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{{trope}}
{{quote|''When first spontaneously catapulted into another era, a simple [[Newspaper Dating|glance at a nearby news vendor]] (whether [[Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids|robotic]] or [[Street Urchin|lovable suspendered urchin]]) should suffice to pinpoint the date. There is no need to walk up to a stranger, shake them by the shoulders, and say "The year, man! What YEAR is it?!".''|[http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num{{=}}491 tailsteak.com], "Basic Time Travel Etiquette"}}
{{quote|'''Stewie:''' ''"Now we just got to figure out where we are."''
'''Brian:''' ''"Or WHEN we are."''
'''Stewie:''' ''"[[Lampshade Hanging|Oh, that's such a douche time traveler thing to say.]]"''
|''[[Family Guy]]''}}
Damnation, you've traveled through time and have no clue when you've ended up! How are you to ascertain what time period you're in, or where you are? Surely you can't just ask a random passer-by—they would think you mad!
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Note that time travel is not always necessary to invoke this trope. A long and agonizing prison sentence in the dungeons of the Evil Empire, the end of the world as we know it, or just plain old amnesia can do it.
Sometimes the trope namer question is used to indicate that something (or [[Disco Dan|someone]]) is [[Deader Than Disco|behind the times]], [[Nostalgia Filter|clinging to the past]], or [[Popularity Polynomial|suddenly popular again]]. See also [[Fan of the Past]] and [[Born in the Wrong Century]].
{{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.
== Comic Books ==
== Comics ==▼
* In a [[Marvel]] UK ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' story, when Galvatron travels back in time to 1986, he asks this question of a passing human. The human answers before running off in terror.
* In ''[[The Mighty Thor]]'' #371, a time-travelling lawman appears out of thin air and asks a bystander "What's the date, citizen?" He has to ask a second time, less politely, before the bystander pulls himself together enough to reply.
== Fan Works ==
* In the ''[[Firefly]]''/''[[Doctor Who]]'' crossover fanfic ''[[The Man With No Name (fanfic)|The Man with No Name]]'', the Doctor spends much of the story confused about where/when he is and eventually simply asks. It does nothing to help get the ''Serenity'' crew to think he isn't completely bonkers.
* Played with in the ''[[Drunkard's Walk]]'' "Steplet" [http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dw-tmods.shtml ''The Melancholy of Douglas Sangnoir'']: When asked by [[Haruhi Suzumiya]] if he is a time traveler, Doug replies, "That depends on what year it is."
* Appears in ''[[Terminator]]'', although questioning under gunpoint is required to receive the (incomplete) answer.
** The questioned police officer, whom Kyle Reese has just disarmed, gives him the date and day of the week, but balks and looks confused when Kyle demands to know the year.
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'''Willie Loomis:''' 1972.
'''Barnabas Collins:''' "1972"? }}
== Literature ==
* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''[[
** Later in the story Dibbler (who is not a time traveller) asks him what year it is.
* The main character of the novel ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]'' time-travels involuntarily, and ends up disoriented in other times so often that friends and family close enough to know about his condition will sometimes tell him the year before he has a chance to ask.
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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 the ''[[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!"
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[The Scarlet Citadel]]" Pelias asks [[Conan the Barbarian]] this, and realizes it's been ten years, which explains his lack of coherency.
* Inverted in Lawrence Block's ''Tanner on Ice'', when Evan Tanner is perfectly sure of what year it is—1972—except that thanks to a Swedish agent (long story) who turned him into a [[Human Popsicle]], he's wrong by a quarter of a century.
* ''[[The Eyre Affair]]:'' Thursday and Bowden stop a temporal rift by driving into it, and after re-emerging they ask mission control what year it is. Doubly subverted: not only does Chrono-Guard understand the question exactly (because dealing with temporal anomalies is their job), they are so jaded that they tell Thursday a ridiculously exaggerated date, just to mess with her head.
* Averted in book seven of ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]''. When Bobby asks passers-by on Quillan about things absolutely anyone would know, their response is to back away slowly.
== Live
* ''[[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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** This also happened at the end of this series's [[Groundhog Day Loop]] episode. The ''Enterprise'' asked the ship it had been crashing into what year it was. Subverted somewhat because the ''Enterprise'' already knew, from a time-base beacon, how long they'd been trapped; they wanted to know how long the ''other'' ship (which was painfully obsolete) had been in Groundhog Day.
** And in the final episode, Picard bounces between his past, present, and future self via Q, and the first scene(repeated towards the end) has him approaching Worf and Troi and asking for the date. A confused Worf gives the stardate.
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]
* Gotten around in ''[[Sliders]]'', where the Professor would ask people to settle a bet, in a tone that sounded like he already knew the incredibly obvious answer.
* Used in two episodes of ''[[Journeyman]]''.
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Seven Days]]''. The hero finds himself in a civil war battle, which is far further back than the one week the time machine can go. He grabs someone and asks, "What year is this? 1861?" The guy responds, "Dude, what are you talking about?" The hero realizes he just landed in the middle of a reenactment.
* Desmond on ''[[Lost]]'' starts down this road because of his time jumping.
** 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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* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': Asked by {{spoiler|The commander of [[Unstuck in Time|Babylon 4]]}} as soon as he is told where Sinclair and Garibaldi came from.
* Played for laughs in the episode of ''[[Monk]]'' where Sharona, his original assistant, came back. When she arrived, Adrian was rinsing his eyes with water to get the dust out following a vacuum-cleaner accident. When he saw her instead of his current assistant, he rinsed his eyes again and then asked her what year it was.
== Video Games ==
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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
== Web Animation ==
* In ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20111228235845/http://www.filmcow.com/thecloaknew.html The Cloak]'', the disembodied head of Robert Mitchum uses this phrase, despite not actually having traveled through time.
== Web Comics ==
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* [[Fans|What is]] [[Unusual Euphemism|the darwinfisting]] [http://www.faans.com/facing-the-future-4-of-15/ date?!]
== 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}}.▼
== Western Animation ==
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'''Kid:''' Uh, 2008.
'''Time Traveller:''' ''(laughs)'' Good luck buddy! ''(portal and traveller both disappear)''. }}
▲== 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}}.
== Real Life ==
* Real Life (sort of): [https://web.archive.org/web/20131220215013/http://www.dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_045.html Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day] (bottom of the page) got casual results to questions like this. The bystander may think you're crazy, but they'll still answer your questions.
* Back when people used to write checks (and dinosaurs roamed the earth) this kind of thing happened in early January.
** Huh? I wrote a check yesterday... what year is this again?
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Exposition]]
[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
[[Category:Stock Phrases]]
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