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{{trope}}{{Featured Article}}
{{cleanup|Some examples have already been moved to subpages by medium. The rest of the examples need to follow suit.}}
[[File:wii is doomed so they said 5483.jpg|frame|link=http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=109863&page=1|What the gaming community thought before the launch of the [[Wii]].]]
 
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Oftentimes, be it a medieval setting or anything else where things we know about have no business existing, something abundantly familiar to our modern audience is put forth as a hypothetical. The punchline is that no one thinks it could possibly be popular, allowing us to laugh at how wrong people's predictions of the future really are, and pat ourselves on the back for being so clear-eyed.
 
Compare [[Vindicated by History]], [[Call Forward]] and [[Who Would Want to Watch Us?]], which is specific to TV shows, and [[Historical In-Joke|Historical In Jokes]] that re-interpret the past in terms of the show. Contrast [[I Want My Jetpack]], where our present makes a wrong prediction about the future. Note that this is also [[Truth in Television]], as many things/people that are now legendary were considered potential failures: neither [[Elvis Presley]] nor the Beatles got good reviews when they were obscure, and many people couldn't see any use for a home computer. The polar opposite is [[This Is Going to Be Huge]].
 
People reinventing things that ''did'' catch on didn't know [[It's Been Done]]. Not to be confused with [[Hilarious in Hindsight]]. Contrast [[Cassandra Truth]], where no one believes the dissenting voices who say that some new famous or trendy product, idea or phenomenon is wrong. See also [[And You Thought It Would Fail]] - and [[They Called Me Mad]], [[Who's Laughing Now?]]
 
{{examples on subpages|Examples on subpages will never catch on:}}
 
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== Music ==
* George Gershwin's ''[[They All Laughed]]'' is almost exclusively this trope. Among the concepts ridiculed by the mysterious "they": Christopher Columbus claiming the world was round, Thomas Edison's recordings, the Wright Brothers' airplane, Marconi's wireless, the creation of Rockefeller Center, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Robert Fulton's steamboat, the Hershey bar, and the Model T Ford. Needless to say, the singer's relationship, to which he compared the above, was a similar success.
** Mind you, [[Did Not Do the Research|everyone already knew the world was round by 1492.]] The reason Columbus was laughed at was because he thought the world was far smaller than it is.
* [[Overly Long Name|Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo]] and Thomas Bangalter of [[Daft Punk]] used to be in a garage rock band named Darlin'. The band received a negative review by a critic from ''Melody Maker'' that their rock music was a "bunch of [[Title Drop|daft]] [[Punk Rock|punk]]". The magazine was right and their rock band fizzled, but the two took the name "Daft Punk" from the review and went on to become famous.
 
== Puppet Shows ==
* In one episode of ''[[Dinosaurs]]'', after traumatizing the Baby with a scary story, Robbie is forced to pacify him with candy. However, the Sinclair household is out, so they go to a neighbor's;
{{quote|'''Old Dinosaur:''' What is this... a trick?
'''Robbie:''' No, it's a treat, for the baby. }}
::The old dinosaur then rants on the absurdity of the two going to his house on October 31st, begging for candy, and slams the door on their faces. Robbie then wonders if they should have worn costumes...
{{quote|'''Robbie/Baby:''' Naaah!}}
** Robbie also once dropped a candy bar into a jar of peanut butter and after pondering the result for a moment dismissed it as idiotic.
 
== Pro Wrestling ==
* Reportedly, after [[Jobber|jobbing out]] [[Stone Cold Steve Austin|"Stunning" Steve Austin]] to "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan in record time, [[WCW]] vice president Eric Bischoff had a phone conversation with Austin, who suggested a change in his character from [[Jerk Jock]] to no-nonsense [[Nineties Anti-Hero]]. Bischoff told Austin, "Steve, we can have you run around in your little black tights and your little black boots, but that just wouldn't be marketable," and then fired Austin. After a brief stint in [[ECW]], Austin went on to the [[WWF]], where he ran around in his little black tights and his little black boots—and became one of the two biggest wrestling superstars in the world (the other being [[Dwayne Johnson|The Rock]]).
** Well, Austin did add a little black vest to the look...
*** As well as a shaved head and a goatee. Back in his WCW days Austin had flowing blond hair and a clean-shaven look.
* WCW managed to do this a lot. While head booker, [[Ric Flair]] once asked the staff "Does anyone ''really'' see [[Mick Foley]] as the world champion?" and when no one defended Foley, Flair decided to keep him in mid-card status before Foley departed for ECW and the the WWE where he became a highly popular three-time world champion.
** Speaking of Foley, he thought this way of The Rock back when he was Rocky Maivia. To quote his book, ''Have a Nice Day!'':
{{quote|"The next day, one of the guys asked for my impression of Rocky. 'Hey, he's a nice guy,' I said, 'but he just doesn't have it. The office should really cut their losses and get rid of the guy'. I had no idea I was talking about the future 'People's and Corporate Champion.'"}}
** Bischoff also took [[Jim Ross]] off of commentary because Ross was fat and Southern and wouldn't appeal to mainstream America. J.R. then left for the WWE where he's become the Howard Cosell of pro wrestling.
** WCW also dropped the ball with one guy named Mark Callaway. Name doesn't ring a bell? Well, you might know him better as ''[[The Undertaker]]'', one of the most famous wrestlers in WWE history, almost universally considered the best big man wrestler of the past 20 years, and whose winning streak at [[Wrestlemania]] is one of the highest draws in any wrestling event ''ever''.
* Eric Bischoff (notice a pattern), along with [[Hulk Hogan]] and [[Goldberg]], felt that a [[Squash Match]] between WCW World Heavyweight Champion Goldberg and WCW World Television Champion [[Chris Jericho]] would not have been a draw. The same Chris Jericho who would later unify the aforementioned WCW World Heavyweight Championship with the WWF Championship to become the very first WWF Undisputed Champion, but not before winning them off of Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock.
* [[Kevin Nash]], [[Running Gag|while a booker in WCW]] dubbed many of the cruiserweights as "Vanilla Midgits," smaller wrestlers who could never hope to become popular main eventers and lacked any charisma. [[Chris Jericho]], [[Chris Benoit]], [[Eddie Guerrero]], [[Rey Mysterio, Jr.]]. Nope, [[Sarcasm Mode|none of them ever caught on.]]
 
== Radio ==
* An episode of the Public Radio International magazine show ''[[This American Life]]'' involved the reminiscences of a man "with a negative ability to identify trends". At various points in his life, he had: watched a Detroit nightclub performance by a pre-record-deal Madonna and assumed she would never make it big because she couldn't sing worth crap, reviewed and rejected a manuscript submitted to a publishing house entitled ''Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus'' because it was trite and misogynistic, and turned down a job with a Japanese company that was working on a major precursor to the public Internet because only losers would talk to people through a computer terminal.
* [[The BBC]] Radio 4 Afternoon Play ''The Tobacco Merchant's Lawyer'', set in 1780, has the lawyer deeply sceptical of a fortune teller who predicts the housing bubble, that Glasgow will be razed and replaced by tall tenement blocks so the poor may have water closets, and that one day everyone will have a box-shaped recepticle in the drawing room that shows plays and the town-cryer. Also, when his company's ships are supposedly lost to piracy, his only consolation is the thought that "the dread [[Pirates of the Caribbean]] may presently be enjoying a degree of infamy, but in the centuries to come their exploits will be forgotten as surely as a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean".
 
 
== Theater ==
* In the French play (and [https://web.archive.org/web/20121013032201/http://www.imdb.fr/title/tt0119855/ later movie]) ''Les Palmes de M. Schutz'', the title character tells in substance that they should give up on this "radioactivity" thing, as it will lead them nowhere... to ''Pierre and Marie Curie''.
* In [[The Musical]] of ''[[The Wedding Singer]]'', Glen is told of a coffee shop from Seattle, and retorts that "no one will ever pay three dollars for a cup of coffee," then turns around and buys stock in New Coke.
* The [[Strawman Political]] patriarch in ''[[An Inspector Calls]]'' (written in 1945, set in 1912) has a speech early on that consists almost entirely of this, including such claims as: Germany [[World War I|isn't serious about]] [[World War Two|going to war]], [[The Great Depression|economic prosperity will be unlimited]] (except for Russia, which will always lag behind the rest of the world), and modern technology has created [[Titanic|an "absolutely unsinkable" ocean liner]].
* In the Gershwin musical ''Crazy for You'', the residents of Dead Rock, Nevada are skeptical of a suggestion of building a casino. "Who would come to Nevada to gamble?"
* In the Kaufman and Hart play ''[[Merrily We Roll Along]]'', Cyrus Winthrop, inventor of cellopaper, has by 1934 become a millionaire and is busy investing his profits in art. In 1922, when his name was Simon Weintraub, he wastes his time pitching his invention to a couple in the paper and twine business, who tell him the public won't buy it, "like that radio thing over there." There is also a scene where a producer says that he's turned down the melodrama ''[[wikipedia:Broadway (play)|Broadway]]'' because he expects "the play won't get a nickel."
 
== Theme Parks ==
* This is a recurring joke in [[Disney Theme Parks|Walt Disney World's]] ''Carousel of Progress''.
* Back in it's early days, [[Disney Theme Parks]] in general, when Walt was trying to get funding to build Disneyland. The critics couldn't have been more wrong.
 
== Web Comics ==
* Parodied in the ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' webcomic ''[[Concerned]]'' [http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-28 here].
* The "Imperial Rome" theme of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' use it [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/994.html here]. (And, to an extent [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/869.html here].)
* [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/danmazur/palindramas/series.php?view=archive&chapter=30558 This] ''[[Palindramas]]'' strip is about a movie executive who doesn't believe in ''[[E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial|ET the Extraterrestrial]]''.
* [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/0316.htm This] "''M*A*S*H'' arc" ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' strip.
* In the alternate Europe of ''[[Girl Genius]]'', where [[Zeppelins from Another World]] are king, everyone thinks that heavier-than-air flight is a silly idea, and Gil's experimental aircraft is referred to derisively as a "falling machine".
 
 
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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
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{{related|Vindicated by History}}
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