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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"[[Ancestral Weapon|It's your father's lightsaber]]. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. [[Elegant Weapon for Aa More Civilized Age|An elegant weapon for a more... civilized age]]."''|'''Obi-Wan Kenobi''', ''[[Star Wars]]''}}
 
This character [[Awesome Anachronistic Apparel|dresses in an old-fashioned manner]], uses old courtesies and practices things that have fallen by the wayside since [[Ye Goode Olde Days]]. Obviously a good man -- the writer is using his adherence to the [[Good Old Ways]] to signal it, as a convenient shorthand.
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* Played with in [[Samurai Champloo]] -- set in medieval Japan, most characters behave like it's modern day, which is the whole premise of the show. Jin, the one character who acts appropriate to the age, is remarked upon as being "old fashioned."
* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' The titular character speaks in the same way one would speak to a Japanese feudal lord (even though it's the Meiji era), and this is commented on by other characters more than once.
* [[Bartender (Manga)|Bartender]] dwells a lot on the difference between traditional cocktail bartending and modern nightclub bartending, usually to the effect of how much better the old ways are.
 
== Comic Books ==
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[I, Robot (Filmfilm)|I Robot]]'': Detective Spooner is portrayed as 'old fashioned' because he wears [[Product Placement|Converse]] and has a non-voice-activated entertainment system. His [[The Obi-Wan|mentor]] lives in a very old-school [[Big Fancy House]]. {{spoiler|In contrast, the villain is a highly futuristic-looking [[AI Is a Crapshoot|AI]].}}
** Also subverted in that {{spoiler|the other hero of the story is ''also'' a highly futuristic-looking piece of technology.}}
* ''[[Star Wars]]'': Invoked by Obi-Wan in the quote above.
* [[Saving Sarah Cain]] : Amish are kind of an Ur-example.
* ''[[Blast Fromfrom the Past]]'', stars Brendan Fraser as the son of a nuclear physicist and his wife who was born in a fallout shelter where he lived for all of his life until his parents deemed it safe(a wrongly triggered air raid siren led them to believe that nuclear war was on in the '60s, so he had never left the shelter in 35 years). Fraser's character, [[Meaningful Name|Adam]], was unfailingly polite and gentlemanly to everyone he met in the present day, to the point where the female lead(Eve, of course) found him insufferably snotty, while her gay cousin realized that Adam simply believed that that was how people should treat each other.
* ''[[Ghost Dog]]'' is entirely about this trope. The title character lives as a samurai in nineties Jersey City, working as a hitman for the mob. The film is interspersed with quotes from the ''[[HagakureThe (Literature)Hagakure|Hagakure]]'' demonstrating how Ghost Dog is doing his best to live by the code of the samurai in the modern age. {{spoiler|It doesn't go so well.}}
* ''[[Casino Royale 1967]]'' features David Niven as the original, retired James Bond, who considered spying to be a noble calling and expressed contempt for the current breed exemplified by his namesake.
 
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In [[Dorothy L. Sayers]]' [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] novel ''Gaudy Night'', the work at the university is presented as Good Old Ways, and explicitly described as a rearguard defense.
* In ''[[The Caves of Steel (Literature)|The Caves of Steel]]'' the majority of the Earth population are 'medievalists' and cling to old fashioned views like not having robots do every job and not talking in public restrooms. The main hero lampshades it, thinking about every era has it... and one day, his own times will be viewed as such.
* In William King's [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Space Wolf]] novel ''Ragnar's Claw'', Ragnar informs an inquisitor
{{quote| ''We hold with the old ways from the time of Russ. The truths do not change.''}}
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Ultramarines (Literaturenovel)|Ultramarines]] novel ''The Warriors of Ultramar'', the [[Space Marine|Space Marines]] have a weapon to deal with the tyrannid queen itself, but they explicitly say they must get to her "the old-fashioned way" -- "with flesh, blood and steel."
* In [[Ben Counter]]'s [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Galaxy In Flames'', this is the core of Keeler's appeal to Qruze "the half-heard". She repeatedly tells him that he is the only one who remembers the ideals of the Astartes. {{spoiler|When he kills Maggard to allow their escape, he is heartened because he killed him face to face, not with treachery, from far away, and tells how they used to fight that way, respecting their enemies.}}
{{quote| ''I also know that [[Good Is Old-Fashioned|your counsel is not heard because yours is the voice of a past age]], when the Great Crusade was a noble thing, not for gain, but for the good of all humankind.''}}
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* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]'s ''[[John Carter of Mars|Chessmen of Mars]]'', the ancient I-Gos is perpetually praising his days. So thorough is his admiration that he [[Turncoat|changes his loyalties]] on realizing who is [[The Hero]].
{{quote| ''Then I did not fully realize the cowardice of my jeddak, or the bravery of you and the girl. I am an old man from another age and I love courage. At first I resented the girl's attack upon me, but later I came to see the bravery of it and it won my admiration, as have all her acts. She feared not O-tar, she feared not me, she feared not all the warriors of Manator. And you! Blood of a million sires! how you fight! I am sorry that I exposed you at The Fields of Jetan. I am sorry that I dragged the girl Tara back to O-Tar. I would make amends. I would be your friend. Here is my sword at your feet.''}}
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Carpe Jugulum|Carpe Jugulum]]'', [[Old Retainer|Igor]] revives the old vampire to deal with the odious innovations of the younger generations. The witches and the mob agree that the old master had been better: he had played fair.
** In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'', Angua complains that barbaric as her father had been, he had played fair with such customs as the hunt; her brother had corrupted things.
** In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Unseen Academicals|Unseen Academicals]]'', the wizards are big on traditions, the changing of rules is justified by finding an ''old'' set of rules in the urn, and Glenda objects to mucking with the rules because football is not supposed to keep up with the times.
** In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Eric|Eric]]'', a demon grumbles about how the new King of Hell is ruining things, there was a time when the damned were not just numbers, but ''victims''.
** In yet another eample from Unseen University, the changing of the guard ceremony seems to be based on a time one of the guards lost his keys. But tradition is tradition, and "Damn, swore I just had them," etc, becomes an official part of the process.
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': Most of the people of the North (and, by extension, House Stark) worship the old gods and keep old traditions instead of having burned their Godswood and converted to worship of The Seven like the rest of Westeros. It is implied that said gods are responsible for the [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]].
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** That being said, there are some old ways that even traditionalists have attempted to toss out. The Starks, for example, have attempted to outlaw the right of first night (i.e. the right of a lord to bed a woman any smallfolk or bannerman of his wants to marry), but according to {{spoiler|Roose Bolton, it is still practiced, by the Boltons and even the Umbers, who are staunch allies of the Starks when the lord is strong}}.
* In Brian Jacques's ''[[Redwall]]'', [[Impoverished Patrician]] Squire Julian of Gingivere disdains his ramshackle estate and [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!|repels Matthias's sympathy]] because he knows nothing of loneliness or trying to preserve standards.
* [[William Shakespeare]], in "Sonnet 68", laments how things have declined: they didn't use to [[Due to Thethe Dead|rob corpses of their hair for wigs]].
* In "Scott-King's Modern Europe" by [[Evelyn Waugh]], Scott-King refuses even to consider teaching anything but classics, even though that may mean he will be out of a job.
{{quote| ''They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?"<br />
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....<br />
"If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world."'' }}
* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[The Golden Oecumene (Literature)|The Golden Age]]'', ''The Phoenix Exultant'', and ''The Golden Transcedence'', Helion and the Silver-Gray movement he helped found intensily support this to provide discipline and structure in a way that can't be enforced by law.
* [[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden]] likes to act old-fasioned, partly because he's a wizard, and partly because it annoys Murphy. This is taken [[Up to Eleven]] by some of the older supernatural entities
* In [[James Swallow]]'s [[Warhammer 40000]] story "The Returned", Tarikus and Thryn [[Handshake Substitute|shake hands "the old way" -- palm to wrist]].
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series. Villains like Lucius Malfoy uphold [[Black Magic]] and [[Fantastic Racism]] as "the old ways".
* Also inverted and Deconstructed with Resthaven in ''[[The Ear, the Eye Andand Thethe Arm]].'' It's a natural preserve of pristine beauty, and it's a very good place to live - if you're a man. If you're a girl, you can look forward to polygamy and drudgery for the rest of your life, and {{spoiler|if twins are born, one of the twins ''will'' be killed. Yes, probably the girl.}}
* [[Alice, Girl Fromfrom the Future]] features an old fashioned man who doesn't trust modern tech. That is, he refuses to use air cars, preferring the old fashioned personal wings, he doesn't like a new electronic food distribution computer installed in the zoo, insisting old fashioned robots are better (well, the computer does prove to be bugged)... and he is the only man capable of urgently repairing some advanced alien equipment.
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Leonard McCoy from ''[[Star Trek: theThe Original Series (TV)|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' both enforces and subverts this trope. He's rabidly in favor of fighting the dehumanizing effects of too much technology (especially the transporter) in favor of enjoying "the simple things in life", and yet sees "primitive 20th-century medicine" as just above trepanation, leeches, and blood-letting in its barbarity, preferring the "high tech approach" to healing.
** In general, he embraces the positive, constructive aspects of technological progress rather than the destructive or dehumanizing ones.
* Fraser in [[Due South]] is like this. He continues to be a stereotypical Mountie in a modern age. At one time he is even complimented by calling him "the old breed".
* Jacob from [[Lost]] is implied to adhere to a (possibly negative) version of this, especially in seasons 3 and 5.
* Pretty much the hat of the Minbari in [[Babylon Five5]]. Quite well drawn though [[Our Elves Are Better|less mundane]] than similar human cultures actually are in practice. Both the virtues and the faults of traditionalist cultures are well shown. Minbari, are often loyal, brave, and honorable but they can also be bigoted and vicious. Still when one sees Minbari act, one can actually belief in them and it is a tribute to the writer and perhaps the actors(Mira Furlan was a Croatian exile and might have had the advantage of being able to act what she knew to some extent).
** [[Word of God]] says that the Minbari were modeled on the Japanese. Personally the connection doesn't seem that obvious; they seem like a number of human cultures and in some ways more typical of humanity throughout history then the humans on the show which are more like modern westerners.
 
== Music ==
* "Gimme that old time religion / 'cuz it's good enough for me."
* "[[O Brother, Where Art Thou?|As I went down in the river to pray /]] studying about that ''[[Good Old Ways|good old way...]]''"
 
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Tabletop Game)|Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'', most of the tribes rely on old-fashioned melee weapons and shamanism, often frowning upon the [[Post-Modern Magik]] used by the Glass Walkers, Bone Gnawers, and other urban Garou.
** [[Justified Trope|Justified]] by that the old-fashioned weapons and spirit magic works just as well as the [[Post-Modern Magik]] of the urban tribes.
*** Unfortunately, this also leads to one of the biggest examples of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: The two tribes who were supposedly the champions of the Wyld, the spirit and force of change, were the most static and rigid, to the point where one of them was frozen in place, an evolutionary dead end, doomed to extinction ''by their own choice and statement''. The two tribes supposedly most in thrall to the Weaver, the force of stasis, were the most adaptive and flexible.
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== Webcomic ==
* Inverted in [[Girl Genius]]: For [[Town Withwith a Dark Secret|Mechanicsburg]], it's the [[Good Old Ways|Evil Old Ways]]. The Heterodynes who are usually [[Mad Scientist|Mad Scientists]] and [[Evil Overlord|Evil Overlords]] have for the last and immediate generations been [[The Hero|The Heros]]. Specifically it shows up when the grandson of the [[Old Retainer]] goes [[Squee]] over one of the security measures for the town going active.
** Meanwhile, the Jägermonsters, the [[Super Soldier]] minions of the Heterodynes who are currently banned from Mechanicsburg, are still trying to figure out what kind of Heterodyne Agatha will be, and hoping that she'll turn out to be ''vun ov de '''fun''' vuns!''
* [[The Dreamland Chronicles]]: [http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/the-dreamland-chronicles/chapter-08/page-496/ The king defends receiving humans as this trope]. Nicodemus is less than impressed.
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