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What Year Is This?: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' example: While fixing the FUBAR Yuki created due to emotions, Kyon uses her [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Emergency Escape Program]] to get out. He lands in summer, feeling extremely warm in his sweater (it was winter then), and he realizes he has travelled through time. His first instinct is to find out where he is, followed by when is it. And since nobody would feel happy about being assaulted by an apparently delusional guy in a winter coat, he decides on [[Newspaper Dating]] instead.
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* Happens in [[Connie Willis]]' novel ''[[Doomsday Book]]''. Slightly inverted, because the character had purposely gone back in time, and had been in the past for several weeks in what she thought was 1320, but turned out to be {{spoiler|1348, when the Black Death reached England.}}
* A non-time travel example that may also be the [[Ur Example]] occurs in ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'': during his time in prison, Dantes has lost track of the time passed, and so when he escapes he needs to ask What Year Is This? to the sailors who pick him up from the sea.
* The [[Animorphs]] ask a French knight this question in ''Elfangor's Secret.'' He looks at them like they're mad before humoring them. Later, they get smarter and use the newspaper trick, but since Rachel had already morphed an elephant in front of them, subtlety was pretty much a moot point.
* Occurs and played with in [[Warhammer
* In ''[[Lest Darkness Fall]]'', Martin Padway finds himself transported to Rome in 535 AD. He tries to ask people the date in his shaky Latin, and at first gets the year in the old Roman calendar then has to ask how many years since Christ was born to get the proper year.
* A version where it's not the year, but with the same "How could anyone not ''know'' that?" factor - [[A Christmas Carol|Ebeneezer Scrooge]] asking an urchin what day it is. "Why, it's Christmas Day, sir!"
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': The Doctor did this in far too many episodes to count. Answers like the one given above usually pointed him in the direction of his latest adventure in the process.
** Once the Fifth Doctor asked an English medieval peasant this question, and in an amusing nod to the times, the man's reply was something along the lines of "Wait, wait, I know this.."
** Less common in the new series: the Doctor and his companions prefer to determine the year by [[Newspaper Dating|picking up newspapers]] or otherwise deducing it from the environment. When he tries this trick straight (in "The Long Game"), he is mocked. Luckily to him, he happens to be talking to news reporters, who, after his insistence, have him [[Mistaken for Special Guest]] and thus provide all the exposition he requires.
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** What happens a few hours later that year is [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|absolutely not dull]].
* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', though Sam tries to be subtler about it.
* Spoofed in ''[[The Fast Show]]'', with a space-suited character who runs into ordinary rooms and frantically shouts "What year is it? Who's the President?" and then runs out before he gets a reply.
* The series finale of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' opened with Captain Picard asking this
* Also in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', the last episode of season one "The Neutral Zone" had a guest character (who had just been woken from cryonic freeze) ask it; Data replied that it was 2364—the Trek universe's first mention of the actual year.
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** And {{spoiler|when Ben arrives in Tunisia, apparently by a jump in both space and time from the island in early January 2005, he asks for the date. When told it's October 24th, he says, "200...5?" and is told, with only a slightly baffled stare, that yes, it's 2005.}}
** Locke is later forced to ask Richard the same question, in 1954.
* Sam Tyler to Gene Hunt in ''[[Life On Mars]]''. (Answer: 1973. Almost dinnertime. He's 'aving 'oops.)
** The American version: ("1973, or, as our Chinese Brethren call it, the Year of the Fist!")
* A fellow in a Brazilian show had a variation of this—he'd ask what the current composition of the national soccer team was.
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* This exact phrase is used by Nigel in ''[[The Lost Crown]]'', because so much of Saxton's architecture, technology, and even its people seem to date from an earlier time. And not even the ''same'' time, at that.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII-2]]'', in which the playable characters Serah and Noel travel throughout time, but the question often isn't unexpected, because people know that there are strange things going on with time and in some cases also know of the fact that they're time travelers. Serah, however, gives the exact line in a dream version of New Bodhum in The Void Beyond and only earns an insinuation that's she's gone loopy, because it's a fantasy world in which she never started a time travel journey.
* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
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== Web Original ==
* One piece of 4chan [[Memetic Mutation|copy pasta]] advice for [[Instant Seduction]] involves disappearing for a week, growing a beard, getting a tan(including wedding ring tan line), and being found "semi-conscious" in the target's house, [[Naked on Arrival|naked]] and injured, demanding to know the answer to this question. Somehow, [[Coitus Ensues]].
* Played straight when Team One in [[Suburban Knights]] released Chuck Jaffers from a magic book. When he asked what year it was, it turns out that he had been trapped in 30 years.
* Used in ''[[Nan Quest]]'' when it's discovered that {{spoiler|people entered the hotel at vastly different times}}.
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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
[[Category:Stock Phrases]]
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