Whether the future is dark, a Used Future, a shining cityscape of Crystal Spires and Togas, or a post-apocalyptic Scavenger World after the fall, there are certain things you can more or less always expect in The Future™. Here's a practical guide.
For things missing in the present time, see There Are No Indexes.
Tropes of the future:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The story is set in the (relatively) near future, not too far away from when the work was first published.
- Advert-Overloaded Future: If you thought that ads and commercials were already way too annoyingly common right now, wait till you see them become even more omnipresent in the future!
- All Hail the Great God Mickey!: Future people mistake the cultural icons of our current society as gods.
- Bad Future: The hero time-travels to a future where the world is worse off without them.
- Big, Fat Future: Global obesity rates have skyrocketed in the future, due to all of humanity collectively gaining weight.
- Coca-Pepsi, Inc.: Two (or more) companies known for being rivals in their industries form one mega-company in the future.
- Colonized Solar System: In the far future, we Earthlings will eventually establish outposts and settlements on other planets and moons in our solar system, if not the rest of outer space.
- Days of Future Past: In the future, society and technology somehow regress to the point of becoming more primitive than it was previously.
- Dilating Door: Doors of the future will not be opened and closed the old fashioned way.
- Distant Finale: The audience gets to see how the future has played out based on the events of the story.
- The End of the World as We Know It: All sorts of doomsday scenarios about the (full or partial) destruction of global human civilization on Earth will usually tend to be set at some point in the (near or distant) future.
- Everything Is 3D-Printed in the Future: 3D printing will play a significant role in the future.
- Everything Is an iPod in the Future: Future technology will all look like it was designed by Apple.
- Extinct in the Future: A species currently thriving in present day is established as having gone extinct in the future.
- Extreme Speculative Stratification: In the future, racial and/or social inequality gets so extreme that new cultures form around the split.
- Exty Years from Publication: The story is set in a future year that is exactly decades, centuries, or millennia away from the year it was originally made/released.
- Fan of the Past: Some people in the future will have nostalgic feelings for the past.
- Feudal Future: Aristocracy and monarchy will make a big comeback in the future.
- Flying Car: Small airborne vehicles will eventually replace the automobile of the past.
- Free-Love Future: In the future, everyone has a progressive attitude towards sexuality.
- Future Badass: Someone will become way cooler than they are now in the future.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Natural, organic food will unfortunately become a thing of the past!
- Future Imperfect: People in the future will have inaccurate ideas on how things were in the past.
- The Future Is Noir: In the future, the insides of vehicles and buildings are very dark.
- Future Loser: Someone becomes much more pathetic in the future.
- Future Me Scares Me: Someone is disturbed by their future self.
- Future Music: The music of the future may become so different that you'll reminisce about present-day music with nostalgia.
- Future Primitive: In the very distant future, mankind (or other creatures) will eventually evolve into species that are, well, much more "primal".
- Future Slang: Informal lingo of the future will become much more schway.
- The Future Will Be Better: Almost all of the problems of the past will eventually be solved in the future.
- Futuristic Superhighway: Even with flying cars, huge roadways will still need to be built to accommodate all this traffic.
- High Times Future: All (or most) of today's illegal drugs will eventually become decriminalized and popular.
- Humans Are Psychic in the Future: Humans will eventually evolve until Psychic Powers become very common.
- In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race: In the far future, all human ethnic groups will eventually mix together to become one racially homogeneous people.
- In the Future, We Still Have Roombas
- Jet Pack: In the future, we will be able to strap on these devices like backpacks to hover off the ground.
- Job-Stealing Robot: Robots built for specific functions result in humans no longer being hired for jobs that involve doing what the robot was made to do.
- The Metric System Is Here to Stay
- Natural End of Time: In the very distant future, even the universe will die.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Story takes place very slightly in the future, with no significant changes from the present.
- No Backwards Compatibility in the Future
- No New Fashions in the Future: Clothing designs have stagnated in the future.
- No-Paper Future: Printing text on paper has become archaic, because everything is digital now.
- No Waterproofing in the Future: Technology that isn't waterproof.
- Nu Speling: Words are spelled as if they were written or typed by barely-literate children.
- One World Order: All sovereign nation-states on Earth will eventually be united under a single global government.
- Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future
- Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: A future where no one is religious anymore.
- Post-Scarcity Economy: Advances in fabrication technology let people create anything from nothing, rendering capitalism obsolete.
- Ridiculous Future Inflation: In the future, items will become hella more expensive than they are now.
- Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: It's established that in the future, a certain film series or media franchise is still having more and more sequels getting made.
- Sighted Guns Are Low-Tech: Good (or at least usable) sights became a hallmark of "primitive" weapons somewhere down the line. The firearms (or energy weapons) of tomorrow will forgo them (and maybe have nothing on the top). Targeting systems optional.
- Smart House: Homes have become totally automated and filled with lots of high-tech features.
- Stupid Future People: Humans have become significantly less intelligent than they were in the past.
- Typeset in the Future: Sans-serif fonts like Eurostile are used for a futuristic feel.
- Used Future: Even future technology won't stay looking too clean and shiny after some wear and tear.
- We Will All Be History Buffs in the Future: Most people are very well-educated about the past.
- We Will All Fly in the Future: No cliched futuristic setting is complete without an abundance of aerial transportation technology, from jet packs to flying cars and beyond.
- We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future: Assisted suicide has become widely available and practiced in the future.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: There will eventually be a cure for (almost) every kind of illness.
- We Will Not Have Appendixes in the Future: Humanity's distant descendants will eventually evolve to no longer possess this particular organ.
- We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future: Futuristic fashion dictates that clothing will no longer have any usable pockets.
- We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future
- We Will Not Use Stage Make-Up in the Future
- We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Plastic credit/debit cards will eventually replace paper cash and metal coins as standard currency.
- We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Laser guns will become the weapon of choice in any futuristic civilization.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: People still do a lot of physical labor despite the presence of robots and other automated machines.
- We Will Use WikiWords in the Future
- We Will Wear Armor in the Future: Full suits of body armor are commonly worn by the police, soldiers, and warriors of tomorrow.
- World War III: The (potentially) upcoming sequel to the previous two World Wars, constantly feared to eventually happen between the world's rival superpowers.
- World War Whatever: If World War III wasn't destructive enough, just wait till our descendants have to eventually experience World Wars IV, V, VI, etc.!
- Zeerust: A conspicuously outdated vision of the future.
