Zeerust: Difference between revisions

Something -- a character design, a building, whatever -- used to be someone's idea of futuristic. Nowadays, though, it ironically has a quaint sort of datedness to it more reminiscent of the era the work came from (or imitates, in case the zeerust is deliberate). Also sometimes called "Retro-Futuristic."

Gets its name and definition from ''[[The Meaning of Liff]]'' by [[Douglas Adams]] and John Lloyd, a book of [[Neologism|neologisms]]<ref>actually, repurposed place names</ref> concocted by the two. Not to be confused with the South African town of the same name (Adams and Lloyd mostly used actual place names for their words).

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''[[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''.

* Abundant in ''[[Mazinger Z]],'' evident in many of the vehicles and [[Super Robot|SuperRobots]] in the series. A case that stands out is an episode in which Baron Ashura captures and analyzes Aphrodite A, only for the disc with the data to be destroyed. It's a good thing the villains didn't have e-mail.

* There are other examples in ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]]'', but the craziest is Desler's use of a gold-colored mid-20th century earth telephone to argue with Starsha. Gamilon General Lysis composes his report on his first encounter with the Argo/Yamato on an alien ''typewriter.''

* 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.

* There's something of a meta, in-universe example in [[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]. The character Vizor/Dark Glass(es) is from an unspecified point in the future (there seems to be some indication it is about fifty years in the future), as are several other characters, such as the Three Emperors of Yliaster. Many of these cards have by now been released as cards for the trading card game. Aside from the universe-destroying time paradox this has inevitably caused, the cards...don't stack up to what [[Power Creep]] would dictate.

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

** Ironically, [http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/11/30/the_failed_chevy_volt_that_just_wont_go_away_99392.html exploding cars in the news recently have been Chevy Volts], which are fully electric models.

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

** HAL is a computer that can have a philosophical conversation and follow voice commands, but can't print plain text onto loose leaf paper.

* ''Silent Running'' features robots that can understand human speech, yet take their programming from cards that have to be welded together.

* ''[[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.

* In [[Godzilla]], ''[[Destroy All Monsters]]'', the year's 1999. Rocket men, aliens that [[Human Aliens|look like people]], [[Mind Control]] signals, knockout gas, a nation devoted to containing monsters; must've been what [[wikipedia:Year 2000 problem|Y2K]] was distracting us from.

* ''[[Blade Runner]]'', which was made in 1982, thinks that in the year 2019 we'll have flying cars, skies so choked with pollution you never see the sun, artificial humans with implanted memories, and off-world colonies. Most of this still feels like a far-off possibility (except for ''maybe'' the pollution issue). All the interior decor resembles that of the late 1940s... while the streetlife resembles the East Village circa 1982.<br /><br />The film's approach to the portrayal of urban architecture represents a significant aversion of the usually zeerust-prone approach found in older sci-fi, and was one of the earliest mainstream works to do so. While much older sci-fi assumes that the cities of the future would, at some point, be leveled and replaced with a sort of Corbusian wet-dream, ''Blade Runner'' depicted a convincingly jumbled combination of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century architecture, which still looks quite reasonable today.

** 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.

* The opening visual communication from 22nd Century Earth Base Mission Control in ''[[Dark Star]]'' features reel to reel computers in the background.

* ''[[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.

* This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNbF9CWJN3o\] science fiction movie from Eastern Europe.

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

* The revived ''[[Doctor Who]]'' series console ''rooms'' have been "organic / coral" and "relatively shiny and futuristic for 2010". The console ''itself'' has a thrown-together old-fashioned scrapheap look, with bicycle pumps and hot / cold taps replacing random parts. TARDIS interiors are justified in that they're fully customisable by the user, and if they look out of date it's simply because the user wants it that way. On the other hand, modern Who may have Zeerusted itself in the future by referring to the interior looks as the "desktop theme".

* ''Zot!'' had already topped that joke, with a girl from the Eighties awestruck at the marvels of 1965.

* Part of ''[[Firefly]]'''s charm is how a lot of the "future tech" weapons look like old fashioned guns. This is exemplified in the episode ''Trash'', where the high-tech laser gun shown looks like an oversized ''Star Wars'' blaster. Well, it's a [[Space Western]]. Though it really doesn't look like original ''Star Wars'' blasters, which were based off of real weapons, primarily World War II era guns.

** 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.

* 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.

* Disney's 1988 mini-series/failed pilot [[Earth Star Voyager]]. Not surprisingly, computer technology and graphics have taken a giant leap backward by 2088. The future looks like it was designed by the same engineers who built EPCOT Center's Future World, which itself is becoming dated.

** 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]].

** Also, according to the depictions in the game material, the most popular kind of music in the 2010s/2020s is basically an updated version 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 the original '[[Traveller]]' ships computers START at one ton for the most basic, 2 program model. If you pay extra you can have optical backup device.

* ''[[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.

** ''Wasteland'', a nearly-forgotten game of [[The Eighties]] and the inspiration for ''Fallout'', took place In The Distant Future Of... 1995, when the [[Cold War]] ([[The Great Politics Mess-Up|oops!]]) reaches a breaking point and everybody gets nuked. Only a small portion of Nevada survives. So far as you know, anyway, since the precipitating event that started the nukes flying was the sudden, simultaneous and unexplained destruction of all communications satelites. While standard equipment is somewhere around the level of the Kalashnikov (the "AK-97," to be specific, a 50th anniversary update of the classic) you eventually wind up carrying around ''portable nuclear batteries to power your handheld ion cannons''.

* In ''[[Bioshock]]'', the city of Rapture is all designed in a 1940s Art Deco style, somewhat behind the times even by 1960 when the game takes place. It looks less out of place after you learn Rapture was apparently built in 1946 and its creator and leader forbade outside culture from getting in, leaving the place in permanent aesthetic stasis.

* 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.

* In the ''[[Back to The Future]]'' adventure games, Marty finds himself at a science expo in 1931. The expo predicts that, fifty years from then, there will be machines that make artificial rain and sun, and vast underground cities. Marty, from fifty-''five'' years later (and had... er, [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|will have]] seen even further into the future in the movies) snarks that he hasn't been to that time period yet.

* ''[[Aerobiz]]'': Futuristic predictions of huge, 1000-passenger airliners & supersonic airliners traversing the globe seem almost quaint for someone who picks up the game now.

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

** 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.

** Don't forget Bender's quote in Proposition Infinity:

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

* ''[[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.

* [[The Fairly Odd Parents]] had an episode that actually [[Lampshaded]] this trope called "Future Lost", in which Timmy discovers one of his father's old sci-fi comic books that supposedly takes place in the "far off" future of the year 2000. Timmy notes that what's in the book is very different than the real early twenty first century. He then makes a wish making the [[Zeerust]] world of that book come to life.

** Also along the same lines, many films used Pan American airlines in their vision of the future... either showing Pan Am Space Travel, or something similar. A fact that's worth much amusement now that Pan Am not only fell from grace as '''the''' world's airline, but out of existence altogether.

* The Concorde SST was once expected to replace subsonic long-distance airliners altogether. Between safety issues, limited capacity, excessive operating costs, and noise-pollution statutes, it's unlikely that regular supersonic passenger flights will resume until there are space colonies to fly to.

* 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.