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'''Buffy:''' That was then... ''[[Muggles Do It Better|(raises a rocket launcher)]]'' This is now.<br />
(Dru and Angel duck for cover.)<br />
'''Judge:''' [[Famous Last Words|What's that do?]]|''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''}}
 
Most fantasy is based on folklore, but what if you want to be really creative (or rip off someone who was really creative) and [[Urban Fantasy|set your fantasy in the modern age?]] When you do this, you are forced to update some of the trappings of your fantasy.
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This is [[Post-Modern Magik]]. It's what you get when you decide that magic shotguns make as much sense as magic swords, and vampires that don't show up in mirrors also don't show up on camera.
 
Even if a series tries to avoid modern day entirely, [[Powers Asas Programs|the tendency for magic to act like computer programs]] has bled into the "pure" magical genre.
 
Can be common in [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]], where you have robots and fairies both running around. However, many of those authors try to separate the sci-fi and fantasy elements; the most common way around this is to make a [[Magic Aa Is Magic A|rule]] that [[Magic Versus Science|magic gives off an anti-technology field]] (or vice-versa) so that at any one place only magic or technology works.
 
Note that this is not [[Magitek]]. Magitek is the use of magic to recreate modern inventions, like a camera which is really just [[Discworld|a box with an Imp inside drawing really fast]], or an "Internet" made from magic mirrors and living books. [[Post-Modern Magik]] is when cameras work as normal, but aren't able to take pictures of vampires due to the use of mirrors<ref>If the writer knew a bit more about camera technology, vampires might show up on digital cameras and film, but not the viewfinder of a film camera</ref>, and demons are real, but can be beaten up by [[Ultimate Marvel|mutants]] or be fooled by [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|realistic androids]].
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* ''[[Durarara]]'': Take the [[Headless Horseman|Dullahan.]] Without a head, it cannot speak. Imagine the horror, the isolation, the depths such a being would go being separated in communication from humanity. ...Or you could give one a PDA and an online message board membership.
** Pencil and Paper? Drawing in the dirt with a stick? Hand signs?
* ''[[Fate /Zero]]'' has Gilgamesh in an ancient Babylonian spaceship [[High Altitude Battle|dogfighting]] {{spoiler|Lancelot}} in a magically enhanced F-15, and King Arthur riding a motorcycle {{spoiler|to battle Alexander the Great in his divine chariot.}} [[Rule of Cool|Yeah, it's that kind of story.]]
 
 
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** Neither did the guys who used the hologram crosses. That was one badass vampire.
** It should be noted the vampire in question was {{spoiler|the ''hero'' of the piece}}, and that the cyborg survived (just barely) fighting a monster that took a time- and space-manipulating, centuries-old spirit to destroy.
* At a time when he was free of the [[Ghost Rider (Comic Book)|Ghost Rider]], Johnny Blaze carried a shotgun loaded with hellfire. Similar weapons were also owned by the Caretaker and Vengeance. This showed up again in [[The Movie]].
** Honestly, the character's ''core concept'' -- a blazing demonic ''motorcycle rider'' -- is a textbook example of this trope.
** His kindred spirits Daimon Hellstrom and Jaine Cutter have both been in possession of a "breathing gun", an enchanted living gun that makes its own living bullets and is especially adept at killing demons.
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== [[Film]] ==
* The three ''[[Blade]]'' have the titular hero using advanced technology such as ultraviolet weapons (including bullets with a UV-emitting chemical inside, and a UV light), the vampires engaging in experimental genetics to overcome their weaknesses, and using low-tech such as sunscreen and UV-filtered motorcycle visors to protect themselves in daylight.
* The UV bullets were also used in ''[[Underworld (Filmfilm)|Underworld]]'' against vampires. The vamps already ''had'' silver bullets for werewolves, but the UV bullets [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard|inspired them]] to make guns that fire Silver Nitrate bullets, a chemical which enters a werewolf's bloodstream and is pretty much impossible to get out.
* For that matter, the vampires in ''Near Dark'' do what the ones in previous Dracula-style vampire movies never seemed to have the common sense to do: they shoot guns ''at humans''. Most movie vampires seem to think that's cheating or something.
* In DVD Commentary for [[Hellboy (Filmfilm)|the movie]], creator Mike Mignola mentions that [[Hellboy]]'s entire shtick is taking mystical artifacts and objects and turning them into tools and other utilitarian object, specifically noting the scene where Hellboy's gear is presented. There's a sledgehammer in there, for instance, and let's not even get into the powers contained within his gun.
* The first two ''[[Evil Dead]]'' movies hinge on how playing a recording of a magical incantation is as effective as reciting it live, with the people who listened to it treated as the summoners. This gets taken further in one of the video game sequels, when the incantation's played ''over a live TV broadcast'': the entire broadcast area is enveloped by the demon-summoning spell (let's be glad it was a local station).
* The core premise of ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' is that spirits can be classified on a modern scale and detected, fought and contained with the right technology. Its [[Expanded Universe]] went on to apply the trope to other kinds of supernatural beings, how they relate with the modern world and how best to fight them.
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** Theoretical computational demonologists can develop a disease of the brain known as Krantzberg Syndrome, which [http://www.tor.com/stories/2008/07/down-on-the-farm some believe] is caused by their own mathematical thoughts causing minor summonings ''[[Nightmare Fuel|in their own head.]]''
* In the [[Mercy Thompson]] series, any holy symbol will work on a vampire, so long as it has meaning to the user. Mercy has a lamb (as in "the Lamb of God"), since she doesn't like crosses. Elsewhere, magic and technology don't interact much, though having the local witch on your speed-dial has to count for something.
* In Rick Cook's ''[[Wiz Biz|Wizard's Bane]]'', a computer programmer pulled into a fantasy world from Earth develops [[Powers Asas Programs|a programming language for magic spells]].
* In [[The Saga of Darren Shan]], half-vampires look blurry in film, etc. while full-vampires can't be seen at all. This becomes a (minor) plot point in the ninth book, when the police are wondering exactly why they can't photograph one of the arrested "criminals".
** And, dragons are made through genetic engineering.
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* In the [[Kitty Norville]] series, police officers end up carrying spray bottles of holy water and pistol crossbows that fire wooden quarrels. Silver paint isn't just a chrome-like color scheme. Faeries wards work just fine if the herbs come in pill form. There's a DNA test for lycanthropy and vampirism.
** It's a plot point in the fourth book that vampires appear in mirrors and on camera {{spoiler|if they want to or appear blurry or not at all if they don't; "it's all tricks of the light"}}. Vampires tend to seem technophobic just because they're old-fashioned, but several have been seen using laptops and other modern technology. One vampire is perfectly willing to feed on someone with her fangs, but also uses a needle and syringe when she wants to be considerate to a wary, reluctant donor. And in the first book, a police detective brings Kitty to a murder scene so she can get the scent of the killer, and tries to treat her as evidence or witness to the crime just based on that scent even though she was nowhere near there when it happened.
* In ''[[Grunts (Literature)|Grunts!]]'' by Mary Gentle, a dragon collected modern weaponry from different realities. Orcs seized the hoard and were cursed to become cigar-chewing Marines. Pegasi don't last long against a Bell HU-1 helicopter armed with Sidewinder missiles, but guns are vulnerable to misfire spells usually used on bows. Luckily, there are magical countermeasures for misfire spells, and so on. And then the aliens came. The reverse later comes to apply; pegasi armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles and a dragon with a technological cloaking device.
* The climax of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Christine]]'': Evil possessed car threatening your day... do you find some magic spell to exorcise it? Bring the ghost closure so he can move on? No, you run over it with [[More Dakka|an oversized Caterpiller truck]], crushing it and re-crushing it [[No Kill Like Overkill|over and over until it stops healing itself]], then have your local junkyard turn it into a 3 foot square cube.
** "Car possessed by ghost" qualifies all on its own. Especially as the novel's protagonist already theorises that it's a result of post-modern blood sacrifice magic ritual. Specifically, the previous car's owner's attitude towards the machine, and its history as well (two of guy's family members died in it), equaled to having unknowingly performed a kind of enchantment ritual on the car.
* Another one of Stephen King's works, a short story called ''[[The Mangler (Literaturenovel)|The Mangler]]'', revolves around a demon-possessed steam-press ironing machine. Which got accidentally possessed because over time the various ingredients needed for the possession ritual have been on the clothes it's washed. Virgin blood? Check. Foxglove? Digitalis pills left in a pocket. And so on and so forth.
* [http://www.eastoftheweb.com/cgi-bin/version_printable.pl?story_id=WateGhos.shtml The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall], by John Kendrick Bangs, is a short story involving a watery ghost who appears for one hour, every Christmas Eve, at midnight, to the owner of the titular Hall. They tried waterproofing, and it doesn't work. Steam-heating only shortens her visit by a few minutes and is hell on the woodwork. The correct solution is to {{spoiler|wear several layers of warm, waterproof clothing and a diving helmet, then go out onto the lake so she freezes, then put her in a frozen warehouse, [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|lined with asbestos]] with fireproof walls so it can't burn down. "Congeal, madam, congeal!"}} This was written circa 1894, by the way.
* ''[[Night Watch]]'' runs with this partly. The old battle amulets exist alongside things like enchanted SIM-cards to make people calling from a specific seem more persuasive.
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** It's mentioned several times that dropping [[The Masquerade]] will be disastrous for the Others, as modern technology has pretty much surpassed magic in terms of deadliness. Yes, a tri-blade will kill you with a simple flick of a wrist, but so will a punk kid from the block with a 9mm. One of the threats in ''Day Watch'' is the possible resurrection of a crazy and powerful Dark Other from the days before the Grand Treaty and the Masquerade, who likes to take the form of a dragon. The characters pretty quickly agree that the humans would be able to, if not kill, then at least seriously hurt the dragon, but it would still result in devastation and loss of life. Helicopter gunships vs a mad dragon? Bet on the gunships.
* Kate Griffin's ''A Madness of Angels'' heavily features this trope, as sorcerers in this series draw power from the environment around them and are strongest in urban settings. Sorcerers can do things such as cast protection spells by using subway passes as symbolic objects of power(because the writing on the back states that only customers who have paid for tickets can enter certain areas) and throw lightning bolts by siphoning off power from nearby electric lights. Cities tend to be full of guardian spirits such as the spirit representing the homeless population and the spirit of neon lights.
* The novel ''[[Jason Wood (Literature)|Digital Knight]]'' is all about this trope. Vampire? Good thing the hero lives next door to a tanning parlor. Werewolf? Go into the X-ray room of the hospital and grab a bucket full of silver chloride. Medusa? Mirrored sunglasses.
* Turns up from time to time in [[Cthulhu Mythos]] stories, as when Robert Bloch's "The Sorcerer's Jewel" shows what happens when a crystal once used by mystics for fortune-telling is ground into a camera lens, and photos are taken through it.
* [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''[[Elemental Masters]]'' have elements of this. For example the lead of ''The Serpent's Shadow'', Dr. Maya Witherspoon, used her largely untrained healing perceptions to help determine the effectiveness of new medical concepts like electrical stimulation and antiseptic surgery; in addition to using her knowledge of anatomy and the actual progression of tuberculosis to efficiently cure it via magic.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' has a lot of these types of things, including:
** The demon who would possess anyone who read a particular book possessing a computer after the book was scanned.
** The demon who [[Prophecy Twist|could not be killed by any weapon forged]] seems unstoppable, until the Scoobies realize that the trait is descriptive, not prescriptive, and weapon technology has come on a bit since that was written... leading to the page quote.
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*** ''Buffy Season Eight'' proceeds to contradict this {{spoiler|by having Warren create secret bases and superscientific oddities outside of the Hellmouth.}}
** Jenny Calendar describes herself as a "Technopagan". Notable scenes include forming a pentagram of witches entirely over the Internet. They don't have to get anywhere close to the subject, and can still communicate.
* [[Channel Four|Channel 4]] series ''[[Ultraviolet (TV series)|Ultraviolet]]'' works like this: It quite commonly sciences up vampire weaknesses, such as ultraviolet susceptibility ([[Title Drop|thus the title]]), carbon-based bullets, and videoscreen-based vampire detectors.
** And on the other side of the war, the "leeches" are quite willing to use things like genetic engineering and dodgy legal matters, and use psychological warfare tactics. As we find out in the series finale, {{spoiler|their big plan is to use synthetic blood as a substitute for humanity. Because humanity will be extinct. Because they plan to kill them all after causing a nuclear winter.}}
* Dean and Sam of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' frequently encounter and make use these. For example, one arc had them going after a weapon that was the only means of killing (no, not banishing, [[Deader Than Dead|really]] killing) the monster from their tragic childhood. Rather than a mystic sword or something, turned out to be a revolver.
** In an earlier episode, they face a Wendigo, which can only be killed by melting its heart. They don't have any hot tallow to pour down its throat, so they shoot it in the chest with a flare gun.
** Death and War have replaced their horses with Mustangs, the kinds with engines, and Pestilence uses a pharmaceutical company to spread his diseases.
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** A Dragon shows up, and can only be killed by a sword forged in dragon-blood. They found one, but it was trapped in a boulder ("it used to be all the rave"). When plan A (that the sword would accept Dean as a "valiant knight willing to step up and kill the beast") failed, out came plan B: Take out the C4 and blow up the boulder. {{spoiler|This had the minor side effect of breaking the sword, but it still worked.}}
** [[The Fair Folk|Faries]] have hidden their kidnappings, light appearances, and their other effects by forming [[Conspiracy Theorist|groups]] preaching it was done by aliens.
* Turned out to be quite a hassle for Jeannie and Tony in ''[[I DreamofDream of Jeannie]]''. It is stated that [[Magic Aa Is Magic A|one of the rules of magic]] is that genies cannot be filmed or photographed. Any photos will come out with nothing but empty clothes, ''Invisible Man''-style. This particular quirk was eventually forgotten during the show's run... and then re-remembered during their wedding episode.
* Reluctance to embrace this trope got a character on ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' in deep trouble. Having already dragged his feet for ages before he even learned to read, the immortal Hugh Fitzcairn finds himself at a serious disadvantage in modern times, as he is computer-illiterate and doesn't know how to {{spoiler|delete falsified evidence framing him for murder}}.
* In ''[[Being Human (TV)|Being Human]]'', it's possible to {{spoiler|kill}} a werewolf by placing him or her in a pressurized chamber during a full moon. Vampires don't show up on video, making for a unique subgenre of [[Snuff Film]]. Meanwhile, Death (or an agent thereof) can talk to ghosts through televisions.
* ''[[The Collector (TV series)|The Collector]]'': The Devil's debt collectors used to have magic rings. Now they have magic cellphones.
 
 
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Shadowrun (Tabletop Game)|Shadowrun]]'' combines [[Cyberpunk]] and magic, but separates the two to an extent. The concept of ''essence'', sort of a measure of how connected to nature one is, or how much humanity one has left, determines magic power and susceptibility to magic. Thus, a heavily-cyborged person with a low essence has no spell casting ability, but can barely be touched by a fireball... or a healing spell. This is half world building, and half an anti-[[Munchkin]] game balancer.
** Technomancy (a new breed of "magic" based around the matrix and technology) tends to work a bit better with the world of cyber; though it still requires essence, so most technomancers are not cybered themselves. Fortunately for them, they don't need it most of the time on account of having what amounts to a biological wireless router in their heads.
* ''[[Rifts (Tabletop Game)|Rifts]]'' works similarly. In fact, the anti-magic empire in the setting has taken to deliberately giving captured mages cybernetic implants specifically to nullify their power. In addition, the human forces in Germany have found that Depleted Uranium hurts monsters pretty bad, and rounds containing ''still-radioactive'' Uranium actually keep them from using their supernatural healing abilities. It has also been discovered that the "running water" weakness of [[Our Vampires Are Different|Rifts' Vampires]] is pretty liberal, and that even a ''Super-Soaker(tm)'' is a lethal weapon against them.
* ''[[D 20 Modern|d20 Modern]]'''s Urban Arcana has a lot of this; a monster is almost as likely to have a weakness to Elvis paraphernalia as, say, holy water.
** Urban Arcana IS Post Modern Magik. You can send spells by e-mail. There are magic paint jobs for cars. The book is a source of plenty of amusement from the sheer incongruity of magic and technology. You can shoot [[Healing Shiv|Bullets of Cure Light Wounds]].
** There is a spell that makes Traffic lights go green for you and make taxis arrive in 1 round (among other things).
* ''[[Unknown Armies (Tabletop Game)|Unknown Armies]]'' plays the whole Post Modern Magik thing to the hilt (it even has a source book by that name). In the game, magick doesn't arise out of a certain religion or belief system -- rather, it arises out of doing something that ''shouldn't'' work and ''making'' it work, usually with extremely risky results. Certain magical schools include: Epideromancy, the ability to control flesh by wounding yourself; Videomancy, the ability to rewrite reality by obsessively watching television programs; Entropomancy, the ability to manipulate probability by doing [[Jackass (TV)|Jackass-level]] things; Dipsomancy, one of the more versatile schools of magick, powered by alcoholism; and Pornomancy, the ability to control people and their emotions by performing ritual sex acts copied from a magical porno tape.
** ''Unknown Armies'' takes the notion of Post Modern Magik a step further than this -- instead of just finding small, modern innovations in archaic magic, the game makes a point of stating that what is considered to be "traditional" magic is obsolete. Magic-users who practice antiquated forms of occultism are shown to have fairly minor abilities when compared to what the postmodern magicians can bring to bear... until they manage to dig up the right ritual.
* This is pretty much the entire concept of ''[[GURPS (Tabletop Game)|GURPS]] Technomancer'', hence the name. Examples include television sets being used as [[Crystal Ball|Crystal Balls]], plastic golems, magical production lines, spells that do everything from deleting commercials on TV to making someone get a busy signal every time he calls you and even smart bombs driven by the pilot possessing a rat in the bomb with a little joystick!
** The only reason why magic exists in the setting is due to a scientist working on the Trinity nuclear tests unwittingly closing a necromatic ritual by saying "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" which then turned the mushroom cloud into the "Hellstorm" - an everlasting tornado that spews mana into the world.
** Russia also detonates their own bomb over Antarctica, leading to a second, large hellstorm (now blanketing the entire world in mana) which causes the local penguins to become sapient magic users with a hive mind, their own technology and the ability to transform humans into hive-mind penguins.
** One clever use of magic in the setting is that [[The Fair Folk|"seelie"]] sightings fill the role of UFO's step for step. Strange lights in the night sky? Seelies. Missing time? Kidnapped by seelies. Encounters with odd humanoids? Seelies.
* In ''[[Mage: The Ascension (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Ascension]]'', the Virtual Adepts and Sons of Ether (computer geeks and mad scientists, respectively) are known for technomagic, as is the Technocracy (though they'd laugh derisively and/or do unpleasant things to you if you called their "science" magic). [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Tabletop Game)|Elsewhere]] in the [[Old World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|Old World of Darkness]], the Glass Walkers tribe of werewolves, urban-oriented tribe that they are, also deal extensively with technology spirits.
* Pretty much the entire [[New World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|NWoD]] operates like this. [[Werewolf: The Forsaken (Tabletop Game)|Werewolves]] (and mages) can have dealings with technology-spirits. ''[[Hunter: The Vigil (Tabletop Game)|Hunter: The Vigil]]'' has the Cheiron Group, whose MO is to butcher supernatural creatures and [[Body Horror|stitch the remains to their operatives]]. ''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters (Tabletop Game)|Geist]]'' has Mementos, supernatural artifacts charged with the power of death, which can be literally anything, from an animal's skull or Vlad Tepes' sword, to a '68 WV Beetle or the jacket Elvis died in.
** [[Mage: The Awakening (Tabletop Game)|In Mage: the Awakening]], the Free Council are the [[Spiritual Successor|Spiritual Successors]] to the Adepts. Incidentally, in the fan-made ''[[Genius: The Transgression (Tabletop Game)|Genius: The Transgression]]'', this means that the Free Council are the few mages that can get along with [[Mad Scientist|Geniuses]], and perform hasty swaps whenever one is mistaken for the other.
** In ''[[Vampire: The Requiem (Tabletop Game)|Vampire: The Requiem]]'', vampire show blurred faces in mirrors, as well as on photographs and any kind of camera unless they make an effort of will to be seen clearly. One sourcebook has an in-character essay from a vampire who says that the [[Masquerade]] will likely be broken any day now, as camera phones are fucking ''everywhere''.
* Nearly any ''[[Munchkin (Tabletop Gamegame)|Munchkin]]'' game, no matter what the setting is, will include anachronistic weaponry. Such as a [[BFG]] in ''Munchkin Cthulhu'', or the ever-popular Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment in the original ''Munchkin''.
* In ''[[Scion (Tabletop Game)|Scion]]'', you play the modern children of the gods and have relics that are tied to you and either have a unique property or let you channel your own power. The player is expected to craft a legend around his relics.
** One of the example characters, a son of Thor, has a huge hand gun the hammer of which is made from a piece of Mjolnir. Also, in his demi-god and god incarnations, this character's muscle car can fly and, if covered with a slip cover, will be completely repaired of all damage the next day in a manner analogous to his father's goats.
** A number of titanspawn are... updated. The Centaurs are a biker gang [[Body Horror|surgically attached to their bikes]] by a demented Scion, while Scylla is an oil rig whose "heads" are its former crew. One adventure hook given involves a Gorgon getting into the cosmetics business and selling makeup containing a small amount of its blood (which [[The Virus|turns women into medusae]]).
* A fair bit of this is present in ''[[Deadlands (Tabletop Game)|Deadlands]]'', since any item that in some way is part of a legend of any kind becomes magical. For example, Wyatt Earp's badge is a shield against outlaw bullets but disables the wearer from ever turning down a request for help, and the gun that killed Wild Bill Hickok does [[For Massive Damage|extra damage]] when used to shoot someone from behind, but will inevitably make the wielder mean as a rattler.
 
 
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** ''Undefined Fantastic Object'' begins with the characters thinking that the sudden appearance of [[Flying Saucer|UFOs]] is connected to the [[wikipedia:Seven Lucky Gods|Seven Gods of Fortune]]. The truth is actually far stranger: they were created by the [[wikipedia:Nue|Nue]].
* ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' has plenty of this, with Dante shooting enchanted bullets, shotgun blasts and grenades as readily as he swings an enchanted sword.
* Most of the ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' games have the main character using a specially-programmed personal computer to communicate with and summon [[Mons|demons]]. The ''[[Devil Survivor (Video Game)|Devil Survivor]]'' version explicitly notes that it is preforming the various "traditional" rituals on its own.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' is set in a classic [[Medieval European Fantasy]] world, but also features a physics simulation that is realistic in most non-magical respects. This causes side effects that put it firmly in [[Post-Modern Magik]].
** Magical diseases follow the same contagion rules as mundane ones, making it possible for a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] to infect your fort even when nobody's been bitten, if somedwarf wears a tainted tunic.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court (Webcomic)|Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' normally keeps magic and technology separate, even though two of the science teachers are practicing magicians. They probably want to avoid incidents like the one with the shadow-possessed robot.
** Recent revelations show this ''definitely'' hasn't always been the case- there's a large room full of functional "robots" with no moving or electrical parts, yet which rely on socketed microchips.
** And now it doesn't, since magic is being used ''as'' a branch of technology, connected to computers.
* ''[[Dragon Tails]]'' goes along a similar line of reasoning as [[Buffy]] vs. the Judge. A malevolent legendary creature's only documented weakness involves mirrors and moonlight, but it turns out to have an undocumented weakness to rocket launchers.
** Also, a Gorgon's stare doesn't work if you look at it through a sniper scope and a stinger missle can take out a phoenix before it does the whole "ashes" thing.
* In ''[[Order of the Stick]]'', Belkar uses a sheet of lead to block a paladin's "Detect Evil" ability, explicitly comparing it to [[Superman (Comic Book)|Superman]]'s [[X-Ray Vision]]. In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', which OOTS parodies, the detect spells can be blocked by a thin sheet of lead, 2 inches of wood, or a foot of dirt.
** In a later strip, Redcloak summons titanium and chlorine elementals.
{{quote| '''Redclock:''' It's not my fault everyone else limits themselves to four elementals. Some of us got passing grades in chem. I mean, fire shouldn't even count. It's a chemical reaction. They aren't called "reactionals," you know.<br />
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'''Torg:''' Proves my point. In the new millenium you'll be able to sell your soul in a nanosecond! But wouldn't it be easier to just email him?<br />
'''Riff:''' Yes! Spam Satan! }}
* ''[[Xkcd (Webcomic)|Xkcd]]'': ''Time passes differently in [[The Chronicles of Narnia|Narnia]], [http://xkcd.com/821/ so by putting the CPU and storage for my machine there, I was able to run through the Folding@Home and SETI@Home databases in about an hour.]"
 
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
* In the novel ''[[John Dies Atat the End]]'', two college dropouts become freelance [[Action Hero|Action Heroes]] after a run-in with a supernatural drug lets them see the paranormal. Their fight against unholy horrors includes the use of traditional weapons like crucifixes and holy water, along with modern innovations like [http://www.testamints.net/ Testamints] and, in a pinch, a Bible bound to a baseball bat with electrical tape.
* Done a lot in the [[Whateley Universe]]. Demons and devils exist, but a tough enough mutant can fight them. The mutant Ecto-Tek hawks devises which can stop or even kill Weres, but are harmless to humans. Carmilla and Fey have specifically talked about devisers and whether that counts as modern magic.
** And in "Christmas Elves", when Hekate wants to make sure that Fey cannot escape, she has the requisite magic circle ''welded'' into the (metal) floor of the base she's using.
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** The system here was basically written so this trope could be had fun with; magic in the setting ''must'' have a loophole of some kind to work at all, so wizards from ye olden times dealt with their requirment of a weakness by making their loopholes seemingly impossible...but modern technology can do quite a bit of things that were considered impossible centuries ago.
** How to fight against a malevolent fairy? With iron-plated robots!
* In one episode of ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures (Animation)|Jackie Chan Adventures]]'', Uncle gets a fax machine, but doesn't understand it and tries to exorcise it. But, we find out at the end, he can cast spells over the phone just fine, despite his catchphrase that "magic must defeat magic" (apparently technology can still assist).
* In ''[[The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Animation)|Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes]]'', while battling the Enchantress and the Executioner, Iron Man's suit is damaged, Giant Man is out, and Wasp is caught by the Enchantress. When Hulk arrives and breaks the Enchantress' concentration. Thor powers up Mjolnir's thunder magic.
{{quote| '''Enchantress:''' Your magic is nothing against mine.<br />
'''Thor:''' You are not my target, witch!<br />
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