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Beware: Many sci-fi settings that aren't [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|harder than diamond]] can become this if you think about it too hard.
Compare [[Adventure-Friendly World]], [[Anachronism Stew]], [[Culture Chop Suey]], [[Urban Fantasy]], and [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]]. [[Technology Levels]] is what this trope averts. As well as [[Medieval European Fantasy]], of course.
{{examples}}
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** And now we have flat-screen TV monitors and speakers made using snails.
** Also the Marines and the World Government have better tech than most every other place simple because they do not want other people to be able to challenge them. So they keep all of their inventions out of public hands because they know that pirates will use it against them if they can. Dr. Vegapunk also works for the Marines and he is more than likely the best scientist in the world by far.
* ''[[Kino's Journey
* In ''[[Getter Robo|New Getter Robo]]'', the Getter Team find themselves transported back to the Heian era, and are quite surprised to find Samurai fighting the Oni with guns, tanks, and ''airships.'' It's suggested by Hayato that their arrival, which deposited each of them at different points in a 2-year period and the robot itself long enough ago to be recorded on scrolls as a fable, somehow screwed up the time line.
* ''[[Black Butler]]'' is explicitly set in the Victorian era, complete with Queen Victoria and Arthur Conan Doyle both making appearances. [[Fridge Logic|But television and video games are referenced.]]
* Ancient Belka of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' is depicted in this manner based on flashbacks, showing a medieval-like era [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_shoujo_lyrical_nanoha_vivid/v01/c006/ with castles standing tall], [https://web.archive.org/web/20200122143938/http://www.mangatoshokan.com/read/Mahou-Shoujo-Lyrical-Nanoha-ViVid/Solelo/10/4 knights clashing sword against sword in the rain]... [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_senki_lyrical_nanoha_force/v01/c000/ and a sky littered with starships preparing to go on an interdimensional war].
* ''[[D.Gray-man]]'' supposedly takes place in the late 19th century, but the Black Order has everything from computers to giant robots.
* None of you have Referenced ''[[Gintama]]'' yet. The Post-Edo Period, with all its kimonos and wooden houses, houses literal aliens and time-space warp gate technology. Justified in that [[
* [[Word of God]] from the [[Berserk]]erverse admits that there is some armor and items that do not belong in the medieval setting, but said that he didn't go ''that'' far {{spoiler|*cough*[[Arm Cannon|armcannon]]thatturnsintoacrossbow*cough*}}. Miura simply said:
{{quote|"[[Rule of Cool|I simply like things that look cool]]."}}
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* ''[[Super Atragon]]'': Modern mach 2 fighters and their missiles could not scratch the enemy's advanced weaponry. A fictional, WWII-style, seaplane armed with nothing but machine-guns could swat down several before being damaged.
* Most of the car designs in [[Red Line]] are bizarre, futuristic, and/or downright aerodynamically impossible but otherwise nothing like you'd see today...except for JP's custom gold plated, pimped out Trans-Am. It's the smallest thing on the track.
* The borderline-surrealist environment that is the setting of ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' features phonographs, reel-to-reel players and ''cell phones'' being used by the characters. In a flashback that may be the most trippy scene in the story up to the point at which it occurs, villagers dressed in modern business attire and wielding pitchforks and swords demand entry to a barn, in which a
* In ''[[The Borrower Arrietty]]'', Haru uses a modern flip-style cell phone that easily fits in her hand. Yet the house where she works at has a rotary-dial landline phone in working order as well! Makes it difficult to determine when exactly does this movie take place.
* This is a deliberate point in [[Mushishi]]. The time period is kept vague, and Ginko uses rather advanced technology for a place where people all dress in kimonos.
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** Oracle (the former Batgirl crippled by the Joker and current organizer of the [[Birds of Prey]]) plays with this. In theory, she could have the use of her legs back instantly with the tech that the JLA and Batman have available. She refuses to use it, however, until it is available to everyone.
** Like many things, [[Watchmen]] deconstructs this trope a bit: Dr. Manhattan and others actually invent a ton of things that change the world. Cars are now electric, eliminating the need for gasoline powered vehicles, and among other things Rorschach's constantly shifting mask is an invention of Dr. Manhattan's designed originally as just an ornate dress.
* [[Pre
** This mostly just justifies why the Kryptonians didn't travel the galaxy as Supermen once they escaped the light of their red sun. In theory, if they had gotten far enough away, they could simply continue travelling without the need for spaceships.
* [[Marvel Comics]] is guilty of this as well. [[Iron Man|Stark Industries]] have technology that really should have revolutionized the world by now, SHIELD have jetpacks and spaceships (technically, SWORD has the spaceships, but whatever), [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Charles Xavier]] has a global surveillance system (mutant only), Henry Pym has his shrinking particles, and of course, [[Reed Richards Is Useless]].
** This huge waste of world changing technology is noted as one of Pym's "sins" in Paradise X since Pym could have saved many more lives by adapting his technology to industry or health technology rather than using it to beat up criminals.
** Even before the [[Marvel Civil War]], [[Iron Man|Tony Stark]] tried letting the U.S. government use some low-powered suits of [[Powered Armor]] a few times. Inevitably, the armor ended up getting used for purposes that were evil or stupid and Tony ended up regretting the decision.
* ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'''s been going since [[The Fifties]] and the Korean War, so Beetle and his unit wear Korea-era uniforms, drive Jeeps, and use old-fashioned rifles. In more recent strips, there are computers, microphone headsets, modern-style golf, and other modern technology, but the 50s tech has never gone away.▼
* Nävis, the protagonist of the French comic series ''[[Sillage]]'', lives in a treehouse inside a sort of biosphere spaceship, presumably because she grew up in a jungle and likes her home feeling close to nature.
* ''[[The Trigan Empire]]'' has supersonic planes and swords. Guns exist, but haven't made swords and spears obsolete, for some reason.
* ''[[2000 AD]]'' strip ''[[Nemesis the Warlock]]'', intergalactic spacecraft, [[Humongous Mecha]] and swords and battle axes.
* ''[[Bionicle]]'' has this in spades- to the point where villagers use [[Powered Armor]] and robotic exoskeletons (and are themselves biomechanical) while living in huts and shacks on a tropical island.▼
* ''[[Flash Gordon (comic strip)|Flash Gordon]]'' joyously lives on this trope. [[Planetary Romance|Mongo]] has swords and rayguns and riding beasts and rocket ships and [[Rule of Cool|anything that would be cool]].▼
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* ''[[Naruto Veangance Revelaitons]]'' does this [[Up to Eleven|even more]] than ''[[Naruto]]'', including modern technology such as cars, guns and video game systems that are not featured in any adaptation or spinoff of Naruto.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes
* The film ''[[Wild Wild West (film)|Wild Wild West]]''has steam punk technologies such as the {{spoiler|steam powered spider mech}} and non steam punk technologies like {{spoiler|the metal collars and saw gun}}
* ''[[Superman (film)|Superman Returns]]'' adopts a glamorous style reminiscent of the '40s, while implied to be taking place not long after the events of ''Superman II''(which was set in 1980). It even says as much that it's set five years later. And then someone pulls out a camera phone.
** Not to mention the involvement of Richard Branson and Virgin Airlines.
*** [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Which were founded in 1984.]] Their presence is slightly more plausible, though still hard to justify if the film's meant to be set in '85.
* The 1996
** The original Hamlet was pretty anachronistic to begin with. [[Shakespeare]] did this a lot, probably because he thought his audience wouldn't be able to identify with the characters or the setting if he didn't include things they were familiar with.
*** Or possibly because he himself was unaware that, for instance, [[Julius Caesar|striking clocks hadn't yet been invented in Roman times]].
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* ''[[Dark City]]'' includes elements of this to reflect the fact that {{spoiler|the city's builders just kind of yanked technology off of Earth for the city's inhabitants (humans) to play with}}. The makers of the movie did this simply to enhance the [[Noir]] elements of the movie.
** It also provides hints that the city is {{spoiler|somehow displaced in time}}, which is kind of true.
* ''[[The Emperor's
* The animated movie ''[[Dragon Hill]]'' seems mostly set in a medieval setting, with a character trying to improve technological advance (such as the use of television); in the end, {{spoiler|it turns out dragons had developed a ''super computer''.}}
* The Wookiees in ''[[Star Wars]]'' use advanced lasers and holographic systems, and still live in wooden treehouses in the middle of jungles. This is one of the reasons that ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' used Ewoks instead - a technologically advanced Wookiee battle would be too expensive to create.
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* Possibly justified in ''[[Sucker Punch]]'' because much of it is in the form of fantasy/dream sequences but in the bordello scenes you still get modern music being played on vintage radios and while a vivid imagination might conjure WWI [[Steampunk]] zombies where did she come up with the [[Humongous Mecha]] piloted by Rocket. Not to mention the modern helicopter and the automatic weapons?
* By the end of ''[[Back to The Future]] Part III'', the [[Cool Car|Delorean]] becomes a product of schizo tech thanks to the upgrades and mishaps through time travel: train wheels from 1885, the time circuits rebuilt from 1955 parts, the Delorean body and flux capacitor from 1985, and Mr. Fusion and the remnants of the hover conversion from 2015.
* Vulgaria from ''[[Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]]'' suffers from this: The Baron's army includes knights in great helms, Napoleonic cavalry, and late 19th-century riflemen. In what is, by best estimate, no earlier than 1913, and might actually be the 1920s. Also, the costuming is definitely Edwardian, but the steamship, the zeppelin and the cars could conceivably be from the 1930s.
* ''[[Zork]]'' contains mostly World War 2ish-era technology that is augmented by magic, some of which uses devices that strike accord with pre-industrial paradigms.▼
== [[Literature]] ==
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* One common justification found in much science fiction is that there is so much space in space that you can find anything. Many authors use that with or without explicitly mentioning it. Poul Anderson, Andre Norton, and the writers of the Traveller RPG are just some examples.
== [[Live
* The ''[[Firefly]]''/''[[Serenity]]'' [[The Verse|Verse]] mixes starships and [[The Wild West|Wild West]] technology indiscriminately. There's a good in-Verse explanation for this: the Alliance tends to dump colonists on recently-[[terraform]]ed worlds with the bare minimum needed to survive. As well, high technology is concentrated in Alliance hands, due to the Unification War between the outer planets and the core worlds, which ended in an Alliance victory, and they have no intention of letting the outer planets rise again.
** In fact, one can actually see real Schizo Tech at work in a few locations in the series. For example, in "Heart of Gold" there's a house that looks like it would be right at home in a Western, with minimal technology, period dresses, an old-style well, and cheap newspaper-based insulation....and they have a futuristic-looking wall terminal complete with interplanetary communications.
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** "Genesis Of The Daleks" lampshades this, as it features a war between two advanced civilizations (possessing nuclear capabilities, energy weapons, and genetic engineering) which nevertheless mostly resembles [[World War Two]] (allowing the Daleks to be compared to the Nazis). This is because it is a thousand year long war, and they've quite simply run out of resources. A highly ranked soldier might still have a laser gun, but his subordinates are now reduced to gunpowder based weaponry.
* Although ''[[The Starlost]]'' was canceled ''long'' before it could have shown any, the possibility of societies with Schizo-Tech on the Earthship ARK was explicitly allowed for in the [[Series Bible]] (found [http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Misc_Bibles/The_Starlost_Bible.pdf here]):
{{quote|Each of the individual cultures inside the various environmental domes will, of course, have developed weapons consistent with their own cultures. But here too there should be not-too-subtle differences. For example, you can make a crossbow that will stop an armored personnel carrier out of a truck's leaf spring and some of the connecting rods from the steering
== [[Music]] ==
* Another mockery in ''50,000 Robot Archers'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhhKQP2ltd0] from Acid Age:
{{quote|''Archers, as far as the eye can see
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''Arrows [[Laser Blade|tipped with lasers]]
''[[Robot War|Robots on a rager]] }}
== [[Music Video]] ==▼
* [[Muse (band)|Muse]]'s ''[[Knights of Cydonia]]''. [[wikipedia:Knights of Cydonia#Music video|A thematic smorgasbord: a spaghetti western film with post-apocalyptic influence, livened with the occasional kung-fu cowboy or metal-clad maiden astride a unicorn.]]
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
▲* ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'''s been going since [[The Fifties]] and the Korean War, so Beetle and his unit wear Korea-era uniforms, drive Jeeps, and use old-fashioned rifles. In more recent strips, there are computers, microphone headsets, modern-style golf, and other modern technology, but the 50s tech has never gone away.
▲* ''[[Flash Gordon (comic strip)|Flash Gordon]]'' joyously lives on this trope. [[Planetary Romance|Mongo]] has swords and rayguns and riding beasts and rocket ships and [[Rule of Cool|anything that would be cool]].
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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** Similarly, while BattleMechs have supposedly made [[Tank Goodness|tanks]]—not necessarily combat vehicles in general, just the old twentieth-century style armored boxes with a turret—essentially obsolete centuries ago in-universe, everybody still uses them anyway. Some handwaving about how they're supposedly cheaper and easier to produce is basically canon, and of course weapons and armor have kept up with the times, but it's still like keeping prop fighters in production and actual military use long after everybody already knows how to make perfectly good ''jets''...
** Schizo-Tech comes up a lot when dealing with backwater colony worlds. A hunter might use a black powder pistol to kill a deer for dinner, then come home and cook it in a microwave.
* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' trading card game world is full of this, possibly because nobody's ever bothered to explain any of it. We are talking about a world where [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/DR04-EN242 a medieval knight] can do battle with [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/DR04-EN241 a low-orbit ion cannon] and win. That same ion cannon also greatly fears [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/SRL-EN064 duct tape.] Kaiba even demonstrated this in the anime during the Virtual Nightmare Arc, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|his Blue-Eyes White Dragon flying into space to shoot down Lecter's Satellite Cannon.]]
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' has their share. As usual.
** [[Gary Gygax]] played around with this trope a ''lot'' in his original ''[[Greyhawk]]'' home games, although most of them (mostly imported from Earth or found in crashed spaceships) got left out in later releases for that campaign setting.
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* Conventional technology in ''[[Exalted]]'' is mostly around middle-to-late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. But those with the needed skills can create a hyper-precision wristwatch with perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset calculator, moon phase display, and the functional equivalent of high resolution GPS as a ''minor [[Magitech|tool]].''
** Even without the inventors, Creation still has a variable tech level, ranging from cities where a few guards ''may'' have [[Fantasy Gun Control|firewands]] and there's a medieval level civic works thing going on, to cities like Chiaroscuro where the rich quarters have elevators and a functional equivalent of electricity, to the relative metropoli of the Blessed Isle.
* The world of Alexander Athanatos from ''[[GURPS]]: Bio-Tech'' is mainly in the Iron Age yet capable of producing genetic hybrids thanks to Hippocrates triggering a revolution in medical science.▼
* ''[[Crimson Skies]]'' is an [[Alternate Universe]] setting where the [[Divided States of America|United States of America broke up]] and the successor states are plagued by [[Sky Pirate|air pirates]]. It regularly features propeller driven aircraft armed with magnetic rockets in addition to zeppelins armed with remote controlled gun turrets and rocket launchers. The Xbox adaption, ''High Road To Revenge,'' features a [[A Nazi by Any Other Name|German Fascist Group]] called ''[[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|Die Spinne]]'' who have Tesla weapons and a weather control device. This series is set in the 1930's.
* The ''[[Space 1889]]'' RPG was all about this trope. Though most of the weapons described in it are either historically-accurate late XIX-century weaponry or very rare [[Steampunk]] inventions. Martians use rather primtive weapons but they are, all in all completely different civilization.
* Naturally, ''[[Shadowrun]]'' picks up this ball and runs with it. Even disregarding the ''[[Cyberpunk]]''-meets-magic setting, there are weapons like ''[[Katanas Are Just Better|katanas]]'' and ''[[BFS|claymores]]'' to go with their assault rifles and grenades. [[Vibroweapon|Vibro-swords]] are higher tech, but... still swords.
* ''[[Traveller]]'' has it reasonably well justified; there is a lot of space in, well, space and some stuff never gets to some planets. Also there have been a large number of disasters in the Traveller history. And even those from high tech cultures like to [[Good Old Ways|go retro]] on occasions, like using swords when they fight a [[Duel to the Death]].
* The world of Yrth, setting of ''[[GURPS Banestorm]],'' is a vaguely-medieval fantasy world like many others, except that people from Earth occasionally get transported there and stranded. [[The Powers That Be]] suppress gunpowder, but many minor technologies and concepts have become common, including the germ theory of disease, some experiments in vaccination, heliocentric astronomy with elliptical orbits, the modern novel, stagecoaches with suspensions, sloops and brigs, fingerprinting, and the use of perspective in art.▼
* ''[[New Horizon]]'' was colonized by humans with advanced technology... and low resources. Thus, while every town has touches of modern inventions - a few computers, a [[Hollywood Cyborg|Promethean or two,]] the ever present [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|Wafans]]—the setting as a whole generally features more frontier-level technology, like flintlocks and rifles.
* In ''[[Fading Suns]]'' most advanced technology is prohibited or restricted by the Church following the fall of the Second Republic, though it's not always enforced, particularly in weapons tech. For example, a militia man on a backworld may have a laser, while his wife still cleans the shirts on the rocks by the stream. As noted on [http://fadingsuns.org/ fan site], there are several good reasons for this:
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*#* If you don't know what you face, a safer strategy is to use expensive assets only when you must, or for tipping the scales at a critical point. If a small expendable force is beaten, shrug and call it "a reconnaissance skirmish". A column of low-tech infantry reinforced with SMG-toting shielded knights can be bombed/strafed by planks-and-tarp planes, though targets will scatter and most shots will miss; a jet bomber with laser guided bombs will do a better job. However, choosing the cheap easily produced option means the attacker's losses will be much less crippling in case said column happens to include support troops with MANPAD. Same deal with land/sea vehicles and mines.
*#* Conversely, the great advantage of House Decados was superior spy network - ''knowing'' what exactly and where they will face allows to at least not lose in [[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors]].
* The technology in ''[[The Splinter]]'' covers everything from early medieval weapons to impossibly advanced, essentially magical devices. The core rulebook includes repeating crossbows, monofilament razor-wire launchers, steam-punk Gatling guns, automatic shotguns, advanced underwater laser pistols, heavy insanity rays, blade-wands, disintegrator pistols, directional nukes, and about fifty types of old-
* ''[[GURPS]]'' has several examples among the in-house settings:
▲** The world of Alexander Athanatos from ''
▲** The world of Yrth, setting of ''[[GURPS Banestorm]],'' is a vaguely-medieval fantasy world like many others, except that people from Earth occasionally get transported there and stranded. [[The Powers That Be]] suppress gunpowder, but many minor technologies and concepts have become common, including the germ theory of disease, some experiments in vaccination, heliocentric astronomy with elliptical orbits, the modern novel, stagecoaches with suspensions, sloops and brigs, fingerprinting, and the use of perspective in art.
** ''GURPS International Super Teams'' (AKA ''IST''), a [[Superhero]] setting firmly planted somewhere between "gritty" and "four-color", averts the usual comic book implementation by having high technology developed by studying metahumans and their powers. For instance, it has practical large-scale fusion power in the early 1980s, high-energy-density power cells in the 1970s and computer technology a good thirty years in advance of our time line.
▲* ''[[Bionicle]]'' has this in spades- to the point where villagers use [[Powered Armor]] and robotic exoskeletons (and are themselves biomechanical) while living in huts and shacks on a tropical island.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* Despite being set during the warring states period of Japan,'' [[Sengoku Basara]]'' has Honda Tadakatsu, a giant cyborg gundam-samurai combination.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' sports this to a degree. The game is set somewhere in the 1960's but there are still Teleporters, invisibilty watches, mechanic limbs and automatic gun turrets.
** Recent{{when}} updates have introduced laser cannons, high-tech sniper rifles, projectile-destroying zappers and a handful of [[And Your Reward Is Clothes|hats and costume items]] that far exceed the technology of the time. Many of these items are the result of a crossover promotion with ''[[Deus Ex:
* ''[[Dragon Age]]'' has elements of this. Most of the world is still in the medieval ages, but the Qunari have got ironclad warships, cannons, and psychosis-inducing gas.
* The technology of the humans ''[[Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds]]'' is mostly in line with 1898 England with some acceleration like tanks, but then there's stuff like the [[Drill Tank|tunneling track layer]].
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* ''[[The Sims]] 3'' takes place 50 years prior to ''The Sims 1'' and it does seem to be going for a 50s feel in many respects (some of the clothing for example).. But it's also a [[Cosmetically Advanced Prequel]] full of late 2000s technology, clothing, and [[Society Marches On|social views]].
* Most of the setting of ''[[Monster Girl Quest]]'' is the standard medieval fantasy world, albeit with gunpowder (and hence bombs and cannons). Then there's the various [[Mad Scientist|Mad Scientists]] who have access to genetic engineering, cyborgs and digital computers (including one artificial intelligence).
▲* ''[[Zork]]'' contains mostly World War 2ish-era technology that is augmented by magic, some of which uses devices that strike accord with pre-industrial paradigms.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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