAnimation/TurtlesForever'', the 2003 versions of the Turtles openly mock the 1980s Turtles for it.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' the three main characters go to an old folks' home for monsters. {{Dracula}} / Film/{{Blacula}}, [[Film/TheWolfMan1941 the Wolf Man]] and the Film/BrideOfFrankenstein are all treated as "Classic" monsters (fair enough) but the "New, Modern" monsters are [[LawyerFriendlyCameo obvious stand-ins]] for [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy]] and [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason]]. The episode aired in 2005, after several generations of horror fads had come and gone since the old supernatural [[OurSlashersAreDifferent slashers]] of the 1980s. This may be partially justified in that they were portrayed more as the new classic movie monsters, and the fact that they're in the old folks' home in the first place acknowledges their age.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' does this intentionally, as many of its gags are reliant on nostalgic pop culture references, particularly from the 1980s.
** A gag in the episode "[[Recap/FamilyGuyS8E10BigManOnHippocampus Big Man on Hippocampus]]" (which aired in 2010) has Richard Dawson as the current host of ''Series/FamilyFeud'' (despite the fact that, outside a brief return in 1994, he hadn't hosted since 1985), Creator/JohnHughes referenced at a rapid-fire pace, Wrestling/MachoManRandySavage cutting promos at live wrestling events, and Creator/OJSimpson's case treated like a current event. The fact that all of the high school scenes look like they're straight out of an '80s teen film might be intentional.
** Depictions of the Pope tend to be of a rather generic guy with an Italian accent, when the last Italian Pope was John Paul I in 1978. (Pope Francis is ''ethnically'' Italian, however.)
** Quagmire's house is almost entirely Mid-Century designed. Justified in that he [[DiscoDan acts like a 1950s-era hustler]].

* ''WesternAnimation/WhateverHappenedToRobotJones'' does this seemingly intentionally, with an art style and musical sequences seemingly inspired from ''WesternAnimation/SchoolhouseRock''. Episodes also feature floppy disks, Rubik's cubes, and characters with Music/{{Devo}} hats and Venetian blinds glasses, despite the show being made in the early 2000s. It even has curiously low-quality and grainy audio.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' is... [[AnachronismStew/{{Archer}} confusing timeline-wise]]. Computers look like they come from the early '80s, and the KGB still exists. Cars and planes tend to look like they come from the '60s and '70s. Meanwhile, all the characters carry up-to-the-second cellphones.
%%* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'', the forest animals (and humans) are still stuck in TheSeventies.

* ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' seems to be stuck in the late '80s/early '90s, judging by the technology in early episodes, from the crude 8-bit graphics in video games to the boxy computer using Windows 95 in the Park's office. It's later shown that the show does take place in the PresentDay -- Benson is just too cheap to upgrade the park's technology, while Mordecai and Rigby are old-school gamers who prefer that era.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' debuted in 2010, but features cell phones and video games that look straight out of TheEighties. [[JustifiedTrope Of course]], the series ''is'' set [[AfterTheEnd a thousand years after an apocalyptic war]]; technological progress may have gone in some strange directions. One proposed explanation for this is that The Mushroom War was the Cold War ending badly, explaining the '80s tech.
* Mocked in ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' when they go to a '50s cars exposition and everybody dresses like in the Fifties. Phineas says that in the Fifties, people dressed like series from the seventies.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
** Despite being set in a far future, and despite the fact that Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew have been dead since the 1990s and Henry Kissinger 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.
** Despite coming from 1999, Fry's favorite music and video games are mostly from the early to mid-Eighties (although this would line up with his childhood years, in keeping with his general {{manchild}} qualities).
* The 2004 ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "My Generation G-G-Gap" is an almost literal example of this trope. Not only does it depict music and fashions that seem straight out of 1984, but it suggests that rock and roll is still somehow controversial among parents and MoralGuardians, even though it hadn't been controversial since the mid-late 1980s at the absolute latest. Even worse, your average grandparent nowadays was growing up when rock and roll was becoming popular, making the episode ''two generations'' behind.
* ''WesternAnimation/DinoSquad'' is a series about a group of TotallyRadical teenagers who get the power to turn into dinosaurs and fight crime with their new powers while using severely outdated slang and delivering {{Anvilicious}} Aesops. From the tropes mentioned, you'd think it was made in TheNineties, but it actually came out in 2007. Unsurprisingly, the show flopped. Whether or not the 90's-isms are because of the creators trying too hard to bring that type of cartoon to a new generation or the show being in development in the 90's is anyone's guess.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', the Wattersons are shown using a rotary-dial landline phone and cartridge-based consoles straight out of the '80s. On top of landline phones becoming obsolete by 2011, video game consoles had (with the exception of handheld systems) already abandoned cartridges by the turn of the millennium. The writers have joked on occasion that they can't remember if the show takes place in the 50s, 80s, present day, or TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture.
** In the season 2 episode "The Bumpkin", Idaho is largely unaware of modern society lifestyle (video games, fast food, modern metaphors, etc) despite attending a modern junior high school with Gumball. This is intentional, as Idaho and his family are clearly Amish and he's most likely living in Elmore as part of the Amish rite of passage ''Rumspringa''.
** 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.
** Mr. Small is the ButtMonkey of this trope. He's a '60s flower-child hippie who's often seen driving a '60s HippieVan in many episodes, and gives terrible advice to the kids on account of his dated philosophies. As a result, he's often the source of many jokes in the show for how out of touch he is with society; such as trying to stop the principal from [[ItMakesSenseInContext blowing up the school]] in a similar fashion to the Tank Man [[note]]an unidentified Chinese citizen who stopped a line of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre by standing in front of them[[/note]], or by continuing to dress like a 1960s hippie all the way into Nicole and Richard's childhood. [[note]]Which is hinted to be during the '80s.[[/note]]
** The episode "The Web" is centered around Nicole and all of her co-workers being unable to understand even the most basic aspects of using a computer. The episode was released in 2019, and Nicole is somewhere between her late thirties to early forties, meaning she would most likely have been using computers regularly since she was a grade schooler.
* Creator/DonHertzfeldt animated his shorts using a traditional film and animation camera along with primitive special effects all the way into the early 2010s even though other indie animators had long abandoned these practices in favor of digital editing and animation programs with scanners standing in for the camera. Don eventually transitioned to digital with the 2015 short ''WesternAnimation/WorldOfTomorrow''.
* 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]].
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'':
** 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.
** ''Gravity Falls'' does avoid the "implausibly old grandparents" version of this trope, however, as the kids' great-uncle Stan is accurately portrayed as a Baby Boomer.
* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' takes a lot of influence from the 1980s to early 2000s, despite being set in the 2010s. Televisions are always [=CRTs=], and we see VHS tapes much more than discs (even though Sadie assumed Steven [[WhatAreRecords wouldn't know what a VHS was]]). Practically every electronic device Steven owns ''besides'' his smartphone is pre-digital, from his VCR to various consoles based on the Gamecube at latest. Greg and Rose's tape to Steven [[DeliberateVHSQuality looks rather old and grainy]] despite only being filmed in the late 1990s at earliest. There's a slight implication that Steven is a [[FanOfThePast fan of old media and tech]], as by ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverseFuture'' he is driving a car that's older than him and kept using the ''cassette player'' of all things.

* Invoked on ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers''. Whatever technological device Bob uses will always be a generation or two behind; he still uses a flip phone instead of a smartphone, and when he needed to record a video of his kids' school recital, he tries to use a '90s-era camcorder, and fails due to how cumbersome it is to use. Other characters kid Bob for being behind the times, but it can be justified by the Belchers being in PerpetualPoverty and not being able to afford upgrading to the latest model of anything.
* Somebody throws out their record player and buys a CD player, but can't get the new-fangled gizmo to work. It's a plot you'd expect from the late 1980s, but in this case it's a ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'' episode that aired in the late 2000s, by which time people were buying [=MP3=] players and throwing out their CD players.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Bibleman}}'': One episode has Luxor being able to infect most of the town with his new evil MMO, which he interests people in by handing out physical passcards from a booth in the mall.
* Though the time period in which ''WesternAnimation/KevinSpencer'' takes place in is never stated, it features tons of outdated technology, ranging from the Spencers using a rotary dial phone (the later seasons replaced it with a cordless house phone), Kevin's school computers are shown to be the old, large ones with the giant desks under them ("Good Will Spencer"), and arcade games are still shown to be popular ("Jacked In"), alongside then-modern bands like Spankdriven, Treble Charger, and Sum 41.
* The clothing worn by the Mystery Gang in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'' was fashionable in 1968-69 when the series began, but became increasingly more anachronistic and odd-looking as TheSeventies progressed into TheEighties. Daphne's mini-dress and Alice band, right for a stylish teen in 1968, alongside Fred's groovy cravat, froze the show into a perpetual 1969, alongside the psychedelic paint job on the Mystery Van. This has a LampShade hung on it in the first movie, where Fred contemplates his cravat for a moment, shakes his head, drops it back into a draw and then dresses appropriately for the 2000's.

* Most of Sunnyvale Trailer Park is portrayed as this in ''Series/TrailerParkBoys''. Most cars are from the 70s and 80s, the interiors of the trailers look like they haven't been redecorated since the 1970s, the electronics are all wood-paneled stereo sets, big bulky console televisions, or Nixon-era (Trudeau-era?) Polaroid cameras. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] somewhat as most Sunnyvale residents border on extreme poverty and probably can't afford to update.

* The title character in the 2015 public access show ''[[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJcsB9a3Oq8XnAx4udaFPNvG-hC-GdcXK Sprinkler's Clubhouse]]'' is a firefighter [[NonIronicClown clown]], as the creator seems to be unaware that clowns have been irrelevant in children's media since Bozo the Clown's cancellation in the early 2000s. [[note]] although Ronald [=McDonald=] is probably the only exception to this [[/note]] Not helping matters is that clowns started to become associated with NightmareFuel around this time due to viral videos of stalkers dressed as such.
** In the "Basic First Aid" episode, a rap song about the importance of first aid shows Sprinkler performing a freestyle in a Music/MichaelJackson's ''Music/{{Thriller}}'' jacket while his friends shout "Go Sprinkler, it's your birthday!'' These examples are fresh out of the 1980s for a show made in 2016.

*** The fact that this is a public access show further drives the point home as developing an independent TV series became more or less obsolete with the introduction of WebVideo sites like [=YouTube=] in the mid 2000s.

** This delay in importing media can result in an ImportFilter; if a country only exports the media [[SturgeonsLaw that falls in the 10% of good content]], and do so with the 10% of many decades all at once, people in the other country may assume that media in the first country is ''all'' good, even if they're only being spared the bad stuff.

* Watching the first few scenes of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' (1984), you'll be forgiven for thinking the story takes place in the 1950s instead of the 1980s, based on the way the teenagers are dressed and the small-town pastor's sermons against [[TheNewRockAndRoll the evils of rock music]], as well as apparently every kind of music except for classical music. (Heck, even ''country'' music is implied to be too wild for this town!) The sermons, at least, were TruthInTelevision, since the movie was based on [[RippedFromTheHeadlines a real-life court case]].

* Everything about UsefulNotes/NorthKorea is basically this, especially because they're [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny an autocratic state complete with propaganda (and gulags) straight out of the eras of Stalin or Mao]], and are ''still'' fighting the Cold War twenty-odd years after everyone else has given up. And that they [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still don't have Internet]]. If you examine the country in greater detail things get even more out of date. It is not uncommon to find trains from the Twenties or weapons from the Fifties still being used, even among comparatively more advanced hardware. Linguists have also noted the phenomena of divergence between the forms of Korean spoken in North and South Korea. Isolation and cultural divergence has led to (North) Korean perpetuating the styles and forms of the language as spoken sixty or seventy years ago. (North) Korean also lacks lots of the more-recently evolved words and phrases (neologisms) which have been coined or adapted from other languages to describe modern technology or socio-cultural evolutions. Put into Western terms, imagine a part of Britain divided by an arbitrarily chosen line, behind which people still speak like an Ealing Film character or a BBC announcer from the 1940's and which lacks phrases like ''home computer'', ''mobile phone'', or even the ever-changing youth slang of the decades since 1950.

** Sharon Marsh and Gerald Broflovski are very stereotypical Baby Boomer parents, even though, realistically, Stan and Kyle should have stereotypical Generation X (or even Millennial) parents, [[StatusQuoIsGod given their ages and the fact that the show takes place in the present day]].

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

* As ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' states, E.B. from ''Film/{{Hop}}'' feels like a walking [[TotallyRadical 90s ad]] in the early 2010s.

This is particularly common in LongRunners, where anachronisms may be TheArtifact or an attempt to say WereStillRelevantDammit

* With the exception of some CG effects, most people who've seen the unreleased ''[[Film/TheFantasticFour Fantastic Four]]'' movie think it was a product of the '70s given that it's similar [[NoBudget production values]] to other superhero titles of that time. That's why many are usually shocked to learn that the film was produced in 1994... a full year after the release of ''Film/JurassicPark''!

* A common comment of the original ''Film/FrightNight1985'' is that despite its Eighties setting it feels very much like the Fifties with the way it portrays teens and the way they act and speak. Aided by the fact that the monsters are heavily inspired by Film/HammerHorror films from the 1950s. Though the soundtrack is very distinctly '80s, with bands like April Wine and Autograph.

** Many viewers pointed out how the group's wardrobe resembled something an 80s new wave/hair metal group would wear rather than a pop band from the 2010s. This could have been intentional given the film's [[WesternAnimation/{{Jem}} origins]] and how current pop groups tend to dress this way as a nod to the decade.
** The footage from Jem's childhood is shot like a [[DeliberateVHSQuality home movie from the 80s]], with videotape quality and fashion sense. However, if you do the math, her childhood would have been around the early 2000s, when VHS cameras were starting to become discontinued and the 80s wardrobe would have been considered an embarrassment (at least for a child or teen).

* Played with in ''Film/NapoleonDynamite'': While the movie is stated to be set in 2004 (present-day at the time of shooting), almost every character's fashion sense seems to be stuck in the eighties or even seventies, Napoleon uses his trusty Walkman to great effect, a fair deal of 80s music is heard (Alphaville's "Forever Young," Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," etc.) and cordless phones (not to mention cellphones) are absent. Clearly overlaps with AnachronismStew, since Kip is stated to chat online with "chicks" via a 90s style dial-up connection (as [[LampshadeHanging pointed out]] by Uncle Rico) on a computer which uses floppy disks as a storage medium, and Summer uses a Music/BackstreetBoys song to accompany her election skit. When the film's writers were asked when the story was set, they replied, "Idaho."

* The short film ''Film/RockItsYourDecision'', though set in 1982, feels like it came out about two decades too late, what with its entire message of [[TheNewRockAndRoll rock and roll]] being [[SatanicPanic a tool of Satan worshipers]] - as well as the whole "rock and roll teen vs. parent who just doesn't get it" trope, which was mostly dead by the early '70s, showing up early in the film. All the generic rock music used is clearly in the style of early '70s Classic Rock. In RealLife, Jeff would more likely be listening to stuff like Music/VanHalen, Music/DefLeppard, Music/TheCars and Music/{{Devo}}. At another point, the now-turned-religious-blowhard Jeff laments that the average age of a person buying a Music/{{KISS}} album is twelve. By 1982, liking KISS was unacceptable to most people.

** 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, 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.