That Nostalgia Show

…and we almost experienced nuclear war!

Some series are set in the present, or 20 Minutes into the Future, or they're meant to have a sort of timelessness to them (which make it awkward whenever someone brings out a cassette tape or a payphone), or else they're set in the distant past, so far back that no one who was alive at that time would be alive to shout "Hey! That's not how it was back in my day!"

Then there are these pieces. Maybe they wanted to avoid certain things from today's society, like modern technology or the Internet, that they didn't have when they were a kid. Maybe the author was looking back to the "good ol' days". For one reason or another, they've chosen to set their show a couple decades back.

Now, just slapping a "June 5th, 1976" on an establishing shot and then doing a "Mister Sandman" Sequence isn't enough. The show's time period has to be readily evident from every frame. If it's set in the 1960s, they should listen to The Beatles and protest The Vietnam War. If it's set in the 1970s, some wistful mention of disco and classic rock should come up. If it's set in the 1980s, everyone should be blowing out their hair and wearing neon. If it's set in the 1990s... you get the idea. It doesn't necessarily need to be The Theme Park Version of its decade, but it should be pretty blatant.

Note that this differs from a Period Piece because of the nostalgia factor; if there's an obvious reason for the series to be set at a certain time, then it becomes a period piece. For example, film adaptations of The Great Gatsby are set in The Roaring '20s because they're based on a novel that was not only written during that time period, but delved deeply into the era's pop culture, making it difficult to set in other time periods. Meanwhile, the film Frost/Nixon is based on events from the 1970s, and so there's less of a nostalgic factor in the decision to set it in that time so much as historical accuracy. On the other hand, Harry Potter, despite being set in the 1990s, wouldn't qualify because there's nothing nostalgic about the books, or really any indication of the decade it's in beyond the dates. We can't know for sure that the author is setting a work at some point in time because they're feeling nostalgic, but unless the work is based on something else (historical events or a work from that time period), then nostalgia is a logical assumption. In general, if you can picture the author of a work writing the script, and then deciding last minute to set it in such-and-such time period, then it counts as this trope.

Furthermore, as a rule of thumb, the series' main creators should have been alive when the series is being set (more or less; it's possible to be nostalgic for your parents' era as well). It can't be too recent; anything set in the 21st century was a no-go until the late 2010s and early 2020s. On the other hand, if it's too old, it becomes less nostalgic and more of a period piece. For example, something set in the 1920s today is now considered a period piece. A good rule of thumb is anything set less than twenty or more than fifty years ago does not qualify, unless it is going out of its way to fixate on the most nostalgic elements of the period or homage other works that were straightforwardly nostalgic for it. As of 2010, the 1950s had fully slipped into period piece territory, the 1960s had started to go the same way, and the 1990s started to enter nostalgia territory. As the 2020s go on, the 2000s will start becoming nostalgic while the 1970s will start to become the domain of period pieces.

Sub-trope of Period Piece. Compare Retraux, which is when the work is meant to look like it's from another time period, which has its own nostalgic value. May relate to Romanticism Versus Enlightenment as another reason to set a piece in an earlier time period. Has nothing to directly do with anything called Nostalgia, or The Nostalgia Critic, or any of the many similar critics; the trope for that is Caustic Critic.

---

Examples (in order of the period when they're set):

Anime and Manga

• Sazae-san began in 1969 and was dated even then. The manga began in the '40s and it shows. The anime has been running non-stop and is certainly this more than ever. It's one of the top 5, if not the number 1, anime in Japan and is seen as a quaint story about a Showa-era housewife and her family.
• Kids on the Slope is a quaint slice of life work about two teenage boys growing up in late 1960s Japan.

Film — Animation

• Walt Disney was enamored with the 1890s (he was born two years after they ended, in 1901) and set many of his cartoons in that period, such as Mickey Mouse's The Nifty Nineties and Donald Duck's Crazy Over Daisy. Even Donald's iconic outfit is a Gay Nineties throwback!
  • Although Lady and the Tramp doesn't quite meet the deadline (it was released in 1955, 65 years after the decade it was meant to invoke), it fits this trope in all other ways.
  • 1946's Make Mine Music features the animated short "Johnnie Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet", which features horse-drawn carts that wouldn't be in style since the 1890s.
• The Iron Giant is set in the '50s from the perspective of the late '90s, and is rich with nostalgia for the decade's pop culture and kitschy aesthetics, albeit taken hand-in-hand with satire of the Cold War paranoia of the time.
• Turning Red is set in 2002, exactly twenty years before it came out, and is imbued with nostalgia for the pop culture touchstones of Y2K-era girlhood, such as Tamagotchis, Nokia cell phones covered in stickers, G-Shock watches, YA Paranormal Romance novels, the Cha Cha Slide, and most notably the fake Boy Band 4*Town that figures heavily into the plot.

Film — Live Action

• Between 1944 and 1948, Judy Garland starred in a trio of nostalgia musicals for MGM:
  • The Harvey Girls is a 1946 musical about the Harvey House restaurants that followed the railroads west and the women who worked as servers there, set in The Gay '90s.
  • In The Good Old Summertime is a 1949 musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, also set in The Gay '90s. It features a cameo appearance by 3-year-old Liza Minelli in the last shot. Ms. Minelli, of course, is the daughter of Judy and the director of the first movie in this informal trifecta.
  • Meet Me in St. Louis, made by Vincente Minelli and Judy Garland in 1944, looks back with affection on the St. Louis of 1904. While most of the filmmakers were looking back to their parents' era, the film was based on the short stories and novel of Sally Benson, who wrote from her own childhood experiences.
• Mary Poppins comes from Walt Disney's admiration for the Edwardian Era. The books are set in the 1930s but the film moves the setting to the early 1900s. There seems to be no reason for the change other than the nostalgia and Walt's particular fondness for the era.
• The Roaring Twenties is a 1939 film that looks back on The Roaring '20s, Exactly What It Says on the Tin — though it begins in 1918, at the very end of The Great War.
• The 1980s Indiana Jones movies were set in the 1930s and were rooted in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's nostalgia for the classic film serials they grew up with, helping to pioneer the Two-Fisted Tales subgenre of Action-Adventure stories. The fourth movie, released in 2008, updates things to a '50s Cold War setting and homages to that decade's sci-fi movies. The fifth movie was set in 1969 and released in 2023, just past the fifty-year mark, but is otherwise just as nostalgic for the late '60s era of Woodstock and The Space Race.
• A Christmas Story was made in 1983 and set in a romanticized late '30s/early '40s suburban small town in Indiana, based heavily on writer Jean Shepherd's recollections of his youth around that time.
• The 1971 film Summer of '42 was screenwriter Herman Rauscher's almost-autobiographical look back at his own summer vacation of 29 years previous.
• 1978's Grease was this to the 1950s.
• School Ties is set in the '50s, most obviously evidenced by the tame rock 'n' roll that plays in the film, which is treated as rowdy and wild.
• Cry-Baby is John Waters second foray into nostalgia (see below), being a look back from 1990 to the Baltimore of 1954.
• Liberty Heights, released in 1999 and set in 1954, is the fourth and final of the "Baltimore Films" by Barry Levinson (see below); all, like fellow Baltimore native John Waters, were based either on his own memories or those of his family & friends of the time.
• Back to the Future, about a teenage boy from 1985 traveling back in time to a highly romanticized 1955. (The sequels are not examples; the second film has him jumping 20 Minutes into the Future, while the third has him going back to The Wild West.)
• Deconstructed in Pleasantville, where the protagonists' trip into a retro '50s Dom Com universe initially plays this trope to the hilt. David specifically watches the titular sitcom because it's an Unintentional Period Piece to the decade in which it was created and fulfills this role for him, allowing him to travel back in time to a mythologized "good old days". The show's setting is a comically exaggerated version of conservative '50s Americana, and even when his and Jennifer's modern values first start influencing Pleasantville's residents, it initially serves to bring Rock & Roll and slick-haired greasers with hot rods to the town, turning it into the "cool" '50s of American Graffiti and Grease. Then it starts exploring the dark side of '50s nostalgia, as the other townsfolk start reacting to these changes in a manner that explicitly recalls segregationists during the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Lords of Flatbush, a 1974 film starring Sylvester Stallone and future Fonzie Henry Winkler, looks at 1958 Brooklyn working-class kids.
• Stand by Me is set in 1959 and attempts to mark the transition from The '50s to The '60s—from Innocence to Experience—reflecting the coming of age of four Oregon youths (and the youths of director Rob Reiner and author Stephen King).
• Diner, released in 1982 and set in 1959, is the first of the "Baltimore Films" by Barry Levinson.
• Across the Universe (2007), being set in the '60s and made in 2007, just barely qualifies as this.
• American Graffiti was made by George Lucas in the '70s to look back on his adolescence. While it's technically set in 1962, this Oscar-nominated box-office success helped spark the explosion of nostalgia for The '50s, and is practically the Trope Codifier for the all-star soundtrack that would accompany so many later nostalgia films.
• Hairspray (1988), John Waters' first PG film, is a surprisingly affectionate 1988 look back at Baltimore of 1962.
• Animal House was so influential on college students of the late 1970s and early 1980s that it is often overlooked for being nostalgic, but the 1978 film is clearly and specifically set in 1962, right down to the JFK homecoming float.
• The famous 1987 film Dirty Dancing is set in 1963.
• The much less famous 1979 film The Wanderers is also set in 1963.
• Tin Men, released in 1987 and set in 1963, is the second of the "Baltimore Films" by Barry Levinson.
• Avalon, released in 1990 and set over a period of decades from 1914 to the early 1960s — thus both nostalgia and a Period Piece — is the third of the "Baltimore Films" by Barry Levinson.
• More American Graffiti, the 1979 sequel which Lucas produced but did not direct, and which was neither Oscar-nominated nor a box-office success, is set in four consecutive New Years Eves from 1964 to 1967.
• The Hollywood Knights, a 1980 film featuring early appearances by Fran Drescher, Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer, examines Halloween night, 1965, and the last night of a drive-in that is the favored hangout of the car club of the title.
• Dogfight, a little-seen but critically-lauded film starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor, was made in 1991 and set in 1965 and '66.
• Baby It's You, John Sayles ventures into nostalgia (he has also made more than one Period Piece); was made in 1983 and set in late 1966 and early 1967.
• The Outsiders book was contemporary when it was written however the film adaptation was released in the 1980s. It's a harsh look at being a greaser in the '60s.
• Although it doesn't technically count (being based on a book written in 1971), the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was made in 1998, at the height of '70s nostalgia.
• Almost Famous is Cameron Crowe looking back at his own beginnings as a boy wonder rock journalist in 1973.
• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a 2004 film, set in the '70s mostly to get away with sexist jokes that wouldn't be politically correct today.
• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is set in the late '70s/early '80s, following suit.
• The Coming of Age Story My Girl is set in the mid 1970s and lets you know it - mood rings, Volkswagen vans, '70s Hair, period-appropriate music, etc.
• Dazed and Confused is a 1993 film about high schoolers in '76, complete with Bicentennial references.
• Detroit Rock City is a 1999 film about high schoolers in '78, complete with the disco/rock conflict of the time.
• 54 is a 1998 film based on the latter days of the infamous epicenter of disco, Studio 54.
• The Last Days of Disco is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, made in 1998 and set in a Fictional Counterpart of Studio 54.
• Everybody Wants Some!! is a Spiritual Successor to Dazed And Confused, looking nostalgically at a college in the summer of 1980.
• Boogie Nights explores the late '70s - early '80s porn scene from the perspective of 1997.
• Adventureland is a downplayed version of this trope, set in the '80s and not really pushing the setting with the outfits except for certain "trendier" characters.
• Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer (1998), which uses the '80s setting for some jokes and nothing else.
• While it is also a Genre Throwback, the movie Super 8 is set in 1979, and is still very much a love letter to the period of time when the 70's transitioned into the 80's.
• Summer of '84, made in 2018 and set in 1984, is an homage to the kids' adventure films of the decade like The Goonies and The Monster Squad.
• Wonder Woman 1984. It's right there in the title: Wonder Woman in The '80s.
• The 2006 British film, Starter for 10, is set in '85-'86, a fact that it makes glorious use of for the soundtrack.
• Hot Tub Time Machine, in which four guys from 2010 travel back in time to a highly nostalgic 1986, was influenced heavily by the aforementioned Back to the Future.
• Ditto for Totally Killer, in which a teenage girl from 2023 travels back in time to 1987, played for both Deliberate Values Dissonance and affection for the era's fashion, music, and slasher movies.
• Donnie Darko was made in 2001 and set in 1988. It even seems to have some added film grain, making it look like it was made in '88.
• 8 Mile, released in 2002 and set in 1995, less than a decade after its release.
• The 2013 romantic comedy The To Do List is set in 1993, presumably to justify the heroine (an 18 year old, just graduated from high school) being completely sheltered about sex. The plot would not have been plausible in a post-internet era setting.
• The MCU's Captain Marvel (2019) is set in 1996, allowing for a '90s-based soundtrack and references to Blockbuster and the analog age, but ultimately could have taken place in any time period, so long as it predated The Avengers (2012).
• mid90s is set in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Palms in 1996. It even uses 16mm film to make it look like an actual '90s film.
• The 2014 Liam Neeson film A Walk Among the Tombstones is explicitly set in 1999, which doesn't change the plot too much, besides allowing the main character to be unfamiliar with computers and the "World Wide Web" (which he insists is a fad) and a lot of Y2K jokes.

Literature

• The Lovely Bones, as well as its film adaptation, begin in 1973 and span a couple years.
• Stephen King's The Dark Tower series has actually turned into this, being largely set in the '70s and publishing from 1982 to 2012.
• Harry Potter: Even though the books were released in 1998 through 2007, it was set in 1991 through 1998.
• Eleanor & Park: Released in 2013, set in 1986-1987. Various musical and cultural references are mentioned throughout the book.
• Unimaa: Released online in 2021, all but the first chapter is set in 1999 (the first chapter takes place in 1899). Signs of the times include the presence of a VCR and dial-up Internet, a brief discussion of progress in Pokémon Red and Blue, and a mention of the Millennium Bug.

Live Action TV

• The Trope Codifier is probably Happy Days (1974-84), which took place in the mid 1950s-mid 60s. While a show set in the same time period would be considered a Period Piece nowadays, at the time when it was made it was very nostalgic.
  • Garry Marshall followed it up with Laverne & Shirley (1976-83) set in 1958-67 and several other, less well received nostalgia-com spinoffs including Joanie Loves Chachi (1982-83) set around the Beatlemania era.
• Hi-de-Hi! (1980-88) is a British sitcom set in the Maplins holiday camp from 1959-60.
  • From the same writers, Dad's Army (1968-77) is set during World War II.
• The Wonder Years (1988-93) took place exactly 20 years earlier: 1968-73.
• The trope gets its name from That '70s Show (1998-06), which has its eight seasons crammed into a four year period: 1976-79.
  • By extension, it also gets its name from the lesser-known spin-off, That '80s Show (2002) with its single season set in 1984.
  • That '90s Show is a Sequel Series to 70s set twenty years later.
• Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) is set in 1980-81 (but really having more '70s nostalgia than the '80s).
• Hippies (1999) is a British sitcom set thirty years earlier in 1969.
• Oliver Beene (2003-04) was set in the 1960s, and used its time period to great effect, referencing Zeerust predictions for the present day of when it was broadcast that, of course, time would prove completely wrong.
• Mad Men (2007-15) plays this trope to a T with a 1960-1970 setting, although it barely meets the "5 decades ago" requirement.
• Pan Am (2011-12) was this to the 1963-64 before its cancellation.
• The Goldbergs (2013-present) has every episode set in "1980-something" and is largely biographical.
  • Likewise, it's 2019 spinoff, Schooled has every episode in the "1990-something".
• The three-episode Britsh drama From There to Here (2014) starts with the 1996 Manchester bombing, continues into the 1997 election of Prime Minister Tony Blair and ends with the Millennium celebrations of 2000.
• Fresh Off the Boat (2015-20) takes place in 1995-2000 and shows '90s pop culture references.
• The series The 1980s: The Deadliest Decade (2016-17) is an odd mishmash of this and crime documentary show. It's about murders that occured in the 1980s but also features a nostalgia for the era.
• Stranger Things (2016-present) is one of the archetypal examples of this trope in modern media. The first season was set in 1983, with follow-up seasons set in the following years. The third season went all-out on the '80s aesthetic, with the production renovating part of a dying shopping mall in suburban Atlanta to look like a place that an '80s Valley Girl might shop at, complete with period-appropriate stores and films like Day of the Dead (1985) and Back to the Future playing in the mall's theater.
• Everything Sucks! (2018) was set squarely in 1996 of the Pacific Northwest, smack-dab in the middle of the decade of grunge.
• The Kids Are Alright (2018-19) was set in 1972-73. Being set 46 years in the past almost makes it a period piece.
• British comedy Derry Girls (2018-present) is set roughly in 1995 near the end of The Troubles in Derry, Northern Ireland. It references Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects is in theatres^note British spelling, and President Bill Clinton visits Derry. However, there are creative liberties with the timeline: Take That (Band) performed in Derry in 1993 and the IRA ceasefire happened in 1994.
• mixed•ish, the 2019 prequel spinoff of black•ish, is so far set in 1985-86.
• PEN15 (2019-present) does this for the Turn of the Millennium, taking place in the year 2000. While the 21st century technically starts in the year 2001 (and culturally, many people would argue that it really started on September 11, 2001), this is the first series to start with 2000s nostalgia.
• Young Sheldon is a prequel to The Big Bang Theory, set during the late 80's and early 90's. Sheldon and his siblings express interest in various pieces of pop culture of the era.

Music

• If any one performer could be said to have invented a "nostalgia genre" of rock, that man would have to be Bob Seger. "Night Moves", "Mainstreet", "Rock and Roll Never Forgets", "Old Time Rock and Roll", "Against the Wind", "Like a Rock"... practically all of his greatest hits evoke a desperately sharp, bittersweet longing for the past.
• Billy Joel's 1983 album An Innocent Man is made up almost entirely of 1950s-style songs. The video for "Uptown Girl" keeps the theme as well.
• Deee-Lite's music video for "Groove is in the Heart" is a classic '90s song, and features the singer and background dancers dressed up in '60s outfits alongside plentiful psychedelic flower-power imagery.
• Charli XCX and Troye Sivan's "1999", released in 2019, is all about them being nostalgic for their childhoods in the late '90s and wishing they could go back to 1999, with both the lyrics and the video referencing famous musicians, shows, movies, and other pop culture touchstones of the Y2K era.

Theater

• Three of Broadway's biggest hits of the mid-20th century were Life With Father, I Remember Mama, and The Music Man; all were based on the childhood recollections of Clarance Day Jr., Kathryn Forbes, and Meredith Wilson, respectively, and all were eventually made into motion pictures as well (though by the time Wilson's piece reached the stage it was almost a Period Piece).

Theme Parks

• Halloween Horror Nights:
  • The Orlando event has the Vamp series of scarezones, each of them set in a nostalgic setting that's been infested by vampires, with classic hits from that time period serving as the soundtrack playing over the speakers in the area. Vamp '55 in 2016 was based on a homecoming parade in The '50s and had vampire Pom-Pom Girls and Greaser Delinquents terrorizing the homecoming court. Vamp '85: New Year's Eve in 2018 was set in Times Square on December 31, 1984 and had yuppies getting terrorized by vampire punks, with various '80s celebrities having also been turned. Finally, Vamp '69: Summer of Blood in 2023 is based on a fictionalized version of Woodstock getting attacked by vampires summoned by that year's Icon Dr. Oddfellow.
  • The Orlando event in 2015 had the haunted house RUN: Blood, Sweat and Fears, an homage to The Running Man and American Gladiators with a Zeerust '80s retro-apocalypse theme.
  • The event has also done houses based on Stranger Things, recreating that show's own nostalgic '80s setting.

Video Games

• The Destroy All Humans! games from the 2000s were set in parodies of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, all from the point of view of an alien invader who had come to Earth to... well, read the title.
• The entire point of Gone Home is exploring the house of a family in '90s Portland, with a Riot Grrrl soundtrack and numerous references to the decade's pop culture artifacts from The X-Files to 'zines to mixtapes.
• The Grand Theft Auto series, whenever it does a setting in the past, often rests heavily on this.
  • The first game's London packs are a pastiche of 1960s London.
  • Vice City and its prequel Vice City Stories are the best examples of this, set in pastiches of '80s Miami designed to allow people to live a gangster lifestyle straight out of Scarface (1983) or Miami Vice, with a period soundtrack of Nothing but Hits and plenty of broad satire of the culture and politics of the time. While Vice City technically breaks the 20-year rule for this trope, having been set in 1986 and released in 2002, it is otherwise awash in nostalgia to the point that it has been described in hindsight as the game where most of the imagery associated with nostalgic depictions of The '80s really coalesced. Vice City Stories, meanwhile, neatly sails through the cutoff, being set in 1984 and released 22 years later in 2006.
  • San Andreas does something similar, except for California in 1992 at the height of the Gangsta Rap era, breaking the 20-year rule for this trope (it was released in 2004, just twelve years after it takes place) but definitely indulging in its spirit much like Vice City did.
  • Liberty City Stories doesn't qualify, though, as it is set in 1998 but otherwise uninterested in the time period beyond exploring the backstories of characters from Grand Theft Auto III (which was released and set in 2001) and making a few jokes about The Matrix and boy bands on the radio.
• Interstate '76 and its console spinoff Vigilante 8 were late '90s homages to the Exploitation Films of The '70s, set in an Alternate History where the oil crisis never ended. The former's sequel Interstate '82 was likewise this to the early '80s, complete with a soundtrack by Devo.
• While Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and its sequel Mafia II were straight period pieces (the first was set during The Great Depression, the latter during World War II and The '50s), Mafia III is set in 1968, just barely getting in under the 50-year rule (it was made in 2016) but otherwise indulging in it for all it's worth. The soundtrack is composed of Nothing but Hits, the collectible items include issues of Playboy (complete with the articles) and Hot Rod Magazine, and the social strife of the time period, particularly the Civil Rights Movement and The Vietnam War, figures heavily into the plot.

Western Animation

• F is for Family takes place in the 1970s.

---