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A bamboo hut with a TV set and a videogame console? Why not!
So they don't have radios, but they do have intercontinental ballistic missiles!
The setting may seem at first to be The Middle Ages, The Colonial Period, or some Fantasy Counterpart Culture thereof, but when you look closer, you find polyester, robots, or other high-tech toys in between the horse-drawn wagons and wattle-and-daub buildings. There's generally no rhyme or reason for which technologies are anachronistically present besides the Rule Of Cool. Sometimes these may be leftovers from a lost technological civilization, but most of the time there is no explanation whatsoever for the bizarre mix of medieval and futuristic.
Schizo Tech is a key component of Punk Punk. It's also the foundation for Fantasy Gun Control. Compare Decade Dissonance for when one side has all the cool toys. When a story nominally set in a real-life historical period has this problem, you've got yourself some tasty Anachronism Stew.
When putting on a candidate for this trope, try not to confuse anachronisms with non-western-isms. For example, a kimono can be just as modern as a three-piece suit, if not more so.
Compare Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Technology Levels is what this trope averts. As well as Medieval European Fantasy, of course.
Examples:
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- Trigun uses this to good effect, mixing use of native animals and chemically propelled weapons with use of extreme high tech terraforming equipment, for the most part cannibalised for energy production.
- Ironically, none of it is anachronistic or out of place, as the people came from a failed terraforming mission.
- Aoi Umi No Tristia (aka Tristia of the Deep Blue Sea).
- In Dragon Half, magic and dragons and dragon slayers coexist with supersonic passenger jets and radio and cds. This, along with just about everything else in the series, is played for laughs.
- Don't forget the Space Shuttle shot down during the Anime.
- El Hazard The Magnificent World is a setting that superficially resembles the Arabian Nights, but is littered with the explicit remains of ultratech civilizations that destroyed themselves in a massive war centuries before.
- Vision Of Escaflowne mixes a fantasy world with Lost Technology Humongous Mecha... and a technophile Big Bad intent on conquering the world through the power of Mad Science. (Of course, his interest in both magic and science is easily explained by his being Isaac Newton.)
- Aura Battler Dunbine is a classic Schizo Tech series, in which the inhabitants of a medieval fantasy world have kidnapped a group of robotics engineers and computer manufacturers from Earth to build advanced weapons. (There's an almost surreal shot of a chip-assembly "clean room" in a castle basement.)
- In Bleach, we see that the 12th Division of the Gotei 13 has some pretty advanced computers...in an afterlife that seems to be based on feudal Japan.
- Although, given that Shinigami are fully capable of traveling to, and interacting with, the world of the living, the real question is why more of the Gotei 13, much less the rest of the Soul Society, doesn't have access to this level of tech.
- Grenadier is set in a feudal Japan that somehow still manages to have modern automatic weapons and other high-tech goodies.
- Lost Universe and Outlaw Star both appear to inhabit the opposite end of the Schizo Tech scale — futuristic worlds with anachronistic magic. That's actually Space Opera, the same thing as Star Wars.
- The characters of Haré+Guu live in a hunter-gatherer society, in a village in the middle of a jungle. However, they also have television, video games, modern school buildings, and a typical late-20th-early-21st-century city just a plane trip away.
- This is actually a Truth In Television since there are hunter-gatherer societies that have remained mostly unchanged for years, but do in fact, have radio, televisions, electricity, and wear modern clothes such as jeans and T-shirts. While going on hunting trips. One British journalist was shocked to see said society watching episodes of Star Trek, despite them not being able to understand the language.
- Smack-dab in between the two extremes is Paradigm City, the setting of The Big O, which would appear to be a 1940s film noir New York — if it weren't for the giant glass domes, androids, robots and Humongous Mecha all over the place.
- This can be explained by the entire world that we see (barring a minuscule exception or two) is part of a gigantic set reminiscent of The Truman Show. Why the producers, etc, of the show inside the show, who presumably have all of this technology and more, chose to do this is another story altogether.
- The universe of Fullmetal Alchemist at first glance seems to be early 20th century Europe. Most long-distance travel is done by steam train, the streets are paved with cobblestones, soldiers dress in uniforms similar to the era and are armed accordingly with period weapons (though the anime messes things up a bit by replacing the WWII-era guns with Vietnam-era ones), things like automobiles and telephones are just coming into existence, and are only being used by those with money or influence and it's mentioned in one episode that delivery of meat in a refrigerated truck is a new technology. Yet at the same time, Ed has prosthetic limbs that while they aren't beyond the capabilities of 21st century medicine to manufacture, are not quite perfected in real life yet, and no one seems to consider this unusual.
- Its worth noting that regular prosthetics exist in the setting, but only Automail is hooked up directly to the nervous system, and there is an entire town dedicated to it. It's believable that the presence of alchemists might have caused technological research to go down different routes.
- Part of the "briefing" part of the OVA collection explicitly states automail owes its existence to alchemy. Somehow.
- Perhaps an alchemist with a bad case of science related memetic disorder came up with the prototype, then concealed the original method of creation to avoid being "recruited" by the military.
- Interestingly, elements such as the steam trains and the State Alchemists' watches are accurate reproduction of early twentieth-century ones. Even more interestingly, Ed is puzzled at the Alternate Universe because 'our' (Western!) universe relies on technology rather than alchemy and Ed had never seen zeppelins, for example.
- Really, nearly all Steam Punk fits this category.
- It's probably even an integral part of steampunk. The whole genre seems to play with anachronisms and the 'vintage' feel.
- It's like why the Spy in Team Fortress 2 uses a revolver instead of a silenced pistol-it's all about style. Sure, advanced technology beyond even what we've got, powered by steam or, at the outside, clockwork, isn't very realistic, but damn if it isn't awesome.
- Although Team Fortress 2 IS set in the 60s, by all appearances, so, the engineers toys aside, most of the characters weapons are actually not subject to this trope, including the spys revolver.
- Parodied in Shaman King, in which the Patch Native American tribe has "traditional hand-made" versions of things like pagers, monitors, and cell phones.
- Later on, it is shown that they really ARE hand made. The tribe became friends with an alien who taught them how to make all of their tech with what they had at hand.
- The anime movie, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, which takes place in the 1960's, but includes both anachronistic WWII-era weapons and futuristic powered-armour suits.
- This applies to the rest of the Kerberos franchise as well, with most technology being from the 50s or so, except for the aforementioned power armour, and the social structure being entrenched in the 1960s and the cold war... aside from the totalitarian dictatorships and massive gang warfare caused by that very same power armour (or rather, those who use it). It's complicated.
- Their armor ISN'T POWERED. They are just that awesome.
- The world of Saiyuki has ancient Chinese architecture, clothing, and farming technology (witness the hoe-wielding mobs of angry cheongsam-clad villagers found in many episodes)...and also such everyday items as butane lighters, a jeep, a revolver, and a gold credit card.
- Specifically, a deity booted out of heaven- who was reincarnated as a small dragon- who can transform into a Jeep via magic. Nice going, Hakuryuu.
- The Naruto universe essentially mixes feudal society with modern technology (and clothing). The only exceptions are things like cars and guns. The author once admitted this, and said that he thought of the Leaf village as more of "a place in my head" that existing in an definite geography or time period and that the existence of ninja, and really the whole story, would be pretty pointless if they had those (or maybe just guns, as he stated there might be vehicle).
- In the Naruto manga (chapter 19 page 8) there is a gun behind the shop counter
 .
- One of the Six Paths of Pain is a friggin cyborg armed to the teeth with high explosives and missiles and Nagato himself is confined into what appears to be some sort of mobile throne, both oddly futuristic for a series that mixes feudal society with modern technology.
- The village he's from is also somehow heavily industrialized (even somewhat steampunkish), despite it being frequently desolated from wars held there by other countries.
- In chapter 354, apropos of completely freaking nothing we see dozens of buildings of late 20th century build, all of which are abandoned except for one that was used as weapon storehouse Uchiha and is inhabited by some old lady, her granddaughter, and their cats.
- It's fairly indicative that fake spoilers claimed Zetsu and Madara showed up to help Sasuke with a fucking tank and people actually believed them.
- Murder Princess appears to be set in a traditional Medieval European Fantasy, right up to the moment when a Tyke Bomb Robot Girl punches down a door with her bare hands in the first episode. (The sci-fi technology seen in the opening sequence doesn't hurt, either.)
- The manga version of Inu Yasha is a completely feudal Japan fantasy setting ... until a group of bandits suddenly come into the picture, one of whom appears to be half-tank.
- Explicable as we learned he has a jewel shard and used to be an explosives/gunner type.
- Samurai 7 has massive cyborgs and warships, equipped with what seems like anti-gravity systems, Wave Motion Guns...and samurai, armed only with katana and Implausible Fencing Powers. The villagers fire incendiary arrows at power armor. The cities are part cyberpunk, but the villages are traditional Japanese in style. And the "mother of all crossbows" is so very worth the watching...
- That's called a ballista, and it's a real medieval siege engine.
- One of the Seven is also a robot. Powered by steam. To borrow a line, I wasn't aware steam could form allegiances.
- In the Orguss 02 OVA, we have Industrial Age societies digging up Humongous Mecha which have teams of psychics onboard to navigate and act in lieu of radar and other sensors, and machine guns installed to replace any Energy Weapons that aren't still working.
- Shina Dark has the Vansable Empire with steam-powered war devices. But more notably, when one of the main characters gets injured, she is sent a hospital which has an oxygen tank with a mask.
- The rabbit-people in Utawarerumono go to war with Eva-style Humongous Mecha. In a medieval-fantasy setting. Oh how the Hilarity Ensues...
- Not only that, but the main character apparently was some modern day archaeologist sciency type before he lost his memory.
- Adding to its ever notorious anachrony, Samurai Champloo features semi-automatic handguns, rocket launchers, and elevators all existing in the Japanese Edo Period.
- Afro Samurai. The opening scene looks like something out of feudal Japan to Wild West Europe... not too long later, cut to a man using night vision goggles. Other technological marvels include rocket launchers, cellphones, androids and cyborgs alongside old-style clothing, architecture and swords.
- Saber Marionette J has Robot Girls, spaceships and all sorts of technology in what looks like feudal Japan; supposedly, this is the result of a space colony operation gone awry.
- Mamoru Nagano plays this trope to the hilt in The Five Star Stories, where genetically enhanced Super Soldiers who act like knights in shining armor and pilot Humongous Mecha serve in the same military forces as WWII-style soldiers, but with laser rifles and anti-gravity tanks. Most of these armies serve various feudal empires, though democracies and fascist dictatorships are not unheard of. This is occasionally Lampshaded, with characters lamenting what a ridiculous game war has become, and various justifications are given, the most common being that it's more a matter of tradition than practicality and that the prevailing military theory favours personal combat to weapons of mass destruction because it isn't worth conquering territory if it's just going to get nuked (which doesn't stop the main character from creating a mecha with a gun that can blow up entire continents when fired at full power, but let's not get into that).
- A girl asked him. So the guy thought "What the hell!" and went all-out with the said mecha.
- The only difference that Glass Fleet has from The Cavalier Years is the presence of space-faring vessels. Swords, flintlock pistols, crossbows, spears, horse-drawn carriages, and plate armor are still well in place. This is taken to ridiculous extremes when artists' renditions of mercenaries are used as a stand-in for intelligence/surveillance photographs.
- The majority of the world of One Piece doesn't appear to be particularly advanced. They have guns and cannons, cameras, but they substitute alot of communications technology with magic snails.
- Then we meet Cyborg Franky who, true to his name, is a cyborg. Turned himself into one In a
cave junkyard! With a box of scraps!. Has a bottomless magazine in his left arm with doubles as a cannon and an automatic weapon, a sort of Rocket Punch attached to a chain. What have you.
- A bit further into the story we meet Bartholomew Kuma. Like Franky, he's a cyborg, but of a much higher quality. He's called a Pacifista.
- Not long after that, more cyborgs show up in the form of what are essentially clones of Kuma, but with lasers.
- And now we have plasma flat-screen TV monitors and Dolby Surround Sound stereo speakers. Out of nowhere.
- Xamd Lost Memories mixes Studio Ghibli with Neon Genesis Evangelion, producing an Anachronism Stew that has to be seen to be believed.
- Its not actually that implausable that two sides of a war that had been going on for ages would have different technology, and even the remote village kingdom place had rifles, so it was more a case of aesthetics.
- Kino no Tabi: in the "Land of Wizards" episode, it is pointed out that no one has ever successfully built an airplane. Never mind that various countries have artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, fully-automated economies, incredibly-advanced neurological science, and, of course, hovercrafts. No airplanes, just hovercrafts.
- In New Getter Robo, the Getter Team find themselves transported back to the Heian era, and are quite surprised to find Samurai fighting the Oni with guns, tanks, and airships.
- It's suggested by Hayato that their arrival, which deposited each of them at different points in a 2-year period and the robot itself long enough ago to be recorded on scrolls as a fable, somehow screwed up the time line.
Comic Books
- Comic books seem to be egregious examples of this. Batman's nemesis Mr. Freeze has invented a freeze-ray; Lex Luthor currently waltzes around in a battlesuit full of crazy power and can probably fly; Firestorm can synthesize any material in any quantity (I'm looking at you, lithium); Thanagarian N-th metal is apparently capable of bestowing flight; Black Lightning is capable of generating mounds and mounds of electrical current, and... well, you get the idea. And yet, citizens of Earth are still using gasoline-fuelled cars.
- Lampshaded somewhat in the first Superman/Batman comic. Alfred is guarding the sewer entrance to the Batcave with a shotgun. Superman remarks on it, telling Batman "You didn't have an extra freeze ray gun you could've given him?"
- Also, Lex's suit is "borrowed" from Apokolips, so it scientific value is rather shady.
- Lampshaded in Starman, when Jack Knight tells his father that when he invented an unlimited, clean source of power in the 1940s, he should have used it to make cosmic-powered cars instead of flying around fighting crime. Jack's father actually goes on to construct a cosmic power plant big enough to power the entire county, which hasn't been seen since in the DCU.
- This is somewhat justified by the technology being created by super geniuses, aliens, and downright magic, all of which have [Reed Richards Is Useless competence.] Or maybe they just don't trust regular people with these wonderful toys.
- Marvel Comics is guilty of this as well. Stark Industries have technology that really should have revolutionized the world by now, SHIELD have jetpacks and spaceships (technically, SWORD has the spaceships, but whatever), Charles Xavier has a global surveillance system (mutant only), Henry Pym has his shrinking particles, and of course, Reed Richards Is Useless.
- Justified, when Tony Stark mentions that the battery that keeps Pepper Potts alive is costs a cool billion dollars, and the Iron Man suit is another billion dollars. That's cheaper than a Stealth Bomber, but the jetpacks and spaceships must still be hideously expensive. In other words, making the technology is a different matter than making it a viable technology that can be easily replicated, maintained, and created by someone other than super geniuses.
- This huge waste of world changing technology is noted as one of Pym's "sins" in Paradise X since Pym could have saved many more lives but adapting his technology to industry or health technology rather than using it to beat up criminals.
- Beetle Bailey's been going since The Fifties and the Korean War, so Beetle and his unit wear Korea-era uniforms, drive Jeeps, and use old-fashioned rifles. In more recent strips, there are computers, microphone headsets, modern-style golf, and other modern technology, but the 50s tech has never gone away.
- Nävis, the protagonist of the French comic series Sillage, lives in a treehouse inside a sort of biosphere spaceship, presumably because she grew up in a jungle and likes her home feeling close to nature.
- Superman Returns keeps so much of the other Superman movies' look and feel that it appears to take place not long after Superman II. And then someone pulls out a camera phone.
- Well, Superman II couldn't have taken place that long before, otherwise Lois's kid would've been finishing graduate school by then. It's more like the previous two movies got pulled forward in time twenty years, and therefore have all archaic tech.
- The 1996 movie Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh. The external guards in the beginning use polearms, the statue of the old King Hamlet wears platemail, and Norway is allowed to invade Poland without any alliance system protecting Poland, making it at least seem like medieval times. Then there are some old-looking guns inside the palace, making it seem like 17th century at least. Then there are steam trains, one way mirrors, and a globe with a complete map of Africa, making it seem like 19th century. Then there are electric lights, which make it seem like the 20th century.
- To be fair, the original Hamlet was pretty anachronistic to begin with. Shakespeare did this a lot, probably because he thought his audience wouldn't be able to identify with the characters or the setting if he didn't include things they were familiar with.
- This troper was told by his British Literature teacher that the movie was supposed to take place in the early 20th Century.
- The old-fashioned weaponry of the guards could be justified considering that many modern guards of honour carry similarly old weaponry. Real-life Rule Of Cool.
- In Tim Burton's Batman, photographers rely on flash-bulb cameras, while Batman has a jet plane and a rocket car.
- Titus. Roman helmets, old-timey microphones, cornrowed glam-rock looking barbarians, oh my!
- Planet Of The Apes. The Ape civilization seems to be on the level of ancient Rome, yet there's an abundance of semi-automatic weapons, plastic pens, high pressure water hoses, and about half a dozen other things this troper can't recall...
- Although they are remains of human technology (the whole civiilization in the original, a crashed ship in the remake).
- Dark City includes elements of this to reflect the fact that the city's builders just kind of yanked technology off of Earth for the city's inhabitants (humans) to play with. The makers of the movie did this simply to enhance the noir elements of the movie.
- It also provides hints that the city is somehow displaced in time, which is kind of true.
- Knightriders is a film where the characters embrace this trope on purpose.
- The Emperors New Groove is largely set in an ancient Incan kingdom, although a floor waxer inexplicably appears for a one-shot gag.
- The Wookiees in Star Wars use advanced lasers and holographic systems, and still live in wooden treehouses in the middle of jungles. This is one of the reasons that Return of the Jedi used Ewoks instead - a technologically advanced Wookiee battle would be too expensive to create.
- Most Steampunk works revel in this trope, though counterexamples do exist: The Difference Engine sees computers developed in the victorian era with considerable effort devoted to making them both plausable and integrated, though even here the rollerskates do seem pure Schizo Tech (or Rule Of Cool).
- The Planet Cull in Neal Asher's The Brass Man features "knights" riding on giant hogs who use lances to kill local monsters, protecting villagers who construct photovoltaic cells by hand as a trade. This is because they are the descendants of a stranded colony ship, of which their leaders are trying to use a telescope and a laser to re-establish contact with as it's still sitting in orbit and can be used as a relay to phone home back to Earth.
- Iain M Banks' Culture has the technology and resources to essentially run on in-universe RuleOfCool. As such, you get things like the air-bubble projected around a kilometres-long hyperspace-capable starship operated by a godlike AI...filled with people flying propellor planes and airships, or, despite having machines that can materialize practically any food at any time, people cooking kebabs on barbecues.
- Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy has cigarettes, cameras and bathrooms with running water, but no weapons more advanced than crossbows.
- Justified in that every member of the society can shield, making them everything proof, not to mention the ability to kill people with a thought.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series features nations with fleets of flying warships and mile-range rifles that shoot explosive rounds, but in which the most valued comabt skill is swordsmanship.
- In Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, a benevolent mind-controlling computer keeps anyone on the planet Harmony from thinking of anything that might lend itself to large-scale warfare, with the end result that they have advanced computers, but the horse pulled wagon is a new invention in the story.
- L. Sprague de Camp's novella Divide and Rule was written primarily to have as much fun with this trope as possible. It features trains pulled by elephants, knights with armor made of chrome steel and plexiglass, cavalry battles with radio correspondents, and castles that use canned food to outlast sieges, among many other things. This is justified by the fact that Earth has been conquered by aliens who give humans a fair degree of autonomy, but don't allow them certain technologies, such as explosives and motor vehicles.
- In Western SF, Frank Herbert's Dune is perhaps the preeminent example of this, though the reasons for it are well-rooted in the series Back Story.
- Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is a great version of this. It takes place in a mystical Wild West filled with malfunctioning robots.
- Jerry Pournelle's Co Dominium is defined by a century-long period of Medieval Stasis following the creation of Faster Than Light Travel, due to every politician in the named entity being either an Obstructive Bureaucrat, a Strawman Political or a Well Intentioned Extremist; the only way all these megalomaniacs could agree not to start World War III was to agree not to develop weapons technology any further, which of course meant not developing anything, and even trashing all the libraries so nobody could build better weapons by Mac Gyvering. They then proceeded to deport millions of people every year to every marginally habitable world they could find, often with little more than the clothes on their backs. The result is a smorgasbord of Schizo Tech. Casual Interstellar Travel, but no lasers. Hand-held anti-satellite weaponry stored next to bolt-action rifles. Spaceports with horse troughs. Pournelle's 'Verse never actually recovered from the whole mess; a thousand years later, every Space Marine thinks PDAs are state-of-the-art.
- Mortal Engines has quite a few examples of this: heavier-than-air flight doesn't exist (at least at the start of the series), swords are still as popular as guns, but engines that can move entire cities and technology that can bring people back from the dead as cyborg killing machines are commonplace.
- Everpresent in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, in which telegraphs coexist with fiber-optic cables.
- The Book Of The New Sun 's Schizo Tech can be summed up by paraphrasing one of its appendices - The future Urth is a world where continents are just as far away to the average person as other star systems. And the peasantry carry crossbows that shoot thermite explosives.
- One very representative example is a short story in an issue of Analog, in which the most advanced two species in the universe can use black hole as a source of energy and have more Wave Motion Guns than you can imagine, but are surprised and, for one of the two species (both flew around in gigantic spaceships), destroyed by a lucky shot from a device consisting of a long tube, a titanium coated projectile, and an explosive, i.e., a gun. Apparently, only humans are brutish enough to come up with the idea.
- This could be called a Wall Banger though, since any civilization powerful enough to develop the technology to harvest Hawking radiation from black holes would be a Type-II society at least, just because of the infrastructure required. A society that powerful could unleash the tiniest bit of their power and turn Earth into a glowing, airless desert that looks like the surface of the moon. Guns should, logically, be useless against a society of that scale (but not the almighty pointed stick!). But then that would spoil the hamfisted moral "Guns R Bad!" wouldn't it.
- "The Road Not Taken", by Harry Turtledove. It turns out that antigravity and faster than light travel are absurdly simple, but have no applications other than travel, and don't fit into other scientific theories, and thus provides no other benefits. Humans, who have missed the discovery, are invaded in 2039 by a species that did during their age of sail. It's humans with 21st century tech versus aliens with highly maneuverable aircraft, starships...and black-powder flintlock muskets. The only thing earth fighters were somewhat inferior was maneuverablity; they more than enough made for it with the speed, radar and sheer firepower. It was very short-lived invasion.
- Once Humanity copies the technology, their invasions are even shorter.
- A couple of captive aliens even lampshaded it in a hilarious "What Have We Done" moment — exactly in these words, no less.
- This happens in Worldwar too. The Race, despite having mastered things like cryogenics and quarter-light speed travel, never thought to stick poison gas in a canister and shoot it at their enemy. Meaning they never invented a proper defense.
- Had The Race invaded just twenty or thirty years later, there simply wouldn't be any invasion: their technology is so 80's, and their industrial base is limited to only their expedition fleet. They have had major difficulties even with 40's era humanity and had to agree for a truce, Earth of thew 70's would've made a short work of them. The Decade Dissonance doesn't really matter when your industial capabilities are infinitely better than those of the enemy. And the concept of orbital bombardment —when they're the only ones with spaceships— just never quite occurs to them.
- The only weapon they have that ist orbit to surface capable is nuclear bombardment. The debate over whether or not to use this is the main reason why Straha defected.
- If the race HAD invaded twenty or thirty years later, however, their initial High Altitude Nuclear Explosions would have found microchips far more accomodating than vacuum tubes!
- Then again we probably would have detected them shortly after they entered the Solar system.
- The Land of Oz is a Magical Land with wind up robots, cyborgs, and radios. The books actually inspired many Sci-Fi writers, like Isaac Asimov.
- In Neal Stephenson's Anathem this is a deliberate trait of the Avout, who live extremely simple, monastic lives without even a printing press, but make their robes using femtotechnology, grow trees genetically engineered to have leaves that can be used like paper, and carry around nigh-invulnerable femtotech "Spheres" that can be resized, recoloured and to a limited extent reshaped to serve as anything from stool or lantern to bullet-stopping shield (actually the effectiveness of the sphere as a bullet-proof sheild was tested in the book, the verdict: ineffective).
- Which is not impossible, assuming they got the technology from someone else, or some kind of Lost Tech.
- In The Planiverse, most Ardean technology is described by the humans as "late nineteenth century", but they also have an experimental computer, rocket planes, and even a space station. Justified because of the limitations of a two-dimensional universe.
- Doctor Grordbort's Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory is a spoof catalogue of Victorian-era rayguns, robots, and other Cool But Inefficient Steam Punk devices. Includes a short illustrated story on a
hunting expedition rampant wildlife slaughter on Venus.
- Any book (or TV series, RPG, etc) where residents of a generation starship have forgotten their origins and reverted to feudalism or the Stone Age (the Bits of Repurposed Plastic Junk Age?) certainly qualifies.
- At the primitive end of the anachronism scale, the fuzzies from the Fuzzy novels are initially mistaken for pre-sentient primates, because they didn't use fire. Their tools, however, were more sophisticated than what a pre-fire culture should've had: they just had lots of thick fur to keep warm, and liked eating their food raw.
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is full of Schizo Tech, since the decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire saw science degrade first into mere past-revering authoritarianism, then into a religion of technology where Foundation-indoctrinated priests made machines work by rote and have no idea of the principles behind them. Only the Foundation(s) keep the concepts of science and research alive, plus records of the Lost Technology from brighter days.
- Eric Flint's 1632 series is practically bursting with this trope. This isn't really surprising to anyone who's read the series, considering that the 1630s of the setting had books covering over three and a half centuries of technological advancement dumped into it, courtesy of the arrival of Grantville from April 2000.
- His Dark Materials has this. Lyra's Earth has Victorian/steampunk tech plus an advanced knowledge of physics, electricity, and nuclear weapons.
- Discworld is going through an accelerated technological revolution, having in the course of the books starting from extremely low-tech fantasy to having a fully functional continent-spanning semaphore network acting as a proto-Internet. Several other schizo-tech examples were temporary magical errors such as the invention of the movie industry (silver portals for eldritch horrors) and shopping malls (a giant creature-hive that hatches from snow globes that feeds on society)
Live Action TV
- The Firefly/Serenity Verse mixes starships and Wild West technology indiscriminately. There's a good in-Verse explanation for this: the Alliance tends to dump colonists on recently-terraformed worlds with the bare minimum needed to survive. As well, high technology is concentrated in Alliance hands, due to the Unification War between the outer planets and the core worlds, which ended in an Alliance victory, and they have no intention of letting the outer planets rise again.
- In fact, one can actually see real Schizo Tech at work in a few locations in the series. For example, in "Heart of Gold" there's a house that looks like it would be right at home in a Western, with minimal technology, period dresses, an old-style well, and cheap newspaper-based insulation....and they have a futuristic-looking wall terminal complete with interplanetary communications.
- In that episode, it's also quite likely that the higher than usual level of Schizo Tech is due to a conscious, in-universe decision; one character mentions that the Villiant Of The Week deliberately keeps the world in a low-technology state so that he can dominate it economically and indulge in an Old West fantasy.
- Some of the planets visited on the various incarnations of Star Trek exhibit this trope. One Next Gen episode had a relatively primitive, pre-industrial society that had dissolving doors that spontaneously re-formed after use. Yeah. Oh and faster than light communication but were too primitive to contact.
- Not shown, but Data mentions a race that developed writing before speech in an episode of TNG.
- That's not so much schizo tech as it is a quirk of evolution. The areas of the brain that control speech and writing are on different "circuits" and can be at different levels of development even among real-life humans.
- The Wild Wild West series is a sterling example of the trope. The Wild West setting mixed with gadgets worthy of James Bond and plenty of mad scientists with anachronistic inventions.
- The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr. was the same thing, but with a lot more Lampshade Hanging.
- Fringe offers an interesting three-tiered use of this trope. In the show, scientific and technological advances have been taking place for decades under the radar of the public. In addition to typical present-day technology, mega-corporation Massive Dynamic produces space age future tech weapons and gizmos. However, a third tech level exists as the protagonists have some rudimentary prototype gadgets designed by Mad Scientist Walter Bishop. The prototypes were designed 20-30 years in the past, as Walter has spent the last 17 years in a mental institution. His laboratory and devices have a low-tech look but function beyond the scope of conventional science.
- For an example of the latter, witness Walter's amazing matter transporter machine. It looks like some metal, wires and lenses...no computers or even obvious power source. But it can teleport a person from any point in space and time to any other point in space and time. Shit just got real.
- There's also a subtle aversion. While tech developed by Massive Dynamics is sleek and efficient, the various reality bending gadgets (old and new) essentially never work as advertised or have bizarre complications involved. The development process is very much apparent.
- Earth in Power Rangers. Fully functional interplanetary spacecraft by 1997, space colonies by 1999, and Ridiculously Human Robots indistinguishable (literally) from the real thing by 2007, and yet everyday technology looks and works exactly the same. One would think that if antigravity technology is advanced enough to show up in earthmade ranger bikes, it'd show up in at least the very high class cars, but no.
- Red Dwarf has more than a bit of this too, video tapes and spaceships for example. Lampshaded in the recent Dave special when Kryten explained that the human race abandoned DV Ds in favour of videos because mankind could never be bothered to put them back in the cases and videos are too large to lose.
- Max Headroom had computers with old-fashioned manual typewriter keyboards. Think "steampunk" but dirtier.
Music Video
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 ranges from worlds covered entirely in cities and advanced space age factories to planets full of human colonists that have regressed to a medieval or even Stone Age level. This is explained in the setting by the Age of Strife, when the manifestation of a new Chaos God disrupted interstellar travel and cut worlds off from Earth for millenia at a time.
- There is also a bit of "lost tech" going on in the setting. The Imperium's technology is controlled by a religious cult call the Mechanicus that doesn't believe in researching new technology or trying to understand the technology they currently have. Instead, they worship whatever old technology they can find from before the Age of Strife.
- The fantasy version of Warhammer features this too, particularly in recent editions. The Empire have a steam-powered tank and a "clockwork" horse while the Dwarfs - better yet - have a helicopter armed with a steam cannon (not mentioning an organ gun and a huge cannon-like flamethrower). The Skaven, infamously, feature "fantasy" versions of a sniper rifle, a ratling gun, a flamethrower, a laser cannon, a hamster wheel of death and what what appears to be a nuclear bomb (all of which may fail with destructively hilarious results). This in a world where a powerful human kingdom still think knights and longbows are cutting-edge, and there's at least one major faction that's entirely Stone Age. Fan reactions have been mixed, although some earlier editions featured actual plasma guns and laser pistols, so modern players get off lightly really.
- Rifts, being set After After The End, has a lot of this. Many wilderness villages may not have running water and only a few electrical generators, but will have laser rifles capable of blowing a sedan in half with one shot. And let's not get into magic.
- BattleTech is also rife with this sort of thing. The mecha all have guns and missiles with great range and hideous damage, but due to the rubbished industrial base apparently nobody can build decent fire control or air-conditioning systems, so most fighting takes place at close range (under 1 kilometer!) and most mechwarriors fight in what amounts to underwear.
- The Yu Gi Oh trading card game world is full of this, possibly because nobody's ever bothered to explain any of it. We are talking about a world where a medieval knight◊ can do battle with a low-orbit ion cannon◊ and win. That same ion cannon also greatly fears duct tape.◊
- Dungeons And Dragons has their share. As usual.
- Gary Gygax played around with this trope a lot in his original Greyhawk home games, although most of them (mostly imported from Earth or found in crashed spaceships) got left out in later releases for that campaign setting.
- Mystara also has a number of anachronisms, either as Shout Outs (Heldannic Knights' bird-of-prey flying vessels), in-jokes, or remnants of (again) a crashed spaceship.
- The Hollow World, inside Mystara, proactively averts this trope with the Spell of Preservation, which makes people in various cultures distrust and spurn unfamiliar technologies, no matter how useful.
- Technology levels in Ravenloft range from Stone Age to late Renaissance, depending on where you are, with even higher tech turning up in the local Mad Scientist Laboratory. Somewhat justified in that new domains are added to the Land of Mists from different worlds with their own indigenous tech-levels, rather than technology evolving in tandem within adjacent countries.
- Spirit Of The Century plays with this, as it's set in the 1920s but uses pulp Science! to allow more futuristic technology, and even full on mad science inventions that we still haven't made. The book does a good job of cataloguing what inventions are just around the corner to give you some idea what the state of the art inventions you could get prototypes to, or make, are.
- Conventional technology in Exalted is mostly around middle-to-late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. But those with the needed skills can create a hyper-precision wristwatch with perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset calculator, moon phase display, and the functional equivalent of high resolution GPS as a minor tool.
Video Games
- The Warcraft series threw in more Schizo Tech as it went along, thanks to the combined engineering efforts of dwarfs, gnomes, and goblins. The strategy game series featured swords and sorcery, guns and cannons, and flying machines. World Of Warcraft added mass transit (in the form of the Deeprun Tram between Ironforge and Stormwind), robots, and teleportation devices.
- The expansion went even further with the Draenei retcon making them a Protoss-Expy more than anything else. The demons also got a lot of technology out of nowhere, including Humongous Mecha and Anti-Air cannons.
- Don't forget, they're shooting at people who are riding the highly advanced Giant Bird Thing technology. Nuclear warfare is also only for use on cavemen. Unsuccessfully. Clubs made of bone are much tougher.
- Justified in the fact that gnomes (Alliance-allied) and goblins (Horde-allied) are nutso crazy about Steam Punk technology and, at least in the goblins' case, are more than willing to blow themselves up wholesale to advance their "science." As each expansion comes out, there are new, generally more powerful, engineering items, as would be expected as Science Marches On. (Or Steam Punk marches on, as the case may be...)
- Further justified in the latest expansion where it's implied that the gnome race may have been created by the Titans (The Creators) as robotic life forms who have since devolved into organic beings.
- By World of Warcraft, it becomes clear that technology in Azeroth is roughly equivalent to modern society, but the universe is quite different thanks to magic and the constant warfare between dozens of intelligent species. At this point the universe is more influenced by science fiction than high fantasy.
- Featured prominently in the Wild Arms series. All of the games features Western-themed elements, but the world is actually riddled with technology way beyond colonial period or even modern capabilities. In fact, the first game starts off distinctly Western/medieval and ends up in a space station for the final battle, while the third uses databases and nanotechnology. See also: Lost Technology.
- The Legend Of Zelda series has elements of this. It's mostly medieval-style, but you'll occasionally run into jukeboxes, neon lights, telephones, and other technology.
- Especially noticeable in Gaiden Game Majora's Mask. The third dungeon, the Great Bay Temple, is very Steampunk-inspired and is in sharp contrast with the other more typical brick-and-mortar dungeons in the game.
- The Steampunk vibe is nothing—the Gerudo Pirates ride around on boats with blatant combustion engines on them.
- The newly announced game Spirit Tracks features Link riding around on a steam train. While also being the sword-swinging hero we all know and love.
- All of the Ultima games, particularly the earliest ones, which had spaceships and starfighters coexisting with a high medieval civilization, and a cybernetic Big Bad in Ultima III: Exodus.
- The Final Fantasy games started out as medieval fantasy with a few robots and propeller-driven airships thrown in (typically the province of one isolationist civilization), but by the time of Final Fantasy VII had instead become science fiction with swords and magic thrown in, with the occasional blend of the two.
- Of course since any given Final Fantasy game is only tenuously (if at all) related to any other Final Fantasy game, it's not really as Schizo as it seems.
- Except that you still have people running around with swords and axes in worlds where machineguns, force fields and what are essentially fighter jets exist.
- Final Fantasy VIII takes this trope up to an entirely new level. The world of the game is shown to be way more advanced than Earth and then there's the city-state of Esthar which is even more advanced in technology. All of this advancement and everyone still uses swords, whips, bare hands, etc. Justified in the case of SeeD, who are superhumanly strong and would have an advantage over ordinary humans in melee combat, and don't generally need firearms because of their magic. However, the Galbadian and Estharian militaries appear to use combinations of both firearms and melee weapons, and the Dollet military uses rifles exclusively.
- Special mention has to go to Final Fantasy XII. Mostly stock Medieval European Fantasy... except for the airships that look straight out of Star Wars.And the guns.And electricity, the electronic voice changers, the radios,the airports,electric lighting,grenades,robots and basically not an example unless "Modern Setting"+ "Some people use swords/Magic" fits the definition.
- Phantasy Star III is a medieval fantasy setting with the science fiction elements placed seemingly randomly: the game takes place on a space ark that has been fleeing its doomed homeworld, Palma, of Phantasy Star II for a thousand years, and its residents have long-since forgotten. IV was more of a sci-fi/fantasy western, and all of its sci-fi elements are a product of Lost Technology. The first two games had Schizo Tech, in that swords, claws, and other melee weapons were more common than guns in a setting with robots and spaceships, for no adequately explained reason.
- Not completely unexplained; firearms and weapon technology are strictly controlled by the government, which the heroes are basically always on the wrong side of. The only people who use heavy firearms are Odin (who was turned to stone, presumably since before the government went bad), Rudo (who has a government-endorsed profession), and Wren (who is an android and part of the corrupted-and-now-defunct Mother Brain system which is responsible for the evil government in II). In III, everyone can use guns and they're very common, but for some reason they call them Needlers.
- The Elder Scrolls has the Steam Punk factories and automatons of the Dwemer and Sheogorath, the god of madness, who wears a prominently displayed pocket watch, despite the fact that clockwork has never been invented in Tamriel.
- The Demi-God Sotha-Sil lives in a clockwork city with a few races of clockwork beings he created himself. The part of the city the player gets to explore has lots of clockwork traps and even a huge clockwork mecha. There is even something that looks like a control panel in his work-shop.
- Most of the Devil May Cry series fits this in their perpetual search (and usually success) at finding the optimal way to produce the Rule Of Cool: swords and guns are both used against demons (although guns do little damage) and the medieval castle on Mallet Island in Devil May Cry has lifts. Temen-ni-Gru tower in Devil May Cry 3 displays the "clockpunk" variant of Steam Punk very well, having elevators and monorail trams despite having been built two millenia ago and not touched until its unsealing in the present day; then again, it was built by demons.
- Likewise, the Might and Magic series of RPGs are apparently set in a fantasy world, but the characters will eventually run into robots, technical maintenance tunnels, and space ships. The in-game explanation is that the fantasy world was created by a high-tech race as an experiment.
- Or more likely it was the result of a failed experiment that reduced the tech level of most of the population to zero.
- The first games had vague mentions of a war between the Ancients (said to be the good guys) and the Creators. The retardation of technology seems to be at least somewhat deliberate, and part of the experiment- to keep the would-be colonists from finding out they are on (part of) a ship, for instance. From Might & Magic VI onward? Well, there is a reason for the dating system being 'After the Silence'...
- Drakengard is ostensibly medieval fantasy, yet certain elements stick out as being beyond prevailing technological constraints. For one, the giant Cyclopes that appear during the game's War Sequence. You might say this was the product of some deranged Functional Magic or heretofore unmentioned Magitek, but the game explicitly states that these creatures are the product of The Empire's war factories.
- Not to mention that the Bragging Rights Reward for One Hundred Percent Completion is a jet.
- Weird little fun fact...one of the endings shows the guy flying out of the territory of his "fantasy land" world, into modern Japan. This Troper took that to mean it was possible this was some kind of bizarre quasi-Tolkienesque nation state in the modern world. So Yeah...
- A trademark of the Wizardry series of videogames. it featured the standard fantasy swords and magic type world. But also spacefaring races, using 17th century firearms and 80s computers. Or light sabers. And robots as Mecha Mooks or Angels.
- In the 1992 game The Lost Vikings, three Vikings battle green monsters and evil computers. When they do get home, they proceed to show off what they learned to their families... which is apparently The Power Of Rock.
- Justified in the game Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, as it is set in a fantasy world (with orcs, elves, dwarves, and magic) that is undergoing an industrial revolution. And magic and technology tend not to like each other.
- As in "A scientist picks up a sword, and the magic in it just drains away; a wizard wants to look at the controls of the running train engine, causing it malfunction disastrously".
- The world of Zork developed with technology and magic going hand-in-hand. In Zork Grand Inquisitor, where magic is banned by the Inquisition, the world has a technology level somewhere around World War II. They can harness the power of electricity, and have radio, television, and movies, but don't have the technology for cars, planes, or firearms. Seems possible they either don't the ingredients or never figured out how to refine fossil fuels or invent gunpowder.
- A mild version of this trope is present in Bio Shock. The game takes place in the year 1959, which is evident by most of the setting (old televisions, tommy guns, even clothes and hairstyles). And yet, there are things like super-advanced geothermal reactors, autonomous flying bots (ok, they do tend to crash all over the place, but still), machines that can create all kinds of ammunition from a few commonly available items, portable guided rockets, and of course a huge city several miles under the Atlantic ocean, which would be an impossible endeavor even with today's technology.
- What if Howard Hughes had told the FAA to shove it when they gave Pan-Am a monopoly, then took his fortune and ran off to some remote part of the world with as many asocial Mad Scientists as he could find? I bet they'd have come up with some neat stuff even without Applied Phlebotinum.
- Star Ocean started in a fantasy world, and was later changed to the 200 years earlier fantasy world... but two of the main characters are commanding staff on a spaceship from Earth. (Before you get to go back in time, you're required to dump all futuristic weapons... including the swords, for some reason.) They adapt with frightening ease; Captain Ronixis even takes up magic.
- In fact, all of the Star Ocean games feature this in some way. Even though it takes place in the far future in outer space, the lead character always uses swords to fight, and you'll generally spend most of your time on primitive planets.
- The post-Apocalyptic game Alpha Man has everything from pitchforks and cured hide armor, to swords and toasters, to phasers, durasteel armor, and transmogrifiers.
- Harvest Moon tills the ground by hand (you can't even hitch a horse to a plow, and forget tractors), has an honest-to-goodness blacksmith with an apprentice, and there's only one phone in the entire stinking town in most games, but you still have a TV in your house. A nice, big TV. At least it usually has rabbit ears.
- The series is apparently present time, presumably spanning from anywhere between the 1990s to 2000. Most likely late 1990s to 2000s, due to the DV Ds. It's just in rural towns.
- Chrono Trigger initially takes place in the year 1000. That doesn't stop the main character's best friend Lucca from building robots, teleporters, and a time portal key.
- Chrono Trigger's timeline is not the same as Real Life's; Year 1000 in Chrono Trigger is more akin to modern/recent times than it is to the Middle Ages (which are indeed a separate era in the game). Still, Year 1000 is influenced by this trope if only for the fact that swords are prominent weapons in a world with guns and tanks.
- To say nothing of the prehistoric age where the humans are primitive, living in huts and subsisting on a mostly hunter gatherer basis they are still able to provide equipment better then any other that you come across. This includes firearms, katanas, broadswords, crossbows and advanced cybernetic robotic arms.
- In La Pucelle Tactics, the setting appears to be fairly standard medieval fantasy. Until one of the characters whips out a walkie-talkie, that is.
- Command And Conquer Red Alert is set, according to a caption, in the present day. But the weapons used are a strange mix of WWII-era tanks and artillery, 1960s-70s fighter jets and futuristic teleportation machines and invulnerability projectors.
- No, Red Alert 1 is most certainly set in the 1950's... (hint: Stalin is still alive!) And all the Schizo Tech is based on Urban Legend concerning Einstein & Tesla! Until the expansion anyway.
- Even Red Alert 2 is still mostly acceptable except for the prism tank (rest are natural expansion of the original, and psychic rumors always exist). Thus, Red Alert 3 is the only one that have schizo tech.
- You are kidding me, right? Airships, mind-control, mind-controlled squid, dolphins equipped with sonic weaponry, enormous tanks and weather-control superweapons? All of which were carried over to Red Alert 3, with a couple of ommissions in favour of more crazy weaponry...
- Nothing gets carried over as the Soviets erase the Red Alert 2 storyline completely.
- This is a doozy...First, after Einstein killed Hitler the past changed to what the storyline is the first game. In this timeline the Philadelphia Experiment actually succeeded, giving the Allies the Chronosphere's teleportation technology in addition to time-travel. Einstein then goes on to invent the other technologies like Prism Towers in Red Alert 2 (which might not be canon). THEN at the start of Red Alert 3, the Soviets go back in time and prevent the Allies from winning either the first game or the second one! Trying to understand this will give you a headache.
- Fallout is full of schizo tech. The world before the war was a super-advanced fifties-style utopia-quickly-turned-dystopia that managed to create fantatistic technology like Fusion Power, energy weapons, stimpaks, Powered Armor, Vaults, GECKs and Artifical Intelligence. Yet their normal computers were big, bulky mainframes with terminals. After the end, it got even more schizo. The average wastelanders lives in miserable agricultural villages lightened by torches and hunts using crossbows, melee weapons, homemade firearms or a expensive decent gun. Eletric Power is only possible for the bigger towns and city-states. Most people use guns of varying power and conditions (ranging from brand new firearms sold by organizations like the Brotherhood of Steel or the Gunrunners, to ancient guns pillaged from abandoned sites, stitched together multiple times and being held together by duck-tape and faith), with energy weapons being rare weaponry capable of changing the course of a battle. On the other side, the New California Republic is capable of fielding a considerable army of soldiers (enough to match the brotherhood), the Brotherhood of Steel has a small army of elite soldiers decked out in Power Armor and armed with energy weapons, and The Enclave has even BETTER technology than both, a army larger than the Brotherhood, genetic engineering capability AND Osprey-like aircraft called Vertibirds.
- Though this is likely due to Lost Technology, as the entire setting quite obviously takes place After The End.
- The Fallout series is based on the 1950's idea of SCIENCE! rather than science.
- Happens in the Touhou-verse. Although it's established as taking place in the present day, the backstory and in-game scenes also show that the technology base in Gensokyo is approximately medieval, apart from technological objects which are occasionally brought in from the mundane world. Then, in a recent installment, a new character was introduced wielding a fairly modern-looking magical SLR camera, and now we've got characters showing up with thermoptic camo.
- This seems to be the current trend in Touhou. As of Touhou 11, we have a hell-raven that control nuclear power, which is part of the Kanako's plan to bring clean technology to Gensokyo. The plan didn't go very well and threaten a nuclear apocalypse, which must be stopped by a shrine maiden, a typical witch, and their fantastic-being allies (which includes the characters above). Schizo Tech combined with Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot, indeed.
- In fact, there are actually four different technology levels in Gensokyo. Humans and youkai, who are pretty much at medieval level; items that come from the outside; the kappas, who are awesome engineers; and the Lunarians, who apparently use futuristic technology.
- Perhaps due to the various mundane uses for Mons, Pokemon games see this pop up often. The ability to store living creatures as data (since you literally download your mons into a computer for storage) is present, but cars don't exist (but bikes do). Guns also don't exist... but when literally hundreds of creatures that live nearby can learn how to breathe fire, does anyone really need them? Also, despite the means to do so mechanically, all dirt farming is done by hand.
- Almost nobody is aware of this, but it is actually an instance of Fantasy Gun Control. People don't use weapons because they essentially have an ancient spiritual contract with Pokemon to never use them, in exchange for being able to master and control Pokemon. It's not in the Anime, but the latest DS versions of the game explain it all if you read the right library books in the Port Town.
- One Lost Episode of the anime did feature guns, and Team Rocket used bazookas in more than one episode. Of course, this was very early on. These days, if you see a bazooka in anyone's possession, all it's going to shoot out is a net.
- The third generation of games shows that cars do exist, since you start the game in the back of a moving truck (If I recall correctly). The lack of motor vehicles is probably a combination of Law Of Conservation Of Detail, as well as the protagonists being ten-year old children.
- There has been evidence that cars exist in the Pokemon world since the very first game: on the S.S. Anne's port there is a parked truck that can only be reached by preventing the ship from sailing before you are able to use Surf.
- This troper recalls hovering vehicles being prominent in Orre; Trudly and Folly drive a sacked Rui with a hoverjeep they stole from someone in Pyrite, Wes and an unsacked Rui (his Umbreon and Espeon before her as well) ride a hoverbike monstrosity, and even Michael's scooter gets upgraded into a hovering model at some point in XD.
- United Nations Space Command from the Halo verse are capable of interstellar travel but their weapons are actually quite conventional. In fact alot of the human weapons look like they're from the present, not the year 2553.
- Though you must wonder why the hell in about 540 years they have made hardly any progress in weapons technology other than orbiting and mounted Magnetic Accelerator Cannons. Also two-shot rocket launchers. It's not like there's been peace for the last 500 years or so, either; there have been countless rebellions in the Outer Colonies for a long time.
- Just because the weapons don't look advanced doesn't mean they aren't. Remember, these weapons are able to consistently take on super-advanced Forerunner and Forerunner-derived Covenant technology and win.
- Furthermore, 500 odds years isn't really all that much time - if we compare that earlier projectile weapon, the real differences between bows in 500 BC and 1000 AD is, uh... well, not much.
- It's also a mature technology, in other words, it can't get much better and in fact, can get worse if you tie in the economic use of mass producing them with an extremely large population in the military. Even if they knew how to make it better, it might cost tons more for even a slight improvement. Just a suit of a Spartan costs a fleet of spaceships...... Yeah....
- The Monster Rancher series of games has various examples of Schizo Tech. While the world itself has a charming sort of 1800's look to it, with fancy clothing, old-fashioned ranches, and no vehicles beyond monster-drawn carts, they have technology capable of Harmless Freezing, movies, vast underground machine cities, pop idols, and goodness knows what else.
- Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath seems to have an eclectic blend of Wild West steampunk and futuristic technology. The final boss battle takes place between an armored character using a crossbow that uses live insects and rodents as ammo and a guy in a energy-shielded battlemech.
- Roguelike Elona seems to have fun with this. The apparent medieval fantasy with sword, magic, and these stuff also contains gun range from pistol to laser weapon, computers, food like french fries and popcorn, genetic engineering, and aliens.
- Professor Layton And The Curious Village at first appears to be set sometime in the early 1900's-1930's—the professor himself wears a top hat, for goodness' sake, and the titular village has a sort of quaint charm to it. However, several of the puzzles (which are technically supposed to exist in-universe) feature things such as digital clocks, cell phones, and computers. And if that doesn't strike you as being "pure" enough? Highly advanced robotics also play an important role in the plot, and you even get to assemble a robot dog.
- Guardian Heroes seems to start in a standard Medieval European Fantasy world... but did we mention the Evil Wizard is building an army of Robots? One of which becomes the last boss of Gunstar Heroes?
- Mother 3 has a peaceful agrarian village menaced by pig-masked Stormtroopers, flying vehicles and cyborg/chimerised animals. This makes sense in the context, however, since the story is largely about how the lives of the people of Tazmily are changed by the influence of modernization brought to the islands by Porky (who comes straight from Earthbound, which is set in a modern world) and his minions.
- Lugaru has a more subtle version that I hadn't noticed until I thought about it. The game features anthromorphic animals that are hinted to have evolved after the humans left or died out. They seem to have very little technology (the first village the player visits consists of two differently shaped monuments, they sleep on the floor.) Despite the fact that they have no visible tools, they still have some way to carve rocks (several rocks in the game are perfect cubes) they also have knives and swords, despite lacking any kind of smithing technology. Granted, you don't see much of the game world, but you do visit a few villages and meet the king of the rabbits without ever seeing any metal apart from the two weapons.
- This is more of a limit on the engine than the story, as there are only three types of weapons, two types of plants, and a rock or a cube that the map maker can choose from. Oh, and you can set bushes on fire. It looks like the sequel will fix this issue.
- Castlevania, baby! Dracula's castle, being "a creature of Chaos", is always full of wacky anachronisms. This is partly because, while the games jump around in the timeline from the 11th century to the present day, we like to see elements return from game to game. There's no good excuse for the robots, though.
- A couple of the recent games are set in the future, allowing us to see this trope inverted — there should be nifty technology and such, but aside from a couple of handguns, Soma Cruz has the same weapons and fights the same monsters as always.
- The Shapers in the Geneforge series have genetic engineering and some crystalline "power spirals" but are otherwise medieval. The first game attempts to justify this in that the Shapers are the remnants of a society that destroyed itself through genetic engineering, but one wonders why their technology doesn't seem to have improved since.
- Most of the technology and culture in the original Monster Hunter indicates a Bronze Age or Iron Age society... except that they have firearms. Huge, clumsy firearms, but still firearms. Later games advance the overall tech level... but also advance the firearms, so they continue to be better than what should be available — Freedom Unite has a medieval-looking society with guns that look comparable to early 20th-century models.
- Wild Guns (no relation to Wild Arms), a fairly obscure SNES Cabal clone, features a general Wild West theme merged with sci-fi, bringing everything from cyborg rustlers on flying robotic horses to giant enemy crab robots to the table. No revolvers for our heroes, though, straight to grenade launchers and vulcan cannons for some good old-fashioned blowing things up.
- Dungeon Siege has a whole steampunk / Clockpunk dungeon, full of clockwork goblins, flying sentry drones, Tesla guns, flamethrowers, Gatling guns and topped off with a freaking Humongous Mecha Goblin.
- The Mystical Ninja series has strong elements of this. It appears to be set in feudal Japan, and yet there is the presence of robots, Humongous Mecha, and even a machine to ressurrect the dead.
- In Hype: the Time Quest, a game set in the middle ages, there are buttons that somehow activate Elivators, or lift gates on the other side of town.
- Kingdom Of Loathing is a fantasy game. The Magi Mech Tech Mecha Mech, the El Vibrato constructs, the Crimborg, any any things we have today exists as Rule Of Funny. (The Vibrato monsters were left by Precursors and the Crimborg are aliens, though.)
- The Jade Empire is an All Myths Are True version of ancient China, so the various ghosts, demons and animated Terracotta soldiers are all to be expected, but despite this the ubiquitous rocket-powered bamboo flying machines are quite incongruous. Sure the player's Global Airship is a product of Kang the amnesiac God of Inventors, but ingame text makes it clear that flyers were around for years before he turned up.
- The Spyro The Dragon series is littered with this trope:
- In the first game, players observe such oddities as a giant robot with a Mohawk (named Metalhead, interestingly) in the same general area as where a bunch of swampland dragons reside in huts built on sticks.
- In Ripto's Rage (Gateway to Glimmer in Europe) and Year of the Dragon, this trope still exists. It's kind of funny to go from regions with bone-people living in bone huts to robotic cities...
Web Comics
- An example is the satirical Bruno The Bandit, which is set in a basic "middle ages" fantasy setting, but still has vacuum cleaners, television (complete with every TV trope in the book) and cellphones.
- It's rather jarring, since there was, for at least the first parts of the comic, no call whatsoever for these things. Talk about pointless anachronism.
- The very first strip has Bruno claiming to be a TV repairman... While it may be pointless, it's not really a surprise...and it is, after all, Rule Of Funny.
- Order Of The Stick is set in a Medieval European Fantasy setting much like a typical campaign setting for Dungeons And Dragons. However, in various strips it has featured coffee machines, indoor plumbing, stethoscopes, bug zappers, cell phones, and even a desktop computer (the last one was admittedly owned by an angel). The technology levels appears to be whatever inspires the best jokes.
- Girl Genius has numerous instances of technological disconnects. They have autonomous robots with advanced AI but no computers. Airships the size of cities cruise the skies but no fixed or rotary wing aircraft. Energy weapons abound but no radio or telephonic communications.
- Somewhat justified, as the people who invent this stuff are crazy.
- The son of the Baron - Gilgamesh Wulfenbach - actually does invent a gas powered fixed-wing aircraft early in the comic archive. The chapter is aptly called The Infamous Falling Machine! - Hilarity Ensues
- Questionable Content is set in Present Day western Massachusetts, but features sentient robots sold at retail, various Transformer-style mecha (Vespa-Bot FTW), and a major character spent her childhood on a space station. This seems to go forgotten for large stretches of time.
- MegaTokyo appears to take place in a normal analog of the modern world. Except when the Tokyo PD breaks out the giant mecha.
- While the setting of Blade Of Toshubi is mainly feudal japanese, there have been instances of higher level technology, such as Reiko's training taking place in a chamber with nuclear waste barrels.
- In Inhuman, the technology level of the planet Hekshano is that of 1970s Earth - but with spaceships.
- Rune Factory has this. It seems like a typical fantasy based, medieval game franchise, however..They have microwaves, recorders, mixers, light bulbs, among other things.
Web Original
- Though mostly sticking to its early 19th-century flavor, Open Blue has the occasional incendiary bullet (WWI), bullets loaded with a nerve agent (1936), and swords coated with diamond (???) to make cutting easier. This of course, does not count the myriad of weird things left behind by the precursors.
Western Animation
- The Flintstones are absolute kings of this trope.
- In the Diniverse, Batman series tend to have a film noir style, down to the appearance of cars, guns, etc. However, modern technology exists as well. You're sure you're watching something taking place in the days of the earliest Batman comics, and then Batgirl mentions Pinky And The Brain.
- Video cassette recorders exist, but television sets are limited to displaying black and white images.
- This was all done for artistic reasons (giving Batman a somewhat nebulous setting in time) and also to keep network censors from forcing the GCPD and the Mooks from using laser guns (by apparently sending it so far in the past, the network couldn't put in lasers since it would strain even a kid's disbelief)
- Except lasers are used in several episodes, they just aren't hand-held blasters.
- Which is what happened in Spider Man The Animated Series, everything is early 90s - but the cops have lasers, and every security company has combat drones - equipped with lasers.
- There was a bit of a semi-major Genre Shift between the original Batman: The Animated Series and the later Batman episodes (in the Batman/Superman era). In order to make Batman fit in more with the style and tone of the new Superman cartoon, the film-noir visuals were basically entirely dropped and everything heavily updated to present-day in appearance — newscasts now in color, Bruce Wayne now in a modern business suit, etc. The original series very carefully avoided any real-life pop-culture references that would date the series while the Batman/Superman episodes are rife with them, see the above Batgirl one-liner.
- Except for random people clearly reading Tiny Toon Adventures comic books in several episodes.
- Both versions of He Man And The Masters Of The Universe had heavy Schizo Tech. Flying vehicles, cyborgs and robots in a Sword And Sorcery setting.
- Avatar The Last Airbender is set in a world where the highest technology is the Steam Punk Fire Nation. But in the third season they are pursued by what apears to be a Terminator knockoff with a frikkin' laser for a third eye! His origin IIRC is never explained, even by Zuko who hired him in the first place.
- The laser is easy enough to understand - it's a form of firebending not seen elsewhere in the show (although this begs the question of why the Fire Nation Army hasn't learnt it and conquered the universe). However, the apparently cybernetic limbs are indeed puzzling.
- Cybernetic? Are you sure they're not just metal prosthetics? They don't move on their own, and the hand never closes.
- Avatar The Abridged Series Lampshades this, from the first season: Tanks (invented 1915), buildable; Jetskis (1973) Buildable, On steam power; Gigantic drills, (invented 20XX) Buildable; Hot Air Baloons (1783) Nope, sorry.
- Despite there being no technology more advanced than Steam Punk (and even THAT shows up rarely), The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack had one episode end with Flapjack pulling the plug on a mechanical genie that worked by electricity. And on a dock no less.
Real Life
- Unlike the Aztecs, Maya, etc., the Incas didn't even have writing. It didn't slow them down appreciably: imperial administrators communicated by exchanging quipu, bundles of strings with knots tied in them to represent numbers.
- One of the fallacies that people commonly, mistakenly believe is that Primitive Society == Stupid People. Many older "more primitive" societies have had mixes of a wide range of technologies. A good example would be ancient Greece and the Antikythera mechanism which is now generally accepted to be a clockwork computer for calculating planetary orbits; technology that literally took another thousand years to reappear.
- The steam engine was invented in Egypt in the 1st century. But slaves were cheaper.
- The Incas didn't use the wheel for transportation, but there where toys with wheels. (Maybe it wasn't the Incas but some other ancient civilization, I Did Not Do The Research)
- Those were the Aztecs, since they didn't have any beasts of burden, the Incas on the other hand had llamas.
- The Amish, especially if you do the research. Name a technology level, any tech level, between Medieval Stasis and "FINALLY released in the US", and there's an Amish or Mennonite sect somewhere in the Midwest that's stuck there.
- Many wars in improvised nations tend to take on elements of schizo tech. One example would be a video from early in the war which overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where Coalition/NATO supported tribesmen used horse mounted cavalry wielding AK-47s to charge a Taliban position while F-16s gave air support. I only wish I can make stuff like this up.
- It's almost normal. Horse-transported machine guns were used in WWI and even in WWII Soviet troops armed this way were nasty surprise for invading Germans — mow down some foes from an ambush, retreat into the forest, move a bit, repeat.
- When invading the Soviet Union during WWII the germans used a bit more than a million horses.
- Similarly, Poland's cavalry units were surprisingly effective against German infantry. No Pole cavalry unit suffered defeat, actually. The idea that they charged the modern German tanks with sabres drawn was Nazi propaganda to insult their opponent.
- It may have been something of propaganda backfire as it turned out. A lot of people believed it because they admired the Poles and thought it was cool even if it sounded like Honor Before Reason . And in any case gloating about such a thing sounds uncommonly lacking in class. Not something a Cultured Warrior would say about a Worthy Opponent.
- One finds the same situation in present-day Papua New Guinea, where wilderness tribes (having pre-industrial level agriculture) fight skirmishes with Kalashnikovs and may use modern simple telecom equipment and put petrol-driven outboards on their canoes, provided that they get hold of ammo, fuel and batteries.
- Go to a lot of cities in developing countries. You'll see old-style villages between shining new skyscrapers, and rickshaws alongside cars. Thanks to recycling of handsets, many parts of Africa and South America have cell phone service, but no electric grid for battery chargers. Missionaries and aid organizations bring (some) modern medicine and literature, but cooking is still done over charcoal fires in handmade clay pots.
- Developing countries, heck, go to some places in America and you'll find this. People still live in log cabins in some parts of West Virginia. Now it's mostly by choice though, but 40 years ago it wasn't.
- Archaeloegy has a term for this. "Out Of Place Artifact." Now, most Oopart (or "O-Part") tend to have eventual explainations or turn out to be hoaxes. But it is a concept that gets its own name.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: there's lots of known "false start" or forgotten inventions, both Cool But Inefficient and working alike (most were closely guarded secrets known only to a few in the eras before concepts like "scientific community" and "public education" were in fashion), so either from a "could be" or real state of affair —depending on the point of view— may be considered Schizo Tech:
- Heron Alexandrinus (10-70 AD) made (supposedly first): the first steam turbine, ages before the piston steam engine that first got on trains and boats; several self-regulating feedback control systems (precursors of things like the later self-regulated steam engine once again); a slot-machine (drop a coin, get a drink).
- Heron also described earlier (attributed to Archimedes) inventions, including an odometer, both in taximeter and naval log variants.
- According to Aristocles (2nd centrury BC), there was an alarm clock in Plato Academy.
- Around 424 BC Boetians burned down wooden walls of Delium. With a bellows-powered flamethrower.
- Aside of an organ (hydraulis), which quickly found its place as a church organ *
in the temple of Venus and was the first keyboard musical instrument ever, Ctesibius invented: a pump (ironically, it was lost in the fires that ravaged Alexandria), a water clock (a direct precursor to the flushing toilet), solar-powered mechanisms and a pneumatic cannon. In the third century B.C.
- The Chinese magazine-fed crossbows (Chu-Ko-Nus) are rather famous, but there were more advanced forms. The first known chain-driven weapon was not "Chaingun", it was the chute-fed Repeating Catapult by Dionysius of Alexandria. This means it wouldn't have required anything new to have steam-powered cannons and full-auto turrets, centuries before anything similar appeared.
- Fully mobile artillery was known at least in the Roman era. The Ballista quadrirotis was simply a two-horse cart with a ballista on top, but it was enough to make a field artillery with a significant level of maneuverability.
- The field transistor predates the bipolar transistor by 22 years: Lilienfeld filled the first patent application in 1925, the idea was much closer to the electron tube. Whether he really built it is dubious: considering the proposed scale and the quality of early semiconductors, it would not give a measurable amplification. But the principle was right, even though the theoretical basis was not yet developed.
- Another Chinese example would be the south-pointing chariot
- We have had modern lasers for over half a century. For much of that time the technology was described as "an elegant solution lacking a problem".
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