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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 (Light Novel)|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 (Video Game)|Mega Man 9]]'s'' bee shooting weapon. }}
 
In most series set more than [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], the date will be an exact round number of years after the year the series was made. Something made in 1965 and set in the twenty-first century will be set in 2065. Something made in 1989 and set in the thirtieth century will be set in 2989.
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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: theThe Original Series (TV)|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' came out from 1966 to 1969 and was mostly set from 2266 to 2269, but ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Film)|Star Trek the Motion Picture]]'' came out in 1979 and was set in 2272, because it needed to be only a few years after the end of the series. Likewise for ''[[Star Trek: theThe Next Generation (TV)|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' and its spin-offs, which took place almost a century after the beginning of the original series (2364 in TNG's Season 1) and continued in real-time thereafter, but originally premiered in 1987. Thus, when the titular ship of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager (TV)|Star Trek Voyager]]'' ended its, well, voyage in the late 2370s, its last episode aired in 2001.
 
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.
 
The trope's name comes from ''[[Homestar Runner]]'''s pronounciation of an X in "futuristic" dates, such as the setting of ''[[Mega Man (Videovideo Gamegame)|Mega Man]]'' in 200X and ''[[Metroid]]'' in 20X5. The series parodies this directly by setting their mock-anime mock-spinoff series in the year 20X6 (pronounced "Twenty Exty-Six"). That is, however, [[Year X|another trope]].
 
The [[Human Popsicle]], [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]], and [[Sealed Good in Aa Can]] have often been that way for Exty Years too.
{{examples}}
 
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* 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!]] has copious amounts of backstory going back for millenia; however, ALL the big important events seem to have happened a round number of years ago. To name just a few: Ryoko was imprisoned for 700 years, Ayeka and Sasami have been in cold sleep for just as long. Washu is 20,000 years old, and Kagato betrayed her 5,000 years ago.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] with the above page quote from ''[[Baccano (Light Novel)|Baccano]]!''.
 
 
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* In ''[[Austin Powers]]: International Man of Mystery'', Austin and Dr. Evil are [[Human Popsicle|frozen]] in 1967 and unfrozen in 1997, the year the movie was released. Similarly, ''Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me'' was released in 1999, but most of it takes place in 1969, after Austin and Dr. Evil travel back in time. Interestingly, the third movie, ''Austin Powers in Goldmember'', does not use this "30 years" convention, although it does briefly involve time travel from 2002 to 1975 and back.
* ''[[Event Horizon]]'' was made in 1997 and set in 2047.
* ''[[Star Trek IV: theThe Voyage Home (Film)|Star Trek IV the Voyage Home]]'' is set in 2286 according to the official timeline. They travel back in time to 1986, the year the film was made, so they apparently went back exactly three hundred years. You'd think this would've at least been mentioned at some point in the actual film.
* In ''[[Citizen Kane (Film)|Citizen Kane]]'', the present year is 1941, young Kane was taken from his parents in 1871 (70 years ago) and he ran for governor in 1916 (25 years ago).
* ''2057'', a "future of science" film from the Discovery Channel, was released in 2007.
* The film ''Metropolis'', completed around 1926, is sometimes said to be set in 2026.
* In ''[[Idiocracy]]'', the main characters are frozen in 2005 and thawed in 2505.
* ''[[Sleeper (Filmfilm)|Sleeper]]'' has Woody Allen getting thawed out of cryogenic sleep in 2173 - one of the doctors points out he'd been frozen for 200 years.
* The 1996 film ''[[Dragonheart]]'' is set in the year 996.
* Used in ''[[The Matrix]],'' though Morpheus acknowledges that it's only an estimate.
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** The movie version was not only shot in the real 1984, but every scene referencing a date was shot on the right date.
* The Science Fiction book ''Frek and The Elixir'' takes place in 3003 (it was written in 2003).
* Weirdly averted in the ''[[Lord Darcy (Literature)|Lord Darcy]]'' mysteries: set in an [[Alternate History]] Europe, each story takes place in the ''same'' year when it was published in reality. This makes for some amusing dissonance, as Victorian-level technology and archaic royalist politics appear side by side with dates in the 1950s.
* 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 Thethe 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.
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** 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 The 25th Century|Buck Rogers in the 25th Century]]'' -- the titular astronaut remains frozen for 504 years.
* 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.
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== 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 (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' just so happen to be nice round numbers, at least for the centuries (600, 1000, and 2300 AD; 12,000 and -- wait for it -- 65,000,000 BC). {{spoiler|The "Apocalypse", though, happens in the year 1999.}}
* Can be attributed to ''[[Battlefield (Video Gameseries)|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.
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== Western Animation ==
* Every season of ''[[Futurama (Animation)|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 (Animation)|Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers]]'' begins: "In 2086, two peaceful aliens journeyed to Earth, seeking our help..." The series premiered in 1986.
* The animated series ''[[Spiral Zone (Animation)|Spiral Zone]]'', which was produced in 1987, was set in the (then) near future of 2007.
* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender (Animation)|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 (Animation)|Gargoyles]]'': The titular gargoyles were turned to stone in 994 AD, and reawakened in 1994 (the year the show started).
* Inverted in ''[[Duck TalesDuckTales]]'' 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 (Animation)|Xiaolin Showdown]]'':
{{quote| '''Master Fung''': It has already begun: a thousand years of darkness!<br />
'''Kimiko''': Why a thousand?<br />
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