Basic Trope: Something that's established scientific fact in the present is dismissed as outdated in a future setting.
- Straight: Alice, someone from the 21st century, remarks that Faster-Than-Light Travel shouldn't be possible. Dr. Elica, someone from the 29th century, says there was a breakthrough that proved it was rather simple a few centuries ago.
- Exaggerated: All known scientific models, from astrophysics to zoology, have been completely thrown out in favor of others over the years.
- Downplayed: Something theorized and plausible but unconfirmed in the present has later been proven correct in-universe.
- Justified: Science Marches On, and it does so quickly. The further into the future the setting is, the more likely this is to happen.
- Inverted: What's accepted as fact in the future has wandered astray from the truth known in the present.
- Subverted: Dr. Elica clarifies that they're not traveling faster than light. Something else is going on to compensate and give the same practical effect.
- Double Subverted: "...of course, there are true FTL ships out there, but they're too expensive."
- Parodied: Dr. Elica says that gravity is a superstitious theory that's been long disproven.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: In-universe science is kept strictly to what's plausible in current knowledge, though this carries with it its own risks.
- Enforced: The story about long-distance space travel could not exist without fudging current knowledge.
- Lampshaded: "That sounds like you're just ignoring facts to get me to shut up."
- Invoked: Alice asks what's been disproven since her time.
- Exploited: The people of the future use the opportunity to mess with Alice by feeding her Blatant Lies about things that have changed.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Alice is relegated to unskilled labor, as her lack of basic knowledge for the job makes her unqualified for anything more substantial.
- Reconstructed: Educational pedagogies have also vastly improved, and Alice gets up to speed very fast.
- Implied: Alice mentions that FTL travel shouldn't be possible and a future resident just gives her a bizarre look.
Back to What We Now Know to Be True.
