Anachronism Stew/Quotes

"It's bloody weird having half the Tudor nobility riding around on MOTORIZED BICYCLES!"

- Queen Elizabeth I, Monty Python's Flying Circus

"This work of fiction is not an accurate historical portrayal... LIKE WE GIVE A F@%#! Now shut up and enjoy the show!"

- Samurai Champloo

"Mickey: What's a horse doing on a spaceship? Doctor: What's eighteenth-century France doing on a spaceship? Get a little perspective!"

- Doctor Who, "The Girl in the Fireplace"

"Exactly where he got his text we do not know. Most Greek scholars that I've talked to seem unaware that Iphigenia ever was in Brooklyn."

- Peter Schickele, on PDQ Bach's Iphigenia in Brooklyn

"Admitting that genius which has familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension,–this form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest, because it demands as much accurate and minute knowledge as creative vigour. Yet we find ladies constantly choosing to make their mental mediocrity more conspicuous, by clothing it in a masquerade of ancient names; by putting their feeble sentimentality into the mouths of Roman vestals or Egyptian princesses, and attributing their rhetorical arguments to Jewish high-priests and Greek philosophers."

- George Eliot, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists

"Know you not, Miss Bennet, that Mr. Darcy has been freestyle disco champion of all Derbyshire these last eleven years?"

- That Mitchell and Webb Look, "Posh Dancing"

"Utahraptor: (narrating) HISTORY FOR YOU IS A BIG PARTY WHERE EVERYONE JUST HANGS OUT TOGETHER, ISN'T IT? T-Rex: F- Forsooth"

- Dinosaur Comics

"Ling-Ling: A coal-powered bullet train. That's progress."

- Guilty Party

"It’s 2009, and we happen to be very proud of that. The Dark Knight’s just come out on Blu-Ray, La Roux’s firmly in the charts, and dinosaurs remain a problem. So get used to it, you fucking div! Now, let’s hop on our Penny Farthings and solve some crimes."

- Lucien Young

"Pat: Hey, you wanna know what was an awesome weapon used in the sixteen-hundreds? Mat: What? Pat: SICK, GIANT ASS RING-BLADES! Mat: YEAH! Pat: Yeah, in western siv we learned all about the ring-blade wars. Mat: France versus Acapulco! In the ring-blade wars!"

- Two Best Friends Play Soul Caliber V

"Figure in hat: (talking to two small children) Everyone said the world was flat, but Columbus knew it was round. Woman: *Sigh* No, no, no. Figure in hat: So he took his ships and sailed west - Woman: - in a line tangent to the surface. The sea fell away, and he landed in Valinor. Woman: A Silmaril on his brow, he wanders the heavens as the morning star, still believing he reached India. Figure in hat: Stop making stuff up. Woman: You first."

- xkcd #1255 "Columbus"