Zeerust: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|"''[[Trope Namer|Zeerust]]: the particular kind of datedness which afflicts things that were originally designed to look futuristic.''"

|''[[The Meaning of Liff]]''}}

 

 

Sometimes the datedness is a bit more subtle. It's possible that the prediction turned out to be technologically or aesthetically correct (or at least on the right track), but the prediction still fails because of [[Values Dissonance|the would-be prophet's implicit assumption that social values will be the same in the future as in his or her own time]] (as demonstrated in the page image).

 

 

Tropes commonly associated with Zeerust:

 

{{examples}}

== General ==

* A glaring example in material written before the 2000s is the lack of networked computers, email, and ubiquitous cell phones. Many authors/screenwriters bet on communications remaining difficult, expensive, and largely tied to fixed terminals. Some projects got this right better than others.

* Some authors correctly predicted that helicopters (referred to as 'copters as opposed to choppers) not [[Flying Car]]s would be common place, but not as common as they expected (they have not, for instance, replaced the family automobile).

 

* Have you ever used a phone booth with a video screen rather than just a cell phone? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8 You Will]. Many of the technologies featured in the ads did in fact come to pass, including turn-by-turn GPS, touchscreen tablets, wireless internet, and video-on-demand services—mostly in forms remarkably similar to the commercials' versions. The most out-of-date part is the assumption that AT&T would be the main carrier for all—or ''any''—of these technologies. Almost every one of those technologies exists in pretty much the form depicted in the commercial but most of them are either non-centralized or connected to the public Internet; the only way AT&T would make any money off of any of them would be as a patent holder.

** Amusingly, Face Time (a video conferencing app for the iPhone) can't even work with AT&T's ''own connection'', instead relying on an outside Wi-Fi signal. Commercials by rival T-Mobile never pass up a chance to point out this fact. Apparently, You Will talk on a phone with a video screen... AT&T just won't provide the service.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3ccJDplzs GRAB YOUR GARMIN, TAKE ON THE WOOORLD!!!]

 

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'': Practically every iteration of bears some vestiges of the era in which it was made, despite the fact that most series occur some time around the 22nd-24th Century. Noteworthy examples include the bellbottom-esque uniform pants on the 1979 original series, the 80s-style clothing in ''Gundam ZZ'' (made in 1986), or the prominence of boxy desktop computers in ''Gundam Wing'' (made in 1995).

** The majority of UC Gundam series have the ubiquitous appearance of floppy disks, even ones made during the age of Compact Discs and Laserdisc, like ''Gundam 0083'' and ''The 08th MS Team''.

** Lain doesn't take place in the future, however, but in "Present day, present time! Hahahahahaa!" I.e. some kind of alternative reality that may or may not be turned into the world that we know at the end of the show.

* Lampshaded in the 2008 anime ''[[Mnemosyne|Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne]]'', where a character in 1991 boasts extensively about the cutting-edge advanced technology of her 486 PC.

** Related, but not exactly Zeerust, The character Z-one uses Trap Cards that can be activated directly from the hand, rather than set first. The main characters all react with shock. One of said characters ''uses'' a card that can be activated from the hand.

 

* The Scott McCloud comic ''[[Zot]]'' features the world of the present day, and the [[Alternate History]] wherein every cool thing thought of in the early 20th century came true.

* DC's 1980s ''[[Star Trek]]'' comics managed a level of datedness filmed Star Trek never did. One issue showed the Starfleet Records Division, with filing cards. The show was fairly consistent in showing us that we would finally have the paperless office by the 23rd century. The [[Gold Key Comics]] were just as dated, technology extrapolated from [[The Sixties]] even though the comics were published well into [[The Seventies]].

* Deliberately invoked in ''[[Chassis]]'' which is set in an alternate 1949, where [[World War II]] never happened and there are [[Flying Car]]s.

 

* Fritz Lang's ''[[Metropolis]]'' has vid-phones, with 1920-s style handsets. Much like Le Corbusier, the cars on the elevated freeways are all Model T's. The flying taxis are a mix of antique biplanes and [[Raygun Gothic]] [[Zeppelins from Another World|zeppelins]]. It has ticker-tape machines and antique IBM devices instead of computers, of course.

* Intentionally invoked in the happy futuristic scenes in ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'', as opposed to the hat-dominated [[Dystopia]].

** Deliberate decisions made in the art, set, and costume design of the two sets of movies are the likely cause of this. The original movie was made on a b-picture budget, so they didn't have money for anything. (That's why Storm Trooper armor is white: It was cheaper than the black plastic Lucas originally wanted. Even Vader's helmet is actually dark brown in that movie.) They were also figuring out how to do the special effects as they went along. When Lucas got to make the prequel trilogy, he decided to make a lot of the art, set design, and costumes more complex because he was dealing with a much more sophisticated culture with more subtlety (as opposed to people who'd found themselves in a stifling dictatorship for a generation). Of course, since he now had the money for these things, it was also much easier.

** The ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' often avoids technology that debuted after [[A New Hope|1977]] or (especially) [[Return of the Jedi|1983]]. This results in things like a setting full of hyper-advanced, palm-sized, long ranged radios but no cell phones.

* ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]'' (2004) is chock-a-block full of Zeerust—not surprising, given that that was the point of the whole exercise. There is a 1930's submersible with a radio-imager that can send pictures back to the [[Airborne Aircraft Carrier]], giant bipedal robots wreck New York, and the hero's plane can go ''underwater''. The entire movie is pretty much [[Rule of Cool]]. The film appears to be set in 1939 (''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' is still in theaters).

* ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]]'': [[Robert Zemeckis]] and Bob Gale wanted to avoid dealing with the future for this very reason, as they couldn't know what the future would really be like. However, when the ending of the first film left them with no choice, they made 2015 basically a cleaner and more colorful version of 1985 with a generous dose of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] (computerized waiters, flying cars, and weather control) thrown in. It ''was'' [[Rule of Funny|meant to be humorous]], though. ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'' was one of a few 80s movies and TV series that had incredibly ubiquitous fax machines in the near future. The alleyway recycling center with huge cubes of shrinkwrapped laserdiscs awaiting processing was utterly hilarious.

{{quote|'''Susan:''' Please tell me this doesn't run on gasoline! Gas explodes, you know?}}

* ''[[Demolition Man]]'', which was an example of late 20th century Zeerust despite being a retelling of ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]],'' which was 1930s Zeerust.

* ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'':

* A curious example appears in ''[[Strange Days]]'', which was filmed in 1995 and set in a futuristic [[Cyberpunk]] dystopia all the way in ''1999''. While obviously the mind-recording technology that formed the centerpiece of the movie's plot has never shown up, the main character's voice-transcribing answer machine is also not exactly the way that particular technology developed. Neither was Los Angeles ''quite'' the decaying urban nightmare just seconds away from exploding into all-out civil warfare in 1999. The fashions are also quite a bit more [[Cyberpunk]] than what really went down. You also have to wonder, with the invention of Napster in 1999 and the rise in popularity of file sharing since that year, why recorded memories aren't swapped online rather than illegally traded on discs by hand. Certainly the downloads would be massive, but think of the wealth of experiences!

** The film also shows only ''one'' countdown to midnight, that of the Pacific time zone, with associated partying; other time zones' celebrations are only acknowledged in a brief call-in radio conversation that plays in the background. When the actual end of 1999 came to pass, practically every TV on Earth was tuned to CNN, where they showed a different celebration on the hour, every hour, from everywhere from Kiribati to Antarctica. Not so provincial, after all.

* ''[[The Island]]'' is mostly devoid of zeerust. It takes place in 2019 (released in 2005), where Los Angeles looks pretty much the same, except for efficient high-speed mass transit. Though the vehicles are pretty much all modern cars (no junkers). MSN runs a free database that allows you to look up anyone you need at booths, and the phones and computers are pretty much the same, albeit with more voice recognition software. However, for everything that is perfectly in place, something is off. The police have flying jet bikes with machine guns, tiny spiderbots can enter someone's body through their tear ducts to act as a tracking device (that leave through urination, despite being a bit.....uncomfortable), and, of course, {{spoiler|''giant underground colonies where sentient clones are raised for the wealthy as organ banks.''}} All this is supposed to come about in ten years?! One thing they did get right though? The Xbox. In the movie, the characters are playing a fighting game with virtual avatars when all they do is pretend to fight themselves. When the movie came out, it was so futuristic it fit right in to the sci-fi environment. Now, with the Kinect - it's pretty much spot-on.

* ''[[Soylent Green]]''. Nice arcade machine you got there, Shirl! The film is set in 2022, but Shirl plays a full-sized video game that looks like a crappy version of Asteroids.

** Even the pollution issue is outdated, as the pollution in Los Angeles, while still among the highest in the country, has gone down considerably since the release of the film. (This may or may not be justified, depending on how closely it resembles the world of the source novel, where the pollution was due to "World War Terminus". Still, it doesn't look like a global war is on the cards.)

** Outdated in the United States maybe, but visit Beijing sometime...

* The film adaptation of ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'', directed by Francois Truffaut in 1966, features zeerust aplenty, notably a propeller-powered monorail commuter train (which was an actual French prototype at the time, but was never developed), antique-looking vehicles, interactive wall-mounted television sets and payphones with a weird design. Explained in that this was one of the first films where the director deliberately went for a [[Schizo-Tech]] look. Also, the jetpacks at the end.

* The film ''[[Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers]]'' suffered from this more than the book. In the film version, CRT monitors were prominent despite flat-panel monitors already having been invented and in production by the time the movie was made. To be fair, flat screens had been around a while, but were expensive, and the directors had no way of knowing CRTs would fall out of favor so rapidly.

** The concept of the flat screen has been used in science fiction since at least the 1960s. This appears to have been a case of using "today's" technology in a movie about the future. This is a particularly sad example when you consider that the original book was written by a forward-thinking author.

** Other notable offenders include ''[[Total Recall]]'' with its ridiculously bulky CRT-based videophones.

* In ''[[A Clockwork Orange (film)|A Clockwork Orange]]'' Alex plays Beethoven's 9th Symphony off of a microcassette tape, which looked pretty futuristic in the 1970's, but never caught on, and were replaced by the far superior compact disc.

* ''[[Zenon]]: Girl of the 21st Century'', ''Zenon: The Zequel'' and ''Zenon: Z3'' (that take place from 2049-2054) have a lot of this (just look at the title of the first one), despite being made in 1999, 2001, and 2004 respectively.

* The ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'' remake starts out on a futuristic spaceship, yet one from which trained apes are sent on scouting missions. Chimps did play a key role in old 1960s orbital exploration, but were only used to confirm that the space-borne environment wouldn't hamper the anthropoid brain or body, before human astronauts could take their place. Nowadays it's rodents, fish, and various invertebrates that are commonly sent into orbit, while far-flung surveying of the solar system is performed by robots: there's no ''point'' to launching apes anymore.

* It is amazing how they were able to build a fully functional ''[[RoboCop]]'' cyborg, while still using floppy disks.

 

* ''[[The Machine Stops]]'' was [[Older Than Television|written in ''1909'']], and has what is basically the internet, though with fixed terminals. Anyone can talk to anyone else on the planet through a screen. And given the state of human society in that story, the lack of portable devices is completely justified.

** The story seems to be remarkably zeerust-proof for the time being, though...

** Pretty much the best example is the fact that all his stories written before about 1970 feature things like flying cars, yet slide rulers are in use. He is not the only author, however, to fail to predict the pocket calculator.

*** In one of the ''[[Tom Swift|Tom Swift, Jr.]]'' books from the '60s (''not'' by Heinlein, mind you), however, Tom developed a pocket computer on which he could do complex computations by tapping at its keys.

** And Heinlein's supercomputer in ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'' is intelligent (and sapient) enough to plan a full lunar revolution... but gives all of its calculations on long rolls of printed paper. Ironically, the book did accurately predict [[Virtual Celebrity|CGI acting]] -- but at the same time the very ''concept'' of computer-generated imagery (let alone ''video'') is presented as a mind-boggling innovation only possible because the computer is so much smarter than any human. The supercomputer is also built on a 1950s scale, to the point that bugs (actual living bugs, mind you) are a threat to his hardware.

** Barry Malzberg was quoted as saying something to the effect that the richness and datedness in Heinlein's stories comes from R.A.H.'s '...understanding ''perfectly'' how the world worked in 1945.'

** In ''[[Starman Jones]]'', [[FTL Travel]] is accomplished with the help of books containing table after table of pre-computed values -- seemingly no electronic storage or look-up at all. The books didn't just contain look up tables for functions - they also contained the tables for converting between decimal and binary, as all the values had to be converted into binary before being entered into the computer by toggling switches to set the binary values, then reading the binary values from the display lights and converting them back into decimal to make them human-readable. This last is particularly strange, as computing devices that did decimal I/O with internal conversion for binary internals had existed for at least a decade when the novel was written.

** Logarithm tables show up for astrogation in every Heinlein story, as when he was writing them calculators did not exist, so people kept big long lists of the log and natural log of lots and lots of numbers handy for calculating.

*** Knock on wood... The Greater Good loomed ominously back then, but it's not like it lost its teeth.

** On the flipside you have ''[[Space Cadet (novel)|Space Cadet]]'', where the ''first thing that happens'' is that the teenage protagonist's cellphone goes off, his friend reminds him to get it and he's disappointed that it's his dad. Cutting-edge [[Science Fiction]] in 1948, the stuff of every [[Teen Drama]] [[Cold Open]] today.

** Used again by Heinlein in ''[[Between Planets]]'' with the added bonus that the protagonist (who is staying on a dude ranch in New Mexico) takes a call from the cell phone mounted in ''his horse's saddle!''

** Rhysling, the hero of the short story "The Green Hills of Earth", was blinded in a reactor-room incident aboard an interplanetary spaceship. Whereupon his crew mates "passed the hat", and he was dumped in a strange spaceport to earn a living by busking: the narrator (looking back from an even more remote future) admits that no one would have thought ill of Rhysling if he'd settled for simple begging, since "there was no way then to restore a man's sight"; in a future where planet-to-planet travel is routine, Heinlein failed to anticipate technological advancements that would increase employment opportunities for blind people (he also apparently failed to anticipate workers' compensation).

** In ''[[The Puppet Masters (novel)|The Puppet Masters]]'', the main character is a secret agent who has a one-way phone (incoming calls only) implanted in his skull, and gets plastic surgery done on himself for a disguise in the morning, and is on his way to the assignment the same day. On the other hand, when he decides to do some research, he heads down to the local library (in [[Washington DC]]) to look up old newspapers and the like on microfiche.

* Deconstructed in the [[Kim Newman]] short story "[[Tomorrow Town]]", which is set in the 1970s and focuses on a murder committed in an experimental community of futurists deliberately constructed as a 1970s version of what the year 2000 would look like - and the savvy detectives are quick to realize that it's completely unworkable, with a futuristic monorail system and bubble cars that can be outrun by someone on a bike, [[Robot Buddy|robots]] that are bugger-all use whatsoever, a [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|"super computer"]] that's really good at adding things up but not much else, an "evolved" linguistics system which exists largely because its creator has trouble spelling, and a dysfunctional and somewhat sexist social system that, not un-coincidentally, places the (murdered) leader of the community in both a position of unquestioned power and gives him the opportunity to legally steal other people's girlfriends/wives if he fancies them, whether they (or their partners) want to or not. Oh, and the very fact that a murder's been committed by people who claim to have [[Evolutionary Levels|evolved "beyond"]] the petty motives for murder is a pretty big strike on the card as well.

** There's a touch of [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] in that the fashionable '70s clothes of the detectives would look no less comical to a modern reader than Tomorrow Town's unisex jumpsuits.

** Another "famous and unfortunate moment" is when the eponymous sentient supercomputer's more extroverted counterpart, Wintermute, disturbs and frightens Case by causing a bank of ''pay phones'' to ring in sequence as he runs past them. This is in addition to the fact that cell phones are ''completely'' non-existent in Gibson's vision of the future.

** In his introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition to the book, Gibson [[Self-Deprecation|apologizes]] to any young readers who are baffled as to why no one has a cell phone, and who can't imagine what a payphone looks like.

* Subverted in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' novels, particularly the first one where Arthur, new to space, sees a spaceship and is impressed by how it looks so future-y. Ford, an alien who's been across space and time, is aghast by how garish and out-of-date it is.

* Much to [[Ray Bradbury]]'s surprise, ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'', first published in 1953, partially avoided this, portraying an early 21st century society with people listening to music from devices the size of cigarette lighters with plugs that go in their ears, televisions that are as wide and as thick as the walls they're mounted on, and people who are obsessed with their "interactive stories".

** And they apparently can't make infinite clones of the same person, despite having a rather complicated process to increase the number of identical twins born from each "batch" of people.

** Lampshaded in the final chapters, when Mustapha Mond claims that many institutions deliberately use archaic and inefficient technology in order to ensure that there are always jobs for the lower castes.

* It's difficult to believe that ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'', even in the 1960s in which it was made, is meant to be set in the ''future''.

** It also features a real-time Google Earth, and a [[Wikipedia]] which requires one to pay for its information.

** Though it may be a case of [[Life Imitates Art|Second Life Imitates Art]], Phillip Rosedale explicitly claimed Stephenson's work as inspiration.

* ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' shows a bit of this: apparently, when we achieve faster-than-light interstellar travel and Turing-level artificial intelligence... we will be using DOS again.

** Arguably, this is one of the reasons why Pern is essentially a Luddite planet in the first place-with AIVAS as the only example of "modern" technology on Pern (albeit 2500 years old), McCaffrey was able to avoid having a series with a helluva lot more Zeerust.

* ''[[Hyperion]]'' managed to predict relatively cheap ubiquitous use of the Internet in 1989, just one year after it was made accessible to commercial groups. On the other hand there are also Hard Boiled PIs.

** Even more, it predicted the ''iPhone''. Yep. The Diskey is a small, ubiquitous device looking like a screen the size of a cigarette pack, but much slimmer, that you command by pressing icons that appear on it. It's used as a communication device, has a direct connection with the computer network and is your main way to access any medium. The cycle doesn't tell if you can shake it to skip tunes, or if it systematically falls apart by itself after three years use, though.

* Many of [[Isaac Asimov]]'s robot stories, set in the 2000s—and even the Lije Bailey novels, set in about the 3000s—mention characters using slide rules. [[Fridge Logic|Robots can't do math]]?

** Another weird one was that a plot point in one of the Lije Bailey novels revolved around the incredible idea of robots with interchangeable parts. Then there was concern about robot brains controlling starships (especially warships), because it wouldn't occur to them that other ships contained humans.

** Never mind that, try a robot with true A.I....that can't talk because text (or robot "thought") to speech is too complex. Really, it's amazing how his early robots had A.I. and could communicate in lots of ways, but couldn't talk.

* George O. Smith's ''Venus Equilateral'' stories (1942-1945) feature a 3-mile-long, 1-mile-diameter space-communications station stuffed with vacuum tubes. The problem of communicating with ships in flight is solved with complicated cams. The engineer-heroes work out problems by sketching them out on tablecloths and using their slide rules.

* [[Arthur C. Clarke]] was a visionary in many respects, but some of his works share his peers' failure to anticipate advances in computing:

** In ''Earthlight'' the protagonist, searching for an information leak, finds the moonbase computer with girls feeding it tapes, and a room-full of electric typewriters. He leaves convinced that information could not possible leak out through the computer, because the hardware is ''locked away''.

* Captured in the 1962 non-fiction book, ''1975 and the Changes to Come''. Some predicted innovations that never came to pass include toaster bacon and punch-card rotary phones.

** Toaster bacon [[Aluminum Christmas Trees|actually did exist]] - you can see a PDF of the patent for the packaging [http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3469998.pdf here.] They had to pull it from the market because some packages leaked grease from the bacon and caused toaster fires.

* Philip K. Dick books are pretty Zeerusty, but a glaring example is in ''[[Ubik]]''. The characters are in a spaceship, en-route from the Moon to Earth, and they need to make a phone call. Someone punches a search query into an electronic phone book (which is big, bulky device, not simply a function of the ship's computer) which then extrudes a punched-card with the number on it. The card is then fed into the phone to make the call.

* Used deliberately in the short story ''The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew'' by [[Catherynne M. Valente]], with a documentary filmmaker using being shot off to Venus in a [[Jules Verne]]-like cannon, and her B&W newsreels of alien worlds shown in silent movie theatres.

* Many stories and novels written by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] from [[The Fifties|the 1950s]] to [[The Seventies|the late 1970s]] attribute in the near future seen from their perspective (roughly [[The Nineties|the 1990s]] to present age) a most important place in world politics, science and global [[Jules Verne|Julesvernian]] projects for African and Pacific Islands countries. Even more strangely for a modern reader, this idealistic view of decolonized Africa [[Rags to Riches|in the forefront of progress]] [[Aluminum Christmas Trees|was fashionable prior to 1980]], and not just in Eastern European Communist countries.

* [[Stanislaw Lem]]'s ''[[Tales of Pirx the Pilot]]'' suffers partly from this, especially with the bigger computers that still have punch cards as input, and satellites communicating in Morse code.

 

* Costume designs from ''[[Lost in Space]]''.

** ''Everything'' from ''Lost in Space'' such as the laundry machine that spits out neatly folded, plastic-wrapped clothes.

**** The name "Eugenics War" comes from the opponents thereof. Those who were all for it could use euphemisms, like it happens with most concepts that collect infamy but live on.

** The ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", in which the crew time-traveled into the setting of the episode "Trouble with Tribbles", mined a lot of amusement out of the style differences of clothing, devices, and Klingons.

** Trek's computing technology ''excluding AIs'' is absurdly primitive by contemporary standards. TOS has the Federation using hand-sized ''Microtapes'' in 2267 when we have MicroSDHC cards the size of a fingernail today.

*** Flip-open cell phones exist mainly because of dirt. So this one was realistic.

** Motorola had a big hit when they introduced a slim, very pocketable flip cell phone, the "StarTAC"—not a coincidence, I'm sure. Unfortunately, even though the Federation had a galactic information network, their communicators and tricorders didn't have data plans, unlike today's smartphones.

{{quote|'''Rose:''' Why does he look so... disco?

'''The Doctor:''' Oi! Listen, in the year 5000, this was cutting edge! }}

* ''[[That '70s Show]]'' once had Red [[Imagine Spot|imagining]] what the future would be like, and it was filled with tongue-in-cheek Zeerust, such as jumpsuits and jet packs. The joke was that he imagined all that stuff would be available in the far-off year of ... 1997. The episode first aired in 1999.

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' had this quite a bit. Examples included the [[No New Fashions in the Future|Cat's "cutting edge", very 90's fashion sense]], and an episode where the crew watched triangular ''video tapes''. This was amusingly [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the 2009 [[Reunion Show]] "Back to Earth", in which {{spoiler|1=Kryten points out that DVDs became obsolete because everyone kept losing them. Apparently videotapes are "too big to lose."}}

* ''[[UFO]]''. In the episode "Court Martial" a computerized encoding device uses handwritten data entry, but it's actually a security precaution. Handwriting samples of personnel authorised to use the device are stored in its memory, and compared against the message written on the input card.

** Canon states that six standard data crystals can contain the entirety of human knowledge as of the 23rd century. Try fitting everything on the Internet on an SD card and see how far you get.

** Needing to find non-military people in person or by word of mouth is definite Zeerust in a modern world where it's impossible to avoid overhearing at least one "where are you?" cell phone call a day. Especially since both cell phone-equivalent technology and ''telepathy'' (which would make the question completely moot) were available to at least the main characters throughout the run of the series.

* ''[[Defying Gravity]]'' is set in 2009 [[In Space|with manned interplanetary travel]]. Seriously, they didn't even ''try''.

* An episode of ''[[Fraggle Rock]]'' has the inventor Doc trying to develop a radio that can get signals from the other side of the world. You just know Jim Henson would have loved what the Internet can do.

** In a rare aversion, the TV movie (and possibly other episodes of the series) depicted computer hacker Bryce Lynch using a small, flip-style cordless phone while in his bathtub.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK5pmZtBzO4&hd=1 Fuji Television's sign-on and sign-off] depicts life in future [[Tokyo]], complete with a [[Space Elevator]] to their [[Space Station|orbiting TV studio]].

* In ''[[Earth 2]]'' the audience gets to see inside the cockpit of the starship that will take the colonists to their new home. It's a very modern glass cockpit with displays everywhere, just one strange thing, they are all heavy bulky CRTs.

 

* [[Steely Dan|Donald Fagen's]] song "I.G.Y. (What A Wonderful World)" deliberately invokes Zeerust, depicting a world where the US definitively won the space race, computers are benevolent overlords, and everyone wears spandex jackets in a world with perfect climate control.

** Actually, that entire album (1982's ''The Nightfly'') is full of cultural Zeerust, being a combination homage and [[Affectionate Parody]] of the optimism of the 1950s and early 1960s (albeit one leavened with hints of [[It Got Worse|the darker developments just around the corner]]). From the liner notes:

{{quote|''Kamakiriad'' is an album of eight related songs. The literal action takes place a few years in the future, near the millennium.

In the first song, "Trans-Island Skyway", the narrator tells us he is about to embark on a journey in his new dream-car, a custom-tooled Kamakiri. It's built for the new century: steam-driven, with a self-contained vegetable garden and a radio link with the Tripstar routing satellite. }}

* In an in-music example, [[Animusic]]'s "Future Retro" has futuristic instruments, but retro tunes.

* The [[Flight of the Conchords]] have a song about a [[Robot War]] where sentient robots have [[Turned Against Their Masters]] and exteminated mankind, which starts with the lyric "The year 2000, the distant future/The year 2000, the distant future..." ([[Stylistic Suck|This is entirely deliberate]]; it was made in 2007.)

 

** Also, according to the depictions in the game material, the most popular kind of music in the 2010s/2020s is basically an updated version of 80s hair metal with cyberpunk-themed lyrics. One of the eight character classes you can choose from is that of a rebellious rock musician called "rockerboy". The game writers must've thought rap and electronic music were just passing fads, as they are not mentioned.

** Well, look at some of the bands out now. They sing a mish-mash of what is geeky, some of it steam/cyberpunk, and some of it is metallic. It's not that far off.

* In ICE's 1990 ''Cyberspace'' it is noted that by 2090 ''some'' portable phones are small enough to fit into a pocket.

* ''[[Shadowrun]]'': This is the case with the entire first three editions of the game. Since the game was set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], every few years they would need to reboot the game to keep ahead of growing technology. For the hacker type class, the original series had deckers that would have to literally plug a wire into the back of their head to go virtual. In the most modern addition everyone has augmented-reality goggles or a wi-fi computer in their head.

* The original Main Book for ''[[Rifts]]'' lists an item called the PC-3000 Hand-Held Computer. It's about the size of a Nintendo DS Lite. It uses one inch disks, has a Dual drive system, and a hard memory of 16 megabytes, and has no sound capabilities. Later versions avert this by saying that the player should assume that it's more powerful than whatever's currently available on the market.

* ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' was designed to invoke this on purpose, to help make the end date of our civilization and the rise of Alpha Complex unclear. Buildings, pills and even the swooshing doors all invoke Zeerust, and then we get talk of cloning and genetics that suggests that mankind was actually [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] when the apocalypse happened.

* Narrowly averted by ''[[Trinity Universe (game)|Trinity]],'' set in the 22nd century. Computers in that RPG are only one step under true AI, are small enough to fit in a pocket, and are presumed to have most of the capacities of 2011 smartphones. The smallest unit of memory described is the "bloc", able to hold "a large library". The only notable limit on what computers can do is the "Comm Crunch", which states that cellular bandwidth is in very short supply (so the GM can arbitrarily throttle the PCs' communications, as needed by the plot). This seems eerily prescient for a game from the 90s! Zeerust only arises in the presumption that computers would still have keyboards, would be strapped to your forearm, and would be called "computers" not "phones".

 

* The [[Classic LEGO Space]] era largely falls into this, as do some of the early days of "modern" [[LEGO Space]]; [https://web.archive.org/web/20131113072050/http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6985-1 this set], from 1986, is a pretty good example.

 

* Parodied in SNK's ''Metal Slug'' series, which takes place in a near future in which nearly all "futuristic" tech is intentional Zeerust, such as [[Military Mashup Machine|land battleships]] or [[Robot Buddy|pulp robots]]. In a related note, almost all of the "contemporary" tech is inexplicably [[World War II]]-era.

* The game ''[[Stubbs the Zombie]]'' takes place in the 1950's with what they believe will be futuristic technology. There are lots of flying cars, simplistic robots with bare-bones AI but no e-mail, Internet, etc. The game developers make the game seem futuristic... for the 1950's.

* The original ''[[Contra (video game series)|Contra]]'', being a ''[[Rambo]]''/''[[Commando (film)|Commando]]''/''[[Aliens]]'' pastiche, stars a pair of musclebound commandos fighting against an alien army in the jungle. The game is set in the year 2633 according to the Japanese canon, but despite the presence of improbable weapons and bases, there's no real reason to suspect that the game is actually set in the future. Because of this, the localization actually claimed that the game was actually set in the present when they brought it to America. This continued until they decided to keep the futuristic setting for ''Contra III'' and even then the city where the game starts, as well as the car in the first level, looks late 80's - early 90's.

* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' has a bit of this in its level design, such as the mysterious [[Doomsday Device]] featured in Nucleus and the giant missile launcher in Gravelpit.

** The Dr. Grordbort weapons invoke this trope, similar to their real-life models [[Captain Obvious|(except in the game they actually work)]]

 

* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130719183405/http://www.drunkduck.com/I_Was_Kidnapped_By_Lesbian_Pirates_From_Outer_Space/ I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space!!!]'' is a 1950s and 1960s Fest of this trope.

* The [[Distant Finale]] of ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'', set six years in the future, shows several of the female characters wearing outfits of this type to their [[Class Reunion]]. Sara even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by telling Daphne, "The retro-future trend was made for you."

* Sometimes, characters in ''[[Electric Wonderland]]'' use technology that feels dated even for the year of the respective comic's release. The cartoonist reportedly hopes that this will prevent references that will date in the future from sticking out.

 

* For some [[steampunk]]ish Zeerust, see [http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm this awesome collection] of French postcards from 1900, trying to imagine what life would be like in 2000. It's surprisingly accurate in some regards. And then they have things like the [[I Love Nuclear Power|"Radium-Powered Fireplace"]]...

* Almost all of [[Doctor Steel]]'s artwork is sci-fi through [[Steampunk|Victorian]] or [[Dieselpunk|Diesel-era]] tinted goggles.

* Zeerustian predictions of the future are savagely parodied in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJjUVIIYptE this film short.] While the narration ''sounds'' like a 1950's expert beaming about the coming utopia brought about by our futuristic technology, the actual video depicts a lower middle class couple from the actual year 2000, who seem none too impressed with the megamalls, bad traffic, crappy service jobs and life-extending but not life-''enhancing'' medicine which comprise their world.

 

* "The future" in ''[[The Jetsons]]'' seemed to mean "the 1960s, but with more [[Applied Phlebotinum]]."

** This was parodied hilariously in an episode of ''[[Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law]].''

* ''[[Muppet Babies]]'' parodied this, when Baby Piggy claimed that the future would be "just like now, only more... [[Buffy-Speak|futurely]]!"

* Any of the old cartoons featuring "The House Of Tomorrow", which typically has, say, a pair of robotic hands manually scrubbing, rinsing, and drying dishes, instead of a dishwasher.

* ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' is set in the Zeerust-styled town of Retroville, and Jimmy's futuristic inventions have a charming Buck Rogers quality about them. And in a strange contrast, the entire show is pretty modern 3D animation. So you get a Buck Rogers-esque mind control device that looks remarkably realistic, even though it appears to be a toy. [[TV Genius|In retrospect (no pun intended), he probably intended it that way.]]

* Many episodes of ''[[Futurama]]'' parodied this by having futuristic technology that was ''already'' outdated in some way, such as interactive cinemas with monochrome newsreels. And then making them holographic. The ''Jetsons''-style "floating hoops around everything and everyone" is considered retro in the manner of a nostalgia cafe or disco.

{{quote|'''Bender:''' "Is food finally in pill form? What about pills? Are they in food form?"}}

* Historical Zeerust - Terry's friend is helping him study for a history test in ''[[Batman Beyond]]''. She mentions "Come on. Clinton was the fun one, then came the boring one...", ignorant of the fact that the next president would go on to be called many, many, ''many'' things, but boring is certainly not one of them. You can assume they believed Al Gore would be elected.

** In addition, while the show correctly predicted the prevalence of cell phones in the future, the phones themselves look more like cell phones from the late 90s when the show was made. The creators even admit in one episodes commentary that they did not predict how cell phones would shrink. If it helps any, you can think of them as satellite phones (which have shrunk, but not nearly as much) instead. This goes double when they somehow continue to work at the bottom of those vast glass-and-steel canyons where the signal from an ordinary tower would be almost indistinguishable from background radiation.

** While we are in the [[DCAU]], the idea of zeerust was deconstructed in ''[[Batman: Mask of the Phantasm]]''; in a flashback, Bruce and Andrea are shown having a wonderful time visiting the Gotham World's Fair, with its lively and optimistic view of the future with standard things such as robot butlers. When the fair is revisited in the present, {{spoiler|it is in ruins, seemingly paralleling Bruce and Andrea's future, and serves as the final battleground for the two former lovers and the Joker.}} Perhaps not entirely deconstructed: a display car that catches Bruce's attention looks a lot like the Batmobile. Might he have rescued this prototype before it went the way of the Joker's hideout?

* ''[[My Life as a Teenage Robot]]'' uses a visual style akin to pie-eyed classic toons and is set in a near-future setting with very Zeerust aesthetics.

* [[Tex Avery]] did a series of cartoons exploring and spoofing how future technology would improve [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBpDNRP5qQ cars], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUArCmcpwuA television] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZuF1ONFT8 household appliances.]

 

* Every World's Fair. Ever.

* Cybergoth music and fashion. Both are intended to seem "futuristic", yet are firmly grounded in 80s and early-90s conceptions of the future (except with more falls).

* A lot of "classic" 1950s design elements, probably best seen in the [http://www.doowopusa.org/ "Doo Wop" architecture of Wildwood, New Jersey].

** Now referred to as 'Googie' or 'Midcentury Modern'.

** Of particular note was [http://www.yesterland.com/futurehouse.html Monsanto's House of the Future] in Disneyland, which featured ultra-futuristic elements like plastics, a microwave oven, and a flatscreen television. While the House soon faded into Zeerust, one element remained steadfastly resistant to progress: when Disneyland decided to demolish the House, wrecking balls just bounced off the sturdy plastic construction. They had to use hacksaws and blowtorches to dismantle it.

** The Zeerust in Tomorrowland is mostly deliberate nowadays -- "[[Tagline|The future that never was is finally here!]]" In 1994 Disneyland redesigned Tomorrowland to deliberately go "Retro-Future" ... that is, they stopped even trying to be prophetic and went for the future-as-envisioned-by-Jules-Verne look (essentially, part steampunk and part Art Deco). A notable exception is the Carousel of Progress, which touts a "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" that's at least a decade out-of-date despite Disney's efforts. Carousel of Progress is supposed to showcase "cutting edge" stuff in its last scene... the last minor tweak in 2010 finally added a flat screen TV to a scene written in 1994.

** Said park also had an attraction called "Horizons" depicting future space and ocean colonization and desert agriculture. Somehow, nearly everything else looked incredibly dated within a decade, including a building that looked straight out of Buck Rogers. Opened in 1983, closed in 1999. The same ride had a room nostalgically presenting the "The Future of the Fifties" as if it were a humorous departure from the sensible, realistic depictions in the rest of the attraction, demonstrating ''[[Genre Savvy|awareness]]'' of this trope while still lacking ''[[Hypocritical Humor|self-awareness]]'' of it.

* GM's "Dustbuster" minivans from [[The Nineties|the early '90s]]. At a classic car show, as a radio mobile unit, [http://www.flickr.com/photos/12458821@N08/2747601505/sizes/l/in/set-72157606639764611/ it didn't look out of place].

** The weirdly egg/bubble-shaped [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/3rd-Ford-Taurus-wagon.jpg/800px-3rd-Ford-Taurus-wagon.jpg Ford Taurus station wagons] from the late '90s, for similar reasons.

** They had been planned to erase from people's minds the impression of [http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5370264430_5223df23e9.jpg heavy V8 powered dinosaurs] fit for [[British Stuffiness|older rich Brits]] and which [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|looked like a cross between a Mustang and an Opel Manta]]. This was also the reason for cramming every possible cubic inch with CRT screens and complex electronics. It backfired.

* The Lamborghini Countach. Now the earlier Miura and 4-door Espada look more modern. Even worse with the eighties versions with their huge wings and flared arches that make them look less sophisticated since newer cars don't really ''need'' giant spoilers.

** The DeLorean probably belongs here too. Not helped by the fact that it was a dressed-up Lotus Esprit — a car that has aged quite well.

** That was because chrome was needed for the war effort, so cars were sold with wooden fenders and you would get the metal parts later from the dealer.

* The [[Media:Apt 370004 - euston - 13-02-1980.jpg|Advanced Passenger Train]]. Well, it was in 1980.

* [http://www.airliners.net/photo/PEOPLExpress/Boeing-747-243B/0662385/L/ PEOPLExpress]. Yes kids, mauve and orange stripes were once the cutting edge.

** Southwest Airlines embraces their [http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2199/2359811060_0b826f715d.jpg?v=0 original livery's] Zeerust-ness by keeping several planes in rotation with the old color scheme. And like all non-white based liveries, their current Blue/Red/Yellow version will someday be Zeerust. Any airline whose planes used to be chrome-colored also suffer Zeerust. Continental was the last American airline to hold out on that scheme.

* The [[wikipedia:Image:Aptera Typ-1 Wallpaper.jpg|Aptera Typ-1]], a new hybrid car that wouldn't look out of place on ''[[The Jetsons]]''. It's either awesome on top of awesome, or utterly preposterous. You want one. And a [[I Want My Jetpack|jetpack]].

* The infamous [[wikipedia:Xanadu Houses|Xanadu houses]], which were supposed to the "the house of the future". Built in the early 80s as automated homes and tourist attractions, their technology rapidly dated and the last of them closed up a mere ten years later.

* There's some adorable Zeerust in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9eAiy0IGBI 30s newsreel feature] of what clothes in the year 2000 will be like ("Oh swish!"). Curiously, they weren't wholly wrong about portable phones or radio. Or women wearing pants.

* [http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20141202081148/http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/ This 1968 article about life in 2008] contains some fine, typical Zeerust: automated cars that hit 250 mph on smooth plastic roads, all controlled by an infallible computer that has never caused an accident; cities covered by domes that keep them evenly climatized yearlong; moving sidewalks everywhere; intercontinental passenger rockets; four hour work days; housework is done by robots; and a lot more wacky stuff.

** People do sometimes willingly buy or build houses at least as ugly as that. Fuller (in the introduction to ''Grunch of Giants'') said the Dymaxion House went nowhere because building codes effectively made prefab impossible.

** It's not that nobody bought the car- it never even went to production. It turns out that, in addition to being very aerodynamic, the (three-wheeled) Dymaxion was also ''very'' top-heavy and unstable. Development was tabled after the prototype killed a test driver.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6pUMlPBMQA This] video made in the '50s shows the highway system of the future to have things like heated roads to melt ice, prefabricated bridges, self guiding cars with thermal imaging, truck trains consisting of store shelving, vehicle elevators, underground roadways, and as it proceeds further from reality: floating cars that can follow roads that turn upside down for [[Rule of Cool|no reason]]. They did certainly get [[wikipedia:Urban sprawl|urban sprawl]] right, though.

** Heated roads and underground roads have become true too. Some parking garages use elevators as well.

* Brasília, the capital city of [[Brazil (useful notes)|Brazil]], opened in 1960 and designed by Oscar Niemeyer, is a perfect example of Zeerust. Like another planned capital, Canberra, it has some interesting buildings but was built on a scale that assumed everybody would be driving a car. Looking back from a world where unlimited car usage is seen as a bit unneccesary Brasilia and Canberra seem far too overscaled and impersonal.

** UNO-City in Vienna makes a similar impression to viewers. Like most planned towns and districts of the [[The Sixties|1960s]] and [[The Seventies|1970s]], it looks devoid of life. The planned structures both in the West and the Communist Bloc were usually built on empty spaces, rising straightly from the ground, which look strange to people accustomed for centuries with cramped buildings within walking distance of each other.

** The State of the Art Cars best embody this trope as they were specifically designed to be futuristic as to promote to the general public what their transit systems could be like with a little funding. The carpeted, [http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?7195 pleather and plastic wood interior] really didn't age well.

** Similar designs based on very clean lines and very hard-wearing materials like plastic-wood seemed to have been all the rage in [[The Seventies|the early 1970s]]. Communist Eastern European governments adopted similar designs for public services like mass transit, buses and hospitals. By [[The Eighties|the 1980s]] they were not only out of fashion, [[Gone Horribly Wrong|but also looked horrible due to wear and tear]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Hollywood History]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Tropes March On]]

[[Category:Time Marches On]]