This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Biffbiffley: Um.. unless I missed something Zaphoid Beeblebrox isn't from Futurama...
"Pretty much every Arthurian story puts the knights in shiny metal armor with big chargers that didn't exist until hundreds of years after these myths supposedly took place" - what are chargers by the way?
Tanto: They're a type of war horse.
Paul A: 'sright. The other type of shiny metal armor with big chargers only appears in mech-suit sci-fi. ;-)
Ununnilium: I don't think Dungeons And Dragons should count; it's not supposed to take place in the real world.
Seven Seals: By a literal reading of the trope, you're right, but the default D&D setting is a good illustration of the "medieval era, which means everything up to guns" type of stew. (Of course, D&D has been generalized to other types of worlds.)
Ununnilium: Yeah, but this is, at base, a complaint about getting history wrong. A totally fictional world shouldn't count.
Seven Seals: Mind you, I'm not arguing for its inclusion since I'm not attached to it, but I have to object to calling it a "complaint". The trope rightly notes that trying to go for historical accuracy usually isn't worth it. Shakespeare didn't get booed for putting clocks in Julius Caesar, and most modern audiences don't object either to things that are anachronistic but not widely known as such. Only history pundits will actually complain about this practice, but (taking obvious exceptions into account) history pundits aren't movie makers. As long as it doesn't break suspension of disbelief, it's all game.
Ununnilium: This is a good point. Actually, a lot of the tropes on the site tend to lean toward complaints when they shouldn't.
Also, takin' it out:
- Most Dungeons And Dragons campaign settings, books, and games are set in worlds which are essentially a mishmash of every culture, mythology, and technological level stretching from the Neolithic era up to about the 15th century.
Phartman: One of my personal favorites is when the term "okay" pops up in medieval fantasy, even though "okay" was coined in 19th century America.
Night Stalker: The same goes for words like quisling.
Big T: Well, that's kind of irrelevant, since people in medieval times spoke a different language than we do. Not even the English in that period would be understood by us; you try reading the original Beowulf manuscript....
StruckingFuggle: I'm not clever enough to write a good, funny, and descriptive explanation for the main page, but how is Naruto not on this list?
Prfnoff: Middle-Earth chronology is really a thing unto itself:
- Both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings describe things sounding "like a [train] engine" (Word of God is that 1) it sounded right and 2) it was a relevant reference since most people used trains), characters using matches, and consuming potatoes, tomatoes, and
tobaccopipeweed, which only grew in the as-yet-undiscovered New World.
Mouser: This page seems to combine two different things. There's the usual Anachronism Stew that happens when They Just Didn't Care (or It Just Doesn't Matter). And then there's lampshadingly obvious anachronisms used for comedy, like the Muppet Treasure Island example. Splittable?
Maso Tey: Purely Aesthetic Era needs more love.
Madrugada: Question about the last two "Real Life" examples: It seems to me that neither belong there. The Antikythera device isn't an anachronism, it's just something that for a long time our modern arrogance didn't want to accept could have been legitimately made by someone working without all of our modern gadgets and stuff. And What, exactly, is this one talking about?
- Jet fighters during WWII.
- And night vision devices, assault rifles, fly-by-wire aircraft, guided ground-to-air missiles, guided air-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, flying wing jet fighther-bombers, sub-orbital rocket-powered bombers, and a host of other cool stuff...
Either these things were actually used in WWII, in which case they aren't anachronistic and don't belong in this trope, or they weren't, in which case they aren't "Real Life" examples and don't belong under that subhead. If it's about these things being used in media about WWII, they belong under the appropriate subhead, with actual citations. Most of them are not anachronistic; taking the only ones I know about, there were jet fighters in WWII. The RAF was flying Gloster Meteors starting in July of 1944; the Luftwaffe was using Messerchmitt Me262s from July of 1944 and Henckel He162s from February of 1945. The Luftwaffe also had a jet bomber/reconnaisance, the Arado Ar234, in use from September of 1944 on. Cruise missiles: The German V-1 was a cruise missiles, by any definition of the term. The V-2 was a ballistic missile. Assault rifles: Germany had the Strumgewehr 44; the US had the Garand M2 and M3 carbines. The M3 also covers "night vision devices": the version used during the battle for Okinawa was fitted with infrared scopes. Germany had the Wasserfall guided ground-to-air missile ready for use in 1944, but for unknown reasons never deployed it.
{Madrugada}} (March 2, 2009) Deleted
- The Antikythera mechanism
is a famous one.
- Jet fighters during WWII.
- And night vision devices, assault rifles, fly-by-wire aircraft, guided ground-to-air missiles, guided air-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, flying wing jet fighther-bombers, sub-orbital rocket-powered bombers, and a host of other cool stuff...
- How can it be an anachronism when all this stuff was actually invented in those years? Isn't that like saying that the iPod was an anachronism in 2001-2?
- And night vision devices
since there were no objections when I asked about it last month.
Jaron K: I didn't want to edit the main page, as I'm new here, but Shakespeare's largest messup was Puck's speach in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He says "I go, I go, swifter than an arrow from the Tartar's bow" but the play takes place in 1200 BC... and the Tartars didn't show up in Europe until they attacked in 1300 AD, a 2500 year anacronism.
Madrugada: Go ahead and add it, Jason. It's certainly a good example. And you don't really need to ask permission to edit unless you've got doubts about you want to do (like I did just above.)
{Mullon: Could someone explain how the picture is an anachronism, or what it is for that matter?
Madrugada: It's a flintlock pistol with every kind of high-tech sights possible. Flintlocks pistols haven't been commercially made (other than for the hobbyist market) since the mid 1800's and they never were anything but short-range weapons at best, since they're smoothbore ( the barrel isn't rifled, which means the ball doesn't have much spin, which means those sights are useless.
