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"Spare me your space-age techno babble, Atilla the Hun!" — Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
Strictly historically accurate writing, set and costume design, and dialogue is often counter-productive. Few audience members will have the historical knowledge to appreciate the differences between distant eras, and they often have muddled expectations of what they would be like. And in any case, for some eras genuine examples of or guides towards clothes, artifacts or items that they would have used in the time in question may be in short supply or sketchy at best, thus forcing props and costume designers to speculate or do the best with what they have. Thus, it is sometimes if rarely more effective to imply a general sense of 'the past' drawn in broad strokes rather than bog the story down in exposition and pedantry. More often, writers and producers are too lazy or have too little time to get the facts correct, or they may actually believe they have the facts correct when they don't.
As a result, historical (or futuristic) stories often confuse two or more time periods. For example, Renaissance dress may appear with 12th-century crusaders in a story set in Charlemagne's empire. Fortunately for the writers and designers, the viewers rarely notice enough to affect the bottom line, which is all that matters.
In other words, this is The Theme Park Version of history.
Note that this is not a strictly modern trope — medieval artists, for example, routinely dressed Biblical figures in contemporary fashions — making this Older Than Print at the very least.
Compare Popular History, Purely Aesthetic Era and Present Day Past. When it's the people of the future doing this with the present, it's Future Imperfect. If it's not a specific "real" time and place but rather an invented Verse, you're looking at Schizo Tech. Compare also Reality Is Unrealistic, when the producers get everything right... but because it's not what the audience was expected, they're criticized for getting it wrong (which prompts them to not bother).
Fantasy works set in secondary worlds are not examples of this, since their histories and geographies relate to those of the real world vaguely at best (through the use of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Samurai Champloo opens the series with a title card declaring that it is not a historical document. It then gleefully throws everything it can get its hands on (from hip-hop to baseball) into the Edo period of Japan. Doubly amusing because baseball is a hugely popular sport in modern Japan.
- Soul Society in Bleach appears to resemble Edo-period Japan in clothing and architecture. But the Shinigami use cell-phone like devices, have a highly advanced research division (complete with Mad Scientist), and several characters sport sunglasses or other modern attire.
- Technically, the sunglasses thing isn't an anachronism. The style might be, but tinted lenses were used as early as the mid 1700s. And quartz sunglasses were not uncommon in China as early as the 12th century.
- Which is understandable — Edo period stuff but they can visit the modern world. Just when you become okay with it you get a flashback with computers and sunglasses around the turn of the 20th century Earth time, with Jazz, in Edo period Soul Society.
- But you can't have soul without Jazz!
- Technically, given that it was a full century ago, what they refer to as "jazz" is more properly known today as "ragtime". Not nearly as much soul there.
- Simularly, the places that the cast of Soul Eater go to are...varied. Medieval Japanese villages with
Ninja Assassin problems, Polish villages who specialize in Golem manufacture, mixed with modern depictions of Venice, Italy and an apparently modern American neighborhood. Also, the Grim Reaper and his students all live in a city in Nevada.
- In Gintama, aliens (known as Amanto) forcibly opened up Japan instead of Commodore Perry and crew, bringing all sorts of new-fangled technology to Edo (space travel, electric fans, bazookas, etc). And since Gintama is supposed to be a Gag Series, you get things like the main character being a big fan of Weekly Shonen Jump (most notably Bleach, since he uses a sword too), idol singers, and countless references to modern pop culture mixed in with more traditional fare, like The Shinsengumi, the Jooi resistance, and the Oniwabanshu (though disbanded in the series).
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, the Roman Empire and Germania are occasionally seen interacting with characters during the first half of the twentieth century.
- Also, Austria is wearing decidedly modern style glasses in the mid-18th century.
- Samurai Gun. Rebel samurai armed with automatic pistols fighting government forces armed with Steam Punk devices and the inevitable Gatling guns. And it appears that breast-enhancement surgery has been invented several centuries earlier too, as Japanese women all have very large breasts.
- Kuroshitsuji is set in London in late 1888, when Jack the Ripper was at large. The maid in the house washes clothes with a washing machine and laundry detergent sold in a box, the chef cooks food with a flamethrower, badly, and Jack the Ripper fights with a chainsaw.
- Osamu Tezuka loved to throw in gross anachronisms into his historical works. The first volume of Phoenix, for instance, has an ancient Japanese general leave to read a James Bond novel (which may be a Woolseyism on the part of the translator), and things like televisions and refrigerators are worked into other volumes of the series via Bamboo Technology.
- In the assorted Slayers series, fashions swerve all over the place, from the basic tunic-and-breeches styles of the Middle Ages to early-20th-century fashions. And of course the fantasy-style outfits (in the case of Naga, the wrong sort of fantasy).
- Inevitably occurs in both Fate Stay Night and Fate Zero, 'cause you know, you're summoning Servants from the past.
- Samurai Pizza Cats cheerfully mixes modern technology & culture, along with futuristic Funny Animal cyborg things & Humongous Mecha into an Edo-period setting.
- Naruto. The series appears to be set in some sort of ancient Japan like world but yet they have telephone wires and modern style photography, as well as trains and tanks in at least of the movies. I'd love an explanation as to why this world doesn't have guns. Oh right, that would make ninjas kind of irrelevant huh?
Art
- Most art prior to the 19th century. A good example is Caravaggio's famous 1602 piece Taking of Christ
 ◊, showing the Roman soldiers seizing Jesus wearing European plate armor typical of Caravaggio's era — more than 1500 years after the event.
- However, note the robes that Jesus and Judas are wearing: the Renaissance had caught on that classical clothing didn't look the same as (then-)modern clothing did, but they didn't really know what it did look like. This got completely out of hand by the 18th and 19th centuries, when both Pontius Pilate and Herod were depicted in extravagant Persian-type robes.
- Historians can and do judge when forks reached different parts of Europe by looking for them in paintings of the Last Supper. Judging military equipment is a little trickier, as you can never quite predict when someone's depicting the cutting edge and when he's depicting a suitably "old-fashioned" type of armor, but that tends to be well-attested elsewhere.
- GKChesterton thought that one of the marks of how ugly Victorian and modern clothing styles are is that no one does this anymore...
Comic Books
- The eponymous character of Leonard Le Genie is an inventor living in the 14th century. However, he has electricity, modern tools and a Cool Car available, and his inventions include computers and robots, among others. Somewhat justified by him being a genius inventor, but still...
- Lampshaded at least once; Leonard invents a photo camera and, on having put the film in an envelope, realises there's nowhere to mail it to. "Do I have to invent everything myself?"
- Hellblazer occasionally falls into this, the most egregious example being issue 186's Anvilicious portrayal of the Black War as a one-sided nazi-style genocide, completed with a barbed-wire-fenced extermination camp in 1833 (thirty years before the actual invention of barbed wire).
- Asterix is a mixture of this and Purely Aesthetic Era.
- Hob Gadling, a character from The Sandman, has been alive since the 13th Century and now will not die unless he chooses to. In the 20th Century, his girlfriend dresses up to visit a Ren Faire. He has several criticisms about the realism of the place (mostly that nothing is covered in shit the way it should be), and when he sees her in wench costume, she attempts to talk Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe to him. His response: "Thou lookst passing fair, milady. Save thou manglest the Queen's good English and thy tits are hanging out."
- The newspaper comic strip B.C. had lots of these. Despite supposedly taking place, um, in the years B.C. (specifically, in prehistoric times), there were often references to modern times, especially as the strip went on; at least one strip had a character refer to the United States. This has caused some to speculate that the series actually takes place After The End, with mankind reduced to the same level of technology as was had in prehistoric times...
- Plus, especially in later years when Johnny Hart became more religious, they celebrated Christmas and made other Christian references. Which is kind of the definition of anachronistic in a strip named B.C.
Fan Fic
- Harry Potter fanfic set in the Marauders era tends to ignore the fact that it's set in the 1970s. James, Sirius and the others will merrily chat on their mobile phones and use computers (both of which did exist in the 1970s, but not in the form we're familiar with today and weren't common in any case, to say nothing of the anti-technology field of Hogwarts), send text messages (which actually weren't invented until the late 1980s or popularised until the late 1990s), listen to 1990s or 2000s music and watch recent films.
- Evidently they're not even following the idea of the books set in "the present" either, as all of those things are rarely mentioned, and far from commonplace in the story.
- I'm not sure if it is this trope, but it's even more annoying because wizards in the potterverse seem to have no idea how muggle technology works anyway. I doubt any of them would use a cellphone, there are spells to do that.
- Heck, any tech from '99 or later qualifies, as long as you are in the canon timeline (except the epilogue), which firmly establishes that when Harry and co. started their second year, it was 1992 (which means Harry got his letter in the summer of '91). This does include mobile phones, which weren't uncommon in The Nineties but were very rarely owned and used by school-age children before the very end of the decade, and once again: Hogwarts anti-tech field.
- And let's not even get started on My Immortal, much of which supposedly takes place in 1980. There is literally no noticeable difference between the "past" and "present" portions of the story, especially not where music history is concerned.
- According to some other wiki The events of the potter books take place over the course of the 90's, setting anything the Maurauders did in the late 60's to early 70's.
- And then there's the Hogwarts Founders fanfic, where circa-1000 A.D. Scotland is often rendered as a mishmash of High Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, and pure fantasy elements.
- Rowling herself wasn't immune to this: the mention of a Play Station in Goblet of Fire is anachronistic, if only by about a year. (This could arguably have just been a case of Brand Name Takeover in Rowling's mind, though it's still an anachronism.)
- Actually, she originally wrote it as a SNES with a family-friendly game. The editor told her to change it.
Films using Rule Of Funny
- Common in movies relying on the Rule Of Funny. Example: Robin Hood Men In Tights. Laser-guided arrow? Why not?
- Those were probably bleeding-edge and rare. I mean, the one shown in the film came all the way from Jersey.
- Pretty much every Mel Brooks movie is an Anachronism Stew. Just ask Hedy Lamarr.
- Muppet Treasure Island has a bit of this-most of it with the rat tourists on Rizzo's cruise, but Piggy claims she got her necklace from "the shopping channel."
- A Knights Tale goes mad with this to great effect, dropping any pretense of historical accuracy and just doing whatever was the most awesome. It begins with the crowd at a joust singing and stamping their feet to "We Will Rock You" by Queen. The director explained this as a way to help the audience relate and convey the people felt the same way about their music and dancing that modern people do.
- On the other hand, I have seen reviews by professional historians noting the impressive accuracy in regards to etiquette, costumes, speech, etc, which gave the impression that the film-makers could have made a perfectly accurate movie about a knight rising from the working class; instead, they chose to make an awesome movie with piles of anachronisms, that was also more fun.
- Most of the film's anachronisms are shoutouts (or Rule Of Cool) rather than Did Not Do The Research. For instance, the female blacksmith (which this site has revealed was perfectly acceptable practice, although uncommon) puts a Nike logo on the knight's armor. That's not a mistake, it's just a shoutout.
- Much like A Knight's Tale, Moulin Rouge! also invokes this frequently, deliberately, and effectively, with characters in fin-de-siècle France singing everything from "The Sound of Music" to Nirvana.
- Disney's The Emperors New Groove is another example of taking the "bones" of a historical milieu, in this case the ancient Inca empire of South America, and hanging a lot anachronistic (and very funny) jokes off them.
- The sudden presence of a floor buffer was particularly confusing. But then, it was so very Disney.
- And then there's the series, The Emperor's New School, which includes robots made of wood. And another made of rock.
- Aladdin does much the same thing with the Genie's antics. There's also the anachronisms in the "A Whole New World" sequence.
- The Genie's gags were 90% anachronistic in all the movies as well as the Animated Series. But it can be handwaved by "near omnipotency" (maybe the Genie can travel through time, enabling him to reference future events).
- It's not only Genie committing random acts of anachronism. Iago says to "pack the guns" and Jafar can apparently play golf.
- Monty Python admitted that the armour (and clothing in general) in Monty Python And The Holy Grail was anachronistic; it was more 13th century than Dark Ages. Also, a French garrison in the middle of England, the fact that England supposedly had one singular king at all at that point (although considering none of the peasants know about having a king, it's possible Arthur is simply making a claim to kinghood) and the construction of a giant wooden badger makes for a pretty anachronistic (and hilarious) movie. In addition, the caption at the beginning claims that the film sets in "932 A. D."; the Arthurian legends are set around the 5th century.
- And the historian and the police cars.
- John Madden's Shakespeare in Love, which sports 16th century theatre production riddled with movie-producing Hollywood stereotypes.
- Is it supposed to be funny or—more likely—a blatant instance of "they don't care" when it becomes obvious, at the movie's conclusion, that it's set in an alternate universe in which there is already a thriving British colony in Virginia in the 1580s, complete with prosperous tobacco plantations?
- Stephan Elliott's adaptation of Easy Virtue is set in the 1930s and includes songs such as "Sex Bomb" and "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going."
Close Films using Rule Of Funny
Films with no good excuse
- The makers of King Arthur (2004) seriously claimed their movie was especially historically accurate in its depiction of century politics and tribal warfare in 5th century Britannia; it was presented as a realistic portrayal of Arthurian legend without the mystical elements of the legends. This editor has read essays of actual historians who went into fits of eyerolling rage over that claim. To be fair, the movie does not contain really blatant anachronistic cross-overs with other time-periods, but it mashes together kings and invasions from several Dark Age centuries... and worst of all: who decided to turn Keira Knightley as Guinevere into a bow-wielding woad-covered warrior princess clad in a leather bra and leather outfit more suitable as a Dungeons And Dragons costume?
- "Okay guys, I read somewhere that the Celts or one of those types didn't wear armor, so we can't put Keira in what we were planning on. What else can we put her in?"
- Celtic warriors often wore nothing but woad, and there goes the PG rating....
- Celts probably invented chainmail (check the other Wiki). Many Celtic nobles employed it, but the term Celt covers a lot of ground so it may have been different in fifth century Caledonia. King Arthur's central storyline, that there was a Roman officer named Lucius Artorius Castus in command of Sarmatian cavalry at Hadrian's wall, is historically possible. I recall there was a major attack on the Wall around this time. However, Artorius died about a century before the movie is set, and his opponents would have been Caledonians, not Germans.
- Troy as a movie based on anything (the stories or the history) was terribly inaccurate, but one of the most egregious instances was the filmmakers putting a llama in the city of Troy, llamas of course being native to the Americas.
- At least according to the Disney live-action film Newsies, New York City in the 1890s was very clean, was run as much by gangs of ten-year-old as by, say, Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall crowd, and had a surprisingly large population of Disney stock characters.
- The actors in the 1939 American adaptation of Wuthering Heights are dressed the way producer Samuel Goldwyn wanted, and nothing about the costumes is contemporary to the setting. The movie is set in the 1780-1810 time frame, yet the hair and clothing dates from the 1840-1880 time frame. Worse, the female characters look like they were hit with a six-inch makeup cannon, even though in the time frame the only women who would have worn makeup at all were cheap street prostitutes.
- The same could be said for the costumes worn for the 1940 adaptation of Pride And Prejudice. In this instance, though, there was a good reason: MGM was broke and had to reuse costumes from Gone With The Wind. The inch-long false eyelashes on Elizabeth, on the other hand...
- 10,000 B.C. is one of the most blatant examples, featuring, among other things, woolly mammoths, saber tooth tigers, metalworking (developed in 5500 BC), domestication of horses (first done in 4000 BC), papyrus, and the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.
- Don't forget the Terror Birds, 2 million years out of place and native to South America.
- Since the desert place is never specifically called Egypt, the Evil Overlord is never called Pharaoh, and the lands the hero passes through don't line up with any Real Life regions, one might think of 10,000 B.C. as a fantasy land that bears no relation to the real world, run by a crappy marketing team.
- The culture with metal, papyrus, and pyramids also had advanced sea-faring technology and a legend among their mercenaries and slaves that their homeland is lost beneath the sea. That may suggest they were supposed to be Atlanteans.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean was full of them. Supposedly set in the early 18th Century, it features...
- Weapons and uniforms that wouldn't come into use until around the Revolutionary War. (Men in the navy didn't even have proper uniforms at the supposed time of POTC)
- Port Royal as the gubernatorial seat, even though Port Royal was decimated by an earthquake in 1692.
- Jack was to be hanged on a trapdoor-style gallows (invented in the 1800s).
- An Anglo concertina which wouldn't be around until about 1879, and the guitar in the same scene wouldn't have been made until just before the Great Depression!
- Modern smokeless gunpowder. (1875)
- The use of the word 'scallywag,' which was a term coined during the Civil War. (1860s)
- The use of the phrase "Robert's your uncle," which dates back to the 1890s.
- The use of the word "port" to refer to the left side of a ship; this didn't become popular until the mid-1800s. The characters should still be saying "larboard" instead.
- To be fair, this is most likely a case of averting Reality Is Unrealistic. After all, most people are familiar with the term "port", due to its technical usage in other media. Most likely, people would have either confused "larboard" for "starboard", and thus thought the filmmakers were wrong, or be confused as to what precisely the term means, as it's not a terribly common one. Even this troper was unfamiliar with the term until reading this article.
- The ride the movie was based on surprisingly averts that particular point: a pirate tells awoman he's auctioning off to "show 'em your larboard side". Of course, the ride is probably rife with other anachronisms, so take that as you will.
- Small music boxes in the form of lockets.
- Or, for that matter, the Gatling-style muzzleloader cannon mounted on the front of the Flying Dutchman in the second movie (Gatling guns require breech-loading; Gatlings themselves weren't invented until the 1830s, and were not cannon-sized weapons; even modern-day Gatlings don't exist above 30mm caliber, as the recoil would be prohibitive on anything bigger)
- 1780s corsets (arguably some of the more comfortable corsets in history portrayed as constrictive, whereas in the late 17th century, closer to the movie's supposed era, they actually would've have ones that caused women to faint) and 1620s swashbuckling gear in the same shots (Will and Elizabeth at Jack's hanging at the end of the first movie).
- Late 17th century long, curly wigs alongside 18th century ponytailed, powdered wigs (in vogue up to the French Revolution in 1789, whereas the long curly sort went out of fashion fifty years earlier at least).
- Late 18th century firearms.
- 19th century teacups.
- Singapore, founded as a city in 1819 and until then a big swamp with a coastal fishing village.
- Or the whole Aztec Curse and anthropomorphic squid person thing. They never had those.
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves managed to feature "Celts" hundreds of years after they existed as a distinct ethnic grouping. (The "Celts" are also ridiculously, even offensively, portrayed as mindless Orc-like barbarians, but that's another matter...)
- This is actually just one of the things they ripped off from Robin of Sherwood and bastardized. In Robin of Sherwood, the "barbaric" Celts are Welsh tribesmen (and aren't referred to as Celts). But that's Hollywood for ya. See Britain Is Only London.
- It also had an anachronistically advanced and accurate clock, and a modern American (California) accent on the title character (and obviously medical care even better than the present day, to judge by the ultra-quick recovery from a Caesarian childbirth).
- Giving him a modern English accent wouldn't have been accurate either.
- He doesn't have that authentic Nottingham twang!
- In any movie that takes place earlier than, say, the 1700s, you just have to shrug and accept that having the characters talk in recognizable speech in *any* modern-day accent is a Tolkien-style translation.
- While the play Rent is presumably set in the present day, the film adaptation is based in the late 80s/early 90s when AIDS was much closer to home for the types of people featured (not that it's anything to sneeze at today). However, Benny must have been some kind of prophet to conceive of a cyber studio in 1989 when the Internet wasn't even
invented available to the public mainstream yet.
- The play was set "in the present" when it was written in the very early 1990s. The makers of the film had to decide whether to update things and keep it "in the present" or to keep it set in the early 90s and make it a "period piece." Either way they went it was virtually guaranteed that the movie would be less than well-received.
- But that supposes the play is set in 1989, when he began it. It's not, nor is it set in the "present day". It's set in 1994, when it was completed. This makes the movie's keeping of references to Thelma and Louise, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the gentrification of the East Village blatant anachronisms.
- Thelma and Louise was released in 1991, and East villiage gentrification had already begun by then.
- While most of the 1996 movie Twister took place in the modern-day (thus avoiding this trope, for the most part), the beginning scenes, set in 1969, have some level of Anachronism Stew to them. In one scene, character Jo's father warns that the approaching tornado is "probably an F-5;" of course, the Fujita scale, from whence the rating is taken, was developed in 1971, two years later (In 2007 the U.S. replaced the Fujita scale with the Enhanced Fujita scale, which is designed to more accurately estimate a tornado's intensity). In addition, the scale only rates a tornado after the storm has passed (it measures a tornado's intensity by the amount of damage it does to buildings in its path; an F-5/EF-5 rating is only given if a strongly-built building is completely swept away, leaving only the foundation). Plus, the meteorologist shown on the TV giving the warning is Gary England, head meteorologist of Oklahoma City TV station KWTV; while the footage is actual archived footage of one of England's tornado warnings, England did not join KWTV until 1972.
- Similarly, Ella Enchanted attempts to be a live-action Shrek in
high school junior college.
- The Other Side Of Midnight, which is set in the time frame just before World War II, has a scene where Catherine is taking a taxi from Union Station in Washington, D.C.. She mentions in conversation with the cabbie that if the taxi meter goes over a dollar she's in trouble. But no cab in Washington D.C. would have had a meter at the time; the city cabs worked exclusively on a zone-fare system.
- Sin City does this on purpose in pursuit of its "ultra-noir" feel. The cars are all 1950s or older (but are referred to as "modern") and some characters use old slang words like "dames", but there are female judges and out-of-the-closet lesbians.
- The Cider House Rules is surprisingly careful, taking advantage of the fact that the drive-in theater was invented in the 1930's and thus, around in the 1940's. It never explicitly states that drive-in has become a huge phenomenon, which would be anachronistic as that did not happen until the 1950's. However, its depiction of widespread favorable attitudes about abortion and choice of haircuts and characterizations of female protagonists bears a strong 1970's air to it that seems out of place for 1940's Maine. Supposedly justified in that it was part of Lasse Hallestrom and John Irving's visions.
- In October Sky the contrast between the actual haircuts of 1950s kids with the Hollywood version is unusually clear: the end credits feature real home movies of the kids the characters were based on. The Hollywood hairdos are a lot longer.
- Whoopi Goldberg's movie A Knight in Camelot. The main character gets sent back in time to the Middle Ages. Ok. She takes her boom box and laptop with her. Weird but all right. She checks the internet for information on how to build an electrical generator using a waterwheel.
- Blue Velvet is clearly set in the eighties, but has a fifties aesthetic. The fire truck that goes by at the start with the dalmation on it. The music and the way the school children dress. It's all extremely fifties. There's even a scene where some high-school kids follow Jeffrey and threaten him with violence that looks like it's straight out of an Archie comic. Depending on how you interpret the movie they do have an excuse for this. This troper has always viewed Blue Velvet as a criticism of Reagan America which had a nice fifties aesthetic with things like 'family values' and 'conservatism' but below that was sexual deviance, violence and anger.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Singing Sword sings "Witchcraft," which was written in 1953. The movie takes place in 1947. Also, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote appear in the film despite debuting in 1949.
- Undiscovered actors perhaps?, although I have no explanation for Witchcraft.
- Well, I don't recall a cartoon land being discovered back then, either. Maybe some early cartoon character made the song... Seriously, anachronisms in a movie about cartoons among the living?
- The 1967 Casino Royale stars David Niven as the original James Bond, whose name and number were appropriated after his retirement for morale purposes. It's mentioned he'd been awarded the Victoria Cross at Mafeking, a siege that took place in 1899-1900. Niven is in his late 50s here, but this would date Bond as around 85 at least. Bond had an illegitimate daughter by Mata Hari, who was executed in 1917. The daughter is played by a 25-year old Joanna Pettet, but she would have to be 50 at least. But then, this movie is not at all logical or linear.
Close Films with no good excuse
Literature
- Practically mandatory for Arthurian stories. (In fact, the myth of Arthur pretty much depends on this, even in the pre-modern versions)
- More often than not, the Knights of the Round Table are portrayed in plate-and-mail armor with big chargers that didn't exist until hundreds of years after these myths supposedly took place. This dates back to Malory.
- To be more precise, they didn't reach western Europe until centuries later. fully-armored heavy cavalry armed with lances were common in the Persian and Byzantine empires from the 3rd century CE. Records are vague on whether this was true plate-mail or only scale, but the essentials were there. A few versions of the story actually pit Arthur's knights against Byzantine cataphracts during his adventures in continental Europe, as a kind of semi-historical Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny.
- Knights living in huge stone castles. There were no new stone fortifications built in Britain between the 6th century and the 11th century. All of the great castles were built following the Norman Conquest.
- The Knights of the Round Table themselves, as feudalism had not yet arisen in the Roman-era Britain when the historical Arthur is believed to have lived.
- Indeed, almost all of the familiar characters in the Arthur mythos originated in different places and eras, and were all mashed together into a single story by Geoffrey of Monmouth centuries later. Arthur (if he existed) was most likely a late-Roman era Celt or Roman Briton, the historical Merlin was a mad 6th century Scottish druid (and Merlin was also conflated with Ambrosius, a second-century boy prophet), Lancelot originated with Chretien de Troyes, Guinevere is apparently a Hijacked By Jesus version of the Welsh goddess/giantess/fae Gwenhwyfar, and so forth.
- The Once And Future King carries this farther than most, even apart from those anachronisms introduced by backwards-living Merlyn. For example, Arthur meets Robin Hood as a child.
- The "courtly love" mythos — including the very existence of Sir Lancelot — and the Grail legends were introduced to the Arthurian legends by remorseless Ret Con.
- Tristan and Isolde were originally a completely distinct story; many modern retellings blend them into the Round Table.
- King Arthur Pendragon deserves mention for resolving the Anachronism Stew of the Arthurian legends by having King Arthur's reign magically feature technology advancing at super speed from Dark Ages to high medieval, until history re-asserts itself after the Battle of Camlann.
- The majority of the anachronisms in the Arthurian mythos came from French poets reading the works of Geoffrey, changing society/technology to coincide with medieval French society/technology, along with hammering in tales not even related to either the Welsh legend or Geoffrey's work and epic attempts at forming this mishmash into a coherent story.
- Michael Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead, and its movie adaptation The13th Warrior, is Beowulf, in the 10th century, with Antonio Banderas as a Muslim traveloguer and a bunch of Vikings. One wears a Murmillo helmet, another wears a 16th-century Spanish helmet and breastplate. They fight Neanderthals. As a result, it's so much cooler.
- Most of the anachronism here is in the movie. The book, aside from the obviously fictional and fantastic nature of the "Eaters of the Dead" themselves, is remarkably true to real history (given that much of the book is based on the real-life travelogue of the real ibn Fadlan, with the minor alteration that the real ibn Fadlan never traveled all the way up north to help the Vikings fight Neanderthals). The only real anachronism problem is the problem that the plot of the novel is obviously meant to be a "real-life" inspiration for Beowulf, a poem that most scholars think was written at least a century before ibn Fadlan lived.
- There's still an infamously unresolved debate about the dating of Beowulf; most place it either in the eighth or the eleventh century.
- Also used by none other than Homer himself. No, not that one. The Iliad and The Odyssey were set in Mycenean Greece, but contain a wild mixture of elements from the Archaic and Classical periods with a few Mycenean leftovers thrown in for good measure. For example, boar-tooth helmets were Mycenean, but funeral pyres belong to a later era.
- Similarly, the ancient Irish epic TáinBóCúailgne features chariot warfare, but there is no archaeological evidence that chariots were ever used in Ireland. This suggests that the tale (or parts of it) is very old indeed, dating to the time when the Celts still lived in continental Europe. But Cú Chulainn's "warp-spasm" is possibly inspired by Viking berserkers of the 9th-10th centuries.
- Chris Elliot's novel, The Shroud of the Thwacker, set in the 1890s, features gas-powered cellphones, among other things.
- One For The Morning Glory Where it is Lamp Shaded as well; when Sir John drinks tea, he wonders whether it is really suitable to be drinking tea, and the Duke dismisses that as a consideration only for those lands that are merely actual.
- Gene Wolfe's New Sun trilogy of novels take place a looong way in the future (the techno-fantasy "post-historical" era where Stone-Age Man, the Modern Era, and the Galaxy-Spanning Imperial Era are all lumped together as the "Age of Myth"). The basic technology and society is late medieval. But at some point time travel had been commonplace, so remnants of all eras of history are common - military energy weapons right along with swords, antigravity craft and ox-drawn wagons, sabretooth tigers and starships, electricians organized like a medieval craft guild, medical men just as likely to use genetic engineering as an herbal infusion, etc.
- One of the early Harry Potter books, set in 1994, mentions Dudley having a Play Station, which wouldn't be out until a few years later. J.K. Rowling later admitted, yeah, this was an oversight on her part.
- The Playstation was released in Japan in 1994, so it would not have been a true anachronism if it happened in Japan, but it's happening in Europe, so it is anachronistic.
- Zifnab the wizard is a one man's walking Anachronism Stew in Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman's The Death Gate Cycle. Not only his name and mannerisms are remniscent to a different character from the Dragonlance universe by the same authors, but he also keeps referencing to other fictional characters from 20th century Earth, such as James Bond and Gandalf, and constantly making comments senseless to people without understanding of modern Western culture (i.e. the rest of the cast). It's ultimately revealed that he was a powerful Sartan on Old Earth before its destruction, and Went Mad From Revelation when he witnessed its destruction, being unable to save anyone. Thus his mind fled to safer matters, like humorous pop-culture to keep him from remembering the truth.
- The Aeneid features Aeneas, fleeing the destruction of Troy, landing at Carthage...which wasn't founded until hundreds of years later.
- The Mistborn series is built on this. While at first glance it appears to be your standard medieval setting, it turns out there are working pocket watches, gunpowder (though it isn't used), and a knowledge of metallurgy and medicine that rivals our own. Turns out this was intentional: What do you think happens when the world is ruled for a thousand years by an immortal god-emperor who doesn't like change?
- The Bible has been known to contain quite a few anachronisms since often the "books" composing it were written quite some time (sometime even centuries) after the events were supposed to have taken place. For example: the descriptions of armor, especially that worn by Goliath, in 1 Samuel 17 are typical of Greek armour of the 6th century BCE rather than of Philistinian armour of the 10th century BCE.
Live Action TV
- Xena and Hercules, in their Universal TV series, live in a world where not only are all myths and legends true, but are also all happening within a few seasons of each other. The Argonauts sailed just a few years before Julius Caesar ruled, and Hercules was old friends of Vlad Tepes.
- The producers explained early on that they were perfectly aware of this and did it simply to add to the camp charm, further explaining the one rule they had that anything BC was fair game, and AD was off limits. There was, however, one episode of Xena that broke that rule big time with an appearance of Joseph, Mary, and a newly born Jesus.
- Of course, the earliest estimate of Jesus's year of birth is 8 BCE, so it's probably no big deal including Him.
- They also seem to have missed the boat with Boudica's rebellion in England (60AD).
- And as said above, Vlad Tepes / Dracula, who was a medieval ruler.
- King Arthur manages to get around the rule thanks to Merlin using magical Time Travel, but then you've got Ghengis Khan and his three sons...
- And the episodes in the modern world, for that matter. So... yeah.
- Interesting. In one episode baby Jesus appears, but another has Abraham and Isaac. Jesus was a Jew. Abraham founded Judaism. To say the math does not work is a dramatic understatement.
- Don't forget that they often show inventions that haven't been invented yet, ala The Flintstones. One episode had Hercules playing basketball.
- And another involved a giant spiderwoman, which lead to a "website" quip.
- Jeeves And Wooster is set in an idealized version of England at an indeterminate point between the World Wars, and largely picks and chooses on matters of detail — Bertie Wooster drives a mid-'30s car, for instance, but Prohibition is still alive and well when he visits the US, and perhaps more jarringly, the World Trade Center is clearly visible in the skyline.
- P.G. Wodehouse, the author of the Jeeves stories, had a writing career which lasted from 1902 to his death in 1975. One story from the 60's is entitled "Bingo Bans the Bomb."
- Highlander, with its historical flashbacks practically every episode, contains too many examples to count!
- In season 2, Heroes sent Hiro Nakamura back in time to 1671, where he meets a wandering English samurai. 1671 is well into the isolationist period in Japan, when any foreigner would be arrested and killed by local authorities. Granted, at first it seemed he always wore a mask to prevent people from knowing his true identity, but this was soon forgotten.
- Black Adder. While it gets the eras correct (there is a firm difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance) it moves around in each era quite erratically. This is most notable in Blackadder The Third, which is ostensibly set during the 1810s, but features Samuel Johnson working in his dictionary (1750s) in one episode, the French Revolution (1790s) in another, and the Napoleonic Wars in the Season Finale. There's a partial list thanks to The Other Wiki. Arguably, this is Rule Of Funny-based Anachronism Stew.
- That Seventies Show. Whenever she watches this show with her parents (who were teenagers in the seventies), they always say things like "we would never have said that in the seventies. We would have said 'groovy.'" This is probably a result of the show being aimed at teenagers of THIS decade, who did not live through the era in question.
- The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr. The entire series. For a series taking place in 1893 we have such things as rockets and rocket powered rail cars, functional tanks, and in one instance a Zepplin. This show also provides an interesting explanation for the acronym U.F.O. as an Unearthed Foreign Object. and that's just a couple of examples.
- The producers of Hogans Heroes blew their entire costume budget on reproduction Nazi uniforms, so minor cast members had to bring their own gear. This means that anyone not a P.O.W. or in Nazi uniform will be dressed in contemporary fashions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
- Kings, being a modern retelling of the story of the Biblical David (who is believed to have lived c. 11th century BCE) is already loaded with kinda-sorta anachronisms, but a particularly interesting one takes place in the fifth episode (sixth if you count the two-hour pilot as two eps), Judgement Day, wherein Jack (King Silas's son) makes reference to "cutting babies in half" (i.e. Solomonic wisdom to decide disputes). Solomon was David's son.
- The New Adventures Of Robin Hood featured all of the historical accuracy of Hercules The Legendary Journeys or Xenawarrior Princess (but without the same quality of acting). A particularly fun gadget is the dart launcher mounted in Robin's bracer.
- Maid Marian And Her Merry Men: Virtually everything that happens. Despite being set in The Dung Ages, it still manages to have a Rastafarian (identified as such), a telethon and sell-by date laws. Amongst many other examples.
- Kamen No Ninja Akakage is set in Warring States Japan, the main characters use high-tech weaponry like flying machines and guns to fight kaiju.
- A flashback to the early life of vampire Darla in ANGEL occurs, according to the caption, in the Virginia Colony in 1609. As anyone who's attended Virginia public schools knows, in 1609 the colony consisted solely of the struggling Jamestown settlement, which, in 1609-1610, went through what's known as the Starving Time and was almost abandoned. Yes, by 1609 the colony included a few women, but it certainly wouldn't have had an Olde English style inn to shelter Darla while on her deathbed waiting for a vampire master to drop in and turn her. All the writers had to do, to make the chronology plausible, would have been to add a couple of decades and set the flashback in, say, 1629.
- This MIGHT be an interesting case in Voyager, though This Troper isn't absolutely sure: In Fair Haven they re-create a 19th century Irish village... crew members admire the historical accuracy of the setting.... and it's complete with roadsigns... BILINGUAL roadsigns. Now, those bilingual roadsigns have the Irish name BELOW the English name, in capital letters - both are wrong, as of the year 2009. This Troper doubts that there even WERE bilingual roadsigns in Ireland in the 19th century, what with the Irish language being prohibited and all that...
- Justified in Stargate SG-1. A lot of the planets that they travel to, especially in the early seasons, are based off Earth civilizations (which, naturally, have not evolved at all in the centuries or sometimes even millennia that have passed, and all of which inexplicably speak English). Some, though, have changed a little bit, so we often see medieval-like cities with spaceships and teleporters. This always makes sense in context, but is still noticeable.
- As Mitchell points out in one episode, referring to an Arthurian stash of gold with a clearly alien device hidden in it: "Which one of these things is not like the others?"
Music
- P.D.Q. Bach pretty much ignores the fact that what we think of today as "classical" music actually happened over several centuries and is divided into distinct stylistic periods. Peter Schickele is quite aware of this, but ignores it in favor of parodying as many different things as possible, and lampshades the eclecticism of PDQ's style many times. Then there are the anachronisms which are more obvious to the layperson, such as "Iphigenia in Brooklyn" or the "Bluegrass Cantata".
Radio
- The Doctor Who Big Finish Audio Invaders from Mars actually has some deliberate anachronisms, such as a character saying there was 49 states in 1938, when there was only 48, and someone repeatedly referencing the CIA when it wouldn't be founded until nine years later. This was due to the influence of "anti-time." Other mistakes, however, were less deliberate, like Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds broadcast being on October 31 instead of October 30.
- Now, now...it was a multi-day broadcast.
Tabletop Games
- King Arthur Pendragon takes a mix of all the main Arthurian myths, mostly Malory, and sets it in sub-Roman Britain. The appearance of medieval technology later in Arthur's reign is explained by magic and it all fades away after the Battle of Camlann with history re-asserting itself.
- Pendragon is not above Shout Outs to later history either, including Merlin prophesying that the Pope would live in Avignon, and King Arthur quoting John F Kennedy "ask not what your country can do for you..." before the Battle of Badon Hill.
- Parodied in the Tabletop Games Diana Warrior Princess and Elvis The Legendary Tours, which take the Anachronism Stew approach to modern-day pop-culture.
- Quirkily lampshaded by the Sourcebook GURPS Middle Ages. Its opening chapter includes a sidebar that actually explains the concept of Anachronism Stew by pointing out all the historical mismatches in its own cover art.
- Also acknowledged in GURPS Camelot, the Arthurian sourcebook. There are three Arthurian settings mentioned - the Mythic one (Geoffry of Monmouth style, with plenty of anachronism), a Realistic one (as close as research can get us), and the Cinematic one (based on movies, with chrome armor and French castles and all the other goodies - not so much Anachronism Stew as an Anachronism Smoothie).
- Mythic Russia has a few that are pointed out and justified in the book. The Russians drink vodka even though it hadn't yet become popular historically, because "what is a game in Russia without vodka?" The Mongols are Tengrist pagans even though the Golden Horde had converted to Islam by the time it was set, partly because it's easier to handle in the game's Religion Is Magic system and partly because of plain old Rule Of Cool.
- The Pirates Constructable Strategy Game by Wizkids is a naval combat game set sometime before, during, and after the American Revolution/War of 1812 era. When the first set came out, things were fine, but with each new expansion, they seem to be intent on adding a new crazy mechanic. They get alright justifications/Hand Waves most of the time, but it is still silly. They are currently halfway between this and Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Some of these include:
- Sea Monsters/Titans
- Cursed pirates
- Submarines (based off Jules Verne)
- Vikings (Hand Waved as being northerners who believe Norse Mythology)
- Bombardiers (Ships with long-range and flame cannons attached to their decks)
- Turtle ships (which at least existed around the time)
- "Switchblades" (metal ships with giant pincers attached to the sides)
- Seventh Sea is built on this, and the Rule Of Cool as applied to swashbuckling. You've got Merlin meeting Robin Hood under Elizabethan rule, the French Revolution brewing under Louis XIV because Napoleon is in the middle of his Retreat from Russia, while across the border the Thirty Year's War just ended in Germany. In the Netherlands, Vikings enjoy raiding the East India Company, whose main commercial rivals are the Venetian Doges and their humongous galley fleet. It works, somehow.
Theater
- Shakespeare may have committed one of the earliest anachronisms in English-language drama in Julius Caesar, which contains references to striking clocks despite the fact that the first mechanical clock would not be invented until the mid-13th century.
- Also of note, Julius Ceasar makes reference to a doublet, a close fitting jacket that wasn't around in Roman times.
- There's also King Lear, in which the Britons of pre-Christian Britain worship Greek gods, arguably the only pagan gods with which Shakespeare's audience would be familiar.
- Lampshaded by the Fool, who speaks a mock prophecy that he claims Merlin will make, since "I live before his time."
- This is the result of massive Latinization or Greekification of the past names, and obsessive attempts to match pantheons of other countries to the Greco-Roman one in the Middle Ages, result of the ideas of the superiority of the Latin language - scholars even made attempts to change English grammar to match Latin! Of course the same process had been going on even back when the Roman Empire and Greek nations still thrived.
- Titus Andronicus is filled with them. A play set sometime in pretty generic Ancient Rome and it is filled with references to Christianity.
- Hamlet (fl. 12th century) is a member of a religious denomination that won't exist for 300 years and attends a university that won't be founded for 200 years...
- Many performances of Troilus And Cressida deliberately use this trope by placing the heroes of the Trojan War into settings like World War I style trench warfare, in order to emphasize parallels with modern war. The play itself has an interesting and subtle example - Hector covets the fancy armor of a Greek soldier, but the few descriptions of the armor indicate that it is clearly in a modern British style instead of ancient Greek armor.
- Medieval mystery plays did this deliberately — either to emphasize relevance to contemporary concerns (King Herod was recast as a scheming aristocrat sending out his knights to kill babies to protect his power base. Also, he was a Muslim), or just for comic effect (Noah exclaims "By St. John!" while arguing with his wife; the shepherds invoke about 5 different saints, the cross of Christ and the Virgin Mary before the angel turns up to tell them that a saviour has been born in Bethlehem... which is within walking distance, despite the fact that the shepherds have mentioned that the action is taking place in the vicinity of the English village of Horbury).
- Probably played with a lot in Japanese Kabuki theater due to government restrictions on content, costumes, and even hair styles: a play that referenced a current issue would claim to be set in another era, except the characters might just happen to be wearing contemporary clothes.
- The musical adaptation of Spring Awakening is based around this trope. While taking place in a provincial German town in 1890, in moments of emotional intensity, the characters whip out microphones to deliver interior monologues in rock music fashion, complete with concert lighting. These songs make not attempt at being time period appropriate: the characters sing in modern slang and the lyrics mention telephones and stereos, among other things.
Video Games
Webcomics
- No Need For Bushido, while technically set in imperial Japan, cheerfully features a hodgepodge of ninjas, Taoist monks, an order of scantily clad female assassins, giant animé-style swords (well, ok, one giant sword), Hongkong kung-fu action movie fighting styles, and modern-day references. And TWO blind kick-ass fighters. Also, birdfish. Don't forget the birdfish. (The NNFB fanmixes take this anachronism with modern day references even further, to absurd but often hilarious extremes)
- Arthur, King of Time and Space gleefully throws the anachronisms into the "fairy tale" arc (the standard Arthurian romance with the standard medieval trappings) with two justifications: the author (and to a lesser extent, the characters) knows the sources are flawed and anachronistic in and of themselves, and half the anachronisms are Merlin's fault, since he has the gift of foresight (at one point, for example, using a fly swatter to kill a fairy spy).
- Dinosaur Comics, of course. While inherently unrealistic (talking dinosaurs), they oftentimes reference human events, which obviously would take place many millions of years in the future. This is often lampshaded.
- There's anachronisms in every strip: The third panel has T. Rex about to step on a house that's next to a car, and the fourth panel has T. Rex about to step on a person.
- Perry Bible Fellowship: this strip◊ shows a technologically advanced future civilization for whom the history of the second millenium seems to be a big blur.
- In Order of the Stick's Azure City, not only are there sewers, but there are three tunnels, clearly labeled "Ocean," "Anachronistic Sewage Plant," and "Obligatory Sewer-Themed Labyrinth." Such things have been lampshaded.
- And in Cliffport, there's a municipal park. Amid high-rise buildings.
Vaarsuvius: I'm simply saying that the architectural motifs found here in the city of Cliffport are inconsistent with the presumed medieval time period.
Vaarsuvius: Yes, fine, I grasp the premise that any sufficiently advanced- and in particular, reliable- magic would be indistinguishable from technology, I merely find the implementatio here haphazard, at best.
Durkon: Meh. It could be worse, ye know.
Vaarsuvius: Oh?
- And let's not forget the C.C.P.D., complete with sirens (on the horses), sketch artist and mayor yelling at Da Chief for failing to catch the murderer when elections are coming up, and underlings being yelled at by said cigar-smoking, coffee downing chief. One double serving of Anachronism Stew, coming right up.
- In Gunnerkrigg Court, Ms. Jones' students watch a documentary hologram about the founding of the Court. The characters in the hologram include a guy who looks like he stepped out of The Cavalier Years or The American Revolution, and another fellow wearing a modern trench coat, an article of clothing which wasn't introduced until World War One. Shortly afterwards, Jones points out that "this simulation is an artistic representation".
- Although she said that in regards to an indistinct glow, represented as such because they didn't know what it was. And present was also the man who designed robots. Maybe the others just liked to dress that way.
- The idea of anachronism stew was theorized, later defictionalized, and generally slammed in this XKCD comic.
Web Original
- Homestar Runner: The "Old-Timey" era is supposed to take place in the 1930s, but makes reference to any number of events ranging from the 1800s to the 1950s.
- The Town is easily one of the worst offenders. Having charcters with technolgy and cultures from every time period yet to exist and several that haven't and likely won't ever.
- On one occasion in Survival Of The Fittest a character directly quoted the Dark Knight. The problem with this? SOTF v3 is set in 2007, a year before the film even came out.
Western Animation
- Afro Samurai takes hip hop and samurai, some Old West, a little Buddhism, cell phones, stereos... you have samurai talking gangsta style. But it works. A little Samuel L Jackson helps. When he orders "lemonade... ice cold" at the dusty old bar, itself part oriental, part Old West... and tosses out a little Japanese... it is very cool. Then there's the heavy crossbow, with autofire, with the underslung grenade launcher. Monks with "hoes" in Oriental temples, with cybernetic hands, chanting koans between fiery preaching. China and Russia are mentioned, and from the dialogue of the monks, it seems that the story takes place in Japan.
- King Arthurs Disasters plays Arthurian anachronisms for laughs, e.g. at one point King Arthur and Merlin land on the moon. At another, he meets Don Quixote.
- The Land Before Time stars an Apatosaurus and a Stegosaurus, both of which existed in the Jurassic period, alongside a Triceratops, a Pteranodon, a Parasaurolophus, and with a Tyrannosaurus as a villain, all of which existed many ''millions'' of years later in the Cretaceous period.
- Dino-Riders also had wildly anachronistic dinosaurs living next to one another (T. rex is closer to us in time than to Apatosaurus), and threw in a Dimetrodon for good measure.
- Parodied in The Simpsons when the family watches The Poke of Zorro which includes King Arthur, Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Three Musketeers, and ninjas in the movie's plot.
- And the credits mention Robot Zorro, among other strange characters.
- With James Earl Jones as the voice of the Magic Taco.
- That is irrevocably awesome
- Parodied in Futurama — the theme park "Past-o-Rama" featured Albert Einstein and Hammurabi disco-dancing in a hot air balloon. With Hammurabi saying 'Dynomite!'. Some wires got severely crossed there.
- Just there? This is the same show where it was said that licensed 'Fun'ologists theorized 19th-20th century-looking WHALERS went to the Moon to find whales. And that cars were built on assembly lines by "primitive robots", meaning regular robots wearing animal skins and going "Oogah! Oogah!" each time they smashed some metal with clubs. And that traffic jams were places of cultural exchange. And that cars were powered by burning literal fossils. All of this is in the name of Rule Of Funny though.
- In Cats Dont Dance, when the animals are on the out-of-control ark, they crash through a movie production in progress, which seems to be a nod to Cecil B. De Mille's version of Samson and Delilah. Except that the columns that Samson is pulling down are part of a Parthenon-style Greek structure, and after the ark crashes through the set, we get a gag shot of Danny and Sawyer suddenly wearing Egyptian costumes. No, really, I swear.
- Batman The Animated Series is another deliberate example. It features Art Deco-style buildings and gangsters sporting fedoras and tommyguns, yet computers are common and nobody bats an eye about women having actual careers.
- Ice Age throws together many animals which did not coexist in either time or place (or both, such as the dodos). At the very least, they're all from after the dinosaur age, and most are from the actual Ice Age.
- Except the sequel, which has dinosaurs (including the aforementioned T. Rex) that survived the KT Extinction Event (when the last of the dinosaurs died off). They suggest that there is only a small population, but the movie still takes place less than 2 million years ago, meaning that they're about 63 million years out of place.
- The Flintstones, for the simple fact that humans and dinosaurs couldn't possibly coexist...of course, this is due to Rule Of Funny.
- In Gargoyles, the flashbacks set in and right after 994 AD (when the eponymous Gargoyles got stoned) have their problems. For one thing, the Normans, who conquered England in 1066, built the first stone castles on Britain, which would make the Gargoyles' home castle an impossibility.
- Present-day (read: 1994) technology is also more advanced than ours. The existence of magic must have helped progress along a bit, even if most people in that world no longer know it exists.
- The "Starboy and the Captain of Outer Space" film from Home Movies is possibly the most Anachronism Stew-y cartoon ever made. For example, the 3 main villians are George Washington, Pablo Picasso and Annie Oakley, who try to destroy the human race by killing their hostages: Shakespeare, Oliver Twist and the Mermaid Queen.
- Another Home Movies episode takes place at a medieval fair where Brendon and Jason put on a play about the friendship of King Arthur and Robin Hood...and the episode is titled 'Renaissance'. It invokes the Rule Of Funny showing Brendon's grasp of history, but it's also typical of these fairs.
- The Mickey Mouse version of The Three Musketeers has alarms, modern plumbing, a production of Pirates of the Penzzance, mentions of peanut butter, etc
Real Life
- Just about any event of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where you can see examples of everything from sixteenth-century German armor to Moors to Vikings to Romans to Samurai all competing in the same tournament, or a Viking chatting with an Elizabethan lady over a display of Catholic prayer beads. Not a result of Did Not Do The Research so much as the basic structure of the organization; anything before 1600 AD is fair game for re-enactment. Individuals will generally be faithful to a period in their dress, though this also varies. Speaking as a member of the organization, oh boy does it ever vary.
- Then again, they do give you fair warning. It wouldn't be a Society for Creative Anachronism if they weren't creatively anachronistic, now would it?
I've seen a joke: You know you're in the SCA when.... you use a wax tablet to write down someone's e-mail address....
- Senator Joe Biden: "Now, when this country entered the Great Depression, our president, Franklin Roosevelt, went on television and spoke of how to get this country out of it." The Daily Show had a lot of fun with this, since 1) Herbert Hoover, not Roosevelt was President at the time, and 2) Television barely existed...
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