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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"103 years have passed since I have been specially summoned. It would have been wonderful if this happened 3 years earlier, but ...ah, never mind."''|''' {{spoiler|Ronnie}}''', ''[[Baccano!]]!''}}
{{quote|''"I guess they thought that humanity would take a few more decades before we would have robots that [[Bee-Bee Gun|shoot bees]].''"|[[The Spoony One]], on ''[[Mega Man 9]]'s'' bee shooting weapon. }}
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This also applies to [[Time Travel]], either forward or backward; from 1972, you can jump forward to 2072 or back to 1872.
There are two big exceptions to this. One is when they just use a nice round number by itself for the year; thus, all the TV shows and movies set in the year 2000 (or 1999, or 2001). The other is sequels to something that was set in Exty Years; for example, ''[[Star Trek: The
It should also be noted that characters, like real people, often round numbers off. Just because someone says something happened "1000 years ago," that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened 992 or 1038 years ago.
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The [[Human Popsicle]], [[Sealed Evil in a Can]], and [[Sealed Good in a Can]] have often been that way for Exty Years too.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* The first ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'' series is set in the year 0079 of the fictional Universal Century. The time it was released? 1979, of course. Several other Gundam series do this as well, for example, [[Gundam Wing]] (1995) is set in After Colony 195.
** And Universal Century 0079 was really 2079, though that got retconned away.
** And don't forget [[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]], set in 2307, made in 2007.
* ''Space Pirate [[Captain Harlock]]'' aired in 1977 and begins in the year 2977, yet somehow we'll still be using huge computers and landlines for the next millennium or so.
* The plotline of ''[[Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki]]'' has copious amounts of backstory going back for
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] with the above page quote from ''[[Baccano!]]!''.
==
* The ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' combines this and [[Comic Book Time]] by always being set a thousand years after the current date.
* The [[Crisis Crossover]] ''[[DC One Million]]'' has an interesting variation on this; the future here is the 853rd century, exactly one million ''months'' after ''Action Comics #1'', with each participating comic being written as ''Such-and-so Issue #1,000,000''.
* Although not a "round" number, ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' is always set 122 years ahead of the present.
** This is a round number from a different
* The Sandman issue Men of Good Fortune used this across 6 centuries, beginning in 1389 and ending in 1989, the year it was written and published.
* ''[[Camelot 3000]]''.
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** But the recent [[Ultimate Universe]]-style miniseries/series of one-shots was published in 2009, and made much of the time difference being exactly 90 years.
* ''[[Marvel 1602]]''.
* The 1965-66 stories about a future [[Superman]] were set in 2965-66 ([[Retcon|or, when someone on the reprint staff noticed this totally contradicted the Legion, 2465-66]].)
* The ''[[Back to The Future]]'' [[Movies]] start in 1985, go back thirty years to 1955, jump forward thirty years to 2015, and go all the way back a hundred years to 1885.
▲== Films ==
▲* The ''[[Back to The Future]]'' [[Movies]] start in 1985, go back thirty years to 1955, jump forward thirty years to 2015, and go all the way back a hundred years to 1885.
** The original jump was at least justified in that Doc Brown selects 1955 as the date he invented time travel. Going forward to 2015, at the end of the movie, was given as a nice round number, after originally intending to go 25 years instead.
*** Though one could say that Doc Brown only selected these dates because the ''writers'' decided it would be Exty Years From Now.
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* The 1996 film ''[[Dragonheart]]'' is set in the year 996.
* Used in ''[[The Matrix]],'' though Morpheus acknowledges that it's only an estimate.
{{quote|
** For the interested, the actual time setting appears to be {{spoiler|somewhere in the late 3rd millenium AD, based on the Architect's description of the history of the Matrix}}.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' is a sort-of [[Averted Trope|aversion]]; it's not a round number of years, but Orwell flipped the year he was writing in to get a "distant but chillingly near future" effect.
** He wanted to title it ''Nineteen Forty Eight''.
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* The futurist book ''2081'' was, of course, published in 1981.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Time Trax]]'' featured a time machine which only could create a time jump or "arc" of 200 years, so they traveled from 2193 to (then present) 1993. As the time passed, so did the possible destination in the past, and we see the related actions of other future cops, so this is also an example of [[Meanwhile in the Future]].
* Averted in the episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' titled "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim", in which a settler from 1847 is transported to the year 1961, 1''14'' years in the future.
* ''[[Lost in Space]]'', particularly the original series, was set in 1997.
** Amusingly, this didn't stop one or two set-on-Earth scenes from featuring horse-drawn carts and the like.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' seems to exist for this trope. The number of times a story has been set exactly a whole number of decades (or centuries) in the past or future are too numerous to count. However, there are exceptions.
** The vast majority of these exceptions are when the story in question was a historical piece; for instance, the Crusades, the French Revolution, the fall of Rome, the Battle of Hastings, etc;.
** Some were just when the year was a round number in itself, though these are even fewer and further between. The Ark (original airdate: 1965) was set in the year 10 Million AD.
*** One definite subversion was in the serial "Trial of a Timelord" (original airdate: 1986) - in the first segment, no exact date was given; the second segment was explicitly stated as being set in 2379, however the third segment was set in 2986, which plays the trope straight.
*** "The End of the World" does label the date...as "5.5/Apple/26", and puts it 5 billion years into Earth's future. Where they've presumably put inanimate objects into the numeric system.
** "The Waters of Mars" was meant to take place fifty years ''to the day'' after the airdate. It was out by six days.
** Russ Davies seemed fond of round-numbered years, setting two of his stories in AD 200000 and 200100 respectively. He also "clarified" at some point that the year "5.5/Apple/26" was ''exactly'' AD 5000000000.
* In ''[[Starstuff]],'' Ingrid lives 30 years in Chris's future.
* Averted in ''[[Buck Rogers in
* Averted in ''[[Lexx]]'', where the prologue to the first movie takes place 2,008 years before the rest, and the gap between Seasons 2 and 3 is 4,332 years. The dialogue falls into this trope though, since both those numbers are given in their exact value once, then rounded to the nearest thousand each time it's mentioned later (and they're mentioned a ''lot'').
* The various collapses and catastrophes posited on ''[[Life After People]]'' seem to be colluding with the writers to comply with this trope, timing themselves for exactly 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 or 1000 years after humans vanish.
* ''[[Sliders]]'' averted this consciously and quite hard. According to the mythology, if our heroes missed the window to slide out of their current universe, they wouldn't score another opportunity for 29.7 years. Series creator Tracy Tormé was very steadfast on not rounding it off.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==▼
* ''[[Car Wars]]'' from Steve Jackson Games was set 50 years into the future. Game world time [[Metaplot|advanced at the same rate as the real world.]]▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
▲* ''Car Wars'' from Steve Jackson Games was set 50 years into the future. Game world time [[Metaplot|advanced at the same rate as the real world.]]
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' does this. Almost all the game products are set ~62 years after their publication dates.
** Same thing for Arthaus's [[Ravenloft]] products.
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]'', two of the game's three protagonists are projected two centuries into the past and future respectively, while one remains in the present day (Of the game's release) - 1993. The setting in the past is 1793, the year the US Constitution was written, while the setting in the future is 2193, [[Bad Future|where Purple Tentacle's scheme to conquer the world has finally paid off and humans are reduced to the Tentacles' slaves and pets.]]
* Although it's not quite the same thing, all the dates of the {{spoiler|Entity's memories}} that can be traveled to in ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' just so happen to be nice round numbers, at least for the centuries (600, 1000, and 2300 AD; 12,000
* Can be attributed to ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield]]'' series with ''Battlefield 1942'', later having a sequel set in the future entitled ''Battlefield 2142''.
** Some of the, well, battlefields on which players fight are also fairly obviously linked to real battles of Wolrd War II, and so is the backstory.
* ''[[Video Game/Fable 3|Fable 3]]'' takes place fifty years after ''Fable 2'', which in turn takes place 500 or 600 years after the first ''Fable'' game.
* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' ''did'' have a genuine example: Strong Bad read an email suggesting that he make a time capsule that would be opened "in at least X0 years". Naturally, this led to an [[Imagine Spot]] of Stinkoman finding the time capsule in the year 20X6, although that would have been exty-''two'' years after the cartoon was made.▼
==
▲* [[Homestar Runner]] ''did'' have a genuine example: Strong Bad read an email suggesting that he make a time capsule that would be opened "in at least X0 years". Naturally, this led to an [[Imagine Spot]] of Stinkoman finding the time capsule in the year 20X6, although that would have been exty-''two'' years after the cartoon was made.
▲== Western Animation ==
* Every season of ''[[Futurama]]'' is set a thousand years after its original air-time (though apart from the very first episode "Space Pilot 3000", where Fry awoke on New Year's Eve 2999, most of the first season was set in 3000, rather than 2999).
* The [[Opening Narration]] of ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers]]'' begins: "In 2086, two peaceful aliens journeyed to Earth, seeking our help..." The series premiered in 1986.
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* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Aang was [[Human Popsicle|frozen in an iceberg]] for an even 100 years. Avatar Kyoshi was born on Kyoshi Island "400 years ago".
* ''[[Gargoyles]]'': The titular gargoyles were turned to stone in 994 AD, and reawakened in 1994 (the year the show started).
* Inverted in ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'' in which an episode takes the cast BACK in time to 1687, exactly 300 years from the show's 1987 airdate.
* Subverted and Lampshaed in ''[[Xiaolin Showdown]]'':
{{quote|
'''Kimiko''': Why a thousand?
'''Master Fung''': It is actually 962 years, but "a thousand" sounds more ominous. }}
* [[Chuck Jones]]' classic ''[[One Froggy Evening]]'', made in 1956, ends with the frog getting snuck back into the cornerstone of a building that gets demolished in 2056.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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