Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow! Literally.

 

A good way to gauge whether or not a show takes place Twenty Minutes Into The Future: would much of the world's population at the time of filming still be alive by then?

 

== Advertising ==

* A new Volkswagen commercial has someone debating about buying a car, only to have his future self (wearing nifty [[We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future|"futuristic clothes"]]) from "13 days in the future" pop into the showroom and tell him to buy the car.

* [[Play Station 3|Kevin Butler of Sony]] greets the people of March 2010 from the "crazy" future of November 2010. Aside from declaring the success of the Playstation Move, he says that people drink their food through straws, and Kansas City won the World Series.<ref>Non-Americans and Americans who don't care about baseball - the Kansas City Royals are a notoriously terrible baseball team. Sony was being facetious, they didn't have a chance.</ref>

* The now famous "1984" ad from Apple to promote their new Macintosh during the [[Super Bowl]] of, you guessed it, 1984. The ad depicts what would happen to the world had the Macintosh not be made in time and then IBM being displayed as a Big Brother expy on a giant television screen.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''Attack of the Super-Monsters'', a memorably bad live action/anime combination, had sentient dinosaurs (played by hand puppets) returning to take over the Earth in 2000.

* ''Code E'' is set in 2017, although the only immediately recognizable difference from the actual modern day are computerized blackboards in the classrooms and computerized billboards and ads on buses. These both exist, but aren't as widespread as in the series.

* ''[[Akira]]'' begins a with a nuclear explosion in 1988 that sets off World War III. (In fact, the date of the explosion given in the movie—1988.07.16—was the date the movie premiered.)

* ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' is set in 2003 (2002 in the original). Since the show was first premiered in 2000, the anime was set 3 (4) years into the future. ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' also plays with the trope, but is set in 200X.

* Subverted in ''[[Code Geass]]'', which appears to be this trope with a dose of [[Alternate History]], and reveals the date to be in the late 2010s. The catch is, it also has an alternate ''calendar''; it actually takes place [[Twenty Minutes Into the Past]]. How they managed to jump ahead of our level of technology by about half a century is not clear.

* ''[[Accel World]]'' is set in 2046 but it doesn't seem that different from modern day Japan, aside from a few technological differences.

 

== Comic Books ==

* [[Darker and Edgier|Grim and gritty]] superhero comic ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'' took place twenty minutes into a future in which [[Batman]] has retired.

* Likewise, numerous other "grim and gritty" superhero comics influenced by ''[[Watchmen]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]''.

* ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' is set in the grim future of 1997, in a post-apocalyptic Britain ruled by Nazis. Some of the original comics used the tagline "Pray the future never needs... V For Vendetta!". The film adaptation shifts this into the near future as seen from 2006 (2020? 2027?), thinly veiled references to the Bush administration and all.

* ''Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future''. The original series (written in the 1950s and 1960s) took place in an "advanced" future starting in 1995 spanning which had Britain as the world leader of space flight; missions to Venus, Mars, Mercury and Saturn's moons (all of which had/have their own civilization) and beyond the solar system.

* Deathlok, a character in the [[Marvel Universe]], is a time-traveling cyborg from the 1990s, where civilization has been almost destroyed by nuclear war. In 1974 when the character was created, this seemed plausible, but by this point he's had more than one major [[Retcon]]. Which is a weird one. Obviously, cyborgs were not running around in [[Real Life]] in the 90's but in the [[Marvel|Marvel Universe]], cyborgs were quite common, among other things.

* The comic strip ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' is set 122 years in an alternate future, and the character ages in real time, meaning that number never changes. It also means that as of 2009, Dredd himself has aged 32 years since his inception in 1977.

* The Highwaymen is about a pair of [[Retired Badass|retired badasses]] from the late 20th century who have to get back together for one more job in 2022.

* ''[[Commando (Comic Book)|Commando]]'' had a series set in the near future where war was effectively outlawed. Instead, nations solved their issues using virtual reality.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Seminal movie example: ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', which in the titular year had commercial spaceflight and space stations, moon bases, cryogenics, and at least two sentient computers. Oh... and [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|the Cold War]], and Pan Am and the Bell System. However, it was critically praised for realism in other things such as not having sound in space, not running the engine unless accelerating, and having flat panel screens. And a 10-minute call from the moon to the earth cost [[Blade Runner|less than $2]].

* The sequel, ''[[2010: The Year We Make Contact]],'' had a major confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union occurring back on Earth in that year.

* ''[[Bicentennial Man]]'' begins in 2005. The opening caption states, [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|"The not too distant future..."]]

* The setting of the movie ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]''. Chicago looks pretty much like here in 2008, but with sleek monorails replacing the elevated trains, [[Crystal Spires and Togas|big shiny buildings with a lot of glass and open space]], long underground highways and sleek cars with automatic pilot. ...and sentient robots everywhere.

* The experimental film ''Sweet Movie'' is set in 1984 (ten years after the film's release) and much of the plot is driven by a show where the most pure woman in the world is found. It gets weirder from there.

* ''[[Real Steel]]'' is set in the year 2020. According to the film's timeline, human boxing died out around 2014, being replaced with the more violent World Robot Boxing league. Aside from that, everything looks like present day, save for a few changes (iPhones and computers look more futuristic, referees at boxing matches were denser armor, etc.).

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' by Neal Stephenson was published in 1992, and for the timeline to work (Hiro and and Raven's fathers were WWII vets) the story would have to have occurred by sometime in the early 2000's. "The Diamond Age" seems to be set in the same universe, just a few decades after "Snow Crash".

** There are two words in ''Diamond Age'' that suggest {{spoiler|a character in common. The words? "Chiseled Spam"}}. Based on this, the events take place 50–70 years after ''Snow Crash''.

** ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]: Black Dossier'' put the book's events ''in'' 1948, allowing them to {{spoiler|show a fallen Airstrip One government ten years later}}.

* Many novels and short stories by [[Philip K. Dick]] (and the film adaptations of them, such as ''[[Blade Runner]]'', ''[[Total Recall]]'', ''[[Minority Report]]'', and ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'') are set just a decade or so in the future. [[I Want My Jetpack|He was much better at entertaining than predicting the near future.]] It's not uncommon for novels written in the 1960s and 70s that take place in the 80s and 90s to feature flying cars, androids, World Wars, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and legalized marijuana]].

* Joe Haldeman admits that setting his novel ''[[The Forever War]]'', about a deep space war to start in the far-off future of 1996, was silly in retrospect, and was done mainly so that the non-coms could be Vietnam veterans. He told any objectors to just "think of it as a parallel universe."

* The ''Dirk Pitt'' series of novels by Clive Cussler are usually set a year or two into the future, with the United States switching to metric and super A.I. computers with hot chick holograms.

** Heinlein invented the waterbed as a concept. That prevented it from being patented. He makes an amusing comment about it in his brick-sized diatribe ''Expanding Universe'' from 1980.

** The themes in the book extrapolated heavily from the 1950s "[[The Beat Generation|Beat Generation]]" subculture, which was the precursor to the counterculture movements of the '60s and early '70s. Its "Church of All Worlds" was based on elements of the neo-pagan/"New Age" mystery religions which were gaining popularity among disaffected youth of the time. Heinlein himself wrote that the book "could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right." Many prominent figures of the counterculture would refer to ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' as a major influence on their thinking and philosophy, particularly the aspects of free love, communalism, and social liberation. Beyond merely predicting the counterculture, the book helped to create it.

* ''Eagle Eye''.

* [[Word of God|According to]] [[Ayn Rand]], "the action of [[Atlas Shrugged]] takes place in the near future, about ten years from the time when one reads the book." In other words, Rand was using this trope quite intentionally. That's why the dialogue seems to go slightly out of its way to avoid referencing any specific year or century (with the possible exception of [[Meaningful Name|the Twentieth Century Motor Company]]), and why the setting's technology and sociology tend to be mildly anachronistic in a [[Steampunk]] kind of way.

* The 1982 Stephen King novel ''[[The Running Man (novel)|The Running Man]]'' takes place in the year 2025, where violent [[Game Show|GameShows]] are all the rage. Among its predictions is that by then the United States will be using New Dollars, possibly as a result of [[Ridiculous Future Inflation]].

* Carl Sagan's ''[[Contact]]'' was written in 1983 and set in the late 1990's. Sagan did not foresee the fall of the Soviet Union at the time of writing and the Soviets had a large role to play in the events. He also did not foresee the cell phone, as characters used pagers still. He did ambitiously have a character who solved the grand superunification theory (something that eludes us even today and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future)... And other human technologies that turned out to be beyond what eventuated in the late 90's, such as orbital space stations serving as retirement homes for those who wished to extend their lifespans and could afford it, and shuttle services to go between earth and station.

* ''[[Numbers]] 2: the Chaos'' was published in 2011 and takes place in 2026.

 

* The MTV sketch comedy show ''[[The State]]'' lampooned this idea with a sketch where a man wakes up in a hospital after only a short time knocked out in an accident only to find that he missed the "most exciting 15 minutes in the history of the world", and now aliens have landed and all sorts of things have changed.

* The setting of ''[[Max Headroom]]''. You can still smoke in public buildings. It's a federal offense to turn your TV off. This being cyberpunk, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-zyRlcMi4&fmt=13#t=320 there is an Internet,] though it gets called "The System", and the way it's shown to work is [[It's a Small Net After All|pretty thoroughly gonzo]]. There's no reality shows. [[Japan Takes Over the World|Japan rules the business world]]. Network news is filmed on camcorders.

* Inverted in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' in the episode "2010", where contact with an advanced civilization willing to share technology makes 2010 a much different world than it was at the time of filming. A very visible bit of [[Zeerust]] is the fashions of this 2010: taking a cue from ''[[Wild Palms]]'', President Kinsey wears an outfit that would look more at home in ''1910''.

* ''[[Space Island One]]'' was set on a space station just a hair more advanced than would be possible today.

** The prequel series ''Caprica'', set about 50–60 years prior to the main series, follows the pattern to a degree by dressing the characters in fashions reminiscent of the '40s and '50s.

** In addition to similarities in clothing, the series features other modern-day elements, such as British rifles and American HMMW-Vs.

* Bosnian rapper Edo Maajka's new music video for song Panika (Panic) is set "23 minutes after this moment", according to the Youtube description. It starts realistically, with a poor man beaten and robbed by a group of men, but then he creates a futuristic weapon and attacks the said group.

 

 

== [[Theme Parks]] ==

* The original version of Disneyland California's Tomorrowland from [[The Fifties]] was supposed to depict commercial space travel in the year "1986". Obviously, [[The Eighties]] didn't turn out that way.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Battle Tanx]]'' and its sequel, released in 1999, set in 2001 and 2006 respectively. Tanks in-game are certainly more advanced than in real life; the real-world M1 Abrams is the [[Jack of All Stats]] to things such as hovering tanks or tanks with laser cannons.

* ''[[Aerobiz]]'': The Supersonic Era of gameplay from the 1994-released Aerobiz Supersonic has the player starting in 2000. It painted a bright future of supersonic airliners and 1000+ passenger super-jumbo jets covering the globe.

* ''[[The Trail of Anguish]]'' is set in 2073, but its set at a campus that would seem perfectly at home in the early 21st century. The game's a prequel to ''[[The Perils of Akumos]]'', which is instead full-on sci-fi.

* Played with in the final content of [[World of Warcraft|Cataclysm]]. The Hour of Twilight instance and the Dragon Soul raid both take place in modern Azeroth's Dragonblight, with Deathwing and the Old Gods laying siege to Wyrmrest Temple, but are both accessed through the Caverns of Time. Also, for obvious reasons regarding Wrath's content, non-instanced Dragonblight looks exactly the same. To any character it can seem like these two instances are set 20 minutes into Azeroth's future.

 

== Webcomics ==

* The exact timeline of ''[[Zombie Ranch]]'' been kept deliberately vague (although references are made to the present day as a not-too-distant past), but a lot of the technology shown already exists in some form or is in development. There's definitely some [[Applied Phlebotinum|Phlebotinum]] at work, though, not only in the form of zombie-based miracle drugs but devices like the free floating camera drones.

* [[Shifters]] is set in the year 2034.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* The ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'', while officially set in whatever the current year happened to be, was actually this. The technology, social mores, and general feel of the setting were never really matched with [[Real Life]].

* The article presented in ''[[The First Run]]'' was set on August 25, 2023.

 

== Western Animation ==

** Plus, you can beam television shows straight to you brain.

* ''[[The Jetsons]]''. It takes place in 2062 (100 years from the day of the show's launch).

* ''[[Transformers: The Movie]]'' takes place in 2005, roughly 20 years after the original series. Does anyone remember having cars like those, wearing pimped-out space suits (whilst still on Earth), the government setting up a publicly known organization to counter alien threats, building space-craft capable of traveling entire galaxies away or riding around on their hoverboards? To be fair though, much of the technological achievements present in that universe could be chalked up to having the Autobots sharing Cybertronian technology with us if you wanna provide an excuse.

* ''[[Jonny Quest]]''. It's still set in the present day, but there is futuristic tech, like robots and personal hovercraft, and prototypes like the Parapower Ray Gun. Overlaps with [[Zeerust]] since you can tell by the dated aesthetic, but a lot of the tech featured is still in use or hasn't been made yet, such as the walkie-talkie that basically allows two-way video conferencing.

* ''[[Futurama]]'' pokes fun at this on occasion, in the fact that it takes place 1000 years later, thus the [[Couch Gag]] in the opening title claimed "YOU CAN'T PROVE IT WON'T HAPPEN!". In the first episode, Suicide Booths also had printed on them "since 2008".

** The show itself probably starts in a Twenty Minutes Into the Future setting, what with the [[Nanomachines|nanites]] and all. One episode featured a working space elevator and the flying transports used by Providence use anti-gravity to stay in the air.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Hollywood History]]

[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]