History Main / FutureSocietyPresentValues

* While the vast majority of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' has aged rather well, many jokes/aspects of the earlier seasons definitely wouldn't fly if they had came out today and not in the [=2000s=] and early [=2010s=]. ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheBloodGulchChronicles The Blood Gulch Chronicles]]'' probably gets this the worst, as the various examples of InnocentlyInsensitive UnfortunateImplications during its events[[note]]I.e., the usage of "retard" (which is now seen as an offensive slur against the mentally disabled) in casual parlance, the uncomfortably common homophobia and misogyny displayed in jokes from as "recent" as ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheRecollection Recreation]]'', Sister being written only as a "loud slut" until ''The Shisno Paradox'', and Donut's entire character being pretty much one big Gay Panic joke until (arguably) ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheProjectFreelancerSaga The Project Freelancer Saga]]''[[/note]] would '''all''' have gotten a noticeable backlash if they were to have been first released in 2019. [[AuthorsSavingThrow Though to]] Creator/{{Rooster Teeth}}'s credit, the series ''has'' actually adapted relatively well to the times by taking these criticisms into account, with it in turn focusing on having more politically correct humor as the series has gone on while either removing the series' more problematic elements or giving them a suitable {{Revision}}[=/=]{{Rewrite}}.[[note]]I.e., Church and Tex's StarCrossedLovers status[=/=]BelligerentSexualTension from during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' is re-framed in ''The Project Freelancer Saga'' as the genuinely toxic and mutually destructive romance it really is, Tucker gets called out on his increasingly {{Jerkass}} behavior and toxic masculinity by Kaikaina during ''The Shisno Paradox'' (with him even eventually [[TookALevelInKindness taking a noticeable level in kindness during the events of]] ''Singularity''), and Donut's AmbiguouslyGay characteristics get increasingly downplayed with more focus given instead to his status as TheDitz of Red Team along with his NaiveNewcomer and GranolaGirl qualities.[[/note]]

** O'Brien boldly proclaims that the system is going to stand forever (although the appendix at the end that refers to their society in the past tense). In the heady 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, many proclaimed that [[FascistButInefficient inefficient dictatorships]] seemed doomed to be replaced by more enlightened regimes, avoiding the stagnant society of the novel... although considering democratic backsliding in places such as Russia, perhaps this bravado isn't so dated after all.

** Although generally totalitarian regimes are (rightly) feared even today, since Orwell's death and the downfall of several regimes that inspired Orwell's writing, we have gleaned some understanding into the internal mechanics ([[FascistButInefficient or lack thereof]]) of these governments. In particular, O'Brien's bold proclamation that the system is going to stand forever sounds laughably arrogant, though given the appendix at the end that refers to their society in the past tense he may have been intended to come across that way anyway (it possibly mocks the Nazi regime's goal of a "thousand year Reich", while they only managed twelve).
** The idea that people under torture would be so utterly brainwashed that they would really end up loving Big Brother was inspired by the spectacle of the Moscow Show Trials whereby Old Bolsheviks were forced to confess to absurd crimes and betrayals in front of news cameras. The truth, as post-Cold War history has revealed, was that most of them were tortured and [[IHaveYourWife their families and friends were threatened if they didn't confess]], and none of them really did believe their accusations, nor did many of the inmates and victims who were sent to TheGulag.
** The idea that a ForeverWar, especially one that was constantly and literally hitting close to home, was a good way to maintain public support should've been discredited after World War I, and is even more laughable in the U.S. due to the Vietnam War and Iraq. It makes sense in Orwell's model where the people of the Soviet Union backed Stalin and his regime as a bulwark against Nazism, as did the Western Communists who Orwell saw as his real target, but of course in that situation, Stalin didn't have to make up any fake war, since [[CaptainObvious the Nazis really did invade the USSR, and with unspeakable horrifying brutality moreover]].

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', in its early years, had a tendency towards stereotyped and racially profiled characters and settings, but has generally worked on them with each subsequent edition. Now in 5th edition, Creators Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast are in the process of removing a number of issues. The recent [[UniverseBible errata]] removed negative racial modifiers as well as addressing many of the racist implications of past editions such as half-orcs getting a negative intelligence modifier, or drow culture being automatically Evil-aligned (a rule a [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem lot of people ignored anyway]]), and future entries, starting with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, will "allow a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D’s many other playable folk."

* Dungeons and Dragons, in its early years, had a tendency towards stereotyped and racially profiled characters and settings, but has generally worked on them with each subsequent edition. Now in 5th edition, Creators Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast are in the process of removing a number of issues. The recent [[UniverseBible errata]] removed negative racial modifiers as well as addressing many of the racist implications of past editions such as half-orcs getting a negative intelligence modifier, or drow culture being automatically Evil-aligned (a rule a [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem lot of people ignored anyway]]), and future entries, starting with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, will "allow a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D’s many other playable folk."

Even if the technology is predicted perfectly, modern readers may lose WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief when reading a work written in TheFifties, set in the present day, and assuming the attitudes of the present day will be exactly like those of the Fifties. They may even be severely bothered if a work from the Fifties assumes that attitudes in the far future will be just like those in the Fifties. (Even if the author had no way of knowing about Music/TheBeatles, even if it is the far future, it just seems wrong to read that a lover of popular music in the future goes primarily for jazz quartets or big bands, with not an electric guitar or synthesizer to be seen even though the entire house runs on electricity right down to the windows and Muzak.) [[note]]This is even more unjustifiable because [[TwoDecadesBehind electric guitars]] ''[[TwoDecadesBehind did]]'' [[TwoDecadesBehind exist at the time]], even though they were still a novelty.[[/note]] Sometimes the author will correctly predict some of the effects of a new technology, but completely miss others; many authors correctly foresaw the effect of automobiles on working habits and city design, but not one person foresaw the effect that access to automobiles would have on [[AutoErotica teen sexual activity]].

This effect increases with the distance between when the work is written and the present day. The necessary distance to invoke this decreases as time passes, so far anyhow -- technology speeds communication up, and communication speeds change. For instance, if a film has been in production for long enough, it may fall under this trope the day it's released.

This will no doubt apply to modern works set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture as well. Unfortunately, we won't know how until the social changes have at least started.

This is the social equivalent to {{Zeerust}}. The inverse of this, when the social mores of the present are presumed to apply in the past, is PoliticallyCorrectHistory.

** Another in-universe example, also played for laughs, comes when Doctor Evil plots with his henchmen for holding the world at ransom, where he will then demand...[[ComicallySmallBribe one million dollars!]] His henchman Number 2 points out that a million dollars isn't what it used to be, and that their organization's legitimate front company makes almost twenty billion in annual profits alone. Doctor Evil then decides to make it a more exorbitant for the era one hundred billion dollars.

%%[[folder:Theme Parks]]
%%This sounds more like TechnologyMarchesOn and {{Zeerust}} as of now. Uncomment if you know otherwise and tell us how it shows social mores changing.* This was a problem to begin with for the Tomorrowland section of the Ride/DisneyThemeParks. Creator/WaltDisney himself knew from the beginning that advancing technology would sooner or later catch up to the "futuristic" theme of the park. So in 1967, he attempted to avert this by retheming it as "New Tomorrowland". But as the years go by, the park becomes more and more dated. Disney attempts to pass it off as "The tomorrow that never was and always will be." When what was then "Euro Disneyland" opened, it did away with Tomorrowland, instead using the theme of "Discoveryland" and theming it after Jules Verne's steampunk style.
%%Same here.* A similar problem occurred with Future World at Ride/{{Epcot}}. So in 2019, a the D23 Expo, it was announced that Future World would be done away with and separated into three different sections, World Celebration (the area around Ride/SpaceshipEarth and the plaza), World Nature (the area consisting of Ride/TheLand and Ride/TheSeasWithNemoAndFriends), and World Discovery (everything else, including Ride/TestTrack, Ride/MissionSpace, and the upcoming Ride/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyCosmicRewind).
%%[[/folder]]

* The VideoGame/{{Fallout}} franchise deconstructs this by parodying 50s sci-fi that played it straight. In the series’ AlternateHistory, the Berlin Wall never fell, and China remained staunchly communist for roughly a century longer than it did in real life, while American culture, gender roles and politics barely changed in that time either. But when the oil that fueled prosperity finally started running out, America started PuttingOnTheReich and invaded Canada to prevent itself from simply imploding because it had never learned to evolve or adapt, and the world was almost destroyed when cold war politics combined with modern resource scarcity.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'':

** This trope was the whole point of the show, since it was meant to be the future equivalent of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones''. The fact that there were no real cultural differences despite being set a hundred years in the future was a big part of the show's humor.

** In "Four Day Planet", the racial ancestry of any human is indeterminate due to extensive intermarrying over the past few thousand years, and a person's name will likely not line up with their visual race. But one fellow with a Scottish lat name shows signs of strong Japanese heritage -and this, unfortunately, gets him tagged with a nickname that today is a racial slur.

** Not as much of a straight example in the new Twenties, where classic cocktails are coming back into fashion.
** In some cultures, drinks after work (usually just before knocking off for the weekend) never went away.

* Not even Literature/TheBible is immune to this trope. Some end-of-the-world prophecies in it run along the lines of: "Two women will be grinding corn together. And one will be taken up to heaven, the other one not."
** This could be explained in part as being the use of imagery which would have been familiar to audiences in that setting, common in prophecy as well as in things like the parables of Jesus. A ''lot'' of Biblical allusions and metaphors are like this, which is why they often need explanation to modern audiences. (It is also true that some societies are still of the primitive agrarian type for whom such sayings are current reality. So your mileage may vary on how "current" or likely they are.)

* ''Literature/MenMartiansAndMachines''. According to Sarge all doctors aboard spaceships are black because "for reasons not understood, no Negro had ever suffered space sickness." Although this portrayal is FairForItsDay in that a black person in a position of authority in a white-dominated society was remarkable in itself, it does make the reader wonder: [[FridgeLogic why aren't spaceship crews entirely black, if that's the case]]?
** The idea is that they have a multi-racial crew because different races are good at different things. White Terrestrials are good at engines, Black Terrestrials don't suffer space sickness, Martians can work in low pressure environments and concentrate on multiple tasks simultaneously, the android Jay Score can handle extreme conditions. The theme of the book is that by working together, all these diverse races can handle any crisis. Consider that this book was published in 1955 when HumansAreWhite was the more common trope. Where it still falls into this trope is that the crew is entirely male.

* It's common in a lot of pre-1970s stories dealing with space exploration that the expedition crews are often all male and predominantly if not entirely white and American.

[[folder:Theme Parks]]

[[/folder]]

* In ''Film/TheKid2000'', part of the movie's drama involves Rusty finding it odd that Russ (his adult self) is 40 and unmarried. This makes the film feel rather dated knowing an increasing number of people have since been choosing to remain single into adulthood.

** The PrimeDirective is a ban on miscegenation (albeit referring to interspecies rather than interracial romance).

* In ''Series/BuckRogersInThe25thCentury'', someone tests to see if Buck is who he says he is by making a pop culture reference to the 20th Century. Today, UsefulNotes/OJSimpson's image as "The Juice" has fallen out of public consciousness. And when one thinks of O.J, it's about something completely different. In Buck's defense, he was frozen in 1987, years before O.J's FallFromGrace.
-->'''Duke:''' If you're Buck Rogers, then who's "The Juice"?\\
'''Buck:''' The Juice? Hah. O.J. Simpson. I told you all about him.

* ''VideoGame/{{Contradiction}}'' has characters say that salvia divinorum is a legal hallucinogenic. About a year after the game's release, the UK (where the game takes place) made it illegal to supply, produce, or import it.

** Several jokes were made about the standard work week being nine hours long, based on the popular conception of the time that technology would allow people to work far less. Not only has the exact opposite happened, but cell phones and email have allowed bosses to contact employees 24/7, meaning that the separation between work and leisure has become blurred.

* ''Series/ItsALiving'': In the episode "Gender Gap," Sonny dates a UsefulNotes/{{Transgender}} woman (ironically one of Nancy's ex's). The main characters all express revulsion at the concept. While in the 21st century, individual opinions might or or might not have changed, a transgender person would no longer be the subject of ridicule on prime time television.

* When Greggs is in the hospital after being shot in Season 1 of ''Series/TheWire'', her live-in girlfriend comes to the hospital. The police commissioner has come to pay a visit himself but, after the other cops [[WinkWinkNudgeNudge explain to him rather elliptically]] what that worried-looking woman's relationship to Greggs is, he can't bring himself to. In the early 2000s, when that scene was shot, that behavior was not unusual, but today, when Greggs and she could legally marry, it would be.

* ''ComicBook/Camelot3000'': Despite taking place in the year 3000 - a ''millennium'' from the time this comic was written - the Soviet Union and South Africa's Apartheid are still in effect, despite both being dismantled by modern times. It also has Sir Tristan's angsting about being reincarnated as a woman, even though her reborn lover Isolde seems quite content to contemplate a lesbian relationship, and sex reassignment surgery is bound to be as routine as a tummy-tuck by that era if Tristan is really not happy.
* ''ComicBook/Armageddon2001'': In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' Annual #3, President Superman is attempting to negotiate peace in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland in 2001 but the parties aren't cooperating with either him or each other. In reality, UsefulNotes/{{the Troubles}} are seen as having ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, something which was unforeseeable in 1991.

* ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartII'' assumed that JapanTakesOverTheWorld, that there would be a Japanese fax machine in every room of every house, and that every corporation would be run from Japan. All of this was from a common belief during the 1980s that Japan's superior electronics were going to allow it to become a global superpower. While Japan is a major economic driving force in TheNewTens, nothing like what ''Part II'' predicted came to pass. Also, [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld another Asian country]] is seen as the challenge now. [[TechnologyMarchesOn Fax machines aren't doing all that well either.]]

* There was a trend in action films between the 1970s and early 1990s (particularly in the late 80s) [[ApocalypseHow in which the rising crime rates of the era would inevitably lead by the end of the century to a near-collapse of civilization...]] unless a [[CowboyCop hard-boiled copper]] or a VigilanteMan could bring some order. The fact that by the late 90s crime rates ''decreased'' (to historical ''lows'' in some places), and (for added irony) alongside a softer stance on crime in the mid-90s makes modern audiences ponder in hindsight if the writers either mocked or were part of the moral panic of the era.
** In ''Film/{{Predator 2}}'', it was predicted that [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture by 1997]] Los Angeles would decay into a dystopian CrapsackWorld with drug gangs in open war with each other, as well as the police, using military-grade hardware and body counts seemingly in the thousands. The police themselves show elements of being an occupying force in their own city and Harrigan himself refers to his beat as "the war." Based on the high crime rates of L.A. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this didn't seem too far-fetched circa 1990, but fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century and we see that Los Angeles, while still not a utopia, has far lower crime rates than it did at the time the film was made. Ironically, it was in the next year that they started to fall.
** See also the opening of ''Film/DemolitionMan'', which shows about 10% of the city on fire ([[MonumentalDamage including the Hollywood sign]]), gangs with ''anti-aircraft'' weapons and police riding military grade Humvees... in 1996 (just ''three'' years after the film's release, making it even more ridiculous than most of them). This is mostly to crank up the contrast with the 2032 world, where crime is so low that the police have basically forgotten what it is.
** ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'', in 1981, predicted that by 1997 crime rates would have risen to such catastrophic levels that Manhattan Island would be turned into a penal colony for containing all the convicts. While the high crime rates of the 1970s-80s made it look more plausible then, the fact they started falling just ten years on left it looking silly when the actual 1997 rolled around.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Space Odyssey'' was pretty hilarious in this regard; along with [[FailedFutureForecast the Soviet Union lasting well into the 2000s]], Apartheid in South Africa continued into the 2030s, when it ended in a revolution that kicked the white ruling class out. Apartheid-related predictions were often a bit off in this way, due mostly to outsiders imagining some sort of centuries-long, deep-seated race war, whereas it was a recent and quickly dated policy which was mostly prolonged because it somehow wound up as a part of Cold War politics. As soon as the policy was put up to a vote, it was rejected by overwhelming numbers.

* In Creator/MichaelCrichton's ''Literature/RisingSun'', the JapanTakesOverTheWorld narrative is played out on steroids. Crichton envisions a Japanese culture so ruthless and so powerful that they get away with murder. This was 1992, shortly before (or more accurately during) the Japanese economy's downfall, and the myth of the Japanese's business superiority to America was shattered.

* The ''Literature/VenusPrime'' series, published in the early aughts but written in the 80's (and based on older Creator/ArthurCClarke short stories) have several examples:
** In the first book, one of the suspects in the ''Star Queen'' sabotage, Sondra Sylvester, has a big secret that she doesn't want anyone to find out... she's living with another woman. While this might have been scandalous in the 80's, it's not so controversial nowadays.
** The plot of the third book relies heavily on the assumption that the Soviet Union is still around in the 22nd century, and has enough clout that the Council of Worlds (a successor to the UN) granted it and China their own colony on Mars to spread communism. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. The last book, written after the Soviet Union's demise, retroactively places a lampshade on this, claiming that in recent years, there have been Russians pining for a return to communism, and the Mars colony was an attempt to siphon those agitators away from Mother Russia.

* Lampshaded at the end of the 1952 novel ''Limbo'' by Bernard Wolfe. His novel is set in a fictional post-WWIII 1990s that maintains racial segregation, sexual discrimination, and UsefulNotes/ColdWar rivalries in a world of automated factories, rocket planes and nuclear-powered artificial limbs.
-->Anybody who "paints a picture" of some coming year is kidding -- he's only fancying up something in the present or past, not blueprinting the future. All such writing is essentially satiric (today-centered), not utopic (tomorrow-centered). This book, then, is a rather bilious rib on 1950 -- on what 1950 might have been like if it had been allowed to fulfill itself, if it had gone on being 1950, only more and more so, for four more decades. But no year ever fulfills itself: the cowpath of History is littered with the corpses of years, their silly throats slit from ear to ear by the improbable.

* ''Literature/ThePower'': The segment of the story set in Saudi Arabia mentions that women there aren't even allowed to drive. This law was repealed in 2017, a year after the book came out

* The ''Fallout'' franchise deconstructs this by parodying 50s sci-fi that played it straight. In the series’ AlternateHistory, the Berlin Wall never fell and China remained staunchly communist for roughly a century longer than it did in real life, while American culture, gender roles and politics barely changed in that time either. But when the oil that fueled prosperity finally started running out, America started PuttingOnTheReich and invaded Canada to prevent itself from simply imploding because it had never learned to evolve or adapt, and the world was almost destroyed when cold war politics combined with modern resource scarcity.

** We never see a single Time Lady from their introduction as a race in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E7TheWarGames The War Games]]" in 1969 until 1977's "The Invasion of Time" (ignoring Susan, who was a character back when the show followed [[TheArtifact different rules]] and the Doctor was still AmbiguouslyHuman). Fans at the time (and some of the actors) even thought Time Lords might have been a OneGenderRace. "The Deadly Assassin" attempted to work with this by turning it into a satire of the white-boys'-club mentality of British politics -- a criticism that still has fangs decades later - but still seems short-sighted with Margaret Thatcher being Leader of the Opposition at the time. From the late 70s onwards, an implicit {{retcon}} was made that Time Lords were a post-sexist society, and the Doctor even got a Time Lady as a companion (who is sometimes shown to be baffled by human attitudes towards women). Later than that it was established that Time Lords and Time Ladies occasionally swap sex when they regenerate, and both the Capaldi-era Master and the 13th Doctor are women. This also means they have their own type of gender identity issues; a [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent one-off gag]] has a newly-regenerated Time Lady remark how glad she was to be back to normal after her single male regeneration.
** A [[RunningGag Running Gag]] is used in [[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime Twice Upon A Time]] which has the 12th Doctor's meeting with his 1st incarnation in which the 1st Doctor talks about how he will smack Bill's bottom and why she hasn't cleaned the TARDIS. This makes the 12th Doctor feel extremely unconformable hearing this.

For writers, it's often a NecessaryWeasel: it's a lot easier to [[WriteWhatYouKnow observe the society you have]] than to predict which way it's going to go. Consequently the work is likely to appeal to a wider audience than a work which assumes the future will be foreign and puts in the appropriate amount of alien world-building. After all, who in 2420 will be reading this anyway? (Presumably, the same sort of people who read books from 1620 now...)

* ''[[http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743436067/0743436067__17.htm Cocoon]]'', a short story by Creator/KeithLaumer, has everyone living in virtual reality tanks a couple hundred years in the future. The husband "goes" to a virtual office and does virtual paperwork, while the wife sits at "home", does virtual housework and watches virtual soap operas all day. When the husband comes "home", he complains because the wife hasn't gotten around to punching the selector buttons for the evening nutripaste meal yet.

* The 16th century comedy ''Morosophus'' by Dutch playwright Wilhelm Gnapheus stars a KnowNothingKnowItAll {{Astrologer}} who is rumored to have a large book sitting around in his house collecting dust. It was intended on an attack on Gnapheus' contemporary Nicholas Copernicus,[[note]]This was because Copernicus remained a staunch Catholic while virtually everyone else around him (including Gnepheus) became Protestants during the Reformation, not because of his scientific views.[[/note]] who indeed had a large book sitting around in his house. Shortly before Copernicus' death, that book was published under the title [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres]], the first great work on Heliocentrism. Today, Copernicus is remembered as a genius and one of the fathers of modern astronomy because of that work.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' tried to avert this. On one hand, they had minorities and women in Starfleet, which was [[FairForItsDay progressive for the '60s]], and [[EverybodySmokes no one smoking]][[note]]Creator/GeneRoddenberry was so adamant about this last example that he was reportedly very upset when a "No smoking" sign appeared on the Enterprise bridge in one film, and Capt. Kirk was shown smoking something that resembled a joint in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry''[[/note]]. But the women, although never explicitly told to StayInTheKitchen, were often portrayed as [[DamselInDistress damsels in distress]] or as only joining the space service to find a husband. In short they did their best to avert the trope but couldn't due to ExecutiveMeddling, especially in the pilot (see below).

** The series appears to have done away with the blatant white supremacy in Gilead as described in the novel. Not only did they want babies, the goal was ''white'' babies, with black people being "removed to North Dakota" (quite possibly [[ReleasedToElsewhere getting killed there]]). In the novel, [[RaceLift Moira was white]], while African-American actress Samira Wiley plays her in the series. We see some photos of black Commanders and Wives in the clinic. No one thinks anything is odd when Moira impersonates an Aunt, either. There are some black men among the Guardians and common workers too. There are some Commanders and Wives who do explicitly want white babies (Aunt Lydia mentions a couple who explicitly requested not to have a Handmaid of color) but it's less institutionalized than in the novel.

* This is very prevalent in MassEffect and it shows. From how the first few games deal with homosexuality, non-white characters to even the way the entire human society functions makes it seems very dated to the mid 2000s to early 2010s.

* While the vast majority of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' has aged rather well, many jokes/aspects of the earlier seasons definitely wouldn't fly if they had came out today and not in the [=2000s=] and early [=2010s=]. ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheBloodGulchChronicles The Blood Gulch Chronicles]]'' probably gets this the worst, as the various examples of InnocentlyInsensitive UnfortunateImplications during its events[[note]]I.e., the usage of "retard" (which is now seen as an offensive slur against the mentally disabled) in casual parlance, the uncomfortably common homophobia and misogyny displayed in jokes from as "recent" as ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheRecollection Recreation]]'', Sister being written only as a "loud slut" until ''The Shisno Paradox'', and Donut's entire character being pretty much one big Gay Panic joke until (arguably) ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheProjectFreelancerSaga The Project Freelancer Saga]]''[[/note]] would '''all''' have gotten a noticeable backlash if they were to have been first released in 2019. [[AuthorsSavingThrow Though to]] Creator/{{Rooster Teeth}}'s credit, the series ''has'' actually adapted relatively well to the times by taking these criticisms into account, with it in turn focusing on having more politically correct humor as the series has gone on while either removing the series' more problematic elements or giving them a suitable {{Revision}}[=/=]{{Rewrite}}[[note]]I.e., Church and Tex's StarCrossedLovers status[=/=]BelligerentSexualTension from during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' is re-framed in ''The Project Freelancer Saga'' as the genuinely toxic and mutually destructive romance it really is, Tucker gets called out on his increasingly {{Jerkass}} behavior and toxic masculinity by Kaikaina during ''The Shisno Paradox'' (with him even eventually [[TookALevelInKindness taking a noticeable level in kindness during the events of]] ''Singularity''), and Donut's AmbiguouslyGay characteristics get increasingly downplayed with more focus given instead to his status as TheDitz of Red Team along with his NaiveNewcomer and GranolaGirl qualities[[/note]].

** In ''Film/{{Predator 2}}'', it was predicted that [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture by 1997]] Los Angeles would decay into a dystopian CrapsackWorld with drug gangs in open war with the police and themselves, using military-grade hardware and body counts seemingly in the thousands. The police themselves show elements of being an occupying force in their own city and Harrigan himself refers to his beat as "the war." Based on the high crime rates of L.A. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this didn't seem too far-fetched circa 1990, but fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century and we see that Los Angeles, while still not a utopia, has far lower crime rates than it did at the time the film was made. Ironically, it was in the next year that they started to fall.

* This is very prevalent in MassEffect and it shows. From how the first few games deal with homosexuality, non-white characters to even the way the entire human society functions makes it seems very dated to the mid 2000s to early 2010s. As a result some of it hasn't aged well.