History Main / Zeerust

* It is amazing how they were able to build a fully functional cyborg in ''Film/RoboCop1987'', while still using floppy disks. Robocop's visual displays are also in monochrome. Even the computers used by the police station and OCP's corporate headquarters [[OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture have pretty crappy graphics]], although that may be because the setting of the film is a UsedFuture / CrapsackWorld.
** Those [[EveryCarIsAFord Taurus Wagon]] police cars looked very futuristic at the time. Not so much now.

* Tomorrowland at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland and Walt Disney World]], originally conceived in 1955 as a portrayal of life in 1986, which over the years has become about half-Zeerust and half-rides-based-on-SciFi-Disney-properties, such as ''Lilo and Stitch'' and ''Buzz Lightyear''.

** Disney once tried to obsolescence-proof Tomorrowland by going for ''intentional'' Zeerust -- "[[{{Tagline}} The future that never was is finally here!]]" In 1998 Disneyland redesigned Tomorrowland to deliberately go "Retro-Future"... that is, they stopped even trying to be prophetic and went for the future-as-envisioned-by-Jules-Verne look (essentially, part steampunk and part art deco). For some of the area this worked, but apparently it didn't occur to anyone that it would turn Space Mountain, an iconic gleaming white structure visible from a significant fraction of the park, into what looked like an enormous pile of greenish-brown doggie-doo. A notable exception is the Carousel of Progress, which touts a "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" that's at least a decade out-of-date despite Disney's efforts. Carousel of Progress is supposed to showcase "cutting edge" stuff in its last scene... the last minor tweak in 2010 finally added a flat screen [=TV=] to a scene written in 1994.

*** Unfortunately, the Carousel of Progress appeared to have been half designed by advertisers who wanted to reach Disney's paying customers. (Note that this is exactly what it originally was - an ad for General Electric at the New York World's Fair.) Some of the "features" included a long car commercial that people would actually wait in line to see because the screens were mounted on something that looked like motorcycle handlebars attached to a chair that turned and swiveled. Not surprisingly, many of the viewers would hop off the swiveling chairs as soon as they realized the commercial wasn't an introduction, but was actually the feature.

* Lampshaded by more than one character when used as part of the character design of Chester in ''VideoGame/ArTonelico2'', even leading to him being nicknamed "Fuglycool" by one character.

* ''Film/TheIsland'' is mostly devoid of zeerust. It takes place in 2019 (released in 2005), where Los Angeles looks pretty much the same, except for efficient high-speed mass transit. Though the vehicles are pretty much all modern cars (no junkers). MSN runs a free database that allows you to look up anyone you need at booths, and the phones and computers are pretty much the same, albeit with more voice recognition software. However, for everything that is perfectly in place, something is off. The police have flying jet bikes with machine guns, tiny spider bots can enter someone's body through their tear ducts to act as a tracking device, and, of course, [[spoiler: ''giant underground colonies where sentient clones are raised for the wealthy as organ banks.'']] All this is supposed to come about in ten years?! The one thing that they almost got right was the video game that tracks movement, though the Xbox Kinect never really worked well with anything but dancing games.

* Creator/GKChesterton invoked this trope when writing ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'' and wrote a LampshadeHanging prologue.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' features many elements of this, being an unusual ([[SeinfeldIsUnfunny for the time]]) combination of RaygunGothic and UsedFuture aesthetics. Technology is constantly breaking down and not working correctly, bundles of wire spark frequently, interfaces are all levers and flashy buttons, visual readouts are bright lines and enormous geometric shapes, and holographic visual displays are monochrome with crackling static. And in the very first movie, the [[MacGuffin plans for the]] [[BigDumbObject horrifying superweapon]] are on "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_drive#History data tapes]]" (although tapes are still used for some specialised purposes, and can store terabytes of data). The prequels, [[GoldenAge set before]] TheEmpire forced the galaxy into a constant state of war and deprivation, [[RaygunGothic feature shinier and more streamlined technology]] with next to none of the grit. At any rate, it ducks the whole Zeerust discussion in the first place by stating that the story takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." Thus, it's not the future and it's not our technology.

* ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'': Creator/RobertZemeckis and Bob Gale wanted to avoid dealing with the future for this very reason, as they couldn't know what the future would really be like. However, when the ending of the [[Film/BackToTheFuture first film]] left them with no choice (as they didn't originally write the ending with a sequel in mind), they made 2015 basically a cleaner and more colorful version of 1985 with a generous dose of AppliedPhlebotinum (computerized waiters, flying cars, and weather control) thrown in. It ''was'' [[RuleOfFunny meant to be humorous]], though; the writers knew the date was close enough that a majority of viewers would reach it in their lifetime and they most likely weren't going to hit the bullseye when it came to making predictions, so they just tossed in whatever fun "futuristic" ideas they had. ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartII'' was one of a few 80s movies and TV series that had incredibly ubiquitous fax machines in the near future. The alleyway recycling center with huge cubes of shrinkwrapped laserdiscs awaiting processing was utterly hilarious. For as much as it got wrong, though, the film actually got quite a few things right, such as widescreen [=TV=]s, video conferencing, targeted personal advertising, video games that don't require the use of hands, tablet computers, 3D movies returning to prominence (just ''not'' [[{{Hologram}} holographic movies]] yet), and (perhaps most famously) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Marlins a Major League Baseball team in Miami]] and, while a year off, [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/back-to-the-future-chicago-cubs_us_581b73c9e4b0b8e11a1358c9 Cubs finally winning the World Series.]]

* Used deliberately in the short story ''The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew'' by Creator/CatherynneMValente, with a documentary filmmaker using being shot off to Venus in a Creator/JulesVerne-like cannon, and her B&W newsreels of alien worlds shown in silent movie theatres.

* Not to mention that some of the technology looks like a combination of a Piccaso painting and the Jetsons.

** ''Futurama'' also plays this trope straight in that many episodes feature 'futuristic' takeoffs on then-current technology, which start looking unironically oudated over time. A 2000 episode about the Internet includes a joke about how it took Prof. Farnsworth years to logon to AOL (AOL!), for example. "Kidnappster" (a pun on Napster.com) is another good one - by the time "I Dated a Robot" (the episode featuring Kidnappster) aired, Napster itself was on its last legs, having endured a lawsuit from the government over copyright violations (it would shut its doors later that year). The nature of Internet file-sharing was already starting to evolve beyond Napster by this point. In another episode Amy uses a magnifying glass to operate a minuscule cellphone; Similarly, when Leela sees Amy coughing, she asks her sympathetically "aw, have you swallowed your cellphone again?"; cellphones had been getting smaller and smaller by the early 2000s but the advent of touchscreen smartphones reversed this. In yet another episode, Fry is taken to a museum to see the complete archive of world literature written so far, which consist of two DVDs, labelled "Fiction" and "Non-fiction" (DVD being the early 2000s standard medium for storing data).

** ''Futurama'' also plays this trope straight in that many episodes feature 'futuristic' takeoffs on then-current technology, which start looking unironically oudated over time. A 2000 episode about the Internet includes a joke about how it took Prof. Farnsworth years to logon to AOL (AOL!), for example. "Kidnappster" (a pun on Napster.com) is another good one - by the time "I Dated a Robot" (the episode featuring Kidnappster) aired, Napster itself was on its last legs, having endured a lawsuit from the government over copyright violations (it would shut its doors later that year). The nature of Internet file-sharing was already starting to evolve beyond Napster by this point. In another episode Amy uses a magnifying glass to operate a minuscule cellphone; cellphones had been getting smaller and smaller by the early 2000s but the advent of touchscreen smartphones reversed this.

* Historical Zeerust - Terry's friend is helping him study for a history test in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''. She mentions "Come on. Clinton was the fun one, then came the boring one...", ignorant of the fact that the [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush next president]] would go on to be called many, many, ''many'' things, but boring was certainly not one of them. You can assume they believed Al Gore would be elected. Extra funny in hindsight, since Terry was able to list the presidents up to Clinton, meaning he ''just said'' Bush, then somehow forgot there was another Bush.
** In addition, while the show correctly predicted the prevalence of cell phones in the future, the phones themselves look more like cell phones from the late 90s when the show was made. The creators even admit in one episode's commentary that they did not predict how cell phones would shrink. If it helps any, you can think of them as satellite phones (which have shrunk, but not nearly as much) instead. This goes double when they somehow continue to work at the bottom of those vast glass-and-steel canyons where the signal from an ordinary tower would be almost indistinguishable from background radiation.

* The film adaptation of ''Film/{{Fahrenheit 451}}'', directed by Creator/FrancoisTruffaut in 1966, features zeerust aplenty, notably a propeller-powered monorail commuter train (which was an actual French prototype at the time, but was never developed), antique-looking vehicles, interactive wall-mounted television sets (though wall-mounted [=TV=]s actually would be a thing), and payphones with a weird design. Explained in that this was one of the first films where the director deliberately went for a SchizoTech look. Also, the jetpacks at the end.

[[folder:Films — Animated]]

* Intentionally used in Pixar's ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' to give a timeless or time lost feel. It works rather well, especially when combined with that [[EverythingIsAnIpodInTheFuture "Apple Store" sleek design]].

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]

** While we are in the Franchise/{{DCAU}}, the idea of zeerust was deconstructed in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm''; in a flashback, Bruce and Andrea are shown having a wonderful time visiting the Gotham World's Fair, with its lively and optimistic view of the future with standard things such as robot butlers. When the fair is revisited in the present, [[spoiler:it is in ruins, seemingly paralleling Bruce and Andrea's future, and serves as the final battleground for the two former lovers and the Joker.]]

** ''Literature/FoundationSeries': The stories were initially written in TheForties, and popular understanding of computers and space travel make for some embarrassing predictions, mixed with some surprising guesses at miniaturization and synthetic music. The embarrassingly dated ideas include space travel with fossil fuels, microfilm and hard-copy newspapers as the peak of information storage/distribution, and human-performed calculation for all interstellar navigation. Revisiting the series thirty-plus years later allowed him to include [[SubvertedTrope more modern predictions]], such as an autopilot that performs course corrections independently, personalized data-mining algorithms, and factors to make a CityPlanet function, like [[FutureFoodIsArtificial yeast farms]], geothermal power/heat, and graviton-based propulsion.

** ''Literature/FoundationSeries}': The stories were initially written in TheForties, and popular understanding of computers and space travel make for some embarrassing predictions, mixed with some surprising guesses at miniaturization and synthetic music. The embarrassingly dated ideas include space travel with fossil fuels, microfilm and hard-copy newspapers as the peak of information storage/distribution, and human-performed calculation for all interstellar navigation. Revisiting the series thirty-plus years later allowed him to include [[SubvertedTrope more modern predictions]], such as an autopilot that performs course corrections independently, personalized data-mining algorithms, and factors to make a CityPlanet function, like [[FutureFoodIsArtificial yeast farms]], geothermal power/heat, and graviton-based propulsion.

** ''{{Literature/Foundation}}'': The stories were initially written in TheForties, and popular understanding of computers and space travel make for some embarrassing predictions, mixed with some surprising guesses at miniaturization and synthetic music. The embarrassingly dated ideas include space travel with fossil fuels, microfilm and hard-copy newspapers as the peak of information storage/distribution, and human-performed calculation for all interstellar navigation. Revisiting the series thirty-plus years later allowed him to include [[SubvertedTrope more modern predictions]], such as an autopilot that performs course corrections independently, personalized data-mining algorithms, and factors to make a CityPlanet function, like [[FutureFoodIsArtificial yeast farms]], geothermal power/heat, and graviton-based propulsion.

->''"[[TropeNamers Zeerust]]: The particular kind of datedness which afflicts things that were originally designed to look futuristic."''

Another part of this often comes from a related issue: especially in more visual mediums, set, costume and prop designers have no choice but to depict the "future" with the materials they have on hand in their present day. When thin, molded glass and clear plastics aren't very readily available to you, you aren't going to put together a prop that looks like an [=iPhone=] fifty years before one exists; you're going to use black hard plastic, inexpensive chromed trim, a grill straight off a then-current telephone, and you're going to end up with a [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS communicator]] and you're going to be satisfied with it because you have other things to work on. This can lead to some particularly hilarious moments when a long running franchise wants to produce a prequel or somesuch, but the set and prop design ends up looking different and more "properly" advanced simply because the designers of the new product have access to the fruits of decades of additional real-world technological progress.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Aptera_Typ-1_Wallpaper.jpg Aptera Typ-1]], a hybrid/electric car prototype from 2009 that wouldn't look out of place on ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons''. It's either awesome on top of awesome, or utterly preposterous. You want one. [[IWantMyJetpack And a jetpack]]. Sadly, the company went out of business before the car made production, though the company was relaunched in 2019 with [[https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28860453/aptera-ev-1000-mile-range/ plans]] plans for an electric car with ''one thousand'' miles of range.

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob'' episode "Buzzkill" when Reagan, Brett, and Rand travel to the moon and discover UsefulNotes/BuzzAldrin's space colony. It is determined that once they managed to put their insatiable horniness aside, the moon colony was able to technologically develop at a significantly faster pace than our world has been able to. All of this high-tech equipment and super-sleek space fashion has a noticeable 1960s flair to it (including a whole lot of [[RollerbladeGood roller skates]]). [[FridgeBrilliance This of course makes sense,]] given this team's arrival in 1969 and their lack of imposed capitalistic manufactured fashion trends; of course their styles and behaviors would develop outward from the standard '60s trends, that's about all they know.

* Have you ever used a phone booth with a video screen rather than just a cell phone? [[https://youtu.be/TZb0avfQme8 You Will.]] Many of the technologies featured in the ads did in fact come to pass, including turn-by-turn GPS, touchscreen tablets, wireless internet, and video-on-demand services — mostly in forms remarkably similar to the commercials' versions. The most out-of-date part is the assumption that AT&T would be the main carrier for all — or ''any'' — of these technologies. Almost every one of those technologies exists in pretty much the form depicted in the commercial but most of them are either non-centralized or connected to the public Internet; the only way AT&T would make any money off any of them would be as a patent holder.

* Appears in ''Manga/DragonBall'' in both intentional and unintentional forms. Intentional examples are vehicle designs that have a militaristic, World War II type of appearance to them. Unintentional ones would be the use of VHS tapes and [=CRT=] televisions, as well as a more "flashing-light circuitboard and wires" look to any unique tech, such as Bulma and Dr. Gero's inventions, that is distinctively 80s. [[TechnologyMarchesOn This was considered modern at the time the story was written]], but nowadays it provides a unique aesthetic when mashed into the [[AnachronismStew traditional Chinese]] aspects.

** So when was the last time your computer (or even your ''television'') showed you static "snow" when the signal dropped? Happens on ''Babylon 5'' all the time. For that matter, while they do have touch screens, the interfaces are ridiculously blocky, over-sized and colorful, almost looking like a child's computer game from the 80s. This is most prominently on display in the fourth-season finale ''The Deconstruction of Falling Stars'', nearly the entirety of which is actually a series of recordings being watched by a man thousands of years in the future. The GUI of his recording program looks horrifically tied to the early 90s. (Granted, [[StylisticSuck some of it may be so that the ''viewer'' can parse it at a glance]], but it's one of those things you notice on repeat viewings.)

** Also, many stories and novels written by Creator/ArthurCClarke from [[TheFifties the 1950s]] to [[TheSeventies the late 1970s]] attribute in the near future seen from their perspective (roughly [[TheNineties the1990s]] to present age) a most important place in world politics, science and global [[Creator/JulesVerne Julesvernian]] projects for African and Pacific Islands countries. Even more strangely for a modern reader, this idealistic view of decolonized Africa [[RagsToRiches in the forefront of progress]] was fashionable prior to 1980 (another well known example is the final story of Asimov's ''Literature/IRobot'' collection), and not just in Eastern European Communist countries.

*** Part of this may be explained / {{handwave}}d by Earth's history in the Trek universe -- The 1990s saw the Eugenics Wars which left things a bit stunted, followed by bad social climate and eventually World War III. Technology that developed in the real world didn't in the Trek universe.

Compare TheAestheticsOfTechnology, CrystalSpiresAndTogas, IWantMyJetPack, HollywoodHistory, PunkPunk, SteamNeverDies, SchizoTech, ScienceMarchesOn, TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, RaygunGothic, and RetroUniverse. Contrast with NewWeird. When the creators actually predict what the future holds ''correctly,'' then it's LifeImitatesArt.

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob'' episode "Buzzkill" when Reagan, Brett, and Rand travel to the moon and discover UsefulNotes/BuzzAldrin's space colony. It is determined that once they managed to put their insatiable horniness aside, the moon colony was able to technologically develop at a significantly faster pace than our world has been able to. All of this high-tech equipment and super-sleek space fashion has a noticable 1960s flair to it (including a whole lot of [[RollerbladeGood roller skates]]). [[FridgeBrilliance This of course makes sense,]] given this team's arrival in 1969 and their lack of imposed capitalistic manufactured fashion trends; of course their styles and behaviors would develop outward from the standard '60s trends, that's about all they know.