Schizo Tech / Western Animation

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• Adventure Time features a fair amount of this — swords used against enemies who sometimes fire lasers back, Princess Bubblegum's advanced science and mathematics and the detritus of past cultures like bunkers, cars and tanks next to BMO, a sentient handheld video game. Justified by the After the End setting.
• Amphibia's titular nation is mostly medieval (or at least, looks medieval)—soldiers wear old-school plate and scale armor and wield swords and bows, the best common vehicle is the equivalent to a horse-drawn carriage (albeit with a Horse of a Different Color), and things like airplanes or phones are unknown. However, there are also a fair amount of relatively more modern things—the major city of Newtopia in particular is bordering on Purely Aesthetic Era, with things like credit cards, elevators, sophisticated plumbing, and a general cultural attitude that wouldn't be out of place in the 20th century. It's all but stated that the land was once far more advanced, but a major fall left them with most of their old tech nonfunctional.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in an early-industrial world with "Element Bending" — and a lot of Mundane Utility. This throws tech development into a tailspin. Being based on 19th century East Asia, it also reflects the latter's pattern of having islands of industry surrounded by vast seas of rural peasants who lived little different than they did in the Middle Ages.
  • The Northern Water Tribe's ability to Make a Splash enables them to live comfortably in Cities of Canals made entirely of ice. Look into Venice sometime for how much hassle that is. They also end up developing waterbending powered submarines by the end of the show.
  • The Earth Kingdom's ability to Dish Out Dirt enables them to build, maintain, and supply multiple megalopoli the size of New York City and a capital city the size of a small country. They even have Cool Trains powered entirely by earthbenders (and eventually develop their own earthbending-powered tanks by the end of the show).
  • The extinct Air Nomads' ability to Blow You Away resulted in ubiquitous personal flight. (With hang-gliders, yeah, but it still meant that their homes looked like a cross between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Metropolis.) It also allowed them to build an entire upside-down city hanging from a cliff simply because few others can even find the place, let alone actually enter.
  • The Fire Nation is the reason why the setting can't be considered pre-industrial, due to firebenders effectively being living external combustion engines that don't need fuel. Tanks, steamships... as long as they can fit people inside to power the machinery, they can make it move. Steampunk to the core. Additionally, firebenders aren't dependent on external sources the way the other benders are. If A:TLA had been a RPG Mechanics 'Verse, there'd be a word for this. In fact, unlike the other countries, a lot of the Fire Nation's more advanced technology (much of it developed by a captive non-bending Earth Kingdom engineer) doesn't seem to even require bending to operate, having substituted firebenders with more advanced coal-powered engines. Nevertheless, they're still not able to develop a working hot air balloon until near the very end of the war, as lampshaded in the Abridged Series (on a side note, firebending assassin Combustion Man had fully functional spring-loaded prosthetic limbs).
    Sokka: So Let Me Get This Straight.... You can build tanks, jet-skies, and a gigantic freaking drill, but the concept of a hot air balloon eludes you.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman series tend to have a film noir style, down to the appearance of cars, guns, etc. However, modern technology exists as well. You're sure you're watching something taking place in the days of the earliest Batman comics, with Tommy guns and classically shaped 1940's cars, until the characters start casually referencing genetic engineering and cybernetic interfaces. Similarly, video cassette and digital recorders exist, but television sets still seem limited to black and white images. This was all done for artistic reasons (giving Batman a somewhat nebulous, noir-themed setting in time) and also to keep network censors from forcing the GCPD and the mooks from using laser guns (by apparently sending it so far in the past that lasers would strain even a kid's disbelief)
    
    There was a bit of a Genre Shift between the first few seasons of Batman: The Animated Series and the later Batman episodes (in the Batman/Superman era). In order to make Batman fit in more with the style and tone of the new Superman cartoon, the film-noir visuals were heavily updated: newscasts now in color, Bruce Wayne now in a modern business suit, etc. While the original series carefully avoided any real-life pop-culture references that would date the series, the Batman/Superman episodes are filled with them, such as Batgirl referencing Pinky and the Brain. This is actually lampshaded by Barbara Gordon in Batman Beyond, when she admonishes Bruce for training Terry by saying that his brand of Justice "went out with the Tommy gun".
  • Batman: The Long Halloween, which was released in 2021, uses the same old-looking cars, Art Deco architecture, Tommy guns, old-fashioned mobs, and WWI-era biplanes, but later on, Harvey Dent answers a call from his smartphone as he's watching the news from a flat-screen TV in his hospital room.
• The Big Knights revels in this trope: Borovia is a stock medieval fantasy kingdom, complete with knights, castles, wizards, dragons and the like, but also has television, hydroelectric power, bicycles, radar, cell phones and cars. All played for laughs, of course.
• Dave the Barbarian has this turn up whenever it's funny; one episode featuring evil lederhosen has an attempt to defeat it prevented because clothes dryers haven't been invented yet, at which point they use a modern hairdryer instead.
  Peasant Child Comedian: (while bombing on stage) [taps microphone] Has this thing been invented yet?
• Dinotrux features extremely advanced robotic dinosaur/construction vehicle hybrids that work together to build fairly primitive constructions out of raw rocks and trees. More often than not, a massive step forward in technological sophistication comes by simply by making a new friend that is a different kind of construction vehicle.
• Western Animation/Disenchanted has a genre shift towards sorcery and then another one towards Steampunk where there's no reasonable explanation for how 19th century technology could exist in this medieval world.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy is set in a deliberately ambiguous time period, and the neighbourhood seems to have a wildly different variety of televisions and appliances.
• The Flintstones mimics modern society via modern conveniences that use animals and stone-and-wood cars and other mechanical devices, but somehow still has working televisions and telephones which can't possibly function without electricity and radio. Fred's Final Fling and The Man Called Flintstone confirm that space travel exists in the Modern Stone Age.
  • And in the first live action movie, Fred accidentally invented concrete a few millennia early.
  • A few episodes/spinoffs show some devices (such as a microwave oven in 90s TV-movie "Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby" and a medical device in an episode of the original series) were powered by electric eels, which might handwave some devices such as their television sets.
• Futurama's general world tends to alternate between a hyper-advanced sci-fi level of technology, with casual sapient AI and traveling to the edge of the universe, and a level of technology on par with the turn of the century, with cable television and dial-up internet. It often ends going significantly below even the second for the Rule of Funny.
  • While being set in The Future, it likes to play with this, giving us "Silent Holographic films" (Where Zoidberg's uncle made his reputation) as opposed to modern talking holographic film. The early films were also in black and white too (since it's far easier to create a monochrome hologram than a colour one)
  • Chef Elzar uses Spice Weasels as living pepper grinders in a Flintstones-esque manner.
  • Fry had to reinvent the wheel during that unfortunate Revolt of the Robots. Too bad he couldn't quite remember the necessary shape.
• Galaxy Rangers works with this in spades. It's a Space Western to start with, but layers on sword and sorcery (Tarkon, Xanadau), cyberpunk (Tortuna), steampunk (Tarkon), and more Western. (Not surprisingly, the same writers also did a large part of Star Wars Legends back in the mid-80s) The best explanation is that the further you get from Earth, the more the colonists are "making do" with lower-end tech and what higher tech they can use. Xanadau and the Sorcerer System have rejected most types of "hard" technology, but use magic and psionics in its place. The Queen of the Crown will cheerfully use anything that crushes her enemies, but doesn't have the high-end hyperdrives her enemies do -– and she wants Andorian tech as badly as she does human souls.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) and its 2002 reboot both had heavy Schizo Tech. Flying vehicles, cyborgs and robots in a Sword and Sorcery setting. In fairness, a lot of the "low tech" stuff is magic. Who's to say which works better?
• The Legend of Korra, set 70 years later after the before-mentioned Avatar, has progressed to Dieselpunk, with automobiles and radio alongside progressively more fantastic police airships, Grappling Hook Pistols, and anachronistically modern boxing headguards with transparent plastic faceplates worn by pro-benders, most of which requires absolutely no bending to operate. And yet there are still no guns (despite the presence of gunpowder in the original series), even though other weapons developed during the show's run include shock batons, taser gloves, biplanes, and Mini-Mecha. Despite Korra's 20s/30s-era aesthetics, Varrick later begins developing such things as a magnetic power armor prototype, highly agile mecha suits equipped with an array of high-tech weaponry, and even a Fantastic Nuke by accident. Said nuke is later on made into a Wave-Motion Gun mounted upon a 25-story tall Humongous Mecha powered by spirit vines and piloted through a metalbending-based control system. Even then, nobody develops conventional firearms by the end of the show.
• Long Live the Royals takes place in medieval times but due to Rule of Funny it has an aesthetic that mixes in the 1980s and 2010s. Electric guitars, undercut hairstyles, cereal, and other modern day things exist.
• Mao Mao Heroesof Pure Heart: The show's Technology Levels are all over the map. Pure Heart Valley was supposedly isolated from the outside world for centuries, and the town has an 18th-19th Century vibe to it, but it has 20th-21st C. amenities such as television, cars, and cell phones with internet access. The Sky Pirates' ship, Mao Mao's skycycle and Badgerclops' cybernetic arm suggest a futuristic Diesel Punk setting, yet swords seem to be the preferred form of weaponry (aside from Badgerclops' plasma cannon), and there are no signs of firearms anywhere.
• Despite there being no technology more advanced than steampunk (and even THAT shows up rarely), The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack had one episode end with Flapjack pulling the plug on a mechanical genie that worked by electricity. And on a dock no less.
• Miraculous Ladybug is set in a mostly totally normal depiction of modern-day Paris, France, magical teenage superheroes notwithstanding. Except for one minor character named Alix, who is given a pocket watch that somehow has a very sophisticated holographic projector built into it. What makes this even more ridiculous, is that the watch is apparently a family heirloom, passed down from parent to child! Ultimately, season three reveals that the watch is actually the camouflaged Rabbit Miraculous, justifying some of its capabilities as magitek.
  • A second example, Max's Robot Buddy Markov, appears in season two. Markov is able to fly, and his A.I. is sophisticated enough that he can feel emotions and be akumatized.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The series contains castles, thatched cottages and sod roofs existing alongside everything from quill pens and chariots to corrective tooth braces, dehumidifiers, walkers with tennis balls on the feet, helium tanks with pressure gauges, chocolate dipping fountains, steam trains, horse-drawn steam trains, hip replacement surgery, microphones, megaphones, steel skyscrapers, sewing machines, cider presses, pneumatic jackhammers, outhouses, ice boxes, flashlights, modern DJ tables, bowling alleys, biohazard suits, a postal system, hydroelectric dams, offset presses, cranes, cameras, video arcade games, snow globes, rap music, etc.
  • This is also Downplayed. Conveniences such as phonographs, typewriters, washboards and gas-lit train cars have appeared in Equestria which are advanced from medieval times but outdated today. Pinkie Pie Zig Zags this by using a phonograph to play electronic music.
  • It might say something about their culture. 20th century medical technology (Heart rate monitor, X-ray) against the closest thing to a military presence wearing metal armour and wielding spears. Then again, the equivalent of airport security uses standard metal detectors and luggage-scanning technology, implying that bombs exist.
  • Interestingly, Lauren Faust has mentioned that she insisted on medieval technology as the "default," with more advanced tech whenever it was needed for the story. "If we needed cameras, I just wanted those cameras to be relatively workable to a creature with no fingers. And if we absolutely positively HAD to have an electrical appliance (which we often did), I just told myself that it was enchanted by some magical unicorn mechanic at some point. However, I insisted that such an attitude was to be considered only as a last creative resort – don't use a light switch when you could use a candle, just because you're feeling lazy."
  • In Season 2, there are examples of steam trains, without any ponies pulling them. Faust explained on her deviantART page that the horse-drawn train was an attempt to make it fit in the Equestrian universe but still keep the iconic train sounds like whistles and chugging steam. Perhaps that first train ran out of fuel or something^note In Real Life, trains are designed with low rolling resistence, and regular humans can and have pulled them — so it's not too hard to believe that ponies with Super-Strength could do so as well.
  • The Extended Universe handwaves this by explaining that Celestia has traveled to parallel worlds; coffee, for example, is taken from the Mirror Universe.
• This seems to be a theme in the My Little Pony franchise. While most of G1 was clearly set in The '80s, almost all other continuities follow this trope to a point. My Little Pony Tales was especially topsy-turvy — for example the cars the ponies drive can be anywhere from modern to mid 20th century.
• Puppy in My Pocket: Adventures in Pocketville: The Pocket Kingdom is mostly a natural environment, but alongside the candlelight and magical items the castle have and the tavern-like appearance of the Bear Inn's dining area there are several places around Pocketville that have what seems to be electric lighting, Eva's gang ride a motorboat in one episode, the hospital has modern equipment like IV drips, and the Bear Inn's kitchen looks like just the average restaurant kitchen. Not to mention the Pet Resort, the most modern-looking of Pocketville's locations, where there is a fitness area with a treadmill and an electronic screen on the wall, and the Gift Shop's gifts consisting of toy trains and cars (both of which do not exist in actuality in the Pocket Kingdom) and moving teddy bears (implying that they move thanks to an electric motor).
• Samurai Jack. The main setting takes place in the future, or possibly only a technologically-advanced alternate present day, but outside of massive cyberpunk megacities you can find Vikings and Scotsmen with swords (magic), Prohibition-era gangsters with old guns, Old West towns inhabited by robots... Rule of Cool predominates.
• Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?: The animation is based on the style from the original cartoon, but given most of the celebrities who have guest-starred on the show and the fact that pretty much all the characters are regularly seen using electronics such as smartphones and tablets, it's safe to assume that the show takes place in the 21st-century.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The Horde has anti-gravity tanks with laser cannons, builds hordes of robots, and is generally pretty high-tech; the Rebellion doesn't even seem to have notably powered ships, relying on sails, and Bow fires his flashy Trick Arrows from an apparently mundane bow. Justified by the Horde's true origins as an Alien Invasion; they have the tech because Hordak's ship had enough stuff to kickstart his own private industrial revolution, and the Rebellion mostly uses the stuff they can actually manufacture and relies upon magic and First One artefacts like the runestones to make up for the technology gap.
  • Within the Rebellion itself, most of the kingdoms are shown using pretty traditional tech: the ships we see in Salineas are powered by sails, for example, while Bright Moon's guards are equipped with metal melee weapons. Dryl, however, has robots and carbonated drinks. This is never explained beyond "it's where Entrapta lives".
• Sofia the First: while the settling is quite magical and medieval per se, certain hints of more advanced tech have been seen, like the flotaing castle, which have no sails and could be easily a steam boat, or Cedric's Glider, which although magical, can be seen to posses certain aspect of a primitive glider.
• In Steven Universe, Gem technology from past eras used to mash medieval-era weaponry, ancient-looking architecture and even manual labour^note although, to their credit, most of their manual laborers had superhuman abilities together with advanced spacefaring technology. And even then, that technology was handled much like magic. This trope is subverted, however, in the current era of Gem history, where technology has advanced all across the board to the point of energy weaponry and robots being common, and any ambiguity as to whether Gem society is magical or technological being basically absent.
• In The Venture Bros., "Super Science" is apparently a branch of science and engineering large enough that it's offered as a major at NYU. The likes of Doctor Venture, The Monarch, and others are able to use and create technology completely unheard of in the mid-20th to early 21st century that the story and its lore spans from working teleporters, hovering chrysalis-shaped airships, mostly-perfected cloning, Lotus Eater Machines, Flesh Golems, and the occasional Walking Eye. And this is all alongside actual magic users like Doctor Orpheus, reanimated mummies, aliens, Chupacabras, and a vampire population large enough to require specialists in hunting Blaculas. The general populace of the Earth never gets a remote taste of the crazy nonsense happening to the main cast until J.J. invents the jPhone and jPad, as most of it is tied up in the arms race between Super Scientists and legally sanctioned Super Villain archnemeses. Come season 7, it's directly stated that the world at large remains in the technological advances of the real 21st century because the Office of Strategic Intelligence keeps tabs on both Super Scientists and Super Villains and steal any super science technology from them if it poses a threat to the status quo of the world.

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