| 1 | Here's a page of {{Unintentional Period Piece}}s from [[LongRunners multiple decades]], or that are OlderThanRadio. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder:Advertising]] |
| 6 | * The Australian "Don't Be A Dickhead" PSA campaign run in Victoria by [=VicRoads=] lasted from 2009-2010, and it shows. The [=PSAs=] included scenarios that happened as a result of somebody using their mobile phone while driving, such as "gingaz" getting laid, redheads earning wings, and {{emo}}s being born. Those scenarios date the [=PSAs=] to when people with red hair and people who identified as emo were easily mocked. |
| 7 | [[/folder]] |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 10 | * Despite being an AlternateHistory period piece on its own, ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' managed to become a time capsule for the beginning of the 2000s to near the end of the 2010s, and it shows. You can probably pinpoint when a given chapter or episode was made through the memes, celebrities, or references to trends in ''Magazine/ShonenJump'' and other magazines that show up. |
| 11 | * ''Manga/{{Yotsuba}}'', which began in 2003, tries to avoid dating itself to any particular time and does a good job at it (according to the author, it's set in "the present day" regardless of when it was published), but there are occasional moments where this foresight slips and ends up mildly dating the comic. One of the earliest chapters involves the transportation of a boxy CRT television, and Yotsuba's father works with a similarly analog computer setup, which later evolves into a more contemporary laptop. Chapters from the late 2000s feature characters wielding flip phones, while smartphones are introduced in chapters published in the 2010s; the switch is justified in-universe by Yotsuba's family and friends simply being behind the times, as her father demonstrates unfamiliarity with them. |
| 12 | * ''Anime/CarnivalPhantasm'' is an interesting case; while it was released in 2011, it is largely steeped in the Franchise/{{Nasuverse}} of the mid-late aughts, in part due to being based on a manga that ran back in 2004 to '05. This is mostly evident in the complete lack of anything relating to the explosively popular ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'', which wouldn't launch until another four years later. Its [[Anime/FateGrandCarnival sequel]] would more than make up for it, though at the cost of dropping the rest of the Nasuverse jokes, reflecting how ''{{Franchise/Fate|Series}}'' had come to completely dominate the franchise in the intervening years. |
| 13 | ** Probably [[HilariousInHindsight the funniest case of it]] is in its RunningGag of [[TheyKilledKennyAgain Lancer always dying]]. It was rooted in [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight the original novel]], where he perishes on all three routes and, despite being really strong on paper, never really gets to show his stuff due to both terrible luck and a Master who refuses to let him cut loose. But post-''Grand Order'', the most common in-joke in the fandom for Lancer is that he's [[StoneWall immortal]], owing to his massive pile of defensive skills and easy availability turning him into a very common fallback character despite mediocre stats. |
| 14 | ** Only slightly less dated is its portrayal of Sakura as a BitchInSheepsClothing who actively ''seeks out'' bad situations because she sees her status as a passive victim as the only way to win audience sympathy. Back when the manga came out, Sakura was [[TheUnfavorite by far the least popular, well-known, or focused-on of the three main heroines]]: most of the fandom wasn't familiar with her story in ''Heaven's Feel'', only being familiar with her OutOfFocus nature in other routes and their adaptations, and even the ones that were familiar often saw her as [[DamselScrappy a bland receptacle for abuse with little charisma]]. ''Heaven's Feel'' now has [[Anime/FateStayNightHeavensFeel three big-budget movies]] dedicated to it, meaning that almost everyone in the fandom knows Sakura's story and character, fandom sympathy has moved much more heavily in Sakura's direction, and her fanbase (though still likely the smallest of the main trio) is hardly anything to complain about. Her portrayal in ''Carnival Phantasm'' to a modern fan now looks less like a wry joke and more like something between a non-sequitur and UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming. |
| 15 | ** ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}''[='=]s depiction is very much dated given the noticeable changes made with the 2021 remake, which [[DevelopmentHell took so long to make]] they even poked fun at it in the [=HibiChika=] Special, in 2012. A modern fan brought into ''Tsukihime'' via the remake will find the different character designs hard to ignore, not to mention the heavy prominence of characters that [[AdaptedOut weren't included in the remake]], like Len, Riesbyfe, and Nrvnqsr Chaos. Sion, due to her prominence in ''VideoGame/MeltyBlood'', is also counted in-series as a ''Tsukihime'' character, whereas to a modern fan, especially after ''Melty Blood: Type Lumina'' left her out as well, she feels much more at home as a member of the ''Grand Order'' cast. |
| 16 | ** The Koha-Ace segment of the [=HibiChika=] special includes an ArtShift to the style of artist Keikenchi, with chibified designs including large circle eyes and [[FingerlessHands pointy limbs]] that is nowadays much more associated with ''Grand Order''[='=]s GUDAGUDA cast, making it surreal to a player of ''Grand Order'' seeing the style applied to primarily ''Tsukihime'' characters with only the occasional cameo from ''Fate/stay night'' or ''Fate Zero''. |
| 17 | [[/folder]] |
| 18 | |
| 19 | [[folder:Arts]] |
| 20 | * Jacques-Louis David's portrait ''The Death of Marat'' was commissioned by the [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution Revolutionary French government]] to depict the slain activist as a martyr, but became politically incorrect a mere two years later after the Thermidorian Reaction, and Marat now seen as a fanatic who [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized incited the deaths of thousands]]. |
| 21 | [[/folder]] |
| 22 | |
| 23 | [[folder:Comedy]] |
| 24 | * Any StandUpComedy special or album will have the comedian commenting, often negatively, on life and culture at the time the special/album was originally made. As a result, the average old StandUpComedy special/album is a great time capsule into whatever period it was recorded in. |
| 25 | * Most political jokes really date the work they are in. After a few years out of office, any jokes about President or Prime Minister (insert name here) aren't going to be relevant anymore. |
| 26 | ** Character issues brought during elections might end up being non-issues for their successors. UsefulNotes/BillClinton's presidential campaign was dogged by claims he was a draft dodger and a pot smoker; claims of a failed draft-dodging and alleged drunk driving didn't hurt UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush eight years later, UsefulNotes/BarackObama's marijuana consumption was a non-issue during his campaign, and the 2020 election saw one candidate being criticised for seemingly lying about having used it. |
| 27 | ** That said, political jokes with a more generic setup often end up repurposed for other figures, as long as the overall premise still makes sense. For example, a joke calling out a politician for a specific lie will date, but one calling him a liar in general might survive as long as the politicians' reputation for insincerity. |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 31 | * ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'': While the franchise is often mocked by being permanently set in [[The60s circa 1965]], the comics are actually a good example about how much teen culture has changed since [[The40s the early 1940s]] (when the very ''concept'' of "teen culture" was just maturing). Even back in the early '90s, they acknowledged this with their ''Americana Series'' of trade paperback collections, showcasing the iconic strips of each individual decade. Usually they will feature one "LoveTriangle"-themed story, then dozens of others about then-current fads, or parodies of then-popular movies. The fashions of most strips shown in the Digest format issues years later also date certain stories greatly. |
| 32 | * ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'', having [[LongRunners been in print since 1977]], has an interesting relationship with this trope: |
| 33 | ** [[The70s Early]] ''Comicbook/JudgeDredd'' stories were often steeped in the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, with the Soviet Union surviving into the 22nd century and being the main antagonists in quite a few stories, at least until East-Meg One got nuked to oblivion. The Volgan Empire in ''[[ComicBook/{{Savage}} Invasion!]]'' and especially ''ComicBook/ABCWarriors'' was an incredibly obvious Soviet stand-in, at least until they were retconned. |
| 34 | ** During The80s, nearly every strip made some reference to UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher or UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan. |
| 35 | ** The90s featured strips such as the ''[[Music/SpiceGirls Space Girls]]'' and ''[[UsefulNotes/TonyBlair BLAIR 1]]'' (a parody of ''MACH 1'', an early strip from 1977) in order to stay relevant. These were not well-received. |
| 36 | ** The title itself did a much better job of projecting a futuristic image when the year 2000 was actually decades in the future. |
| 37 | * Many superheroes have dated origins, according to either comics canon or tradition. Bruce Wayne became Franchise/{{Batman}} after seeing his parents get shot outside a movie theater showing ''Film/{{The Mark of Zorro|1920}}'' (1920), while Bruce Banner became the [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk]] in the early 1960s while trying to stop a beatnik-like teenager from wandering onto a nuclear testing site. Understandably, many of these details have been [[{{Retcon}} altered by later stories]]. |
| 38 | * Many of the early ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' comics ended up becoming incredibly dated, not just due to the DirtyCommunist-type villains common in that era, but also because of many pop culture references included in the stories. |
| 39 | * Numerous Creator/MarvelComics characters have ties to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Primary examples are Nick Fury, Reed Richards, and Ben Grimm, who fought in it, and Magneto, who was in a concentration camp. For some reason, only Captain America had to be frozen in ice in order to be brought into the "modern" age (which at the time was the '60s). Nick Fury's relative youth continuing well past the '60s was explained by a serum he was given that keeps him young, and Magneto was deaged into a toddler then re-aged into a young man by an alien (though this doesn't get brought up very often), but there has been no explanation for why Reed Richards still looks maybe 50 at the oldest. The idea that [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Richards and Grimm are WWII vets]] was [[ContinuityDrift quietly dropped]] later in that decade.\ |
| 40 | Tying a character to a war in general tends to do this. Professor X is supposed to be a veteran of UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, where he and Cain Marko stumbled upon the Gem of Cytorrak, turning Marko into Juggernaut. Neither character is portrayed or drawn as being anywhere near old enough to have been a soldier in that war (Charles has an excuse of getting his mind transferred into a clone during the '80s, but this also doesn't get mentioned a lot). The Punisher's history as a [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam]] vet is vital to his character, but it would mean he's somewhere in his seventies at this point, and yet he's never drawn looking older than a very youthful 40.\ |
| 41 | In 2019, ''History of the Marvel Universe'' was published and the second issue brought in the then-little known nation of Sin-Cong, a stand-in for Korea and Vietnam, retconned a war called "the Siancong War", then not only brought back the idea Mr. Fantastic and the Thing were soldiers prior to the FF's origins, but transferred that aspect and the Punisher's backstory, as well as Iron Man's origin, to it, thus preventing this in the future. |
| 42 | * The Lee-Kirby ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' comics are unmistakeably set in the early 1960s. Ben and Reed are both veterans of World War II, Sue's various hairstyles are very 60s, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy makes an (albeit ambiguous) appearance, one of their villains, the Red Ghost, is one of the DirtyCommunists, and so on. The entire series is also heavily influenced by the Space Race--in fact, the team's original motivation for going into space was to beat the Russians there. |
| 43 | * The Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams run of ''ComicBook/GreenLantern/ComicBook/GreenArrow'', thanks to its heavy focus on the politics of its day, is unapologetically dated to the early 70s. For instance, the first issue cites the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (at the time only two years past), an early villain is clearly based on Charles Manson, and Black Canary's writing features a lot of undertones of the women's lib movement. The [[VerySpecialEpisode most famous issue of the run,]] "Snowbirds Don't Fly", has aged fairly well by the standards of [[DrugsAreBad anti-drug stories]], but it dates itself in part by its focus on heroin, which was one of the most despised drugs of the period. |
| 44 | * ''ComicBook/MortadeloYFilemon'': Most of the stories released in the 21st century could be considered this, as they tend to be themed after an important event happening at the time. A notable example from The90s, before the aforementioned trend started, is "El quinto centenario" ("The Fifth Centenary"). It's themed, as its name suggests, after the fifth centenary of the Discovery of America, with the protagonists time-travelling to join Christopher Columbus' crew. ''Many'' jokes are lost to modern readers. To start with, most important characters in the past are drawn like important politicians from the year the comic was released. Some characters were drawn like politicians who would still be recognisable or relevant years later (such as future Prime Minister José María Aznar or Cuban leader Fidel Castro), others... not so much (even the then-Prime Minister Felipe González, still known nowadays, can be hard to recognise due to how he's drawn). The story ends with a parody of the 1992 Universal Exposición of Sevilla which, as referring to a one-time event which only lasted 6 months and was located in a single city, is as accessible to modern readers as you would expect. |
| 45 | * ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' inevitably ran into this during its 24 year run, being based on a long running video game franchise that has shifted repeatedly in direction and added new concepts and characters as time went on. The series often [[ProductPlacement promote]] the latest game (and prior to 2001, SEGA console), and to start with, since Sonic's lore was [[ExcusePlot threadbare]] in 1993, it cribbed characters from ''WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM'' while [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness initially]] having a tone closer to ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'', which both premiered the same year as the comic, with Sonic's TotallyRadical characterization in these works to go with it. The early gag-focused issues frequently make pop culture references to such things as ''Film/JurassicPark1993'' and lampoon the excesses of MediaNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks, which became quite ironic when CerebusSyndrome came in full force a few years later. When ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' came out and refreshed the main characters' looks, so did the comic, and the art became more Animesque in look, reflecting the medium's western boom around the same time. This did not stop with Ian Flynn's takeover of the title, as he snuck in references to YoutubePoop in a couple issues in the late 2000s. It is possible to identify when a given issue came out by the art, characters, writers and most of all continuity, due to a [[ScrewedByTheLawyers lawsuit-induced]] CosmicRetcon chucking out decades of continuity in favor of starting from scratch and redesigning the [=SatAM=]-original cast starting with issue 252 of the main title. |
| 46 | * ''ComicBook/{{Condorito}}'' has become an example of how Chile and Latin America have changed since [[LongRunner the character's first appearance in 1949]][[note]]For context, Condorito's original characteerization was that of a country boy that migrates to the city to improve his lot in life, but has to deal with a miserable environment[[/note]], also spoofing key events in the news (an early example being the 1957 Asian flu pandemic) as well as TV shows and movies (from James Bond and ''Batman'' to ''The Avengers'' and Turkish soap operas). |
| 47 | * Most of the stories of the Chilean comic ''ComicBook/{{Mampato}}'' were written between 1968 and 1978, and it shows when we see Mampato's home, for its furniture, appliances and posters of popular singers of the time. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JBHnpz9Q74 The animated adaptation of 2002]] tried to modernize the environment by giving Mampato a modern computer (which now looks like an antique) and by having it search for information on Terra.cl, a website that disappeared in 2017. |
| 48 | * You can very easily tell when an issue of ''ComicBook/StarWarsMarvel1977'' came out by checking which character Luke is getting ShipTease with. The writers were seemingly convinced that Luke/Leia was the OfficialCouple, and even after ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' put a lot of focus on Han/Leia, they still more or less ignored it and kept on trying to develop Luke/Leia. Needless to say, this abruptly stopped after ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi''[='=]s release in 1983, whereupon all that shipping took on [[IncestSubtext some very uncomfortable overtones]]. |
| 49 | * ''ComicBook/JLA1997'' is a product of its time at DC and it shows. Batman spent the entirety of Creator/GrantMorrison's run wearing the costume he first donned in ''[[ComicBook/{{Knightfall}} Troika]]'', meant to emulate the ones from the Film/BatmanFilmSeries, before reverting to his original costume for the rest of the series starting with Creator/MarkWaid's tenure; Superman spent the first year with either [[ComicBook/TheDeathOfSuperman his post-resurrection mullet]] or [[AudienceAlienatingEra the hated electric powers]]; the first couple of years also saw Wonder Woman early on in the modified costume John Byrne gave her and then later replaced by Hippolyta; Aquaman spent a few years sporting his beard, long hair, and hook (and later prosthetic hand); the Flash and Green Lantern present are Wally West and originally Kyle Rayner; and Kyle's BadassBoast at the end of Morrison's run invokes ''Series/TheJerrySpringerShow''. |
| 50 | [[/folder]] |
| 51 | |
| 52 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 53 | * ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece/CalvinAndHobbes has its own page]]. |
| 54 | * ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' gets most of its humor from technology jokes and pop culture references, making much of its older strips very dated. |
| 55 | ** A 1990 StoryArc features the Fox family getting a compact [[Platform/AppleMacintosh Macintosh]] computer which appears to be based off the Macintosh Classic. |
| 56 | ** In a January 1993 strip, Jason dreams that he found a Macintosh Quadra 950 with 64 megabytes of RAM and a 230-megabyte hard drive as a Christmas present he forgot to open. A typical computer now has its memory measured in gigabytes. As for long-term storage, many (though by no means all) have replaced hard drives with solid-state drives (think internal thumb drives; it's the same technology); either way, it's now measured at least in gigabytes, and often in terabytes. |
| 57 | ** One comic from the late 90s has Jason dress up like an [=iMac=] for Halloween. When Peter asks why that would be scary, Jason replies "I have no floppy drive!", [[FauxHorrific terrifying Peter]]. Floppy drives are all but extinct for everything except dedicated retro builds, as floppy disks have been replaced by [=CDs=], [=DVDs=], thumb drives, cloud storage, or just downloading things. |
| 58 | ** The strips where Jason shows enthusiasm for ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', thanks to the severe HypeBacklash that made such enthusiasm unthinkable except for an ironic value from the moment it actually came out. |
| 59 | ** [[http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2010/10/31 This strip]] has Jason dress up as Creator/GeorgeLucas for Halloween, saying that it's horrifying because Lucas plans to rerelease all the ''Franchise/StarWars'' films in [[Platform/ThreeDMovie 3D]]. Two years after the strip was made, Lucas sold the ''Star Wars'' franchise to Disney, who discontinued the project in favor of releasing new movies, such as ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', leaving ''The Phantom Menace'' as the only one converted to 3D. |
| 60 | ** A 2010 strip jokes about the exclusion of Flash from the iPad and other Apple devices by having Steve Jobs give a pitch to ComicBook/{{Superman}}, ComicBook/SpiderMan and the [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk]] about the iPad being "the future of comic books" then telling ComicBook/TheFlash he's "out of luck". Flash would be gradually phased out later in the decade, with Adobe ceasing support permanently in December 2020. |
| 61 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'': While the humor is generally timeless, there are a few elements that date particular strips: |
| 62 | ** One strip in the 1950s has Charlie Brown say there are 48 states in the union, dating it to before Alaska and Hawaii received statehood in 1959. |
| 63 | ** In one 1970s strip, Lucy and Sally talk about how little a bug knows, and cites Creator/FarrahFawcett and Creator/MaryTylerMoore as examples of its ignorance. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine children their age knowing who those two were. |
| 64 | ** There are many strips from the 1970s in which the kids, especially [[BookDumb Peppermint Patty]], are struggling to learn metric units and talking about how everything will be metric in the future--a product of the period in which the U.S. was planning to go metric. |
| 65 | ** Tapioca Pudding, a recurring character during some later 80s strips (she was introduced in 1986), was created as a jab at the huge merchandising success of ''WesternAnimation/StrawberryShortcake'' during that time period, which was seen as a fad, with Tapioca's catchphrase-of-sorts being "My dad is in licensing" and her constantly making statements about how he's going to make merchandise of a character based off her. With ''Strawberry Shortcake'' having been rebooted several times in later decades (most successfully in 2003), Tapioca being a satire of mass merchandising of popular characters seems quaint nowadays. Ironically, ''Peanuts'' and ''Strawberry Shortcake'' are now owned by the same company, Creator/{{WildBrain}}. |
| 66 | ** The 60s and 70s strips showing the kids in line for the movies always show them reaching the box office and just saying "One, please". If you're used to having to specify ''which'' film you're going to see at a multiplex, it's not always even clear they're in a movie theatre. |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 70 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'': In the song "Look out for Mister Stork", mentions "Millionaires" as high class (When it was in the 40s) and also has a verse of "Remember those Quintuplets" - specifically referring to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionne_quintuplets the Dionnes]], who were famous in TheThirties for surviving infancy. |
| 71 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Foodfight}}'' was meant to be released in 2003 and featured an AllStarCast of then-popular actors and actresses such as Creator/CharlieSheen and Music/HilaryDuff. The files were apparently stolen, however, and thus the film had to be recreated from the ground up, and on a cheaper animation budget at that, [[DevelopmentHell leaving the film to not see release]] until almost a full decade later in 2012. The film could have been popular in the early 2000s, but by the 2010s, many of the voices had lost their popularity (especially with kids) and the animation -- especially being that it was a low-budget replacement for the original -- looked terribly dated. |
| 72 | [[/folder]] |
| 73 | |
| 74 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 75 | * In general, one can pinpoint when a film was made by its credits: |
| 76 | ** Before the 1920s, only the producer (often featured as presenter), and sometimes the director and/or the lead performers would be listed. |
| 77 | ** During the Golden Age (late 1920s - early 1960s), opening credit sequences became increasingly elaborate, often lasting up to five minutes. |
| 78 | ** In the early 1970s, technical credits began to appear at the end of the movie, often following a list of characters (by order of appearance). |
| 79 | ** Beginning in the late 1990s, some films began putting ''all'' the credits after the movie, in two sets, consisting of CreativeClosingCredits featuring the leads and key creative crew that would have been featured at the beginning, followed by the longer "characters and technical" list, although it wouldn't be until around 2010 when this became the standard. |
| 80 | ** Old Directors' Guild guidelines obligated members to include the more important credits at the front, since these were viewed as important for displaying the big stars and crew members. Creator/GeorgeLucas was kicked out of the Guild after insisting on ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' not having opening credits (he got a pass for ''Film/ANewHope'' because [[ItWillNeverCatchOn none of them thought it would succeed]]). After Lucas proceeded to become a powerful filmmaker without the aid of the Guild, the rules were softened to say the "big credits" could be put in the back instead before the main list of credits. |
| 81 | * How colors look on a film can also date it as well (often [[DecadeThemedFilter deliberately invoked]] in period pieces): During the late 1920s and 1930s, color films had either "[[RedGreenContrast red-green]]" or "[[OrangeBlueContrast blue-orange]]" washes because of the limitations of early processes such as two-color Technicolor and Multicolor. Color films from the late-30s through the 1950s/early 1960s became famous for their saturated palettes. While color became the standard in the mid-1960s, artistic choices [[RealIsBrown preferred more neutral earth tones]], a trend that stretched through the early 80s before being replaced by pastel colors. Films between the late 1990s and the early 2010s either featured [[ColorWash loud contrasts]] between [[OrangeBlueContrast blue and orange tones]] or [[RealIsBrown brownish colors]]. In the mid-2010s however, wider color palettes became popular once again with varying degrees of saturation. |
| 82 | * ''Film/TheThreeStooges'' shorts, made from [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood the 1930s through the 1950s]], were always a product of their time. |
| 83 | ** The soundtrack for their first short, ''Woman Haters'' (1934) is comprised by the "sweet" dance music popular during the early 30s (retrospectively referred with the derisive nickname of "Mickey Mouse music"). |
| 84 | ** Many Stooges shorts from the 30s would find the trio dealing with the Great Depression. |
| 85 | ** A number of shorts had the boys dealing with WWII. They even [[AdolfHitlarious made fun of Hitler and his cronies]] in [[Film/YouNaztySpy two]] [[Recap/TheThreeStoogesIllNeverHeilAgain instances]]. |
| 86 | ** A few of their final shorts had science-fiction settings. Many of the shorts of the time also featured Larry and Moe sporting "crew-cut" hairstyles popular at the time instead of their more familiar looks. |
| 87 | * ''Film/JamesBond'': |
| 88 | ** Most of the Bond films, with each version of Bond being this to (roughly) one particular decade. The Creator/SeanConnery films have their feet planted in The60s, Creator/RogerMoore's Bond is a product of The70s, the Creator/TimothyDalton films are products of The80s, the Creator/PierceBrosnan films are filled with the post-UsefulNotes/ColdWar vibe of The90s, and Creator/DanielCraig's DarkerAndEdgier Bond is a man of the TurnOfTheMillennium and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. Sometimes the Bond Girls' fashion choices also make the films' decades clear as day. |
| 89 | ** An interesting case is the aborted film ''The Property of a Lady'', set for a 1991 release. It would have revolved around the UK's relationship with China and the disputed sovereignty of Hong Kong. However, a legal battle with former producer Albert Broccoli left the film in DevelopmentHell for a few years. By the time all that was cleared up, the two countries were in talks of returning Hong Kong to China, which would have made the plot outdated, necessitating several rewrites. These rewrites turned the movie into ''Film/GoldenEye'', which dealt with the fallout of the Soviet Union's dissolution instead. |
| 90 | ** ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'' is obviously a product of The70s, from its extensive talks about the energy crisis to the martial arts school showcasing the kung fu craze of the time to {{product placement}} by American Motors Company (most prominently the Matador and Hornet) then at its height of power and brand recognition to [=MI6=] using the burned and capsized wreck of the RMS ''Queen Elizabeth'' as a covert Hong Kong headquarters, which was dismantled for scrap shortly after filming and blasted to clear the shipping channel, then buried by an artificial island some two decades later. |
| 91 | ** ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'': The mere fact that the plot mentions West Germany and East Germany already makes the film that. Also, the Soviet prime minister Leonid Brezhnev administers the Soviet briefing in the first half of the film. However, in real life, Brezhnev had died during production in 1982, making Octopussy one of the last depictions of him. Since he was succeeded by KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in real life, the recurring character General Gogol would've succeeded him within the film series. |
| 92 | ** ''Film/AViewToAKill'': The San Francisco scenes briefly show the notorious Embarcadero Freeway along the waterfront, which was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, closed, and eventually demolished in part due to the expense of repairing it, in part due to the fact that many locals felt it spoiled the view of the bay and waterfront. (Not to be confused with the Nimitz Freeway across the bay in Oakland, which actually collapsed during the quake, causing the greatest loss of life in the disaster.) On top of that, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefty_O%27Doul_Bridge opening drawbridge]] that Bond jumps over is now in front of Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team (in 1985 they still played at Candlestick Park in the far south end of the city). Also, the notion of Max Zorin being able to corner the world market on microchips by destroying Silicon Valley was arguably outdated by the time of the film's production in 1984 in part due to the fact that even by then, other centers of the tech industry had taken root, such as [[Creator/{{Microsoft}} around Seattle]]. |
| 93 | ** ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'' has several things that instantly date it: |
| 94 | *** When Bond returns to London, he presents a cigar to Miss Moneypenny, who replies that she knows where to put it. This could be seen as a reference to the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, which allegedly featured a cigar being used in foreplay. |
| 95 | *** The boat chase down the River Thames does not feature the London Eye (which had already been raised to its current position ''by the time the film was released'') and passes a then-under construction Portcullis House (it was finished in 2001). |
| 96 | *** Bond watches a report on the conclusion of Elektra King’s kidnapping presented by Martyn Lewis -- as in the above example, Lewis had retired and the BBC had changed the appearance of their news broadcasts by the film’s release. |
| 97 | *** Elektra King surveys her oil empire with a computer running Windows 2000 (and a beta version at that). |
| 98 | *** At the end, R switches off a screen showing a heat-sensitive image of Bond and Christmas Jones ''in flagrante delicto'', pretending it’s an early occurrence of the MillenniumBug. |
| 99 | * ''Film/JayAndSilentBobStrikeBack'' references works from multiple decades, though the early to late '90s are treated as being recent, with movies from the year 2000 being the most topical. The ''Film/{{Daredevil}}'' EarlyBirdCameo references a movie that had not yet been released at that time. |
| 100 | * Downplayed but still present with TheMovie of ''Film/WestSideStory1961'', which was made (very early) in The60s but is presumably set in 1957, which is when [[Theatre/WestSideStory the play]] debuted. Admittedly, the Jets look and talk like a product of their time, but the much grittier Sharks look like they could be from two or three decades into the future, making the film sort of an evolutionary missing link between the more violent films of the 1970s and the whimsy of musicals of the '50s and early '60s. The dialogue, however, was fairly authentic teenage slang from the '50s -- which of course makes it sound ''incredibly'' dated to modern viewers. Music/StephenSondheim has been quoted as saying that Arthur Laurents created original slang ("Cracko, jacko!") ''specifically to avoid this trope.'' Clearly, he failed. |
| 101 | * Creator/DavidORussell's [[AlanSmithee now-disowned]] BlackComedy ''Accidental Love'' (originally known as ''Nailed'') ultimately became this upon its release in early 2015, after [[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment nearly seven years on the shelf]] due to a TroubledProduction. When it began filming in 2008, the premise of a waitress with a nail lodged in her skull fighting for health insurance was timely. Due to the Affordable Care Act, this premise is now considerably dated--while the ACA certainly didn't ''fix'' America's health insurance woes, and many people still lack coverage or have to deal with a hostile industry or inadequate support, to not have the ACA mentioned at all in a film satirizing health insurance is a pretty baffling omission. |
| 102 | * Creator/JimJarmusch's ''Film/CoffeeAndCigarettes'' started as 3 vignettes filmed in the 1980s and 90s and was rounded out with 8 more filmed relatively shortly before its release in 2003. It featured a lot of people smoking cigarettes indoors in public (at cafés and diners mostly) in the US (and in one case in Australia). The period from the 1980s through the 2000s is ''exactly'' when most jurisdictions in the US (and Australia for what it’s worth) banned smoking in indoor public spaces, so the movie was dated practically the day it came out. |
| 103 | * The ''Franchise/{{Rocky}}'' series serves as a guidepost for the transition from The70s to The80s. While the [[Film/{{Rocky}} original 1976 film]] was a gritty drama about an underdog proving he could go the distance with [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed a fictionalized version]] of UsefulNotes/MuhammadAli that symbolized a particular rough-hewn ethos in '70s cinema and pop culture, the later films were just as much symbols of the increasingly upbeat and optimistic '80s, with Rocky Balboa having risen from the mean streets of Philadelphia to become a superstar celebrity standing for [[PatrioticFervor the American flag]] against [[DirtyCommunists the Red Menace]]. WebVideo/PatrickHWillems, when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgTVPydfmoc calling]] ''Film/RockyIV'' the most '80s movie ever, said that, if one wants to quickly understand the mindset of the '80s, they should watch it as the second half of a double-feature with the original film and pay attention to how much had changed and in what ways. |
| 104 | [[/folder]] |
| 105 | |
| 106 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 107 | * ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' has a lot of contemporary references to date it, but the most significant is probably the reference to King Henry VII (no, [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor not that one]]). Henry VII was the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, and attempted to lead an expedition into Italy that would place it under Imperial control and dethrone the Catholic Church as the main controlling power. Dante was all for this, as he believed this would be a step to Italy regaining its former glory, and also due to his heavy dislike of the CorruptChurch which had forced him into exile from his home city of Florence. Several parts of the poem cite Henry as having a guaranteed seat in the heavens and being the man to unify Italy, naming him "''alto arrigo''" (high ruler). Henry's expedition largely failed, with him dying of malaria and seeing his limited territorial gains swiftly reverse upon death, and he is now ''only'' remembered because of Dante's fondness for him. |
| 108 | ** A lot of the events Dante refers to are very contemporary and some of the characters in his poem are only well-known because him mentioning them, such as the wrathful Filippo Argenti, a contemporary who had once slapped Dante, and Count Ugolino from Pisa, who was starved to death when Dante was about 24. |
| 109 | * The entire genre of the [[TragicAIDsStory AIDS novel]], popular in the eighties and nineties, has become this because of the vast improvements in the treatment of HIV. |
| 110 | * ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' is very clearly dated to its release. Wells did do his research, and it shows, with the novel being pretty accurate to beliefs about science, technology, military tactics, and the possibility of life on other planets at the time. Its very dim view of imperialism and colonialism is obviously colored by the days of the British Empire at its height, the described technology of the tripods looks a bit quaint nowadays, and one of the most pivotal HopeSpot moments in the book involves an attack by a British torpedo ram--a bit of military tech from the 1870s and early 1880s that is now almost completely forgotten, given that only a few such ships were built and few if any of them saw combat. |
| 111 | * Creator/JaneAusten's books, which define the Regency Romance subgenre. |
| 112 | ** ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'' is used on the PeriodPiece page to illustrate a story whose crisis could not occur in a present-day 21st century setting. |
| 113 | ** ''Literature/NorthangerAbbey'' was actually this ''at the time of publication'', being an early work of Austen's only published later in her lifetime, and being a send-up of the GothicHorror novels which were popular when it was written; however, tastes had since moved on. The author even issued an apology for this in the preface. |
| 114 | * Creator/StephenKing's works are [[ReferenceOverdosed chock full of pop-cultural references]] from whenever the book was written, to an almost ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''-like extent. It helps that he tries to keep things timeless by heavily reference-mining 1950s and '60s pop culture, but that in itself evokes the poignant Baby Boomer nostalgia that was everywhere in the '80s when King wrote many of his most iconic novels. |
| 115 | * Dan Simmons' ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' series (taking place some hundred years into the future) is filled to the bursting with reference to 20th century culture. There are a few older references and a few references to fictional future events, but the overwhelming majority of them are from Simmons' lifetime. |
| 116 | * Creator/DamonRunyon's stories are set when they were written, meaning from the early 1920s until Runyon's death in 1946 and are clearly of that time. Some of the stories can be dated in a general sense due to references to ongoing events like Prohibition or the Great Depression. Others refer to contemporary events and can be even more narrowly dated, such as alluding to members of the Hoover Administration as being in office, or a character having just been liberated from a German POW camp at the end of World War II. |
| 117 | * While the ''Literature/JamesBond'' novels fall into this when it comes to fashions and [[ValuesDissonance attitudes]], Ian Fleming went out of his way to avert this somewhat with the introduction of SPECTRE in the later books. By using a completely fictional and strictly apolitical organization to replace SMERSH, a fictionalized version of a real Soviet organization, as the main evil group, he intended for the books to avoid being too firmly entrenched in the UsefulNotes/ColdWar culture in which he was writing. |
| 118 | * Creator/PGWodehouse's books took place in a kind of flexible ComicBookTime version of the GenteelInterbellumSetting that he originally began writing them in, and he kept them coming until his death in the 1970s. In one interview, he noted with bemusement that he was writing "historical novels". |
| 119 | * The Literature/NancyDrew and Literature/TheHardyBoys books, which have been written ''non-stop'' since the late 1920s, always give an interesting cross-section of culture at the time. Interestingly, while the works' environment seem to be stuck in [[The60s the Lyndon B. Johnson era]] (not unlike the case of ''Archie Comics''), both franchises had to have their very '20s sensibilities (particularly regarding race and ethnicities) ''modernized'' during the 1960s. It got worse after they switched publishers in 1979, since the new publishing house was a lot more prone to using much more topical themes. Two '80s spinoffs, ''The Nancy Drew Files'' and ''The Hardy Boys Casefiles'', had stories taking place in very 1980s settings, such as on a soap opera (at the peak of ''Series/GeneralHospital'' supercouple Luke and Laura) or horror movies (back when ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' and ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'' were churning out sequels left and right). Revival series ''Nancy Drew: Girl Detective'' and ''Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers'' are even more topical, with stories about reality TV and cyberbullying. |
| 120 | * Some of Creator/BillBryson's travelogues; In ''The Lost Continent'' Bryson is startled to see how much America had changed since The60s. Reading it today reveals how much the country has changed since 1987-88. It's certainly one of the last works to mention strip clubs in Times Square; similarly in ''Neither Here Nor There'' Bryson discovers how much Europe has moved on since he backpacked around as a student in the 1970s. Being written in 1990 it has a pre-single European currency Europe and [[UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars pre-Balkan war Yugoslavia]] and pre-[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresund_Bridge Oresund Bridge]] Denmark, as well as relying on printed guidebooks for European train times; in ''A Walk in the Woods'' the gizmo-crazy hiker is kitted out with technology that was advanced in 1997 (GPS, self-pitching tent) but is fairly standard fare now; ''Notes from a Big Country'' mostly deals with a mid-1990s world just before the internet and cellphones became ubiquitous -- Bryson mentions the difficulty of finding change for a payphone at the airport, the amount of mail order catalogs he's sent, sending faxes to the UK, and renting movies on videotape. |
| 121 | * In general, many encyclopaedias and other books of knowledge often end up quite dated as [[ScienceMarchesOn knowledge]] [[TechnologyMarchesOn updates]] [[DatedHistory itself]]. Theories that were at one time new and controversial become commonplace and one-common knowledge becomes discredited, meaning any encyclopaedia more than about ten or twenty years old show their age. |
| 122 | ** As referenced in ''The Literature/{{Discworld}} Companion'', Creator/TerryPratchett believed that books a century old are useful as historical documents while textbooks a decade old are unreliable because you don't know what you're missing. In fact, ''The Discworld Companion'' itself also applies, with the original edition released in 1994, restricting it to barely half of the books in the series, and the most recent edition was released before the final two ''Discworld'' books were published. |
| 123 | * A genre of books known back then (with only the Dutch term still surviving) as "De Karelroman" (''Elegast'' being the most popular example). Part of their appeal was that medieval celebrities such as Charlemagne were in the main roles of a story that sounds pretty similar to the fairy tale. Add in such infamous morals such as that you must be loyal to your lord and you get an example of a trope that is OlderThanPrint. |
| 124 | * ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' has a bit of this as Mina scoffs at the whole fad of the "new woman" culture which was arising in London at the time focusing on women becoming more independent. Bram Stoker is using it as an allegory to the subject, including being more sexually forward, which likewise ties to vampirism and its lack of morality as demonstrated by the count's vampire brides earlier in the story. |
| 125 | ** In a broader sense, at the time of its publication ''Dracula'' was every bit as much a Modern Science vs Archaic Superstition conflict as a Heroes vs Villain one, in which the good guys made extensive use of such state-of-the-art technologies as wax-cylindar recording, typewriters, rapid train transit and blood transfusions to oppose an invading relic of the Dark Ages. Needless to say, TechnologyMarchesOn swiftly eliminated that facet of the tale. |
| 126 | * In the mid-2000s, Hard Case Crime re-released some of the first novels that Creator/MichaelCrichton had published under the pseudonym "John Lange" in the 1960s. In one case, they tried to get over TechnologyMarchesOn by adding bookends with an elderly version of the main character telling the story to his grandson... who is filming him in DVD with a videocamera. As a result, the novel is now only unintentionally dated to the mid-2000s. |
| 127 | * Many of the great works of 19th-century Russian literature are inseparable from the period in which they were written. Books such as ''Literature/AnnaKarenina'' and ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov'' are explicitly set in [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia a version of Russia]] with both an established aristocracy ''and'' an absence of serf labor, placing them firmly between 1861 (when the serfs were emancipated) and 1917 (when the landed aristocracy was driven out in the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]]). Granted, 56 years is still a pretty broad swathe of time, but given the momentous social changes that bookended this period, the feel is pretty drastically different from any moment in Russian history before or after. Likewise, Dostoevsky's preoccupation with new and trendy (at the time) ideologies such as [[StrawNihilist nihilism]], Tolstoy's fascination with the lifestyles and social mores of the ruling classes, and the Christianity they both practiced and wrote about (which would've gotten them into trouble a few decades later) tie these particular authors even more firmly to their time and place. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools (Though, notably, none of this has lessened their importance or appeal into the modern day.)]] |
| 128 | * Simon Braund's 2013 book ''Literature/TheGreatestMoviesYoullNeverSee'' invokes this, and is itself an example. It's mentioned that Creator/AlfredHitchcock's abandoned 1960s SerialKiller project ''Kaleidoscope'' would seem dated today, citing ''Film/HenryPortraitOfASerialKiller'', Franchise/HannibalLecter and the ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' movies. |
| 129 | ** An adaptation of Caleb Carr's ''Literature/TheAlienist'' in 1996 was scrapped. In 2018, Creator/{{TNT}} turned it into an [[Series/TheAlienist eight-episode series]], with Creator/{{Netflix}} getting the international rights. |
| 130 | ** Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/TheManWhoKilledDonQuixote'', which was originally started in 1998, finally saw release twenty years later. |
| 131 | ** Orson Welles' ''Film/TheOtherSideOfTheWind'', filmed between 1970 and 1976, finally saw release in 2018. |
| 132 | ** The "Not Coming Soon" section mentions how Creator/JossWhedon had been trying to make a ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' film going back to 2007. Creator/PattyJenkins' ''Film/WonderWoman2017'' would be delivered four years after the book was published and it became a huge SummerBlockbuster, setting box office records, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of the year and, along with ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'', made star Creator/GalGadot the third highest-grossing star of the year, behind Creator/VinDiesel and Wrestling/DwayneJohnson. |
| 133 | ** Creator/NationalGeographicChannel turned ''The Hot Zone'' into a series in 2019. |
| 134 | * The 2019 edition of Seth Grahame-Smith's ''Literature/HowToSurviveAHorrorMovie'' (originally published in 2007) updated many of the rules and scenarios on account of this trope. Among other things, a line about watching a ''Series/{{COPS}}'' marathon is updated to binge-watching Creator/{{Netflix}}, a joke about Corbin Bernsen playing your father in a horror sequel is updated to Creator/JamieLeeCurtis [[Film/Halloween2018 playing your mother]], there are new sections on {{cell phones|AreUseless}}, how to deal with [[Film/TheWitch a witch]], and how to survive the more esoteric monsters of recent "arthouse" horror films like ''Film/ItFollows'' and ''Film/TheBabadook'' (the last one replacing the section on surviving the now-forgotten ''Film/SnakesOnAPlane''), and there are jokes making fun of pumpkin spice lattes and e-cigarettes. It also removes a joke about Music/MichaelJackson being a pedophile in the section on how to deal with the Film/ChildrenOfTheCorn, likely because (''Leaving Neverland'' and the related controversy aside) such jokes became [[DudeNotFunny a lot less comfortable]] after his death. |
| 135 | * When a popular baby-name book of the early 1980s titled ''Beyond Jennifer and Jason'' was revised and reprinted in the early 2010s, the title was changed to ''Beyond Ava and Aidan''; the new introduction points out that Jennifer and Jason are likely to be the parents' names now. |
| 136 | * In C.S. Lewis's ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'', written in 1952, but set in 1942, some adventures that happened in 1940 are referred to as happening "in the war years". |
| 137 | * ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' by Creator/BretEastonEllis was published in 1991, but based on the culture of late '80s Wall Street yuppies. The book is an ''extremely'' specific ReferenceOverdosed satire, with some pages having a good dozen or so references to pop culture, fashion, brand-name products, food, locations, and people relevant to the lifestyle being satirized. The book was so heavily dated from the moment it came out that [[Film/AmericanPsycho the 2000 film adaptation]] was made an ''intentional'' {{period piece}}. |
| 138 | ** Bateman's music tastes are firmly in what was trendy at the time, such as Music/PhilCollins-era {{Music/Genesis|Band}}, with him specifically dismissing more experimental or difficult work. Two chapters are dedicated to Patrick Bateman suddenly inserting a very detailed review of an album [[MoodWhiplash immediately after brutally murdering someone.]] Many of Bateman's musical opinions were meant to clash with what was "acceptable" for music fans in 1991 to like, only for a combination of PopularityPolynomial and changing career paths to make many of his preferences more mainstream, including the aforementioned Phil Collins, Music/WhitneyHouston, and Music/TalkingHeads, all of whom were heavily rehabilitated in the 2000s and 2010s. |
| 139 | ** From the first chapter, ''Theatre/LesMiserables'' is present in the form of bus ads, discarded playbills floating in the wind, and instrumental versions of songs playing in restaurants as characters try to debate which cast version it is. At the time the book is set, ''Les Mis'' was the trendiest Broadway show and getting the rare and expensive tickets was a sign of your wealth and influence. |
| 140 | ** The food Bateman eats is a parody of [[SnootyHauteCuisine nouvelle cuisine]], with unusual combinations of trendy or expensive ingredients in tiny portions for dinners that cost hundreds of dollars. All of the restaurants Bateman visits are either real restaurants that were popular with yuppies at the time or [[FictionalCounterpart thinly veiled versions of them]]. |
| 141 | ** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump is commonly referenced in his pre-politics form as a millionaire businessman that Bateman idolizes. He's so obsessed with Trump and his version of success that he can be distracted by references to him and makes pathetic attempts at claiming to know him and his family (including his then-wife Ivana). |
| 142 | ** Patrick's [[CatchPhrase go-to excuse/alibi]] is claiming he needs to return videotapes, which even just a decade later were well on their way to being completely supplanted by [=DVDs=], to say nothing of movie rental stores in themselves becoming obsolete another decade beyond that with streaming services like Creator/{{Netflix}}. |
| 143 | [[/folder]] |
| 144 | |
| 145 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 146 | * Quite unavoidable with a {{Long Runner|s}} such as ''Series/DoctorWho'' -- the special effects and fashions give the production decades away within minutes. When the stories have been restored to DVD with new special effects, the Restoration Team have very deliberately shot many of the new effects in appropriate styles so they wouldn't clash with the source material. So the Five Doctors Special Edition has new and improved CGI effects that ''actually look like Eighties effects''. |
| 147 | ** And once again used deliberately in "[[Recap/DoctorWho2007CiNSTimeCrash Time Crash]]", which alternates between the grand orchestral score of the Tenth Doctor's era and [[{{Retraux}} the synthesized background music]] of the Fifth Doctor's era. |
| 148 | ** Watch's 50th Anniversary rundown of the Doctors pointed this out while discussing each Doctor -- pointing out how each Doctor's personality, the personality of the threats they faced, and especially their personal appearance was informed by the era from which they came. For instance, the narrator suggested that the addition of Mel was inspired by the 1980s fitness craze, and most of the talking heads seemed to agree that, while Colin Baker's outfit was [[ImpossiblyTackyClothes incredibly awful even in-universe]], it's really only a mild exaggeration of [[IWasQuiteAFashionVictim hideous things people sincerely wore in the 80s]]. |
| 149 | ** Played with in the novelization of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E6Shada Shada]]", which was a 1979 DevelopmentHell episode originally written by Creator/DouglasAdams,[[note]]the basic plot and many characters of which would eventually see the light of day as ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'', mildly {{retool}}ed to take place in their own 'verse[[/note]] and eventually novelized by a writer on David Tennant/Matt Smith-era ''Doctor Who'' in 2012. As a result, the 1970s setting, which was LikeRealityUnlessNoted for Adams, is deliberately played for kitschy absurdity -- the male companion is specifically noted to have long, feathered hair and a taste for denim jackets (which would have been assumed default in the '70s), a very Douglas Adams joke about humanity's obsession with digital watches goes from being satirical (similar to a modern joke about a fixation to smartphones) to being funny entirely because of the anachronism of it, and the band Music/StatusQuo show up at one point, for laughs. At the same time, the Time Lord tech is altered to be more like modern tech, with K-9 being given a battery charge indicator that works like one on a modern phone, and Chronotis's time telegraph having a touch screen and a 'Sent Mail' folder, and it's likely this was intended to look equally silly in the future. |
| 150 | ** The first revival season ends up falling into this. The Tylers' (and a few other characters') [[LowerClassLout "Chavvy"]] fashion style is significant, Rose has to visit her boyfriend's house to use the internet (which is a mixture of Timecube-esque personal sites and Livejournal) and uses a Nokia brick phone which is nevertheless talked up, and homosexuality is still discussed as a slightly edgy issue in pre-civil-partnership terms.\ |
| 151 | \ |
| 152 | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld The second story]] involves Music/BritneySpears' "Toxic" as 'a traditional Earth ballad', the fourth is a WholePlotReference to 9/11 conspiracy theories and the 'sexed up' Iraq September Dossier, and the finale is about the Doctor (and the Daleks) getting trapped in DeadlyGame versions of 2005 light entertainment shows, like ''Series/TheWeakestLink'', ''Series/BigBrother'' and ''Series/WhatNotToWear'', complete with celebrity parodies immediately recognisable to the contemporary audience but rather dated now. [[note]]There was a certain RealitySubtext to this last part, as the main feeling in the television industry was that the ''Doctor Who'' revival was doomed as 'family television' didn't exist as a format any more except in the form of {{soap opera}}s and reality or game shows.[[/note]] |
| 153 | ** David Tennant-era Episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode The Shakespeare Code]]" has a discussion about ''Literature/HarryPotter'' that refers to [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows the 7th book]] in future tense, obviously dating the episode now. It’s as if they thought no one would ever watch that episode in reruns. Adding to the awkwardness, one of the characters involved is explicitly from 2008, the year ''after'' the book's real-life release. From the same episode, there is the Doctor's line "Good old J.K." This episode aired when J.K Rowling was still a beloved and respected author, as such that line comes across as rather awkward nowadays, given how Rowling's transphobia has greatly damaged her reputation in recent years. |
| 154 | ** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E9TheTimeMeddler The Time Meddler]]", The Doctor discovers that the Monk is from the distant future (rather than the apparent Middle Ages)... because he uses a ''record'' player to re-enact the sound effect of monks praying. That, and the toaster that looks like a museum piece to modern viewers. |
| 155 | ** Classic DVD releases all come with a little booklet which gives some details about the story in question. However, some of the "facts" within them are no longer true. The booklet for "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E4TheRomans The Romans]]" (Released 2009) talks about the current incarnation of the Doctor, a man who is now four Doctors ago. The Lost In Time set (Released 2004) claims there are 108 missing episodes, when actually there are now only 97. "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E1ArcOfInfinity Arc of Infinity]]" claims that Creator/ColinBaker is the only person to be in Doctor Who before being the Doctor, which Creator/PeterCapaldi and Creator/DavidBradley may now disagree with. |
| 156 | * ''Series/SpittingImage'' spoofed many celebrities of the 1980s and 1990s, which would make it outdated in itself anyway, but there are also countless references to stuff that was in the news during the week of an episode's transmission. Some can be looked up in any chronicle of the decade, but other events are far more obscure, with direct references to advertisements, TV shows, media news stories, and UK political events. Then there are the appearances of puppet celebrities who were considered more innocent back in the day, but have gotten more controversial as TimeMarchesOn and nowadays would probably not be referenced so matter-of-fact, like TV presenter Creator/JimmySavile and politician Cyril Smith, who after their deaths became notorious for sex scandals with minors. Jokes at the expense of celebrities who since then have died (in tragic events), like Robert Maxwell and Princess Diana, can also leave a bitter taste in your mouth. The numerous jokes at the expense of the Apartheid regime in South Africa during the 80s episodes also date them heavily, as South Africa would repeal their apartheid policies in 1994. The copious amounts of [[BlackComedy politically-incorrect humor]], especially in regards to sensitive topics, can leave a bitter taste in the mouth for modern audiences used to more serious and respectful handling of sociopolitical issues. |
| 157 | * The ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'' franchise. |
| 158 | ** Thanks to its RippedFromTheHeadlines formula, it can seem quite dated depending on the season, though the fact that they just [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed switch the names]] makes it so that older episodes can still be enjoyed [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools on their own merits]]. |
| 159 | ** The same goes for its portrayal of crime and police work. As [[https://www.vox.com/2016/9/24/11348334/law-and-order-svu this article]] by Dylan Matthews for ''Vox'' notes while discussing the SpinOff ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' in particular, watching older episodes versus newer ones can allow one to track how attitudes towards criminal justice have evolved since The90s, especially among its target audience. Earlier seasons reflected the "tough on crime" ethos of the '90s and 2000s; the police were always portrayed as the good guys, the guilty (and the suspects were usually guilty) were scumbags of the highest order who deserved everything they got, and jokes and threats about perps being subjected to PrisonRape and [[GoMadFromTheIsolation solitary confinement]] were never far from the lips of the shows' detective protagonists. By the 2010s, however, the show had grown more sympathetic to the accused even when they were guilty, with the police sometimes portrayed as overzealous when it comes to punishing criminals and blind to racial biases in their enforcement of the law. However, ''SVU'' was also [[ValuesResonance ahead of its time]] in its treatment of the victims of rape, always portraying them as at least worth being listened to even if they were sex workers or [[MadonnaWhoreComplex otherwise "loose" or "disreputable"]] (averting the DisposableSexWorker trope that was common back then), and defining rape purely in terms of consent. |
| 160 | * Episodes of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', thanks to its musical guests and its use of topical, current events humor (from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead "Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead"]] to [[Creator/TinaFey "I can see]] [[UsefulNotes/SarahPalin Russia from]] [[MemeticMutation my house!"]]), can be dated almost to the year.[[note]]For those guessing, the Franco one is from 1975, ''SNL'''s first season.[[/note]] Or when some [[OneHitWonder flash-in-the-pan musical act]] is introduced by some [[HollywoodHypeMachine equally-flash-in-the-pan host]]. As a result, old ''SNL'' episodes are a great time capsule into whatever period they first aired in. |
| 161 | ** Parodied in the opening monologue of an episode hosted by Creator/JohnGoodman, with musical guest Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, who both made most of their many appearances in the '90s. |
| 162 | ** The Franco one was called back when Creator/ChevyChase hosted and appeared on Weekend Update along with then-host Kevin Nealon, using 1975 news-jokes which Nealon immediately complained about afterwards. |
| 163 | * Every GameShow is dated to the year that it's produced, whether because of the products (four-figure Datsuns, anyone?[[note]]Not only dated in price, but in brand name. Through the 1983 model year, Nissan sold its vehicles under the Datsun name outside of Japan. In 1984, all of its cars were labeled with both names, and the following year saw the Datsun name abandoned.[[/note]]) or the questions (which can fall prey to future updates). |
| 164 | ** Other times, they will have answers pertaining to then-current pop culture, which may or may not fall under this trope depending on how long-lasting that pop culture item becomes. For instance, a 2003 episode of ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' has "Life with Bonnie" as a puzzle; that show was in first-run at the time, but it didn't last very long and is now a very short lived footnote in Bonnie Hunt's career. |
| 165 | ** Commented on in ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego''. The Chief would always read a disclaimer at the end that all geographical information was current as of taping. Given that the show's run coincided with the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars and a number of other events, all of which meant that any given day an atlas may have become obsolete, it makes perfect sense. The follow-up show, ''Series/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego'', switched its major topic from geography to history and avoided some of this, since history is one of the few subjects that would be immune to change from current events. [[DatedHistory Well, mostly.]] |
| 166 | ** Even Rockapella's theme song had to change with the times; After Season 2 (1992), Carmen no longer traveled from Chicago to Czechoslovakia, but to ''Czech AND Slovakia''. And back. |
| 167 | ** One episode of Britain's ''Strike It Lucky'' led with an admission that they were out of date; the answer to one of the questions had changed during the week it aired. |
| 168 | ** Invoked with ''Series/TheChallengers'', which stated the airdate at the beginning of the episode, and taped a week of episodes on Friday to be aired over the following week, in order to use extremely contemporary material. However, the show only aired from 1990-91. |
| 169 | * Happens a lot more in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' than you would think at first glance. |
| 170 | ** The more obvious examples are of how Kirk's ''Enterprise'' looked, essentially, like a 1950s-60s naval vessel in its design and style, and how Picard's ''Enterprise'' was comparatively bright and pastel, just like the [[The80s decade in which it was envisioned]]. Moreover, the original series is full of [[NoNewFashionsInTheFuture obviously 1960s fashions]], especially on the women. Later incarnations of the series avoid this, more or less, by dressing everyone in SpaceClothes. |
| 171 | ** ''Star Trek'' has a long history of allegorizing topical politics and current events. The original series has a UsefulNotes/ColdWar vibe, with apparently the Federation standing in for the United States (or possibly NATO), the Klingon Empire standing in for the Soviet Union (or possibly the Warsaw Pact), and the Romulan Star Empire standing in for Maoist China (although aesthetically, the Klingons and Romulans resemble Space Mongols and SpaceRomans respectively). This reaches its logical conclusion with ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', the last movie with the original cast, which makes the Klingons-as-Soviets metaphor very blatant as it allegorizes the then-ongoing the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', which began during the ''glasnost'' era and continued through the end of the Cold War, the Klingons are now allies of the Federation. ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' and ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' draw upon UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror for inspiration. ''Film/StarTrekBeyond'' seems to be a commentary on the rising tide of populist nationalism in the West during the 2010s, with the Federation now apparently standing in for the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations or possibly UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. And so on. |
| 172 | * Episodes of ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' from the 20th century often included outdated technology such as [=VCR=]s and phonographs, the vehicles offered during the 1980s ''bled'' then-contemporary structure and design, and showcases often included pop music from the 1980s. At one point the Giant Price Tag was very, VERY 1980s, featuring the show's logo on a Space/Futuristic background. As the contestants were always pulled directly from the audience, the fashions and cultures of the 1970s to the '90s were very prevalent. ''Price'' actually stayed stuck in the 1980s well into the early 2000s, given their insistence on using physical props instead of video monitors, a set that went mostly unchanged for 20 years, and of course, the prominent use of Edd Kalehoff's Moog synthesizer in their theme tune. |
| 173 | * British panel show ''Series/NeverMindTheBuzzcocks'' falls into this, with many of the show's jokes referring to subjects topical at the time, many of the songs being referenced falling out of vogue a couple of years or so after the episode's original airing and having numerous guests who ended up becoming {{one hit wonder}}s (in the latter case, some of these guests had already become obscure by the time they appeared on the show). As well as this, the theme song changed with the times, to an indie-style version of itself in 2006. |
| 174 | ** For example, the first episode (made in 1996) had the drummer from Dodgy as one of the guests (the band faded into obscurity in the late 1990s) and one of the intros was "I Love, You Love, Me Love" by Gary Glitter who didn't have a joke made at his expense.[[note]]Not long afterwards, his reputation was destroyed by a pedophilia scandal.[[/note]] |
| 175 | ** A more recent example would be the times Simon Amstell [[HarsherInHindsight mocked Amy Winehouse's alcoholism]]. |
| 176 | * ''Series/TheSopranos'': |
| 177 | ** The show was released between 1999 and 2007, but the show rarely mentions dates. Nonetheless, the time of the setting is made easily apparently by late '90s/early '00s conventions like [=RadioShack=], Blockbuster Video, Music/{{Slipknot}}, pagers (in earlier episodes), flip cellphones (in later episodes), CRT televisions, the Platform/PlayStation2, Platform/Nintendo64, UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars, and of course a prominent shot of the Twin Towers in the opening. Episodes filmed after 9/11 removed the shot from the opening and had characters make references to the event (sort of inevitable, as the show is set near New York). |
| 178 | ** One line that aged really poorly was Tony arguing that it's perfectly safe that his son should attend military school because "the United States Army hardly ever goes to war anymore", in an episode that aired less than four months before [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]]. Notably, a much later episode had AJ say he ''wanted'' to join the army, only for Tony to immediately shoot the idea down because he doesn't want him to get sent to the Middle East. |
| 179 | ** The last episode of Season 3 is titled "Army of One", and has a subplot of Tony wanting to enroll his son in military school. The title refers to the US Army's recruiting slogan at the time, but proved to be a very short-lived slogan, replaced in 2006 with "Army Strong", due to "Army of One" seeming anti-teamwork, and has been again replaced several times since. |
| 180 | ** The Columbus Day episode has a luncheon instilling Italian-American pride by countering the negative John Gotti with the positive Rudy Giuliani, then-mayor of New York, who was riding a wave of popularity in the aftermath of 9/11. His popularity took a ''massive'' nosedive from the mid-2010s onward due to a number of scandals and controversies (including his arrest in 2023), making the idea anyone would use him as a positive example of anything cringeworthy or laughable nowadays. It also mentions Native Americans protesting the name of the Cleveland Indians, which changed to Cleveland Guardians in 2021 in part due to said protests, and one sequence of Native Americans protesting under the statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark. The statue was permanently removed in 2020. |
| 181 | ** A more subtle example is how often characters are shown casually smoking in indoor public facilities, such as restaurants and hospitals. This change is referenced in a later season when a character notes how it's nice that this restaurant they're at allows indoor smoking, something that would've been increasingly rare by the time the series neared its end. |
| 182 | ** A more plot-related example is how much of the mob's income is shown to come from sports betting. Sports betting was illegal at the time, but has since been legalized in New Jersey (in 2018) and New York (2019); Vermont is the only state in the North Atlantic where it's still illegal. One early episode also had them jacking a shipment of DVD players, which were a brand new invention at the time (first shipped to the United States in 1997), and had a much heftier price tag than DVD players even a few years later. Similarly, an early episode treats an HD television screen as a pricey bribe. |
| 183 | ** Another early episode had a character have a sit down at a random diner with director/actor Creator/JonFavreau (AsHimself), something much more believable back before he directed ''Film/IronMan1'', which greatly elevated his career. |
| 184 | ** The 2007 episode "Soprano Home Movies" has Bobby offhandedly mention there was a snakehead scare near the cabin last year (although it was only a bowfin), referencing a then-recent scare of the invasive Asian fish in the United States that caught a lot of media attention in the 2000s, although it's largely forgotten these days. |
| 185 | ** A 2001 episode had Carmela's tennis instructor tell her he was moving to San Diego for his wife's new "dot-com" job, selling antiques online. This line instantly dates the show to the late 90s and earliest 00s. Indeed, the episode was produced right around the peak of the 'dot com boom', and it was in the process of collapsing by the time the episode aired, unintentionally making the tennis instructor's fate an UncertainDoom to future viewers. |
| 186 | * Pick any long running {{Toku}} franchise, and you'll probably be able to guess the decade from the fashions alone. For example... |
| 187 | ** ''Series/{{Ultraman}}'' is most definitely a product of the '60s, if only for tone. While it still had many of the super science trappings of the late '50s, its tone of hope for the future and building a better tomorrow are more in line for what '60s Toku was becoming. |
| 188 | ** For that matter, many of the Ultra series date themselves through aesthetics alone, with hippies showing up in both Ace and Jack, and an early seventies PsychedelicRock song in one ep of Series/ReturnOfUltraman. |
| 189 | ** The first five ''Franchise/KamenRider'' series (''Series/KamenRider'' through ''Series/KamenRiderStronger'') are essentially products of the 1970s, given the heroes' fashions. |
| 190 | *** ''Series/KamenRiderSuper1'' also manages to date itself through both clothing and background music, as well as the fact that Super 1's bike is a reference to ''Series/{{Chips}}''. |
| 191 | ** ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' and by proxy ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' have tendencies to appear dated to the year they came out depending on the season's clothing, hairstyles and technology; especially those used by the heroes. |
| 192 | * The producers of ''Series/FreaksAndGeeks'' avoided the tendency of teen shows to fall into this by making an ''intentional'' period piece, setting the show in 1980-81. |
| 193 | * The ''Series/InspectorMorse'' episode "The Wench is Dead" can instantly be dated to the mid-1990s when Adele Cecil makes a telephone call from a public booth, using a prepaid card. A few years earlier, she'd have used cash; a few years later, and she'd have been carrying a mobile phone. |
| 194 | * Shows dedicated to media of a then-contemporary culture, such as the American ''Series/SiskelAndEbert'' and the British ''Series/TopOfThePops'', easily betray their first airing date not just down to the period, but even to a certain point in a year by covering specific works shortly after their release. |
| 195 | * TV shows that show reviews of various goods, such as most versions of the modern iteration of ''Series/TopGear'', can be dated with relative ease just by looking at what is described at the new thing in the specific episode. |
| 196 | * Certain flavours of VerySpecialEpisode can be precisely dated to a specific era. The most infamous is the AIDS VSE, which spanned from the late-80s to the mid-90s, when the disease was still a death sentence before modern treatments. Generally, a character we have never seen before (and will never see again) is introduced only to announce that he or she has AIDS, and all the regular characters spend the rest of the episode attempting to confront their own prejudices and destigmatize the disease, invariably mentioning that it is not a "bad person's disease" and that all sufferers are victims. Another ubiquitous feature of the AIDS VSE is the characters abruptly halting the plot to discuss all the ways you ''can'' and ''cannot'' get AIDS. |
| 197 | * ''Series/VideoOnTrial'' dates itself to the high points of the mid-to-late-2000s [[TakeThat celebrity-bashing culture]], especially when it came to pop superstars. The show was already starting to get dated by the time it was cancelled in 2014. Some of the more frequent targets can instantly date episodes, for example Music/MyChemicalRomance were mocked as {{emo}} culture was a go-to punching bag in the 2000s, but then EmoMusic, [=MCR=] included, became VindicatedByHistory. |
| 198 | * Any episode of any late-night comedy talk show will include a few skits wherein the host mocks current events or recent fads. As a result, watching episodes of old late-night talk shows make for a great time capsule of the period it aired in, especially if some of the media, trends or celebrities mocked have fallen into obscurity. This even extends to single segments from certain shows, such as Creator/DavidLetterman's Top Ten lists, which often relied on topical humor and then-popular jokes (for example: a 1998 list of "Top Ten Hilarious Mischief Night Pranks to Play in Space" lists "Paste a "Hyundai" logo on the main control panel" at #8, as Hyundai were known for their poor quality automobiles at the time). Some of the typical snarky quips about celebrities' wrongdoings may age poorly once they've been VindicatedByHistory, or may leave an outright sour taste in the mouth if they've died. |
| 199 | [[/folder]] |
| 200 | |
| 201 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 202 | * Many, but not all, [[ProtestSong political songs]] fall into this category. To name a few: |
| 203 | ** Music/GilScottHeron's ''Music/TheRevolutionWillNotBeTelevised'' ripped into many popular culture icons, advertising campaigns and public figures from 1971, when the song was released. |
| 204 | ** Songs about apartheid rule such as ''Free Nelson Mandela'' by [[Music/TheSpecials Special A.K.A.]] (Just 6 years after the song was released, Mandela was released from prison) and ''Sun City'' by Artists United Against Apartheid. |
| 205 | ** Music/ElvisCostello's ''Oliver's Army'', which name-checked various places that were geopolitical hot spots in the late 1970s. Today, the song is only remembered for avoiding NWordPrivileges in one verse. |
| 206 | ** Any song about UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. |
| 207 | ** Heaven 17's ''Fascist Groove Thang'' is firmly planted in the year 1980, due to mention of Ronald Reagan as 'President Elect'. |
| 208 | *** And, of course, the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. (''Enola Gay'', ''99 Luftballons'', ''Music/LandOfConfusion'', ''[[Music/FrankieGoesToHollywood Two Tribes]]'') The music videos for these songs make it a lot more obvious. |
| 209 | ** Much of the references in political 1980s hardcore punk like Music/DeadKennedys ("Holiday in Cambodia") and Music/{{Minutemen}} ("Viet Nam", "West Germany"). |
| 210 | *** Astoundingly, the Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles" was suddenly relevant again when UsefulNotes/JerryBrown was re-elected California governor about 30 years after the song was recorded. |
| 211 | ** John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down" protested the government bailouts of General Motors in 2008-09. |
| 212 | ** Darryl Worley's "Keep the Change", a 2010 song ranting against the [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama]] administration. |
| 213 | * It is the tradition in Trinidadian Calypso to sing about about current events such as politics, news stories, and other calypso singers who are popular at the time. As a result, old calypso is a great time capsule into whatever period it was recorded in. |
| 214 | * Each of Music/WeirdAlYankovic's albums is largely a product of the year it was recorded, as Al fills the albums with parodies of popular music at the time or older songs parodied in a way that references current pop culture: |
| 215 | ** His [[Music/WeirdAlYankovicAlbum self-titled debut album]] from 1983, despite being a case of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, is composed of power pop, bubblegum, heartland rock and early New Wave. He also mentions discotheques and 8-tracks which, while not done so in a nostalgic context, were fading at the time of its release. |
| 216 | ** ''[[Music/WeirdAlYankovicIn3D In 3-D]]'', ''Music/DareToBeStupid'' and ''Music/PolkaParty'' from 1984/85/86 are composed mostly of New Wave, SynthPop and bar rock. |
| 217 | ** ''Music/EvenWorse'' and ''Music/UHFOriginalMotionPictureSoundtrackAndOtherStuff'' from 1988/89 are composed of arena-oriented dance pop, hair metal, hip hop and teen pop. |
| 218 | ** ''Music/OffTheDeepEnd'' and ''Music/{{Alapalooza}}'' from 1992/93 have heavy metal, hip hop, dance pop, jangle pop with single Music/{{Nirvana}} and Music/NewKidsOnTheBlock parodies symbolizing both the rise of grunge and '80s teen pop acts taking their dying gasp. |
| 219 | ** ''Music/BadHairDay'' from 1996 is composed of hip hop, alternative rock, grunge, college rock and R&B. |
| 220 | ** ''Music/RunningWithScissors'' from 1999 is composed of hip hop, bubblegum pop, adult contemporary, alternative rock and country, with a parody of "Zoot Suit Riot" by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies symbolizing the era's neo-swing revival, and a parody of "American Pie" by Music/DonMcLean which recapped the then-new ''Franchise/StarWars'' film ''Film/ThePhantomMenace''. |
| 221 | ** ''Music/PoodleHat'' and ''Music/StraightOuttaLynwood'' from 2003 and 2006 are composed of hip-hop, ringtone rap, punk rock, emo rock and R&B, with some ribbing of popular ''Series/AmericanIdol'' launched acts thrown in. ''Poodle Hat'' even throws in an "Angry White Boy Polka" ribbing on "{{angst}}y" NuMetal and IndieRock acts (even if two of the songs covered, "[[Music/PapaRoach Last Resort]]" and "[[Music/{{POD}} Youth of the Nation]]", were intended to be completely serious - "Last Resort" being about the protagonist contemplating suicide and "Youth of the Nation" having lyrics about an implied school shooting, bad parents and a suicide - not to mention that several of the bands who's songs are mocked in it have either multiracial or ''female'' members). |
| 222 | ** 2011's ''Music/{{Alpocalypse}}'' is composed of hip hop, dance pop and bubblegum teen pop. In addition, the album's title is in reference to the 2011 and 2012 doomsday predictions. |
| 223 | ** 2014's ''Music/MandatoryFun'' could almost be seen as ''Early 2010s Pop Culture: The Album''. Noteworthy are the song "Tacky", with its references to Instagram, Yelp, selfies, the YOLO (You Only Live Once) motto, and twerking, and the fact that there's even a song on there entitled "First World Problems". |
| 224 | ** Pre-''Mandatory Fun'', Al was a bit of an odd case -- he tended to parody songs that were popular ''two or three years before his album came out'', which means they were usually forgotten by the time his parodies were released. This was the inevitable result of recording times, and is the chief reason Al has not recorded physical albums since the aforementioned ''Mandatory Fun''. Instead, Al has turned to digital-only releases, with digital recording techniques and distribution speeding up the release process considerably. This was even seen as such with his parody of Music/LadyGaga's "Born This Way", "Perform This Way", which was released digitally only a couple of months after the original song. |
| 225 | ** "I Lost on Jeopardy" is a double example. Besides relying on a song over a year old ("Jeopardy" by The Greg Kihn Band), the music video parodies the original 1964-1974 version of ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'', complete with cameos from original host Art Fleming and original announcer Don Pardo… all a mere ''three months'' before the current version of ''Jeopardy!'' (hosted by Creator/AlexTrebek and announced by Johnny Gilbert) debuted. |
| 226 | ** "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" could easily stand in for any time period for the whole song... until the single line "In our '53 [=DeSoto=]". That car was aged but reasonable in the 1980s, but now you wonder why he'd be driving that ancient museum piece. |
| 227 | ** The car that keeps getting impounded in "Stop Draggin' My Car Around" is a '64 Plymouth, obviously RuleOfFunny in 1983 but applies now since they haven't made Plymouths since 2001. |
| 228 | ** "Headline News", from 1994, intentionally invokes this. Like "I Lost on Jeopardy", this was based on a year-old song ("Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by Crash Test Dummies), but here, Al replaced the three bizarre stories of the original with three (equally bizarre) tabloid news stories that were prominent that year. In song order: UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}} caning American delinquent Michael Fay, the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan by associates of her rival UsefulNotes/TonyaHarding, and Lorena Bobbitt severing her husband's... [[ICallHimMisterHappy wiener]] with a knife. |
| 229 | ** Al's polka medleys also fall under this. Each album (save for his debut and 1988's ''Even Worse'') features one, and nearly all of them are a medleys of recent hit songs of their respective eras (his first, "Polkas on 45", also contained songs from the '60s and '70s mixed in with recent '80s hits). The lone aversion of this trope is "The Hot Rocks Polka", which is comprised entirely of Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} songs (none of which are from the '80s; the latest two songs in the medley, "Miss You" and "Shattered", had been released in 1978). |
| 230 | ** The whole conflict for half of the song "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" is because the fast food place doesn't take credit cards, which for a time was true. Every fast food chain in the US accepts them these days, and many restaurants starting in TheNew10s don't even take cash anymore. |
| 231 | ** "Don't Download This Song" mentions four file-sharing sites which were operational when the song was recorded in 2005 but do not exist today: |
| 232 | *** Morpheus filed for bankruptcy in 2008. |
| 233 | *** Grokster lost a Supreme Court battle ''one week'' before the song was recorded and eventually went defunct before its 2006 release. |
| 234 | *** [=LimeWire=] was shut down by a separate court order in 2010. |
| 235 | *** Kazaa quietly closed in 2012 after years of legal issues. |
| 236 | ** "I'll Sue Ya", released on the 2006 album ''Straight Outta Lynwood'', lists two defendants that have since filed for bankruptcy: Toys 'R' Us and Neiman Marcus. |
| 237 | * Music/CledusTJudd, as a prominent parodist in his own right, displays this a lot: |
| 238 | ** His first few albums usually parodied country songs from the past two years, sometimes going back even further (his first album in 1995 had spoofs of "[[Music/{{Eagles}} Hotel California]]" and "We Are the World", while his second parodied "Music/{{J|ohnnyCash}}ackson" and "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"). By 1999, his turnaround was a bit quicker, to the point that his fourth album spoofed "Livin' la Vida Loca" only five months after that song's release. Later albums zig-zagged this, with some parodies ranging from only a few months after the original's release to two or three years. But probably his quickest examples came on 2012's ''Parodyziac!!'', where [[ZigZaggedTrope despite also having parodies of songs from 2009-2010]], the album also included a spoof of Music/LittleBigTown's "Pontoon" less than two months after it hit #1, and a takeoff of Music/EricChurch's "Creepin'", which was ''still climbing the charts'' at the time of the parody's release. |
| 239 | ** It also didn't help that he sometimes parodied songs that weren't very big hits even at the time. For instance, his first album spoofed "Refried Dreams", one of Music/TimMcGraw's lesser-known songs; his second spoofed "For a Change" by Neal [=McCoy=] and "You Have the Right to Remain Silent" by the obscure OneHitWonder Perfect Stranger; and his third had a parody of "Mama Don't Get Dressed Up for Nothing" by Music/BrooksAndDunn. After that, he generally only took on bigger hits (with the strange exception of 2009's ''Polyrically Uncorrect'', which included parodies of Gretchen Wilson's 2005 dud single "Politically Uncorrect", and the Music/GeorgeStrait-Music/AlanJackson duet [originally by Larry Cordle] "Murder on Music Row", an ''album cut'' from 2000). |
| 240 | ** Another example is "Martie, Emily & Natalie", which was a timely takeoff of Music/BradPaisley's "Celebrity" that spoofed the Music/DixieChicks' [[CreatorKiller fall from grace]] in early 2003. The original had a reference to ''Series/TheWeakestLink'' which was dated even then. But the whole song's datedness was only exacerbated when it made a repeat appearance on ''Bipolar and Proud'' a year later (likely because the original was on a limited-release EP). |
| 241 | * In 1996, the [=GrooveGrass=] Boyz parodied the "Macarena" in country form. ''That's'' a period piece if there ever was one. |
| 242 | * Creator/{{Disney}} put out a "Macarena" version of [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks the Tiki Room theme song]]. |
| 243 | * Most of those CD compilation albums that are released every year, such as Music/KidzBop, become this within a few years of being released, because they are just compilations of the top hits of the year. |
| 244 | * Whilst the ''appeal'' of the Beatles is certainly timeless, given they're one of the foremost bands to define The60s, they do after a fashion play this trope straight -- [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools albeit in a positive sense]], rather than the negative "hasn't aged well" sense. Their songs themselves vary -- some almost deliberately evoking a timeless feel, some very much of their time, in retrospect. Specifically, the Moog synthesizer that shows up on a few ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' songs is a little jarring (primarily on "Because" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"; it's slightly more subtle on "Here Comes the Sun" and used only to make noise for the crescendo of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"). What was considered a cutting-edge musical innovation in 1969 went on to become the definitive sound of 1970s cheesiness. This is quite true of much music that makes a lot of use of synthesizers, up to at least The80s, due to the way the technology has evolved. |
| 245 | * Whenever a GaitaZuliana group decides to tackle a current issue, it instantly dates itself. This is not only on political songs, but also with mundane themes. "[[http://miqueridagaita.blogspot.com/2010/11/la-parabolica.html La Parabolica]] (The Parabolic Antenna)" for example, is still being played, despite being firmly root on its launching year of 1987, three full years before Cable TV arrived to Venezuela rendering most of its complaints (like all --or most of-- the programming being on English or its enormous size) instantly obsolete. |
| 246 | * If you want an earful ''and'' eyeful of most of the defining mainstream music trends from The60s through the TurnOfTheMillennium -- FolkRock, HeavyMetal, GlamRock, Funk, {{Krautrock}}, NewWaveMusic, Pop rock, HardRock, Electronica, Alt-Rock, with a few other styles thrown in for good measure -- just follow the bouncing [[Music/DavidBowie Bowie]], who helped define some of them in the first place. |
| 247 | * As a {{Long Runner|s}}, Music/RayStevens has done this many, many times in his career. |
| 248 | ** 1970: "America, Communicate with Me". It's clearly a song bridging the gap between the '60s and '70s, as the line "Three small bullets took the leaders that could help us all unite" addresses the assassinations of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, UsefulNotes/RobertFKennedy, and UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr, and snippets from an interview with actual late '60s protesters are heard in the opening. |
| 249 | ** 1974: "The Streak", about the then-popular craze of {{streaking}}, because NakedPeopleAreFunny. Sure, some people still do it today, but the 1970s was its peak. |
| 250 | ** 1974: "Moonlight Special", a five-minute parody of ''Series/TheMidnightSpecial'', a very '70s variety show. His take on it includes parodies of Gladys Knight & the Pips, Music/AliceCooper, and Music/JerryLeeLewis. |
| 251 | ** 1986: "The People's Court", a five-minute parody of, well, ''Series/ThePeoplesCourt'' that name-drops original judge Joseph Wapner (who left the show in 1993). |
| 252 | ** 1987: "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex" is a ReligionRantSong against the many controversies present in televangelism at the time. The "megachurch" movement in evangelical American Christanity is [[ValuesResonance still relevant today]], but it was an astonishingly new phenomenon in the '80s, whereas nowadays it's become such a commonplace element of America's religious culture that the media doesn't bother to cover it that much anymore. In fact, most megachurches today don't televise their services outside of their local areas, though many stream them on their websites. The song's central derision of "[[GreedyTelevangelist prosperity gospel]]" has also aged surprisingly well, as many people have launched similar criticisms against more modern televangelists such as Joel Osteen. |
| 253 | ** 1991: "Workin' for the Japanese" is a (surprisingly vicious by his standards) mockery of the [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld insurgence of Japanese products in the American market]] in the early 90s. |
| 254 | ** 2001: "Osama— Yo' Mama": A post-9/11 mockery of [[UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden you-know-who]]. |
| 255 | ** TheNew10s: Many of his early-2010s political songs, such as "Obama Budget Plan", can be seen as this, due to UsefulNotes/BarackObama no longer being in office. |
| 256 | * Fearless Records' ''Punk Goes...'' series of albums are based around PunkRock covers of songs that are popular in the year that the album was released. The songs, of course, are the most obvious time stamp of when each album was made, especially for the flagship ''Punk Goes Pop'' albums, with the first one from 2001 focused on bubblegum teen pop and later albums combing through the RAndB-flavored pop of the late '00s, the [=EDM=]-flavored dance-pop of the early '10s, the ElectronicDanceMusic and indie rock of the early-to-mid-'10s, and the various trends in HipHop that have come and gone through that time. One album, ''Punk Goes {{Crunk}}'' in 2008, was devoted entirely to crunk rap, at one of the last points in time before that genre fell out of the public consciousness. However, the styles of the bands performing the covers are just as good a marker. Earlier albums released in the early-mid '00s have more PopPunk and {{emo|Music}} bands, while later albums from the late '00s and early '10s have more {{metalcore}} and scenecore bands. Even if the albums focus on a specific genre or period, such as ''Punk Goes Classic Rock'' from 2010 or the two ''Punk Goes [[The90s '90s]]'' albums from 2006 and 2014, they're still in the style popular in the time those albums were released. |
| 257 | * The Bellamy Brothers: |
| 258 | ** Their 1985 hit "Old Hippie" has the titular character turning 35 and disco and new wave leaving him cold in the first. A 1995 sequel, creatively titled "Old Hippie (The Sequel)", has him turning 45 and name-dropping Music/BillyRayCyrus and Music/GarthBrooks and mentioning President UsefulNotes/BillClinton as well as Woodstock '94. Subverted by the fact that fans of all ages (even those who turned 35 long before the hippie era or were born after it) completely identified with the song's central idea. |
| 259 | ** 1987's "Kids of the Baby Boom" centers itself on people of the same generation a bit more lightheartedly ("We all grew up on Mickey Mouse and hula hoops / Then we all bought BMW's and new pick-up trucks / And we watched [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy John Kennedy]] die one afternoon... Kids of the Baby Boom"). |
| 260 | ** 1988: "Rebels Without a Clue" frames a man who is getting older and more confused about the world around him in the context of boomer nostalgia ("[[UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson LBJ]] was our president" is even a lyric in the song). |
| 261 | ** 1994's "Not" uses the {{Not}} trope popularized by ''Film/WaynesWorld'' a few years prior. |
| 262 | ** 1999's "Don't Put Me in the Ex-Files" makes a {{pun}} on the title of the then-very popular TV show, ''Series/TheXFiles''. |
| 263 | * The [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation Seattle SuperSonics]] are mentioned in a few songs, including hits like "Good Day" by Music/IceCube and "The Chanukah Song" (Version 1) by Creator/AdamSandler. The team became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008. |
| 264 | ** The many versions of "The Chanukah Song" include some references to stars or events that are either dead, reference a specific event, or significantly changed a few years after that versions release. |
| 265 | * Music/HankWilliamsJr: |
| 266 | ** 1981: "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down" references what many of his contemporaries were doing at the time: Music/GeorgeJones was "getting straight", Music/WaylonJennings was "staying home and loving Jessi [Colter] more these days", Music/JohnnyCash "don't act like he did back in '68", while Creator/KrisKristofferson "is a movie star and he's moved off to LA". In addition to the extremely timely nature of the lyrics, three of the people named in the song are no longer alive: Jennings died in 2002, Cash in 2003, and Jones in 2013. |
| 267 | ** 1984: "Video Blues" is about the novelty of owning a VCR. |
| 268 | ** 1985: "This Ain't Dallas" is full of name-drops to the then-contemporary ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' and ''Series/{{Dynasty|1981}}''. |
| 269 | ** 1990: "Don't Give Us a Reason" directly references UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, and the US' and Russia's involvement in the same ("Hey ole' UsefulNotes/{{Saddam|Hussein}}, you figured wrong / When you thought the whole world would back down"). |
| 270 | ** 1991: "Fax Me a Beer". Since the 1990s, personal computers and cell phones have rendered fax machines all but obselete. |
| 271 | ** 1999: He rewrote his SignatureSong "A Country Boy Can Survive" with [[MillenniumBug Y2K]]-themed lyrics. He got Chad Brock and Music/GeorgeJones to sing it with him, and it got as high as #31 on the charts before 2000 hit and everyone realized the overblown hype of the [=Y2K=] bug. |
| 272 | ** 2011: "Keep the Change", much like the Darryl Worley song of the same name, is clearly a protest against UsefulNotes/BarackObama's first term in office. |
| 273 | * Music/TomLehrer has fallen into this multiple times across his career. |
| 274 | ** While "We'll All Go Together When We Go" from the 1959 album ''Music/AnEveningWastedWithTomLehrer'' is full of some (depressingly) timeless gallows humour of everyone dying simultaneously during a nuclear war - albeit somewhat dated in these worries being at the forefront, which mostly dropped off when the Cold War ended - what marks it out as being a 50s song is the line that we'll all become "nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak". Someone living in an era where there are more than seven billion will be surprised that, yes, the world population only hit three billion in 1960. He also refers to "every Hottentot and every Eskimo", both of which are considered dated at best and offensive at worst (the preferred terms are Khoi or San for the first, and Inuit and Yupik for the second). |
| 275 | ** 1965's ''Music/ThatWasTheYearThatWas'' is a particularly common offender, since all of the songs were based on then-current events, including a mention of Sheriff Jim Clark in "National Brotherhood Week", in the same year during which he orchestrated the Bloody Sunday attacks in Selma, Alabama. |
| 276 | ** "New Math" from the aforementioned album ran into it twice over. First, new math itself - an attempt to improve how math and science were taught in American and European schools due to fears that the Soviets had them beat in mathematics - faced massive backlash and was very quickly abandoned, so many people these days will have no idea what he's talking about. Second, for actually poking fun at how it works he just happened to pick the one aspect of it that actually stuck around, so it's now weird as hell to hear him laying out a completely normal subtraction problem, of 13 minus 7 equaling 6, with a tone of "Isn't this silly?". |
| 277 | ** "That's Mathematics" was written in 1994 as a closing credits song for a video from the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute celebrating that UsefulNotes/FermatsLastTheorem was finally proven after three and a half centuries; the version on the ''The Remains of Tom Lehrer'' box set from 2000 edited out the verse specifically speaking about Andrew Wiles proving the theorem to avoid dating the song. |
| 278 | * You can tell the decade by those recyclable jokes about publically or critically-disliked bands or singers. The same jokes would be told in the 1970s about Music/TheBeeGees, in the 1980s about the Music/CultureClub, in the 1990s about Music/HootieAndTheBlowfish (mainly for frontman Music/DariusRucker not being "black enough", an argument that [[UnfortunateImplications would fall flat today]]) and Music/MichaelBolton, in the 2000s about Music/MyChemicalRomance, Music/{{Creed|band}} and Music/LimpBizkit, and in the early-to-mid-2010s about Music/{{Nickelback}} and Music/JustinBieber — the words would be nearly identical, only the band made fun of was different. Notably, higher political correctness and genuine nostalgia for their music largely killed these jokes by the late 2010s, mainly because people began saving the bashing of Music/GretaVanFleet for [=YouTube=] comments sections. |
| 279 | * Music/{{Devo}}: |
| 280 | ** 1978: "Come Back Jonee" states that Jonee's car is a Datsun. Nissan dropped the Datsun name in the US in 1986, but brought it back for a few years in the 2010s as a budget marque for emerging markets. |
| 281 | ** 2009: "Merry Something to You" makes fun of the "War on Christmas" ideal, which is still brought up from time to time but was at the height of public attention in the 2000s and early-2010s. |
| 282 | ** 2012: "Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro! (Seamus Unleashed)" satirizes an incident where then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney strapped his dog Seamus to the roof of the family's car in a dog carrier. While it was frequently used to mock Romney, the whole matter was quickly forgotten once the election was over. The title also references the now-forgotten "Don't tase me, bro!" meme. |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder:Music Videos]] |
| 286 | * Music videos tend to date themselves very quickly, especially videos by female artists, since women's fashions change more quickly than men's. For example, Music/EnVogue's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iQbBbMAFE "Free Your Mind"]] showcases early-90s fashion trends in addition to multiple references to current events from 1991-92 (such as a [[FreezeFrameBonus "blink and you'll miss it"]] shot of one guy's shirt referencing the 1992 L.A. Riots). |
| 287 | ** And a close second place behind goes to music videos filmed on location in urban landscapes -- cars, architecture, fashions, advertising -- you name it. Cases in point: |
| 288 | *** Any music video filmed during New York's [[TheBigRottenApple Big Rotten Apple]] phase, such as Music/GrandmasterFlashAndTheFuriousFive's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY The Message]]". |
| 289 | *** The video for "[[http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/auckland-tonight-1981 Auckland Tonight]]" by UsefulNotes/NewZealand punk band The Androidss captured Auckland city nightlife as it appeared in 1981. |
| 290 | *** Music/PhilCollins travels around the world in the video for "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRY1NG1P_kw Take Me Home]]". In particular, he's seen in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}}, [[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Stockholm]], UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}}, UsefulNotes/{{Sydney}}, [[UsefulNotes/{{Tennessee}} Memphis]], UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, and UsefulNotes/StLouis -- as they all appeared in 1985. In particular, New York's World Trade Center twin towers can be seen in the background. |
| 291 | ** There are times when men's fashions aren't immune either. One of the most obvious examples is The Quick's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bCZsnSeXT8 Hip Shake Jerk]]" from 1981. |
| 292 | * Starting in the 2000s, many music videos would also have prominent ProductPlacement for latest cell phones, especially in the ringtone era. |
| 293 | [[/folder]] |
| 294 | |
| 295 | [[folder:Pro Wrestling]] |
| 296 | * Pro wrestling has traditionally tried to avoid this, not because it would cause their matches to become dated (only since the age of television have the matches actually been recorded for posterity, the wrestling companies pride themselves on never showing reruns, and much of the match's story content is [[SevenYearRule pretty interchangeable anyway]]), but because wrestling is supposed to exist in its own peculiar fantasy world of {{Kayfabe}}, and allowing too much of the real world to seep through would spoil this illusion. At least, that was the case until the late 1990s, when the Wrestling/{{WW|E}}F (and, to a lesser extent, Wrestling/{{WCW}}) developed a ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''-like fascination with "hip" topical humor, such as openly mocking the UsefulNotes/BillClinton[=/=]Monica Lewinsky scandal, or airing a fake home movie called ''[[Film/TheBlairWitchProject The Blonde Bytch Project]]''. Wrestling/{{ECW}} in particular was known for this and thus looks ''really'' dated today. [=WWE=] still occasionally made refrence to current events in storylines during the Ruthless Aggression era and the [=PG=] era; such as an instance where Wrestling/VickieGuerrero parodied Creator/ClintEastwood's addressing of an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention. |
| 297 | ** [=WWE's=] video games however get hit with this pretty hard, though you can't really call it unintentional when the year following the release is in the title of every game. Still, with the way gimmicks and ring gear changes constantly these games can already be out of date on release, and people who follow WWE closely can identify exactly when a game was in development by looking at a screenshot and seeing how a wrestler is dressed. The roster will also instantly date a game, a few fans have joked that ''[=WWE2K19=]'' is a better Wrestling/{{AEW}} video game than [=AEW's=] own game because so many people in ''2K19'' have since left WWE for AEW. |
| 298 | [[/folder]] |
| 299 | |
| 300 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 301 | * You can easily tell when an episode of ''Dead Ringers'' was originally transmitted given the show's use of topical, current events humour. Listening to an old episode of ''Dead Ringers'' makes for a great time capsule of what was going on in the British media at the time of it's recording and/or transmission. |
| 302 | [[/folder]] |
| 303 | |
| 304 | [[folder:Sports]] |
| 305 | * References to sports stadium names can become this as corporate sponsors come and go. For example, since 1987, the Miami Dolphins have played at Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Landshark Stadium, Sun Life Stadium, New Miami Stadium, and Hard Rock Stadium. All of those are the same venue. |
| 306 | ** References in games, movies, ads, books, or TV to title sponsors of events like the Mobil Sugar Bowl, The Winston Cup Series (Nextel Cup, Sprint Cup, or Monster Energy Cup for that matter), The Barclays Premier League, or the Dark Knight Rises 500. |
| 307 | * Movies about breaking certain records become dated once the record is broken, especially baseball movies chasing Roger Maris' 61 home runs (surpassed by Mark [=McGwire=] and Sammy Sosa in 1998, Barry Bonds in 2001, and Aaron Judge in 2022). |
| 308 | * Fantasy sports guilds, mock drafts, and sports video games as team rosters change many times between production and publications. |
| 309 | ** Media references to playing college video games had this status from 2013--2023, as the NCAA has refused to license any games since the ''O'Bannon v. NCAA'' lawsuit would require paying for player likeness in those games. |
| 310 | * Movies and TV shows about a particular team having not won a championship in decades, including the Boston Red Sox (2004), Chicago Cubs (2016), New York Rangers (1994), or Philadelphia Eagles (2018). |
| 311 | * Footage of a real team play in media, as particular players, team uniforms, team names, and team venues and city locations change with some frequency. Because of this, and expenses to show major league games footage, many movies and TV shows avoid the trope by showing fake teams or archival USFL, NASL, or WHA footage with much lower expenses. |
| 312 | * References to teams that have relocated cities, especially teams that played for decades like the LA or Oakland Raiders, Montreal Expos, San Diego Chargers, St. Louis Rams, or Seattle [=(Super)Sonics=].[[note]]In order: the Raiders were in LA from 1982 to 1994, and moved to Las Vegas in 2020; the Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005; the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995 before moving back to LA in 2016; the Chargers moved to LA in 2017; the Sonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.[[/note]] |
| 313 | [[/folder]] |
| 314 | |
| 315 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 316 | * Trivia games in general can fall into this. Aside from political changes, many are pop culture based, or have pop culture categories, and make no sense to someone just a few years out of the original audience. Plus, what was obscure trivia when the game was published might be common knowledge a few years later (like the fate of Apollo 13 before and after the release of the movie). And that's ignoring cases of ScienceMarchesOn, DatedHistory, and other things that can make the "correct" answer just plain wrong. |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 320 | * Creator/{{Aristophanes}} drew heavily on (late 5th and early 4th centuries BC) [[RippedFromTheHeadlines current events]] for his plots and jokes, and so the roll of eleven plays of his that survived had debaffler text called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholia scholia]] in the margins because some of the jokes needed explaining relatively quickly. |
| 321 | * ''Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest'' takes a jab at the Liberal Unionist Party, who had split from the Liberal Party out of opposition to Irish Home Rule and formed a coalition with the Tories. Jack tells Lady Bracknell that he is a Liberal Unionist because he has no politics, and she replies, "Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate." All this will likely go over the heads of modern audiences. |
| 322 | [[/folder]] |
| 323 | |
| 324 | [[folder:Theme Parks]] |
| 325 | * Ride/UniversalStudios: |
| 326 | ** The ''Ride/Terminator23DBattleAcrossTime'' performance, specifically [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V30yLB1_3eU the pre-show,]] which talked about all of the fascinating new technologies that Cyberdyne was working on. Problem is, the attraction first opened in 1996, and it remained in use, unchanged, for almost ''twenty years''. Today, most guests probably have smartphones in their pockets and purses, and various gadgets in their homes, that can put to shame the "advanced" computers and robotics on display -- and that's to say nothing of the cameo by Creator/ShaquilleONeal and the reference to ''Series/MurderSheWrote''! Universal eventually closed the attraction at the Hollywood park in 2012 partly for this reason,[[note]]Though the fact that Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger's years as the Governator had made him a very controversial figure in California also had something to do with it.[[/note]] followed by the Orlando attraction in 2017 and (due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic) the Japan attraction in 2020. |
| 327 | ** The Orlando version of the attraction, for what it's worth, added [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh54SZW229U a new pre-show]] in 2015 in an attempt to bring it more up-to-date. It swapped out the CassetteFuturism of the original '90s version in favor of [[EverythingIsAnIPodInTheFuture a Silicon Valley-inspired aesthetic]], while replacing Shaq with an anonymous soccer player and showcasing modern Predator drones in the section on Cyberdyne's military technology. All it did was shine a spotlight on how dated ''the rest'' of the show was, between period slang like "bust a move" and aging animatronics and special effects, hence why it failed to save the attraction in the long run. |
| 328 | ** ''Ride/JimmyNeutronsNicktoonBlast'' first opened in 2003, meaning that it represented the Nickelodeon of that time, with the likes of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'', ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'', ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'', and the classic Nickelodeon splat logo being in it. Therefore, the ride started becoming this as early as 2006 when [[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius Jimmy Neutron's show]] was cancelled, and it ''really'' became this by the time it closed in 2011. It got to the point that in the months before the ride was closed down, the video monitors in the queue had ''Series/{{Victorious}}'' and ''Series/BigTimeRush'' music videos added to the clip loop to better represent Nickelodeon's current business strategies. |
| 329 | ** ''Ride/ETAdventure'' is the oldest ride still remaining at Universal Studios Florida, and despite a renovation, it is, for the most part, largely unchanged from what it was when it first opened. As a result, the ride definitely carries a serious "'90s" feel to it, with its dated animatronics and effects. Unlike most examples, though, it's less due to the actual specifics of the ride (despite being based on a classic '80s movie, there isn't much in the way of dated tech or pop culture references) and more due to the generally out-of-place feeling of being the only Disney-style "dark ride" in the park. Reportedly, the only reason it's being kept around is because Creator/StevenSpielberg heard about its closure at the Californian and Japanese parks, and threatened to end his relationship with the company if the Florida one was ever removed. |
| 330 | ** The entire "WesternAnimation/WoodyWoodpecker's [=KidZone=]" area ''E.T. Adventure'' was housed in fell under this, as it was entirely themed around properties that were popular in the '90s but are little more than footnotes today: ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'', ''Literature/CuriousGeorge'',[[note]]which, while having a successful revival through its [[WesternAnimation/CuriousGeorge2006 2006 film]], isn't at the same height it was at in the 20th century[[/note]] and ''Series/BarneyAndFriends'', as well as Woody Woodpecker himself, who had a brief revival in 1999 with ''The New Woody Woodpecker Show''. The only major change to the area during its lifespan was a ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' store added in the 2010s. The closure of ''A Day in the Park with Barney'' in 2020 indicated the writing on the wall, with the rest of the area following suit in January 2023 (excluding ''E.T. Adventure'' and the ''[=SpongeBob=]'' store). |
| 331 | ** Ride/HalloweenHorrorNights long featured [[Franchise/BillAndTed Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure]], a parody show featuring the two slackers from the 1989 film (and various villains) using their time traveling phone booth to bring celebrities and fictional characters from whatever was recent in pop culture. While the initial show was a [[HorrorComedy horror-themed comedy]] and featured subjects more relevant to the subject matter and location (like [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]] and [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]]), subsequent years were in the vein of the ''Film/ScaryMovie'' series and similar parodies. Some examples: |
| 332 | *** 2006 featured [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth Swan, and Davy Jones]], [[Film/XMen1 the Juggernaut and Magneto]], [[Film/SupermanReturns Lex Luthor]], and Creator/TomCruise when he was at the height of his public meltdown and participation in Scientology. |
| 333 | *** 2008 featured ''Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', ''Film/SpeedRacer'', ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' (with the elderly Creator/HarrisonFord taking a bong hit to help his glaucoma and arriving on an electric scooter), Music/MileyCyrus (early in her "crazy" phase when she was still trying to balance her Series/HannahMontana image with her desire to go buck wild), Franchise/{{Rambo}}, Film/AlvinAndTheChipmunks and Comicbook/TheJoker from ''Film/TheDarkKnight''. |
| 334 | * Ride/DisneyThemeParks: |
| 335 | ** Tomorrowland at Ride/{{Disneyland}} got hit with this ''twice'' during its lifespan. The original park's RaygunGothic vision of the future became outdated within just a decade, causing them to start making updates to the park over the course of The70s and The80s. "Flight to the Moon", for instance, became "Mission to Mars" after the Apollo landings. By The90s, these visions of the future were ''also'' outdated.[[note]]Making matters worse, the Tomorrowland section of the park was plagued with petty crime and youth gangs (most notably the {{goth}} gang Disneyland Arcane Crew) during this period.[[/note]] In 1998, the Disneyland designers finally threw up their hands and embraced Tomorrowland's {{Zeerust}}, redoing it as a retro-future area inspired by classic sci-fi and Eurodisney's Discoveryland. This redo was poorly-received, however, due to mostly being a hasty repaint of the original, sleek color palette with rusty, earthy colors. The infamous "copper" ''Ride/SpaceMountain'' only lasted until 2003, and the rest limped on until around the late aughts, at which point work began to revert it back to its original 1955 look. |
| 336 | *** They did get some things right, though. Most notably, the original 1955 imagining of the "future" of 1986 envisioned a no-nonsense, utilitarian design for spaceships and the like -- and, come the actual 1986, that aesthetic was indeed popular for sci-fi, especially for children's toys. It certainly looked a lot more timeless than, say, 1970s predictions of what the future would look like (just try to imagine Tomorrowland if Disneyland had opened in 1974, and recoil in horror). |
| 337 | ** Ride/WaltDisneyWorld's Tomorrowland (which ''did'' open in the '70s) started out as an upscaled version of the Disneyland variant. In the early '90s, the "New Tomorrowland" project was established to update its tone to a more DieselPunk aesthetic (which involved adding two new rides, ''Ride/ExtraTERRORestrialAlienEncounter'' and ''Film/TheTimekeeper'', as well as a major overhaul of the rest of the area to add details like rivets and gears). ''Alien Encounter'' in particular was much DarkerAndEdgier than the rest of the park--it was originally planned as an ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' ride!--and dated itself quite firmly to the '90s, while ''The Timekeeper'' featured New York City with the Twin Towers still standing in its "present day" scenes. Suffice to say, both rides closed their doors in the mid-2000s, with the park's 50th anniversary spurring a redo to bring it back to its roots. |
| 338 | ** Other Tomorrowland equivalents, like at Ride/DisneylandParis and Shanghai Disneyland, get around this by simply using a different aesthetic aside from "the future". Discoveryland in Paris is full-on {{Steampunk}} rooted heavily in the work of Creator/JulesVerne, and Tomorrowland in Shanghai is more ''Franchise/{{TRON}}''-inspired {{Cyberpunk}}. |
| 339 | ** Like Tomorrowland, Frontierland was also hit with this. The problem in this case was that a theme park based on American westward expansion was [[ValuesDissonance an idea that could only have come from the hyper-conservative 1950s]]. Since then, concerns about racism and whitewashing American history have caused several of the park's more outdated rides to be re-tooled. For example, the Indian War Canoes were re-themed, and the backstory for the Burning Cabin no longer included an Indian attack. Even so, there's still the generally dated feeling of the '50s cowboy craze, since much of the area has been left practically untouched since it opened. |
| 340 | ** Because ScienceMarchesOn and TechnologyMarchesOn, virtually all of Future World at Epcot -- which opened in 1982 and was devoted to predicting the 21st century -- has been substantially updated and/or replaced over the years. Much as nostalgic Disney park fans miss Horizons, World of Motion, [=CommuniCore=], etc., it's telling that they were replaced with attractions that are easier to update and/or have more appeal to children (one pavilion, Wonders of Life, was shut down because it just couldn't keep up with advances in health and medical research). Attractions that ''haven't'' been overhauled in more than a decade (the Universe of Energy/Ellen's Energy Adventure show, for instance) get called out for falling into this trope. By the late 2010s, they gave in and announced a revamp to split Future World into three non-future-themed lands (World Discovery, World Nature, and World Celebration, gelling with the existing World Showcase). |
| 341 | [[/folder]] |
| 342 | |
| 343 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 344 | * The modern line of Toys/AmericanGirl (first known as American Girl of Today, now called Truly Me) is this. When the modern line started in 1995 the clothes for the dolls were, if not the height of modern fashion, at least reasonably fashionable for an eight-to-twelve year old girl. As time--and fashion--moved on, many of the older clothes fell out of fashion and heavily reflect the eras they were released in. In fact, some of the older clothes designs from the 1990s started being used as "throwback" clothing for the 1990s characters, Isabel and Nicki, in 2023. |
| 345 | * Due to the parody nature of Toys/WackyPackages, specific products and their packaging are referenced through the parodies. Due to the constant changing nature of products, both through discontinuation of the products and changing of the labels, the stickers are very much "stuck" in the years that they were created. |
| 346 | [[/folder]] |
| 347 | |
| 348 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 349 | * Due to DevelopmentHell causing the game to be delayed continually since its inception 13 years prior to its release, ''VideoGame/DukeNukemForever'' (released in 2011) has the unintended disadvantage of playing as though certain parts were only added in a certain year [[FollowTheLeader when they were the latest trend in gaming]]. The gameplay borders on GenreRoulette as it tries to mimic [[VideoGame/SiN1998 late-90s cornball camp shooters where everything can be interacted with]], [[VideoGame/Doom3 early-2000s dark sci-fi shooters]] with frequent sections where you have to [[VideoGame/Halo2 hold the line (usually with a turret) waiting for something to happen]] or [[VideoGame/HalfLife2 drive a vehicle while getting out at regular intervals to clear the path]], and [[VideoGame/{{Killzone}} late-2000s grim realistic shooters]] where [[VideoGame/ModernWarfare nearly every NPC on your side dies]] practically in sequence. Several of the references include {{Exp|y}}ies of the [[Creator/MaryKateAndAshleyOlsen Olsen Twins]] (who haven't acted together since 2004), several [[AscendedMeme one-liners lifted from]] a "Ventrilo Harassment" video from 2007, a vehicle section including [[HummerDinger a massive car that runs out of gas after a five-minute drive]] (the brand most heavily associated with that sort of vehicle closed in 2009), and a near-exact replication of the infamous Creator/ChristianBale rant from the set of ''Film/TerminatorSalvation''. Because of this effect, the mechanics that were added more recently (Duke having [[RegeneratingHealth a regenerating "Ego" bar instead of health]], running out of breath after [[SprintMeter sprinting short distances]], only being able to [[LimitedLoadout carry two weapons with maybe four full mags for each at once]], and being [[InsurmountableWaistHeightFence completely incapable of scaling anything taller than his ankles]]) stick out like a sore thumb instead of "making the game accessible to today's players", especially since several of them don't mesh with how the game is actually designed (the two-gun limit definitely wasn't made with the wide array of gimmick weapons and Duke's low ammo count in mind, necessitating [[BottomlessMagazines crates of infinite ammo]] around every other corner as a quick fix). This also pretty clearly dates it to before the halfway point of the decade, prior to games like 2014's ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'' or 2016's reboot of ''VideoGame/{{Doom|2016}}'', both of which [[GenreThrowback deliberately eschewed several of these "modern/realistic" mechanics]] (only keeping what could actually synergize with or be reinvented to fit classic-style shooter gameplay, like the typical obsession with GunAccessories being streamlined into an upgrade system that gives weapons [[SecondaryFire new and distinct modes of operation]]) and were largely praised for it. |
| 350 | * ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' has a character skin dedicated to the GiantEnemyCrab, a meme from 2006. The game is still going strong more than a decade after the meme and at this rate looks like the last thing on earth that will recall the meme. |
| 351 | * This also occurs with works that don't make real world references. In ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Super Mario]]'' spin-offs, there would always be elements from the then-latest main game which were not retained after the next main game came out. Platform/{{S|uperNintendoEntertainmentSystem}}NES-era spinoffs took a lot of influence from ''VideOGame/SuperMarioWorld'', with ''VideoGame/SuperMarioKart'' having Donut Plains, Vanilla Lake and Chocolate Island tracks being a prime example. Meanwhile, Platform/{{N|intendo64}}64-era ones took influence from ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' (note all the blue Thwomps in spinoffs of the time, and ''VideoGame/MarioKart64'' included a recreation of the front of Peach's castle off the beaten path of Royal Raceway). [[Platform/NintendoGameCube GameCube-era]] games took a lot of inspiration from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'', notably with the constant undercurrent that they were set in the tropics rather than in the Mushroom Kingdom (especially noticeable in ''VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'' with Peach Beach, which is heavily based off Isle Delfino, even featuring Piantas as audience members and Cataquack enemies as obstacles), while also taking some cues from ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion'' (like Luigi's frequent use of the Poltergust 3000 and King Boo starting to appear as a playable character). [[Platform/NintendoWii Wii-era]] ones would in turn drop that tropical setting as they looked to ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' (Rosalina and the Lumas showing up everywhere) and ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii'' (bringing the setting back to the Mushroom Kingdom) for inspiration. In the early-2010s, there was a variant: If the game was released on Platform/Nintendo3DS, references to ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'' would appear, whereas if was released on Platform/WiiU, references to ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosU'' would appear instead. The Platform/NintendoSwitch era often looks into ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' for inspiration, with Pauline starting to become a regular in Mario spin-offs and stages inspired in both games starting to show up everywhere. |
| 352 | * Sam and Dan Houser, the creators of the ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series, leaned heavily on satire of pop culture and current events as one of the games' main sources of comic relief, especially from the third game onward. As such, unless the game is a ''deliberate'' period piece (like ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity Vice City]]'', ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas San Andreas]]'', and the ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoLibertyCityStories Stories]]'' [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCityStories games]]), it usually isn't hard to figure out what time period each game was written in, even discounting advances in graphical technology between games. |
| 353 | ** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'' is supposedly set in Autumn 2001, when many aspects of both the late '90s and the early '00s, such as the dot-com boom (radio commercials for "[=PetsOvernight.com=]", a site that boxes up exotic animals and ships them out to people wanting pets), [[HummerDinger massive SUVs being a novelty]] (other commercials advertise the "Maibatsu Monstrosity", a beast that can seat 12 people and cross anything from rivers to arctic tundra, but only gets 3 miles per gallon -- which is presented as something between an almost-completely negligible downside and [[ConspicuousConsumption a point of pride]] -- and has the advertising tagline "[[BiggerIsBetter mine is bigger!]]"), {{boy band}}s, the infancy of RealityTV (other radio commercials advertise a show called ''Liberty City Survivor'', wherein recently-paroled convicts are given weapons and [[BloodSport hunt each other down through the city]], complete with a recommendation from someone who got hooked on the series [[SpectatorCasualty after he got caught up in an episode]]), and the rise of the cell phone (the main character still uses a pager and is able to take some missions via payphones, and a caller on the "Chatterbox" radio station represents a ''protest group'' against cell phones -- who are finding it rather difficult to organize themselves in any way without the use of phones), were easy topics to explore and satirize. Its setting, the [[BigApplesauce New York]] pastiche of Liberty City, is portrayed as TheBigRottenApple, an image that it hadn't yet shaken off by that point. Although the game was released one month after [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]], very little was changed to reflect that,[[note]]The police cars' colors were changed from the NYPD's then-current and distinctive light blue and white to a more Los Angeles-inspired black and white, the only aircraft the player can use in the game has cut-down wings specifically to make it nearly impossible to fly it (much less recreate the 9/11 attacks with it), and the character Darkel, a hobo/revolutionary who gave missions involving acts of terrorism, was removed. Interestingly, most of his missions -- including, eerily, one in which it is speculated the player would have destroyed the Love Media building by flying a plane into it -- had already been cut long before 9/11 because they didn't fit the tone of the game, and after his removal following the attacks, the ones that were on track to make the cut were retooled (a bombing attack on innocents was re-purposed into bombing a Mafia family) or stripped of context and given as optional Rampages.[[/note]] and as such, the atmosphere of the game is more grounded in the immediate pre-9/11 period of 2000 through the summer of 2001 than after. |
| 354 | ** The [[QuadDamage adrenaline pills]] in ''GTA III'' and ''Vice City'' put the player into BulletTime, a firm reminder of the days in the early-mid '00s when the influence of ''Film/TheMatrix'' ruled over the action genre. Though ''Liberty City Stories'' briefly brought them back, most games in the series since ''San Andreas'' have largely abandoned bullet-time outside of cheat codes or character abilities which are meant to call back to Rockstar's own ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' and ''VideoGame/MidnightClub'' more than ''The Matrix''. |
| 355 | ** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' is set squarely in then-contemporary (2008) [[BigApplesauce New York]], just past the peak of the TurnOfTheMillennium zeitgeist it was rooted in, which can be seen in both the more obvious use of contemporary music and vehicles and in the political and cultural satire. The economic crisis was just starting to sting (especially in the final expansion pack, ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheBalladOfGayTony The Ballad of Gay Tony]]'', released in late 2009), but the President was still [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush the cowboy from Texas]] rather than [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama the professor from Chicago]], and much of the satire was directed at such targets as UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and the then-politically empowered Christian Right. Its portrayal of New York is less TheBigRottenApple like in ''III'' and more a gentrified, nanny-state [[TheThemeParkVersion Theme Park Version]] of itself with [[UrbanSegregation a yawning gap between the rich and the poor]], reflecting how stereotypes of the city had evolved during the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg. The shadow of 9/11 (or at least the ''GTA'' universe's [[EarthDrift fictional version of it]]) hangs heavily over the city; [[BrokenBridge the bridges to Algonquin and Alderney are initially closed]] due to perceived terrorist threats (leading to hand-wringing from [[StrawmanNewsMedia Weazel News]] when they're re-opened), the Patriot Act, the now-discontinued terror alert system and the apathy and excessive violence of the LCPD come in for a ribbing, and there's a massive construction site in lower Algonquin that's strongly implied to be where this Liberty City's version of the World Trade Center had once stood. Its portrayal of [[{{Joisey}} New Jersey]], meanwhile, is drawn heavily from ''Series/TheSopranos'' with the protagonist Niko Bellic's interactions with the Pegorino crime family; notably, there is no analogue to the Jersey Shore in the game, even though just one year after it came out, the Shore quickly became [[Series/JerseyShore the defining stereotype of the state in general]]. Regarding media parodies, ''Dragonbrain'' is apparently based on ''Film/{{Eragon}}'', which would fall into obscurity later on, while you can watch a poker tournament and a ''Cribs'' parody on TV, both of which would be unimaginable in a post-Great Recession world.\ |
| 356 | Going beyond the setting, Niko's backstory is that of a veteran of UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars who is haunted by the atrocities that he and the men he served with committed, pinning the game to a time when the breakup of Yugoslavia was still within recent memory as a blood-soaked symbol of man's inhumanity to man and a veteran of such could still be a reasonably young man (at the time of the game's release, the last of the conflicts considered part of the wars had only ended seven years previously). The technology present is also emblematic of the mid- to late-2000s. Niko uses a big, chunky black cell phone with a monochrome screen for the first part of the game, with the [[https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Communication?file=Whizcellphone-IV.png color-screen camera phone]] he receives shortly after reaching Algonquin treated as a luxury item, while smartphones are never even mentioned, which means you can only access the Web either at Internet cafès (which would be on their way out after 2010) or a laptop in your Algonquin safehouse, the in-game Internet being filled with parodies of Platform/MySpace, Yahoo!, Classmates.com, Jamster, Platform/YouTube (back when they were first getting embroiled in MediaNotes/{{DMCA}} takedown controversies), Napster, ''VideoGame/SecondLife'', ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', and many, many Geocities lookalikes.[[labelnote:As for the expansions...]]In ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheLostAndDamned The Lost and Damned]]'', Johnny's [[https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Communication?file=Mobilephone-TLAD.png older, monochrome cell phone]] symbolizes his rough-hewn, impoverished life as an outlaw biker, while in ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheBalladOfGayTony The Ballad of Gay Tony]]'', Luis has a [[https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Communication?file=Mobilephone-TBOGT.png fancy camera phone]] to symbolize his comparatively glamorous lifestyle.[[/labelnote]] Niko's cousin Roman, meanwhile, owns a taxi company, and rideshare services, which took off as a serious competitor to taxis a few years after the game's release, are never mentioned with regards to his business. |
| 357 | *** The second ExpansionPack for the game, ''The Ballad Of Gay Tony'', heavily revolves around the eponymous Gay Tony's clubs and managing them, at a time when the Hollywood club scene was at its peak. Some of the celebrities that appear are parodies of Nicole Richie, Creator/LindsayLohan, Creator/ParisHilton, and Music/BritneySpears (particularly referencing her breakdown that happened two years prior to the game's release), all of whom were associated with the scene in some way. In addition, the game features a parody of [[Platform/TwitterX Twitter]] when the site was first growing in popularity. |
| 358 | ** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', released in 2013, and set in Southern UsefulNotes/{{California}} during the very early 2010s. It's the height of the Great Recession; the first teaser for the game prominently showed a "foreclosure" sign being put up in front of a house, as well as homeless people living in tent cities under Los Santos' overpasses, and in the finished game, one can find a "dignity village" in the northern part of the map that contains a lot of imagery lifted from the Occupy movement. [[HonestJohnsDealership Simeon's business]] also exploits people who try to keep up with the Joneses by using cheap credit to live beyond their means, a clear reference to one of the main causes of the recession. One of the businesses that Franklin is able to own is a medicinal marijuana outlet, dating the game to the time before California legalized recreational marijuana usage in 2018 (medicinal marijuana having been a popular compromise solution before support for full legalization took off in the state). A key part of the storyline involves the protagonists being forced to do dirty work for the game's fictional version of the FBI after Michael comes out of his WitnessProtection-imposed retirement, with EnhancedInterrogationTechniques and the NSA's espionage activities (both major political controversies in the early '10s) featuring as important plot points.\ |
| 359 | The technology has also advanced with the times. ''All'' of the main characters, even the [[LowerClassLout white-trash]] Trevor and the {{gang banger|s}} Franklin, have smartphones with full internet access,[[labelnote:*]]It's especially highlighted when you go back to the opening tutorial mission, which is [[TwentyMinutesIntoThePast set in 2004]] and has Michael carrying [[https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Communication?file=CelltowaCellphone-GTAV-Contacts.png an old-fashioned, text-only device with physical buttons]] much like what Niko, Johnny, and Luis used in ''GTA IV''.[[/labelnote]] and on that internet, one now finds parodies of Platform/{{Twitter}}, Tinder, Kickstarter, and most notably Platform/{{Facebook}}, whose CEO and headquarters show up in the game in a vicious TakeThat at contemporary Silicon Valley tech culture. The Platform/MySpace parody [=MyRoomOnline=] is still around, but has been rendered "the ghost town of the internet" by the Facebook parody [=LifeInvader=], with its site still up almost solely to announce that its domain name is for sale. Beyond that, the [[Radio/GTARadio in-game media]] is filled with parodies of such late '00s/early '10s touchstones as ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'', ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'', the New Atheism movement, "cash for gold" websites, vaping, Whole Foods, American Apparel, freeganism, and the push for marijuana legalization. |
| 360 | ** An example that comes throughout the series is with the character of Donald Love, who appears in ''GTA III'', ''Vice City'', and ''Liberty City Stories''. The head of a media and real estate empire, Love is [[{{Trumplica}} a fairly transparent parody]] of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, right down to his first name, with his appearance in ''Liberty City Stories'' bearing an uncanny resemblance to Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. However, his portrayal leans on the pop-culture image of Trump that existed before TheNew10s, when he was seen as an eccentric, flamboyant mogul rather than a right-wing activist and later politician. |
| 361 | * ''VideoGame/NightTrap''. A side-effect of having the footage shot in [[The80s 1987]] (it shows) and releasing it in [[The90s 1992]], when the hangover(s) from the previous decade had not yet worn off. |
| 362 | * Any racing or driving game that features real cars is doomed to finding itself dated by virtue of [[TechnologyMarchesOn technology marching on]]. The cutoff date for the cars appearing in the game becomes more obvious the further the game falls into the past, such that the then-modern cars in some of the [[Platform/PlayStation PS1]] ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed'' or ''VideoGame/GranTurismo'' games are now almost old enough to be considered antiques. In some cases, they already are; the first ''Need for Speed'' had the very '80s Ferrari Testarossa, the third had the equally '80s Lamborghini Countach, and neither felt particularly out of place next to the assorted '90s sports cars in both games. It makes for a great time capsule of what were considered {{Cool Car}}s in the time the game was released; if some of those cars have since fallen into obscurity, or (in the case of the concept cars that often featured) never even saw the light of day, all the better. Even games that use fictional vehicles (such as the ''VideoGame/{{Burnout}}'', ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'', and ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'' series) can fall into this trap if the cars in question are [[SerialNumbersFiledOff closely-enough based on contemporary cars and styles]]. |
| 363 | ** This goes double for games that try to emulate car culture on top of it. For instance, the swarm of tuner-based games that came out in the early-mid '00s (led by ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeedUnderground'' and ''VideoGame/MidnightClub''), which were [[TotallyRadical oh-so-cool]] in lifting their style from ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' and ''Series/PimpMyRide'', became [[IWasQuiteAFashionVictim downright cringeworthy]] ten years later with their assortment of overdone [[RiceBurner neon-lit bodykits]] and [[PimpedOutCar 24-inch chrome spinner rims]]. |
| 364 | * Sports games based on professional sports leagues are this by design, given that a huge chunk of the appeal is to lead real teams to victory against their rivals. Each year, when a new version of the game is released, one of the most important features is that the roster is updated to reflect the real players on the current teams. Needless to say, such games have a ''very'' short shelf life, often falling into the bargain bin the moment the next year's edition hits shelves. |
| 365 | * 3D graphics tend to age very poorly. What looks innovative and realistic at first often falls straight into the UnintentionalUncannyValley after a few years as graphics capabilities improve. |
| 366 | * The EdutainmentGame genre is full of games that have aged poorly due to [[ScienceMarchesOn facts being debunked, new facts being discovered]] or [[DatedHistory history changing]]. Unless it's something that changes very slowly like math or grammar, it's unlikely a game will be accurate within fifteen years. |
| 367 | * Many, many ''VideoGame/{{MUGEN}}'' videos are instantly dated either by their content or contemporary fads: |
| 368 | ** Cheap busting videos were a big fad before 2010, as were "retarded" (i.e. poorly made) character beatdowns and "'x' hates [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer]]" videos, using a popular spriteswap of an ''VideoGame/SNKVsCapcom''-styled [[VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters Iori Yagami]]. |
| 369 | ** Any videos referring to defunct MUGEN forums were clearly made before said forums shut down. |
| 370 | ** Any time a character is updated, making his or her pre-update videos obsolete. |
| 371 | ** Many videos from UsefulNotes/TheNew10s will refer to ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'', ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'', ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight'', ''Franchise/AngryBirds'', ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}'', ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', ''Webcomic/OnePunchMan'', ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', ''Franchise/DespicableMe'', ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'', ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}}'', ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'', ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' and more. Now that it's the 2020s, even those videos are easier to date. |
| 372 | ** Anything mentioning a retired or deceased player or author, as their videos can obviously only show content up to the time of the maker's retirement or death. |
| 373 | ** Anything with a character that is [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost]] was clearly made before the character's download links all got removed. |
| 374 | ** Bashing videos in general instantly become dated as the community moves on from the moment certain characters and/or users were bashed. |
| 375 | ** Character choices in general. For example, [[VisualNovel/{{Air}} Misuzu_M]] was really popular during the heyday of [=Markyjoe1990=], but has long since faded into obscurity. |
| 376 | ** Meme characters such as Shoop Da Whoop, due to their memes fading out over time. |
| 377 | ** MUGEN teams, which have gradually faded out over time and are rarely mentioned today. |
| 378 | ** Even the characters themselves can become dated based on how they're designed: |
| 379 | *** Warner's Wario, for example, was designed in 2000 and shows it in several ways, with his design being that of the older long-sleeved design rather than the more iconic short-sleeved design or [[VideoGame/WarioWare biker outfit]], voice clips from 1996's ''VideoGame/MarioKart64'' and a very simplistic moveset that borrows heavily from the ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' series. |
| 380 | *** Likewise, [=ShinRyoga=]'s Mario was made in 2001, has voice clips from 1996's ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' and 1999's ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros64'', lacking anything introduced in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' and onward. |
| 381 | *** [=AndreTXH's=] [[Website/{{Neopets}} Hakktan the Xweetok]] has an attack where he dresses up as Misuzu and splashes her juice. Hakktan was made in the 2000s, Misuzu's heyday. |
| 382 | ** In regards to stages, Arpa made [[https://www.mediafire.com/file/z2xs34f4464a0p7/BAMT3_Stage_Pack.7z one]] crudely drawn in MS Paint featuring statues of [=JudgeSpear=], Ampchu, [=MarkyJoe1990=], The_None, [=WildTengu=], himself, [=AshramVII=], Orochi Gill, and [=MC2=]. All of these MUGEN users were big hits in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the only ones who haven't retired as of this writing are The_None and Arpa, and even the latter is far less relevant today. |
| 383 | * ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' is a pretty timeless game... except for those {{tagline}}s on the title screen which frequently contain references to memes that were popular during the development of a given version. Media referencing ''Minecraft'' have it even worse though, as the game itself is continuously developed by Mojang, who keep adding completely new elements to the game world, making those T-shirts showing chibi-fied mobs quite dated with their lack of new ones. |
| 384 | * ''VideoGame/{{Postal}}'': |
| 385 | ** ''VideoGame/Postal2'', released in 2003, is a case of The90s spilling over into [[TurnOfTheMillennium the following decade]]. The game features references and parodies of the 1993 Waco siege, the cameo by Creator/GaryColeman AsHimself (primarily jokes about [[FormerChildStar when he was a child star]]), and a very '90s view of the controversy over [[MurderSimulators violent video games]], particularly in its many, ''many'' {{Take That}}s at then-Senator Joe Lieberman (who had become irrelevant to the subject by then) while never so much as hinting at Jack Thompson's existence, even in the expansion which released at the height of his relevance after the [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas "Hot Coffee" scandal]]. The [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror al-Qaeda]] references with terrorists who all look like UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden, however, place it firmly post-2001, and are so over-the-top that it can [[PoesLaw almost be seen as a parody]] of America's early reactions to the attacks of vulnerable, paranoid xenophobia. It's even more apparent in the ''Apocalypse Weekend'' expansion, where a full training camp for terrorists is within easy walking distance of Paradise, and the statements and conduct of the National Guard when they roll in and arrest the surviving terrorists and the player character, particularly referring to the terrorists as a "filthy Axis of Evil" and holding everyone without trial, are lifted directly from statements from and accusations leveled at then-President George W. Bush and the US Army of the earliest days of the Iraq invasion. Its later rerelease on digital storefronts in 2013 and ''Paradise Lost'' DLC in 2015 add yet another decade to the pile, such as an achievement poking fun at a minor controversy regarding the game's release through Steam Greenlight, a service which was phased out in 2017; an EasterEgg entirely dedicated to advertising a remake of the first ''Postal'' that came out in 2016; an "Equality Simulator" arcade game poking fun at the idea of the "social justice warrior", back when people who identified as such were almost-universally mocked; and a cameo from controversial journalist Milo Yiannopolous before he made statements on pedophilia that [[RoleEndingMisdemeanor effectively made him persona non grata]]. |
| 386 | ** In turn, ''VideoGame/PostalIII'', due to its delayed development, is a unique case of being a period piece to the late TurnOfTheMillennium, almost specifically to 2008, and thus immediately being dated upon release when it came out [[TheNew10s in 2011]]. The political atmosphere is soundly grounded in the twilight of the Bush era -- including "border patrol" that involves stopping Americans from escaping into Mexico to get away from the recession, the moral guardians now being crazy hockey moms [[EverythingIsRacist looking for excuses to be offended]] and only noticed for being too loud and violent to ignore, who are lead by a dead ringer for UsefulNotes/SarahPalin (who stopped being relevant almost as soon as the 2008 election was over), and Osama bin Laden as a prominent member of the BigBadDuumvirate (the game released half a year after his death). The celebrity appearances are likewise all dated, including Jennifer Walcott (based mostly on her being a ''Magazine/{{Playboy}}'' Playmate of the Year ten years prior), Randy Jones of the Music/VillagePeople (whose last solo outing before the game was in 2007), Creator/UweBoll (primarily for his ''Film/{{Postal}}'' movie, also from 2007), and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela's President until his death in 2013). |
| 387 | * ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers'' contains references to well-known games, game designers and game companies of the '80s and '90s, and the computer technology of that time period. Since the 2000s, the gaming landscape has significantly changed. |
| 388 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGear'': |
| 389 | ** ''VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake'' is set on Christmas Eve of 1999; it's all but outright stated that the Cold War is still ongoing, and much of its plot is dedicated to making a big deal about how the East vs. West tensions of that time period have screwed up the lives of almost every character present (Gustava Heffner had her defection request denied and was then persecuted at home for attempting to defect, Dr. Madnar was forced into scientific pursuits the US military demanded and was ostracized for wanting to work on Metal Gear, etc.). It came out in July 1990, which turned out to be just a year and a half before the Cold War ended. |
| 390 | ** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' is set in the back end of the 2000s, 2007 for the prologue and 2009 for the main game, but the fact that it came out at the exact opposite point (2001) is easy enough to notice. In particular is during the long conversation between Raiden and Emma about [[AncientConspiracy the Patriots]] and how they got to the {{Big Brother|IsWatching}}-like status they now have, with mention of them installing spying software into every computer in the world by masking it underneath software updates to counteract [[MillenniumBug Y2K]] -- something which was still fresh in people's minds in 2001, but by 2009 had been all but forgotten except by, perhaps, the craziest and most obsessive of {{conspiracy theorist}}s (which unintentionally suits her role in the story to argue points in the same manner as a crazy, obsessive conspiracy theorist). |
| 391 | * Each game in ''VideoGame/TheSims'' series can easily be dated to the time in which it and its expansions came out, largely through how the technology and fashion (especially female fashion) available to Sims changed. Will Wright, the creator of the series, stated that his goal with the original game was for the setting and aesthetic to reflect the lifestyles commonly seen on American {{Dom Com}}s from The50s through The90s so as to avoid this trope, but as times changed, ''The Sims'' changed with them. |
| 392 | ** In [[VideoGame/TheSims1 the first game]], released in 2000, Sims used landline phones to talk to each other at long distances, a black-and-white television was available as the cheapest TV set, newspapers were used to find jobs, cell phones didn't exist, and computers were only used to play games and look at job listings. By [[VideoGame/TheSims4 the fourth]], released in 2014, newspapers and landline phones were gone entirely, every Sim had a smartphone, cathode-ray-tube color [=TVs=] were the dirt-cheap options, and the ''City Living'' expansion released in 2016 added a Social Media career track, allowing Sims to work in an industry that did not exist in 2000. Going through the ''Sims'' series, one can trace the evolution of consumer technology over the course of the early 21st century, and how people have interacted with such. |
| 393 | ** The evolution of the games' treatment of LGBTQ+ people has also tracked with how the discussion of their issues has evolved in the United States. The first game treated same-sex romantic relationships as nothing out of the ordinary, which was big for the time, but gay and lesbian Sims could only "Move In" with each other, as same-sex marriage was still considered a fringe topic then even by some members of those communities. The [[VideoGame/TheSims2 second game]] allowed same-sex Sims to marry each other, in a way, but called it "joined union" instead of marriage, reflecting the time in the mid-late '00s when civil unions (which were legally marriage in all but name) were a popular "middle ground" option between making same-sex marriage legal and keeping it banned. From the [[VideoGame/TheSims3 third game]] onward, full marriage was available to same-sex partners the same way it was to opposite-sex partners. With the fourth game, as UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} and non-binary people became more visible in the mid-late '10s, options for creating trans Sims and determining their pronouns were added in free patches. |
| 394 | ** In terms of fashion, meanwhile, the clothing options available in the first game still reflected The90s, with a particular focus on clothes that would look and feel right at home in a DomCom from that decade. The second and third games, meanwhile, featured popular fashion items from the TurnOfTheMillennium, particularly with the prevalence of low-rise hip-hugging pants for female Sims designed to bare the midriff, which were trendy among young women in that decade but experienced a major backlash in the next. Finally, the clothing in the fourth game reflects contemporary fashions in TheNew10s, particularly the {{hipster}} and athleisure trends. |
| 395 | ** The ''Sims 3'' expansion ''Supernatural'' is filled with [[ShoutOut Shout-Outs]] to contemporary UrbanFantasy franchises, including ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', ''Literature/TheSouthernVampireMysteries'' (especially its TV adaptation ''Series/TrueBlood''), ''Series/{{Being Human|US}}'', ''Series/{{Grimm}}'', and ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', rooting the game in the time period when those series were at the height of their popularity. |
| 396 | ** Perhaps no game in the series is more thoroughly dated to its time than the SpinOff ''VideoGame/TheUrbz: Sims in the City''. Released in 2004 for the Platform/PlayStation2 and Platform/GameBoyAdvance, the entire game is dripping in a TotallyRadical aesthetic inspired by early-mid 2000s "urban" culture (from HipHop to [[TheQuincyPunk punks]] to club culture to {{anime|sque}}), the fact that Music/TheBlackEyedPeas made cameos in the game and recorded several [[TranslatedCoverVersion Simlish covers]] of their songs for the soundtrack being just the start. Its gameplay and setting reflect a time when the gentrification of the major cities of the US and Europe was just starting to take off, and when many [[ViceCity previously rough neighborhoods]] were suddenly turning into the hippest spots in town but still had "edgy" reputations that gave them a certain cool factor. Sims also have a distinct Toys/{{Bratz}} doll appearance, from the gigantic eyes to how the hip-hugging pants for the women often came paired with thong underwear. |
| 397 | ** The various celebrity tie-ins serve as snapshots of pop culture, especially youth culture, at the points when the various games came out. In the first game, the ''House Party'' expansion (released in 2001) had Creator/DrewCarey show up at your house in a limo if your party was successful enough, while the ''Superstar'' expansion (released in 2003) featured Music/ChristinaAguilera, [[Music/BonJovi Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora]], Music/AvrilLavigne, Music/SarahMcLachlan, and Creator/FreddiePrinzeJr as [=NPCs=], as well as Elle Woods from ''Film/LegallyBlonde''. The console version of ''The Sims 2: Pets'' (2006) had Creator/HilaryDuff. ''The Sims 3''[='=]s ''Ambitions'' expansion (2010) had an expy of Creator/ParisHilton in Sofia Carlton, while the ''Showtime'' expansion (released in 2012) had a special edition that boasted a tie-in with Music/KatyPerry, along with a separate ''Sweet Treats'' stuff pack filled with clothing and objects straight out of her ''Teenage Dream''-era concerts and videos. Finally, ''The Sims 4''[='=]s ''Get Famous'' expansion (2018) had the influencer Baby Ariel as an NPC, while official Sim versions of Music/VanessaHudgens, Creator/MillieBobbyBrown, Creator/KiernanShipka (as a Spellcaster, [[Series/ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina of course]]) and the bands Music/NewPolitics and Music/{{Echosmith}} have all been featured in the Gallery as free downloadable content. |
| 398 | * {{Game mod}}s often fall into this, even if just by some random texture on a wall, because modders tend to be more openly political and prone to {{Take That}}s than developers that are aware of this trope. |
| 399 | ** For one example, the ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament2004'' vehicle CTF map "[=AggressiveAlleys2k4=]" includes [[https://i.imgur.com/7fmKKn8.png this cover]] of ''The New York Post'' from October 2001 in each vehicle garage. Even ignoring that the game takes place 300 years into the future, almost no one these days remembers '''which''' ''New York Post'' worker got infected, or even the last time anthrax was relevant. |
| 400 | ** The ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' mod ''[[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hellcore_2.0 Hellcore 2.0]]'' is a more innocent example. The original mod was in development [[DevelopmentHell from 1994 to 2004]], which would lead to wild variances in quality and techniques, so for the 2.0 re-release in 2006, eleven maps from the original were extensively modified and updated to bring them up to modern standards of ''Doom'' map creation. What wasn't updated was some of the textures in the real-world areas of the early to mid-game, thus the second level includes a gas station selling gas for less than two dollars a gallon, something people could only dream of being the case around the time of release. |
| 401 | ** The 2003 ''Doom'' mod ''[[VideoGame/TheAdventuresOfMassmouth MassMouth 2]]'' immediately dates itself by its opening (where the characters re-enact the ''VideoGame/ZeroWing'' intro) and one of its endings (with a joke revolving around Creator/JohnRomero giving you a copy of ''VideoGame/{{Daikatana}}''). These date it to the early 2000s, back when jokes about ''Zero Wing'', and how terrible ''Daikatana'' is, were still in fashion. There's also a short gag with a TakeThat to Newdoom, a ''Doom'' fansite which went defunct after 2009. |
| 402 | ** The ''Community is Falling'' trilogy of mods likewise fall into this. Standout instances are their plots centered around now-forgotten moments from the ''Doom'' community (like the first part having a joke where the player gives admin access to every user on Newdoom, resulting in the lights suddenly shifting through several different bright colors, the second built entirely to lead up to a recreation of a ''Doom''-themed troll post on the then-still-new Platform/{{Steam}} forums, or the third centering around finding out who leaked a test build of ''Knee-Deep in [=ZDoom=]''), namedrops for several prominent members of the community of 2004-2006 (most of whom have probably either moved on to newer games or been forgotten even by the most hardcore fans - even the creator of the trilogy, who inserted himself into the first part, is now probably better known as the creator of Creator/NightdiveStudios' KEX engine than he is as a former Doom mapper), the first also featuring Doom Connector (a multiplayer service that, in its then-current form, went offline just a year later[[labelnote:*]]Doubly for this trope, there's also a brief claim that nobody will miss it because everyone uses [=ZDaemon=] anyway, a multiplayer-focused source port with its own server browser which was at the height of its popularity around 2004, but slid into irrelevance another two or three years later with the release of more feature-rich and better-looking multiplayer ports like Skulltag[[/labelnote]]), and the second including [=PlanetDoom=] (hasn't been updated since 2012) and many jokes at the expense of ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' and Steam, back when the latter was a glorified launcher/DRM scheme specifically for the former (presented in the mod as [[BigBrotherIsWatching only a step above spyware]]) and not the number one emptier of PC gamers' wallets; jokes about VaporWare are interestingly never hinted at, as not even ''Episode One'' was out yet and everyone had forgotten about ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' in 2005. |
| 403 | ** The ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'' GameMod ''[[http://www.moddb.com/mods/cc-shockwave ShockWave]]'' makes a joke regarding Microsoft's Windows XP's fictional "Nightmare Edition", which is supposedly so unstable, it makes [[ExplosiveOverclocking computers explode]], as part of a minigame intro. The ending references (what else for early 2000s?) ''VideoGame/ZeroWing''. The eventual 2018 re-release replaces Windows XP with the made-up "Windows One" (which will itself fall to this later down the line when its namesake, the Platform/XboxOne, becomes old news), but keeps the ''Zero Wing'' reference. |
| 404 | * A lot of ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' cosmetics were put out as part of promotions, and many outlasted the games/shows they were meant to promote. There are probably more snipers currently wearing the promo hat for ''VideoGame/{{Brink}}'' than there are players of ''Brink'' itself. In some cases, if the item isn't craftable or droppable, you can even guess how long someone's been playing, if they have older promotional items like [[VideoGame/Left4Dead Bill's Hat]], the VideoGame/AlienSwarm Parasite, or the Earbuds. AdaptationDisplacement is also a factor, in the case of very common weapons or cosmetics; the Frying Pan was added to promote ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'', but is now more associated with ''[=TF2=]'' (mostly because it took on a new life there for its trolling potential). There's also promotional cosmetics from Creator/AdultSwim shows, and it's obvious when the promotion happened since the only show involved that's still going is ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'', and there's no cosmetics for the block's newer hits like ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' and ''WesternAnimation/SmilingFriends''. |
| 405 | * VideoGame/TheGame2008: The first two installments of the series contain plenty of references to mid-to-late-2000s memes, as well as jokes about the 2007-2008 recession. The third does too, with social media, mobile games, Inception references, and more early 2010s memes. |
| 406 | * The ''VideoGame/TonyHawksProSkater'' series is deeply rooted in the skater culture of the late '90s, which soon became the skater culture of the '00s thanks to how the series [[TheRedStapler revived the popularity of extreme sports]] during that time. Even in later games released well into the '00s, the soundtracks were usually rooted in '90s PunkRock and HipHop, almost out of tradition. Later games, however, did see more modern elements start to come in. |
| 407 | ** The second game of the ''VideoGame/TonyHawksUnderground'' sub-series, as well as the follow-up game ''American Wasteland'', featured [[ProductPlacement Nextel and Motorola flip phones]] as the main form of communication for the playable character. ''Underground 2'' also featured several cast members from ''Series/{{Jackass}}'' and a plot heavily inspired by both that show and its spinoff ''Series/VivaLaBam''. |
| 408 | ** ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2'' is a full remake of the first two ''Tony Hawk'' games from the Platform/PlayStation 1 era released in 2020 for modern consoles. While the levels, objectives, and gameplay have been preserved and recreated as closely as can be, the aesthetics on some elements have been updated with the times. The Mall level, for instance, is now abandoned, reflecting how many indoor shopping centers have fallen out of fashion and closed down since the '90s[[note]]It was particularly prescient during 2020, the year the remakes released, since the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic forced many shopping malls and other businesses deemed non-essential to close, which the [[RippedFromTheHeadlines game even mentions as the reason for the mall being abandoned]][[/note]]. The returning skaters from the older games have also been aged up to reflect that they were now in their 40s at least (Hawk himself was 52). But the biggest one comes in the remade School level, where the video screen that once played music videos now plays [[https://kotaku.com/schools-out-in-tony-hawks-pro-skater-1-2-due-to-covid-1-1844943051 messages]] revealing that the school is closed due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, pegging the game as taking place in 2020 or 2021. This isn't the only COVID-19-related EasterEgg, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFE2xAU1z_g either]] -- the remade Venice Beach level now has a plane flying overhead pulling banners telling people to wear protective masks and wash their hands, the New York level has a PublicServiceAnnouncement about such showing on one of the electronic billboards, the Minneapolis level has a hidden room filled with a massive stash of toilet paper (which many people hoarded in the early weeks of the pandemic), and one of the options in the character customization menu is a medical face mask. |
| 409 | * The 2010 remake of ''VideoGame/{{GoldenEye|2010}}'' was an attempt at reimagining [[VideoGame/GoldenEye1997 a game from 1997]] that was itself an adaptation of [[Film/GoldenEye a film from 1995]] which was heavily steeped in an immediately-post-Cold War world. As such, it couldn't simply shift the original plot 15 years into the future, because it wouldn't have worked anymore - for instance, Trevelyan's original motivation to get revenge for his Lienz Cossack parents being sent back to Russia rather than being given asylum in the UK after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, even with him being only six years old at the time, still would have had him at 71 years old in 2010. Its attempts to modernize the plot simply dated it to a later period, such as Trevelyan's new motivation being to get back at the British banks for making a killing while the economy melted down in the 2008 recession, and the Russian villains' backgrounds in the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan were shifted to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. |
| 410 | * ''VideoGame/SeriousSam'': |
| 411 | ** Even from the beginning, the games were dated mostly in that they, to this day, almost-directly follow the gameplay style of 1993's ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' combined with very 2000s-style writing, particularly the many, many times [[TakeThat they take the piss]] out of ''VideoGame/DukeNukemForever'' being VaporWare as long as it was; the most common joke around news of a delay in ''VideoGame/SeriousSam3BFE''[='=]s release was that they had to hastily rewrite the game after ''DNF'' actually launched earlier in the same year. |
| 412 | ** ''Serious Sam 3'', from late 2011, is in itself another example in that it tried to keep up with the classic gameplay style, but also [[FollowTheLeader added gameplay mechanics to ape more modern shooters at the time]], such as {{sprint|Meter}}ing, aiming with ironsights, and setting the game in Egypt to fit in with the several other shooters of its day that were set in and around the Middle East. Like with ''Duke Nukem Forever''[='=]s infamous development, these mechanics ended up sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the game, which is all about moving as quickly as possible and taking on huge hordes of monstrous enemies, especially since the game has an achievement for beating it without ever using any of the "modern" mechanics and thus proving they are entirely unnecessary. It can also be seen in the game's pace, as the really big ambushes with hundreds of diverse monsters the series is famous for take much longer to show up this time around, the game apparently wanting a more "grounded" take on [[MisaimedRealism an invasion by several varieties of cartoony aliens taken on by a single catchphrase-spouting action hero]]. |
| 413 | * Any RhythmGame that relies on the player dancing to contemporary music can date itself by virtue of the songs licensed for them. |
| 414 | ** The ''VideoGame/JustDance'' series began in 2009, during the period in which people were getting tired of PostGrunge, PopPunk, EmoMusic and GlamRap but just starting to embrace the dance club-friendly electropop that dominated popular music in the early half of TheNew10s. The games have combed through the aforementioned electropop and whimsical festival-oriented IndiePop of the early-to-mid-2010s, the socially conscious, alternative-influenced pop of the mid-to-late-2010s, the various trends in HipHop and ElectronicDanceMusic that have come and gone through that time, the various dance craze songs that came and went through the years, various songs made popular on social media or by memes, and songs from musicals and musical films that were popular at a given entry's release. |
| 415 | ** The reliance on {{Eurobeat}}, [=Eurodance=] and other forms of late-90s/early-2000s ElectronicDanceMusic trends in the early ''VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution'' titles turn them into time capsules of what was popular in dance clubs at the time. |
| 416 | * ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'': |
| 417 | ** ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'' falls into this by way of being, essentially, a [[Post911TerrorismMovie Post-9/11 Terrorism Game]], with fans and critics of the series both describing it as post-9/11 {{catharsis|Factor}} that lets players to personally get revenge on stand-ins for the people responsible. As 9/11 fell out of the recent past, further ''Call of Duty'' games switched its enemies to more recent and hot-button foes such as Russia (invading America and then western Europe in ''Modern Warfare 2'' and ''3''), China (engaged in a new Cold War with America and indirectly fighting them over various Middle Eastern and European countries in ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII Black Ops II]]''), Venezuela (leading a South American petro-empire that also invades America in ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts Ghosts]]''), PrivateMilitaryContractors (growing out of control and attacking sovereign nations in ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyAdvancedWarfare Advanced Warfare]]''), and eventually the rapid progress of [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul technology itself]] (cyborg super-soldiers being corrupted by a [[AIIsACrapshoot rogue AI]] in ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'') before moving straight on to [[VideOGame/CallOfDutyInfiniteWarfare pure fiction]], [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyWWII actual period pieces]], [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps4 battle royale clones]], and [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2019 reboots of earlier series]]. |
| 418 | ** ''Call of Duty 4''[='=]s treatment of Russia is pretty indicative of the times. Russia is depicted as poor and unstable - the half of the plot set there deals with a civil war, the government forces are stuck with late-Cold War tech, and most of the houses you encounter in the Russian countryside are ramshackle buildings that look older than most of the men you fight with or against - while said government is portrayed as broadly friendly with the West, all of which mirrors the state of Russia at the time of the game's release in 2007, when they were still recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union, dealing with insurgencies and worsening relations with former satellite states,[[labelnote:*]]the Ultranationalists were even [[WhatCouldHaveBeen meant to be Chechen insurgents]], but were changed to more generic Soviet diehards because Russia's relation with other former Union members worsened as the game was in development[[/labelnote]] and was trying to cozy up to the US and EU. After the game's release, much of this would be reversed; Russia experienced an economic boom thanks to, among several other reasons, high oil prices (by the end of the 2010s, its GDP per capita at PPP was five times higher than at the start of the 2000s), while its relations with the West would worsen over its continued fighting with other former Union members, particularly its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and ''especially'' the 2022 escalation, which resulted in the West effectively severing all economic ties with Russia. |
| 419 | ** There's also ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2 Modern Warfare 2]]'', which released in 2009. Though ostensibly set in 2016, the first two missions have a pair of details that are hard to notice but clearly date the game to the late 2000s once you do catch them -- namely, a reference to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which was repealed in 2010, and the fact that ''all'' of the Rangers using their phones to record [[StuffBlowingUp an F-15 bomb strike on an enemy-controlled tower]] have flip-open phones. Tellingly, the 2020 UpdatedReRelease has them using smartphones instead. The remaster also comes with a [[OurLawyersAdvisedThisTrope disclaimer]] on startup noting that it is a faithful recreation of an at-the-time 10-year-old game and reflects the norms of its time period because of several other things that have come to date it, like a complete lack of female soldiers (women were barred from serving in any US Army unit smaller than a brigade that was meant to actively engage enemy forces until 2013) and a somewhat more optimistic view of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror (which, while definitely unpopular in 2009, has since come to be almost universally viewed as a complete and utter failure after US forces started pulling out of Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban [[AllForNothing captured Kabul before that withdrawal was even finished]]). |
| 420 | ** The games, especially ''Call of Duty 4'' and ''Modern Warfare 2'', are in a somewhat unique position as being a turning point for the "modern" FPS genre, and as such other contemporary-set shooters can usually be dated to before and after they came out. ''Call of Duty 4'' and shooters before it typically have slower action sequences with more downtime between them, a willingness to have setpieces that don't just involve loud shootouts (e.g. "All Ghillied Up" is so iconic because a "good" run involves nobody even realizing you're there, whether you silently pick them off or just sneak by them) and more authentic loadouts, e.g. ''[=CoD4=]''[='=]s most recent weapons still being almost a decade old as of its release and having already appeared in several other shooters before then. ''Modern Warfare 2'' set a precedent for much higher-octane and constantly-rolling action, with even intended stealth missions always having every other area punctuated with a big shootout, and featured many more weapons that were much more recent (many of which were still in the prototype phase at the time of the game's release, e.g. the TDI Vector and Bushmaster ACR) or [[RuleOfCool much more cool]] than a more realistic choice (e.g. every Humvee now has a [[GatlingGood minigun]] mounted on it rather than the more ubiquitous M2 machine gun, and the basic pump shotgun is switched from a Winchester 1300 to the more famous Franchi SPAS-12) and which lead further games, in attempts to raise the bar on that front, to frequently feature prototype weapons that ended up being wildly redesigned before they actually entered service at best, or never entering full production at worst; this quickly reached its peak with ''Modern Warfare 3'', which featured [[https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/FAD_Assault_Rifle a prototype assault rifle from Peru]] before anyone outside of its designer even knew how it actually ''operated''. |
| 421 | [[/folder]] |
| 422 | |
| 423 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 424 | * ''WebAnimation/TheGmodIdiotBox''. Thanks to the creator's tendency to put in references to popular games, memes, trends etc., some episodes of the show can often feel like products of that moment in internet and/or gaming culture: |
| 425 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Fpj-tmRiE Episode 8]][[note]]Which was released in February of 2010, but made during late 2009[[/note]] where the entire intro skit is in reference to a Youtube channel layout change that users don't even have anymore. It also has references to [[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/2-girls-1-cup 2girls1cup]], [[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/will-it-blend Will it Blend?]], and [[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/fred-lucas-cruikshank Fred]]. |
| 426 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjCvmrEB-no Episode 14]][[note]]Released in mid-2014[[/note]] has references to ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', ''VideoGame/PAYDAY2'', ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'', and ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys''. |
| 427 | * This was occasionally a problem in the first five seasons of ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue''. Since the majority of the plot hadn't been established yet, it relied mostly on character-based humor with the odd topical joke, making any moment that makes a jab at one of the characters catching up on ''Series/{{Lost}}'' or when Sister wanted to check her [=MySpace=] account stand out like a sore thumb. Thankfully when it became more focused on its developing plot this largely stopped, though it still pops up from time to time. It's inevitable really, when your series has been going nonstop [[LongRunners since 2003]]. There's also the PSA skits which reference current events and trends, and more recognizably the graphical styles as the series readily adapts to whichever ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' game has been most recently released and video-capturing software improved. |
| 428 | * This may have contributed to why ''Platform/GoAnimate'' was updated and retooled to an [=HTML 5=] business-friendly animation site in 2015. Back when the site was released in 2007, it featured then-popular crazes such a parody of the ''Advertising/GetAMac'' campaign, caricatures of figures such as candidates of the 2008 US election, Music/BritneySpears, Creator/ParisHilton, and jokes about Osama bin Laden's hiding. The site's next change in 2010, while keeping the past themes, incorporated a newer Flash software. It also introduced the famous Comedy World (based on adult animation, especially ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), Anime and 2012 US election themes, text-to-speech voices, which led to the "grounded video" trend the site has become famous for and a larger following. However, as the site started to lose relevance and losing out to competitors in 2015, CEO Alvin Hung retooled the site to remove the outdated Flash themes and focus the site entirely on business animation aspects. Despite the outcry at first, past users have since moved to other animation sites, and some have accepted the changes. |
| 429 | * ''WebAnimation/AnimatorVsAnimation'' can more or less be traced year by year, given that the entire concept is a stickman rampaging across a guy's computer and desktop, with programs coming and going as a real-life tech-savvy person would adopt and get rid of them. For instance, the third short is a cavalcade of all things from the late XP era, from bundled games like TabletopGame/{{Solitaire}} and ''VideoGame/{{Minesweeper}}'', to Clippy, to AOL Instant Messenger, to Firefox being the big dog while Chrome was just taking off. The 2014 short has an operating system that looks like Windows 7, Chrome as the main browser, and Facebook and an [=iPhone=] as significant plot elements. |
| 430 | * Many ''[[WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4]]'' videos have a tendency of [[ReferenceOverdosed referencing various memes and franchises]] that were popular at the time they were uploaded. Because of this, it can be easier to tell when a video was made. This is ''especially'' evident with "breaking walls", which featured Platform/YouTube the way it was when the video was uploaded in 2012. |
| 431 | * {{Invoked|Trope}} by ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' in the [[Recap/DeathBattleS10E10ColeMacGrathVSAlexMercer fight between Cole McGrath and Alex Mercer]]. Since their respective video game series, ''VideoGame/InFamous'' and ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'', were at the peaks of their popularity in the late '00s and early '10s, the script for the episode is [[{{Retraux}} presented]] as a lost and revisited script that was originally written back in 2013, complete with outdated slang like "awesomesauce", jokes about ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'', and various [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]] screenwriting cliches of that time period. Wiz and Boomstick frequently ask WhoWritesThisCrap as they go through the episode, [[IWasQuiteAFashionVictim cringing at the internet humor of that era]]. |
| 432 | [[/folder]] |
| 433 | |
| 434 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 435 | * [[TwoGamersOnACouch Gaming comics]] are like this almost by design, as they often reference then-current games. |
| 436 | * ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' rarely if at all tries to stay timeless. Many strips are made in response to new scientific discoveries, recent culture phenomena or politics. Browsing through the archive is kinda like travelling in a time machine. Watch characters (and Randall) talking about [=MySpace=] and [=LiveJournal=] in the earliest strips (from mid-2000s) and transiting to Facebook as you move further in time. |
| 437 | ** The punchline to [[https://xkcd.com/647/ this]] strip becomes more and more pertinent as more time passes. |
| 438 | ** Discussed in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic in [[https://xkcd.com/2384/ this strip]] and how simple things like characters attending a party can date a work to pre-2019 or imply an alternate universe. |
| 439 | ** An instance of a comic aging badly can be found e.g. in [[https://xkcd.com/792/ strip 793]], which makes fun of an issue (tech companies' use of their users' data) that became a serious concern in just a few years since then. |
| 440 | ** [[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1688:_Map_Age_Guide Strip 1688]] discusses how easily this occurs with maps in the form of a flow chart, directing you based on which features are present or missing. The [[TheNew20s 2022]] Colorado radioactive spider outbreak [[IWantMyJetpack seems to be getting kept under wraps for now, though...]] |
| 441 | [[/folder]] |
| 442 | |
| 443 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 444 | * [[Website/TVTropes This very wiki]]. Given its reliance on informal writing style and pop culture references, it can be very apparent when a certain entry or article was made ([[Administrivia/ExamplesAreNotRecent even when there are efforts to minimize such datings]]). For example, something written in the mid-to-late 2000s will contain plenty of references to ''Series/StargateSG1'', ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', Creator/JJAbrams' early hits (e.g. ''Series/{{Lost}}'', ''Series/{{Alias}}'', ''Series/{{Fringe}}''), Website/{{Fark}}.com, ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''Website/TheBestPageInTheUniverse'' (and other "[=fratire=]" blogs), ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'', ''Literature/HarryPotter'', ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'', ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', or ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' while something from the early-to-mid 2010s will instead repeatedly refer to ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', or the ''Series/DoctorWho'' revival. By the late 2010s, the go-to referrals were things like ''Series/GameOfThrones'' or ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', and with these shows having ended in 2019 and 2020 respectively, even those entries will most likely seem dated in a few years' time. |
| 445 | ** Other entries or even pages can be dated with changes in naming conventions (Administrivia/NoNewStockPhrases, tropes named after a character or a then-recent pop culture reference, etc.). While most have been renamed, the [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes rename history]] and redirects still show the tendencies of the time. Alternatively, there's even the style in which they're edited, even if you have to look at the page source itself to see it -- for instance, an older link to a work's sequel, before it got its own page, will frequently have a pothole to the main work's page consisting of... the main work's name typed out again, just with a number added, to say nothing of how quickly dated locked pages become, either from tropes that have since been renamed (e.g. a reference to "The Yoshi" rather than PowerupMount), memes that have since fallen out of style (such as the prevalence of linking to EpicFail before about 2011), or massive shake-ups in the subject itself that would be impossible to go unmentioned if the page were unlocked (e.g. Platform/{{Tumblr}}'s infamous porn ban in late 2018, which saw one whole ''third'' of its userbase leaving the platform, gets little more than a passing mention). |
| 446 | ** The description of MisterSandmanSequence originally cited an example from ''{{Series/Journeyman}}'', a short-lived TV series which aired in late 2007. Guess when that page was started. |
| 447 | ** A common problem with [=YMMV=] items like OvershadowedByControversy, RoleEndingMisdemeanor, CondemnedByHistory and NeverLiveItDown is that minor, long-forgotten drama will be treated as if they were colossal, massive scandals that cast a shadow over the work. This is a large reason why most of these items are now listed in the Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease page, in the hopes of reducing exaggerated, knee-jerk reactions to recent events by ensuring they have several years of hindsight. |
| 448 | *** Relatedly, entries under HilariousInHindsight, HarsherInHindsight and other retroactive AudienceReactions are [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical very prone to drawing (sometimes tenuous) comparisons to then-current events and hot-button topics]]. |
| 449 | ** The introduction from OnlyInFlorida quotes Website/{{Fark}}.com headlines from March 12, 2008. Guess which date the trope was added to the wiki. |
| 450 | ** Several pages dating to the 2000s and early-to-mid-2010s will occasionally give mention to the New Atheism movement, often being laudatory towards the rhetoric of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins. By the mid-to-late-2010s, the New Atheism movement (and to a degree, atheism in general) had largely fallen out of favor with the public as New Atheists like Dawkins' rhetoric began to veer towards concepts such as misogyny and Islamophobia. |
| 451 | ** Older pages mentioning the ''Franchise/StarWars''[=/=]''Franchise/StarTrek'' FandomRivalry will often make mention of the now-mostly-obscure 2009 film ''Film/{{Fanboys}}''. |
| 452 | ** The description for FridgeLogic cites an example from ''Series/{{Alias}}'', a TV drama which ended in 2006. The page was created in 200''7'', a year ''after'' it ended, so the series was still fresh in the mind of many at the time the trope was added to the wiki. |
| 453 | ** Some tropes named for then-recent pop culture references become recognizable enough on the site that the recognition for their names eclipse the memory of what they're referencing. (e.g. {{Narm}} is named for a now-forgotten meme spawned from the Creator/{{HBO}} drama ''Series/SixFeetUnder'', ShortRunInPeru's name is a reference to a line in the 2000s British sci-fi comedy series ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'', and HereComesTheScience was named for a then-popular meme spawned by a UK L'Oreal ad starring Creator/BenAffleck). |
| 454 | ** Even the description for Administrivia/ExamplesAreNotRecent mentions ''Series/BurnNotice'' and the death of Comicbook/CaptainAmerica, which both occurred in 2007. The current iteration of the page was made in 2012, but before namespaces existed, an earlier version of the page from the "Main" namespace was made some time before 2008. In this case, there actually was an effort to update the references in the mid-[=2010s=], but they were changed back because [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools the more outdated the original references became, the greater the point the article made]]. |
| 455 | ** Pages about niche works are rarely updated to reflect negative developments (whether it's [[SeasonalRot merely poor reaction to later material]] or full-on RoleEndingMisdemeanor on the creator's part), which can lead to an odd dissonance where a given work or creator becomes widely mocked and disliked but the page and its YMMV items are written as if the thing in question is still popular and universally beloved. This particularly hits online video makers due to how volatile the space is. |
| 456 | ** {{Jossed}} was named such back when Creator/JossWhedon was still a relatively beloved and respected creator. Opinions of what's come of him since then have been heated, to say the least, but having become OvershadowedByControversy in recent years, it's very likely the trope would have a different name if the page was created today. For that matter, the phrase's definition is one that dates to the time when Whedon was still a relatively underground nerd-culture figure mainly known for ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Post-''Avengers'', when his work and career became far more mainstream and far more scrutinized, "guy who disproves fan theories and fanon with new installments" probably wouldn't even rank 50th in terms of PersonAsVerb descriptions of him. |
| 457 | * Discussed by Erik Germ in the ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' article [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-childhood-favorites-that-did-not-age-well/ "5 Childhood Favorites That Did Not Age Well"]]. Among other things, he notes how ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' chewable vitamins have long since outlived the TV show they were based on, such that kids raised after The90s may not even realize that [[AdaptationDisplacement they were based on a TV show]], and how, in the other direction, watching ''Series/SesameStreet'' with his son now is an exercise in trying to figure out where all the characters he grew up with went. |
| 458 | * The [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Wank_Wiki Fanlore wiki]] is an inherently dated concept; cataloging fandom drama in a snarky way was seen as a way to teach people what not to do in a fandom at the time, but once people seriously began reckoning with cyberbullying and online harassment, the idea largely became seen as completely unacceptable and a way of making a problem worse. Besides that, the website mostly owes itself to Platform/{{Livejournal}} fandom culture, which was a dominant force in the aughts and early tens, but almost completely evaporated due to Platform/{{Tumblr}}, and later on Platform/{{Twitter}} and Platform/{{DeviantArt}}, stealing most of its userbase. Quite a few articles on the site talk about controversies that are now mostly forgotten or fandom trends that have long since evaporated, such as Creator/CassandraClare's various dramas or Creator/AnneRice's crusades against fanfiction. There's also a heavy focus on ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', which was at its peak in that period. While there are still a good number of people keeping the lights on and making pages for more modern fandoms and controversies, it's clear that the vast majority of activity on the site is over a decade old. |
| 459 | * The failure of Platform/MySpace was largely because the website didn't innovate in time. The design during its zenith (2005-2006) was largely what one could expect of most websites in the early 2000s. The problem was that the internet moved on from that. The bulky, cumbersome, and unintuitive design of flash over substance that [=MySpace=] reeked of was quickly supplanted by sites like Facebook, which went for quick, efficient access, and sleek design. [=MySpace=] often had an air of a very high-end Platform/GeoCities type of website. And that was further hurt by profile customization: Anyone with the power to create a [=MySpace=] profile had the power to show everyone just how terrible they were at web design. In the age of easy access with simplified layouts (which is especially a MUST for the mobile aspect of the internet, which was another failure on [=MySpace=]'s behalf), [=MySpace=] clung to a bulky, unintuitive interface (that was still very buggy to boot) for too long. And once it stagnated as the once popular party that most people abandoned, it especially couldn't shake the stigma of being "so 2005". |
| 460 | * Much like the infamous ''Space Jam'' website in [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece/The90s the '90s subpage]], the official website for the [[https://99wfmk.com/spotlight-theater/ long-abandoned]] Spotlight 10 movie theater in the UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} suburb of Taylor, Michigan still exists, and has not been updated since the theater went out of business in 2012. [[http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbstocke/Site/index.html The site]] retains a basic late-'90s/early '00s layout,[[note]]even though the theater only opened in 2010, taking over a building opened by Star Theatres in 1989 and closed by AMC Theatres in 2009[[/note]] with static images and loud colors against simple Web 1.0 HTML, yet the movie showtimes displayed date it very specifically to late 2011. |
| 461 | * In modern times, Website/{{Fark}} feels like a time capsule of mid-to-late-2000s internet culture, and was once a very popular source for "weird news" and the origin point of many popular memes but its popularity almost completely evaporated by the early 2010s. The overall design of the site has been barely updated in recent years, and still resembles a news website from the 2000s. Founder Drew Curtis and the remaining Farkers have tried keeping the lights on, but it's clear that the vast majority of activity from the site is over a decade old. |
| 462 | [[/folder]] |
| 463 | |
| 464 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 465 | * Any Platform/YouTube video that pokes fun at, really, ''anything'' about the site itself, as it changes constantly and extensively. References to one-to-five-star ratings make no sense after the site switched to a simple like/dislike rating system, and later the counter showing "dislikes" disappeared completely. Any video [[PleaseSubscribeToOurChannel asking you to subscribe]] and pointing out where the subscribe button is will invariably point in the wrong direction because, as soon as video creators start getting clever about that (or start thinking little enough of their viewers that they find it necessary, depending on your interpretation), it moves to a completely different spot. Depictions of the site itself look noticeably off when the entire site layout changes seemingly for no other reason than an aversion to being depicted as it currently appears. And so on. |
| 466 | * WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows has [[DiscussedTrope discussed this trope]] in some of his pop song reviews. |
| 467 | ** In his "[[OneHitWonder One-Hit Wonderland]]" review of "Ridin'" by Music/{{Chamillionaire}}, he cited this trope as [[DefiedTrope the reason why he doesn't cover]] more recent one-hit wonders for the show, as there's always a chance, no matter how seemingly remote, that they can [[PopularityPolynomial make a comeback]] and render the episode obsolete now that they have more than one hit under their belt. He used Mike Posner as Exhibit A for this, noting that, before 2016, it seemed like he would forever be remembered for his lone 2010 hit "Cooler Than Me" and that he was the absolute ''last'' person who'd ever make such a comeback... only for him to drop a smash hit out of nowhere with "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" (a song that's all about [[CelebrityIsOverrated being a washed-up one-hit wonder]], at that). |
| 468 | *** 2019 marked the first time where a One-Hit Wonderland subject managed to get a second hit, when Music/BillyRayCyrus, previously on the show for "Achy-Breaky Heart", appeared as a featured artist on the remix of Music/LilNasX's "Old Town Road", which became the ''longest running #1 hit of all time''. It also marked the second, albeit less drastically - Snow, covered on the show for "Informer", was a featured artist on Daddy Yankee's "Con Calma", which made it to #22 on the Billboard Hot 100, technically giving him another hit, though since it was based off an interpolation of "Snow" it's debatable how much it counts. He acknowledged both of these in his OHW for Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack", stating that the reason he wanted to make the episode was because he appeared on Music/GEazy's "Provide", and while it failed to crack the Top 40 due to being "actual shit", he got worried he was running out of time to do an episode. |
| 469 | ** He mentioned it again in his One-Hit Wonderland review of "Music/VideoKilledTheRadioStar" by Music/TheBuggles, which he felt defied this trope. It's a song that, by all means, ''should'' have been an exemplar of such, as it's not only indelibly tied to The80s and Creator/{{MTV}}'s formative years, it's also about the rise of music videos as the dominant commercial force in the popular music world. And yet, he felt it to still sound fresh, new, and futuristic over thirty years later, at least partly because it's primarily fueled by {{nostalgia|Filter}} for the pre-MTV world that was entering its twilight at that time. Complaints about how music videos, and the resultant focus on image that they created, had killed 'real music' would remain relevant for decades after, and so "Video Killed the Radio Star" would always be an anthem. |
| 470 | ** His One-Hit Wonderland review of "Your Woman" by White Town describes that song as another defiance of this trope. Between its electronic sound, its subject matter, its gender-bending lyrics (sung by a man, but told from a woman's point of view) that play around with sexuality, and Jyoti Mishra being a OneManBand who recorded the song at home, it sounded like a perfect example of early 2020s BedroomPop, except it was ''actually'' a song from 1997. |
| 471 | * Unless your AbridgedSeries is particularly clever, the shelf life of several jokes can really suffer when they hinge on the current state of Platform/YouTube, internet drama, and which acceptable targets are in vogue. ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' is very dated, but due to the GrandfatherClause of founding the entire genre to begin with, it's largely given a pass or only gently mocked at worst. As an example, the famous Creator/FourKidsEntertainment jokes have long since stopped being current, as their dubbing practices have faded with the times, but the fact that they're such iconic jokes, and that [=4Kids=]' reputation will outlive them for some time, still keeps them funny. |
| 472 | * The Creator/BlackPawnMovement dates itself as a product of the late-2000s/early-2010s. For one, the whole thing began during the height of popularity of ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', of which fans of were a frequent target of the riffs early on. It was also made at a time when [[{{MST}} riff culture]] had free range in whatever [=MSTers=] wanted to riff, up to and including the statements of fans of things the riffer didn't like, and being a FanHater to the point of harassing fans of something you hated was considered okay. That ideal died out as the mid-2010s hit and there was an eventual backlash against what amounted to cyberbullying for entertainment. |
| 473 | * ''WebVideo/IsItAGoodIdeaToMicrowaveThis'' ran from 2007-2011 and had ten specials until 2015, so the videos are a friendly reminder of late 2000s/early 2010s trends, technology and culture. Most notably, they microwaved a G3 ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' toy a year and a half before G4's ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' premiered. Among the other experiments: a disposable camera, figurines of UsefulNotes/JohnMcCain and UsefulNotes/BarackObama, a digital pet, a ''Series/HannahMontana'' pen, a Microsoft Zune, [[Creator/BillyMays Mighty Putty]], a 20Q game, a [[Creator/VinceOffer ShamWow]], a Staples "Easy" button, [=ZhuZhu=] pets, ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'' figurines, a [=FlipVideo=] camera, Silly Bandz, a [[Creator/VinceOffer Slap Chop]], a Music/JustinBieber doll and a Shake Weight. The microwave they used for Vidcon was named Justine after then-popular [=YouTuber=] iJustine. They also collaborated with owners of other [=YouTube=] channels from the same era such as [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkSj-DR2aS3_wPmAE7d7Qlg Dan Brown]] and [[WebVideo/WheezyWaiter Craig Benzine]]. The first seven seasons were uploaded when [=YouTube=] still had a star rating system. After the change, the text reading "Please Comment, Subscribe, & Rate!" at the end changed to "Please Comment, Subscribe, & Like!" |
| 474 | * Any [[WebVideo/StuartAshen Ashens]] video where Stuart reviews knock-offs and tie-in "tat" for a recent fad[=/=]trend or a hot new property is a friendly reminder of when that trend or property was popular. For example, the very first [=POPstation=] review from 2006 featured a knockoff of the then-popular [[Platform/PlayStationPortable PSP]], and in 2013 he did [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBm-pg0F8Bk a review of merchandise for the then-recent 2012 Summer Olympics]]. |
| 475 | [[/folder]] |
| 476 | |
| 477 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 478 | * ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' is bound to become very outdated in the future, due to numerous shout-outs and references to pop culture that even to younger generations today can be quite obscure and incomprehensible, like TV commercials and cartoon shows no longer on the air. |
| 479 | ** One episode {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d this in which Peter announced that the audience doesn't know who Creator/JoePesci is because they're fourteen, and another played the '80s Polaner jelly commercial after parodying it. |
| 480 | * Any BandToon is linked to the period it was made in by default, since they are usually made at the height a band's fifteen minutes of fame. As for Band Toons featuring fictional bands such as Music/AlvinAndTheChipmunks, it is the genre of their music that dates them (or the songs they do covers of). |
| 481 | * ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'', in its original incarnation, epitomized The90s (back when [[NetworkDecay music videos still aired on MTV]]). This happened again with the first revival in 2011, making references to the then current MTV shows that were airing (including ''Series/JerseyShore'' and ''True Life'') in addition to music videos, it captured the zeitgeist of the early [[TheNew10s New Tens]] instead. Not helping is the fact that insulting celebs and music artists with no apparent motive would later become unfashionable (unless one did or said anything controversial) and much of the very politically-incorrect humor the duo used when mocking videos would be considered "unfit" for mainstream media. |
| 482 | * Some of the animated ''Franchise/{{Peanuts}}'' specials come off as this. |
| 483 | ** In ''Charlie Brown's All-Stars'' (1966), Charlie Brown wants his team to play on an organized league only to learn that teams with girls on them can't be sponsored. At the time, Little League actually was off-limits to girls. |
| 484 | ** In ''There's No Time For Love, Charlie Brown'' (1973), Peppermint Patty comments that the metric system will probably be official by the time she reaches high school.[[note]]Like the rest of the English-speaking world, the United States was on track to switch to metric by the early 1980s. ''Unlike'' everywhere else, however, the process went completely off the rails by the end of the 70s – major industries were split on the issue (some supported it, but the economically-vital housing sector - construction, engineering, surveying, etc. - was dead-set against), the public was overwhelmingly opposed (this was also true in other countries, but their governments forced it through anyway), and the cost of changing millions of road signs and other official stuff during the era of Stagflation was deemed "not worth it". So, Congress gave up partway through, leaving the weird mix of Customary & Metric that's still in use in the USA today.[[/note]] |
| 485 | ** In ''WesternAnimation/ItsTheEasterBeagleCharlieBrown'' (1974), Sally wants to buy platform shoes which were all the rage in The70s. |
| 486 | ** ''You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown'' (1979) has Charlie Brown thinking that people will "treat [him] like Bruce Jenner", who was since involved in a controversial fatal accident, and is now known as [[Creator/CaitlynJenner Caitlyn]]. |
| 487 | ** In the decades since ''Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown'' (1980), the popularity of the traditional traveling circus fell into steep decline. Most notably, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed in 2017. |
| 488 | ** There's also ''It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown'' (1984), which could not more obviously be tied to the 1983 film ''Film/{{Flashdance}}''. |
| 489 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', despite taking place in the far future, derives most of its gags from how similar the future looks to the present. This results in a year 3000 that looks like the early aughts, and post-revival, the early '10s. |
| 490 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS2E9ABicyclopsBuiltForTwo A Bicyclops Built For Two]]" features a vision of the internet that is very early-2000s, with AOL being namedropped, hilariously slow connection speeds, dialup noises, an excess of ads (still ''extremely'' common, but most remotely savvy people would use a blocker), and mentions of having to disconnect to use the phone. This is all in an ultrasophisticated {{Cyberspace}} VR system. |
| 491 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E15IDatedARobot I Dated A Robot]]" involves celebrities' personalities being downloaded onto blank robots through a company called (Kid)Nappster. This is dated to the early 2000s when the Napster media-sharing service was popular, but which has since been shut down. The writers acknowledge this on the DVDCommentary. |
| 492 | *** The same episode shows Professor Farnsworth using a ''VCR.'' In the 31st century! |
| 493 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS4E16ThreeHundredBigBoys 300 Big Boys]]" was based on big news in mid-2001 about plans for the newly-elected UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush to give a $300 tax rebate to American taxpayers, owing to a budget surplus. It was dated even by the time it aired, because [[ProductionLeadTime it finally did so two years later]] in June 2003, well after the September 11th attacks and the subsequent [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq]] ended those plans. In a bizarre way, it became relevant again after the stimulus checks sent out during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. |
| 494 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E5TheDuhVinciCode The-Duh-Vinci-Code]]" makes a crack at Leonardo being unable to determine the mass of the Higgs Boson. At the time of its production (July 2010), researchers at the Large Hadron Collider famously furiously attempted to discover it. It was discovered in March 2013. |
| 495 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E8ThatDarnKatz That Darn Katz!]]" is made up largely of WebOriginal/LOLCats jokes at their peak of popularity. They are still reasonably popular now but have been slipping out of the mainstream. Cat memes are still huge on the internet, but [[https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1366539-half-cat-panorama-fail-cat they've changed quite a bit]] since the 2000s. |
| 496 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E2AFarewellToArms A Farewell to Arms]]" is a parody of the supposed end of the world in 2012, complete with a stone calendar supposedly predicting this, a belief that was extremely common and widely made fun of in the months leading up to December 2012 but which fell from cultural relevancy shortly thereafter. |
| 497 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E3Decision3012 Decision 3012]]" falls into this since it's a satire on all the UsefulNotes/BarackObama conspiracies. |
| 498 | * ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' aside from being created in 1988 at the tail end of the massive popularity boom of ''Garfield'' merchandise, prided itself on its pop-culture awareness from both 80s and 90s, with episodes devoted to compact discs overtaking records and liberal references to then-popular shows like ''Series/TheOprahWinfreyShow'' and ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984'' (the latter of which aired immediately before G&F). Jon is looking to replace his record player, and any time he explains what a record is, people assume he means "compact discs".[[note]]Funnily enough, [=CDs=] are now the dying format while vinyl is experiencing a surge in popularity due to its general higher quality than more modern formats.[[/note]] A lot of the stuff that Garfield watches and/or gripes about on TV, like the abundance of "trash TV" daytime talk shows (all but dead in the US), game shows (which have gone through several ups and downs in popularity) and "late-night creature feature" showings of old B-Movies (which disappeared around the same time with the rise of Creator/{{FOX}}, Creator/TheWB, and Creator/{{UPN}}, who snapped up a lot of the independent stations who used to air movies like that). In one segment, Jon participates in a spoof of ''Series/AmericanGladiators'', which was extremely popular at the time. |
| 499 | ** The ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' segment also had these sometimes, like a scene in which Roy spoofs various 90s movies to impress his agent Bernie, an episode in which Orson teaches Booker and Sheldon how to use a computer when they were new, Roy mentioning ''WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy'', which was popular at the time, during a phone call and Aloysius talking about animation cels being used to animate cartoons, when most modern cartoons are animated on computers. |
| 500 | * The Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse, though mostly heavy on throwbacks to older eras, also carried a lot of signature elements from comics of the era. |
| 501 | ** ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'', while drawing heavily on the 40s ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheatricalCartoons'' and the 70s Fourth World, bore quite a few telltale signs of being made in the 90s. The biggest distinguisher is likely its treatment of ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}, who is given a background that explicitly makes her non-Kryptonian and not Superman's cousin (being from one of Krypton's moons instead), which dates her to a period in DC when editorial mandate refused to allow other survivors from Krypton. |
| 502 | ** ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' has a number of rather clearly dated aspects; ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}'s hookhanded design combined with ComicBook/MartianManhunter's revealing outfit leaves a fairly narrow band of time for it to have been made. A couple characters got noticeable redesigns at around the same time as their comics selves, such as Supergirl and Huntress. The Justice Society isn't a thing, but its members appear as League members, reflecting the franchise's post-Crisis incorporation into mainline continuity and its relative low ebb at the time. The one that had the biggest effect on the series, though, is the Justice Lords--while [[MirrorUniverse an evil alternate League]] has been done many times before and since, the Lords are clearly based on ComicBook/TheAuthority, which was at the height of its popularity and cultural relevance, rather than the traditional Crime Syndicate. |
| 503 | * The ''[[WesternAnimation/SuperMarioBrosDic Super Mario]]'' cartoons qualify, especially the first two: |
| 504 | ** It's already obvious that ''Series/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow'' was made when both the ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Super Mario]]'' and ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' franchises were still practically in their infancies [[EarlyAdaptationWeirdness by today's standards]], but the drum machine-heavy soundtrack and occasional nods to [[FailedFutureForecast Soviet communism]] (right down to a caricatured UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev making a guest appearance) will definitely hammer it in. |
| 505 | ** The infamous ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfSuperMarioBros3'' episode "Kootie Pie Rocks", where Music/MilliVanilli guest star as themselves. In November 1990, just two weeks after it first aired, Milli Vanilli admitted to lip-syncing their songs - and, in fact, having never once ''actually'' sang them - and their popularity plummeted. |
| 506 | ** Both shows also feature a caricature of then-US president UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush. |
| 507 | * Being a {{Long Runner|s}} as well as being reliant on mocking contemporary pop culture, ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' often veers into this territory. You can probably pinpoint when a given episode was made through the movies, films, celebrities or trends that are spoofed. The heavy reliance on references to 1980s pop culture (especially cartoons) in the episodes made in the 2000s and early-2010s also date those episodes, as that was when 1980s nostalgia was at its peak. The show's frequent depictions of Creator/LindsayLohan and Music/BritneySpears as drug-addicted trainwrecks also didn't age well, as by the late-2010s people started seriously reckoning with the misogyny and general disregard towards people with serious issues that riddled mainstream culture in the 2000s and Lohan and Spears had been elevated to misunderstood icons. |
| 508 | * The 1944 WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes short film "WesternAnimation/LittleRedRidingRabbit" is considered a minor object of fascination among fans for taking aim at then-contemporary trends in youth culture: a parody of "Literature/LittleRedRidingHood", the short depicts Little Red Riding Hood as an [[CuteButCacophonic obnoxiously loud-mouthed]] "bobby soxer" who's first introduced singing "The Five O'Clock Whistle" (a popular traditional pop ballad at the time). And in this version of the story, Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother isn't around because she's off "working the swing shift at Lockheed", marking it as a WartimeCartoon (albeit a more subtle example than most from that era). |
| 509 | ** A great many WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes shorts of the 40s and 50s featured appearances of caricatures of then-popular Hollywood stars. Not all of these stars have passed the test of history, and would not be recognizable by a modern viewer, seeing as said stars may have peaked in the days of the viewer's grandparents or possibly great-grandparents. |
| 510 | ** [[http://web.archive.org/web/20071026140346/http://www.conmicro.cx/~eocostello/wbcc/eowbcc-index.html Here's]] a website cataloguing the many references to 1930s through '60s pop culture, [[RippedFromTheHeadlines current events]], and what we nowadays call "memes" that popped up in ''Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies'', serving to remind 21st century netizens that pop culture and headlines references and memes ''well'' predate ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' and the Internet. |
| 511 | [[/folder]] |
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