Break Out the Museum Piece: Difference between revisions

** There was also the episode "Speak Like a Child" where Faye receives an old Beta VCR tape that might contain clues to her past, so Spike and Jet scour the solar system looking for a working Beta VCR.

** Towards the end of the movie a number of museum piece aircraft are brought out. Some of the designs don't exist yet and some are museum pieces in the present day. Unlike usual, many of them are in... less than ideal working condition. Thankfully the pilots all had parachutes.

** In ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' the Tallgeese is the first military mobile suit ever made, but it was never used because it was so overpowered that it killed all the test pilots. When the Gundams appear and start ripping OZ's new models limb from limb, a student of [[The Rival|Zechs Merquise]]'s suggests using the Tallgeese specifically ''because'' it's overpowered, meaning it might match the Gundams. It's [[Lampshaded]] in the anime when a soldier comments he didn't know Zechs flew "antiques".

*** This can happen mainly because the military is still using the weakened version of Tallgeese, the Leo (weakened so pilots don't get killed by the G-Force at full throttle) as its main battle weapon. It is only a museum piece because it is the first prototype, too powerful to pilot and see combat, not because it is super old. It fits more in the [[Super Prototype]] trope.

*** The Remnant's earlier attack on Dakar was much more successful.

* Happens in ''Shin [[Getter Robo]]'' when reptilian duplicates of the protagonists hijack the Getter G. They even have to get the original Getter from an actual museum.

{{quote| '''Kotetsu:''' Hey, it's all wrinkled!<br />

'''Ben:''' Uh, let's not worry about little things like that. }}

* In a ''[[Commando (Comic Book)|Commando]]'' story titled "Charlie's Tank" a group of plucky British soldiers trapped in occupied France liberate a World War I tank from a museum and use it to escape the Nazis.

* The entire origin of ''[[Booster Gold]]''. All the devices he uses to be a superhero were stolen from a 25th Century museum, and he uses a time machine stored in the museum to get to the 20th Century where they would then be beyond state of the art. (Though at least originally, they were actually from his future too: 30th Century Legion of Super-Heroes devices that had gone back to the 20th century with Superman, and thus wound up in the museum.)

* In ''[[Tex Benson]]'', a futuristic Canadian space opera newspaper strip, the heroes have to launch an attack on the base of an enemy who is amassing his forces at a hidden base prior to an interplanetary invasion. Unable to use their rocket ship to launch an attack from space because of the bad guy's high altitude defense system, the heroes land on the back side of the planet where they know a war museum contains a fully operating squadron of WW-II era P-38 Lightnings. After they load them with fuel and bombs they launch a low-level attack that catches the bad guys by surprise and destroys their base.

* The ''[[Batman]]'' [[Elseworld]] story ''Dark Knight Dynasty'' showcased Brenna "Batwoman" Wayne's incredibly advanced 25th century power armour, before destroying its power cells so she had to swap it for a bat-costume that was just a costume.

== [[Film]] ==

* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'': Shaun and Co. are in the Winchester pub with a Winchester rifle (that no-one thought would work) as their only defence against the zombie hordes. [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity Ensues!]]

{{quote| '''Scotty''':The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.}}

* ''[[Independence Day]]'':

** The flying saucer had been stored for decades under Area 51 when they suddenly needed it. Variation/subversion in that the vehicle is just as advanced as what the aliens are still using.

** Though, to be fair, the only reason that these weapons are outdated are because society now [[Does Not Like Guns]].

** The car driven by Spartan is also a classic, and that's just by our standards. Forget 2032.

** The Decepticons knock out all digital communications, so the feds at the Hoover Dam dig an old 1930s-era radio out of storage. They also use a couple of display Winchester 1897s.

** Doubled up when they find some old computers when they need to get a message out. They work, but don't have keyboards. Luckily, they can be rigged up for Morse Code.

** In the sequel, one of the characters is hiding out as a ''literal'' museum piece.

** Of course, the car (fully fueled, for some reason) only drives for about a block before stalling.

* In ''[[Cliff Hanger]]'', [[Sylvester Stallone]]'s character uses the antique climbing gear on display in the hut where he takes shelter.

** At the beginning of the movie, Leonardo da Vinci is shown testing a flying machine outside his castle. Five hundred years later, Eddie and Anna escape from the castle by using the flying machine to glide to safety.

** Also, there's this newfangled device Eddie seems never to have heard of called a "watch."

* In ''[[War Games]]: The Dead Code'' the original JOSHUA system from the first ''[[War Games]]'' movie is uploaded into RIPLEY in order to save the day.

* In ''[[Down Periscope]]'' Commander Dodge has to use a rustbucket WWII-era submarine to test the Navy's vulnerability to unconventional attacks.

* Subverted in ''[[Date Night]]'' when the protagonists steal an antique revolver for self defence purposes. Turns out, the ammunition it's loaded with is so old that it causes a misfire.

* ''[[The Matrix Reloaded]]''. While Morpheus and Trinity are fleeing after the Keymaker, Morpheus grabs a katana from a display of antique weapons and uses it to fight the albino ghost twins.

** Justified as, not only is this the only option available, but [[World War Two]]-era warships with their thick armor can take a punch. Modern-day missile destroyers... not so much.

== [[Literature]] ==

** Bonus points for having the ''Yorktown'' refit with the bridge of the original ''Enterprise'' for the museum. Also, Scotty made sure not to make the same mistake as in the third film. This time, he routed all the controls through a 24th-century shuttle computer, which worked just fine. Unfortunately, the Romulans have upgraded their sensors within the last century and spot him pretty quickly.

* Every [[Dirk Pitt]] novel ever made has one of these in it. In one, it's a old Ford Trimotor. In another, an old steam paddle boat saving the president. In another, its an old French legion fort.The list just goes on.

* The ''[[Seventh Carrier]]'' series of novels by Peter Albano features a [[WW 2]] Japanese aircraft carrier and its planes that had been frozen in a glacier, fighting a war against an Arab alliance after a Chinese SDI system goes haywire and starts shooting down anything with a rocket or jet engine, rendering more modern weaponry useless. To escort the carrier, the Japs pull the pre-[[WW 1]] battleship ''Mikasa'' out of museum-ship mothballs.

* The premise behind the [[Choose Your Own Adventure]] book ''[[The Last Battledroid]]'' is that the galaxy is at peace, few standing armies are left, and the only thing that can stop the [[Big Bad]] is the single remaining Samurai-class battledroid currently residing in the museum. A nice touch is that you have to roll for its stats at the start, to see how badly the droid has deteriorated over the centuries.

* The eponymous corps of Joel Rosenberg's ''[http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/joel-rosenberg/not-for-glory.htm Metsada Mercenary Corps]'' series are forbidden by convention from using military technology more advanced than the enemies they've been hired to fight (thus, they use spears and shields against a Bronze Age culture, muskets against a 17th century level culture, etc.). The protagonist's uncle in ''Not For Glory'', the third book in the series, is renowned for his skill at using the limited equipment he sneaks past the shrewd inspectors to the maximum advantage. Against the Bronze Age opponents mentioned, {{spoiler|he jury-rigs hang-gliders out of the tents he is permitted to bring, giving his forces aerial superiority}}.

* Done literally in the ''[[Starfist]]'' series, where [[Hollywood Tactics|heavy armored vehicles went out of style three centuries ago]] due to the availability of the Straight Arrow, an extremely lightweight and portable shoulder-fired rocket that could defeat any thickness of armor you could reasonably put on anything meant to move. When someone starts building tanks again, they have to dig Straight Arrows out of the museums so they can make copies.

* In ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]: The Titan's Curse'', Annabeth's father (a history professor) rescues the heroes with a Sopwith Camel. Firing celestial bronze bullets.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'': The battlestar itself and everything it contains. In fact, it was in the process of being turned into an actual ''museum'' when the Cylons attacked. The rest of the fleet was knocked out quickly due to a Cylon backdoor in their networks, rendering all the new battlestars and the latest marques of Vipers all but useless, although several of the newer Mk. VII types on ''Galactica'' are retrofitted.

** The officials actually insisted on installing a computer network on the ''Galactica'' in order for it to be used as an interactive museum. Adama refused, claiming that no network will be installed as long as he's in command.

* In one episode of ''[[Tremors]]: The Series'' Gun Nut Burt Gummer is out of weapons while fighting a monster infestation. The locals tell him of a resident gun nut with a huge arsenal. When they get there, they discover that the "huge arsenal" consists of 18th-century black-powder muzzle-loaders. Burt, however, being a drooling gun fanboy, is well-versed in 18th-century warfare and manages to organize the locals to Save The Day. (It helps that the actors in that episode were part of a historical re-enactment society.)

** It also helps that the shriekers have no concept of tactics or even pack mentality (even wolves know to surround a prey). They just charge at the defenders without regard for their own lives.

* In the "Jesse James vs. Al Capone" episode of ''[[Deadliest Warrior]]'', the fight takes place in an American History Museum. Jesse James' gang steal guns from the museum's display cases with which to fight their opponents.

* In the short-lived series ''[[Covington Cross]],'' the landowners of the south-east have assembled at Arundell Castle to pay their taxes. Bandits invade the gathering and hold the nobles for ransom. The Grey boys and their sister have to save the day by using the old weapons from the Duke of Arundell's collection. Note that this show already takes place in the Middle Ages, so the heroes fighting the bandits are using weapons even more ancient than that! Tenth to Twelfth century rather than Fourteenth - and yes, there was a difference!

* In ''[[Covert Affairs]]'', an encoded radio transmission turns out to be in such an outdated cypher that a clunky old museum piece is pulled out of the CIA's archives in order to decrypt it.

* Hodgins and Wendell did this on ''[[Bones]]'' (with a healthy dose of [[MacGyvering]]) when they were trapped by a blizzard without power, and they had to solve the case quickly because the murderer might be contagious. The clearest example was when Hodgins actually managed to vaporize some of the metal shrapnel and analyze it. Justified because they work IN a museum.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''The Seeds of Death'', the Ice Warriors have hijacked the T-MAT teleportation grid, which is on the Moon. Luckily for our heroes, the crackpot who runs a space museum has been secretly maintaining a rocket...

** In "Vincent and the Doctor", the Doctor digs around the TARDIS for a species-scanner that was apparently given to him as a childhood present by his godmother.

** In "A Good Man Goes To War" he presents Amy and Rory with ''his'' cot for their baby, with its mobile still in perfect working order after a thousand years.

* In an episode of ''[[Primeval]]'', Professor Cutter takes a katana from a display stand and uses it against some prehistoric worms.

** The ''Miranda'' and ''Excelsior'' classes were actually in constant use for over 100 years, but the early models were usually mothballed after a while. But Starfleet kept building new ones with updated electronics and engines, so pulling the old ships out of retirement and bringing them up to modern standards was easy.

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'':

** Most of the ''really'' cool stuff is at least ten thousand years old, from [[Tank Goodness|Baneblades]] to [[Humongous Mecha|Titans]] to [[Battlefleet Gothic|miles-long battle cathedrals (IN SPACE!)]].

** They have to gas it up first, however, so that plot hole is filled. Why there are over a dozen canisters of gasoline scattered around a mall undergoing renovation is anyone's guess, though.

* In ''[[Ultima VII]]'', you return to Britannia so long after the events of the prior game that all of the loot from your [[Bag of Spilling]] has ended up in a museum, and nobody will believe you're the Avatar.

** This sort of thing qualifies as [[Truth in Television]]. Properly cared for, a firearm can and will last for a very long time. Fifty years is ''nothing.'' Oh, and the blunderbuss is not picky in the least about what you feed it, provided that it gets enough powder to wash it down with.

* A major plot point in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'', when the only ship under the control of the US forces after Ocelot hijacks their DRM is the ''USS Missouri'', which had literally been in a museum until its license expired and it was retrofitted with VR elements for training purposes. Mei Ling is its captain, despite being an analyst with no battle experience who is unwilling even to shoot a robotic Dwarf Gekko.

** The 001 you use is a rebuilt version courtesy of the local [[Human Aliens]]. And considering that the entire Gespenst series are inferior copies of Gilliam Yeager's [[Super Robot]] / [[Eldritch Abomination]] XN Giest from [[Hero Senki]], the closest copy should be a top-tier Super Robot.

* In one of the most literal sense, ''[[Desert Strike|Nuclear Strike]]'' has you break out an AH-1 Cobra from a museum in Pyongyang. While the AH-1 is still used worldwide and ingame, you were initially flying a lightly armed news chopper for clandestine operation and since North Korean army is going all out, you are instructed to get the choppper and fly it. One wonders why the chopper is fully fueled and armed, [[MST3K Mantra|but hey]].

* A theme in ''[[Red Alert 3 Paradox]]''. The Soviets have been forced to put some of their older vehicles back into service, while the entire Confederate faction consists of rusting vehicles stolen from a massive reserve dump in the Nevada desert. The twist is, of course, these museum pieces are the old units from Red Alert 1.

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Futurama]]'': After the Decapodians shut down the Earth's high-tech defences, the crew uses an ancient heat-seeking missile from a museum.

** Of course, Rusty ends up being the sidekick.

** Terry's batsuit was technically a museum piece in the Batcave, though he said, "This suit may be old, but it's still cutting-edge." He uses other artifacts from Batman's crimefighting days in the series as well. (e.g. Nightwing's domino mask for ID obfuscation when the suit was unavailable, along with some old-style Batarangs.)

** In "Blackout", Bruce took the freeze ray out of his [[Superhero Trophy Shelf|little crime museum]] to stop Inque, and wore the old Gray Ghost hat and mask to keep his identity hidden. In her second appearance, Terry tried the same, but she broke it; later, Bruce took a huge [[Powered Armor]] suit out of retirement to go hand-to-hand with her in a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]].

== Other ==