History Main / FailedFutureForecast

* ''Literature/IslandsInTheNet'': The Soviet Union is portrayed as lasting into the 2020s.

* This is a common trope in very old sports games (especially in sport simulations like ''VideoGame/FootballManager'') since you can manage teams from pre-UsefulNotes/ColdWar era and control them until beyond the 90s without any changes.
* A major plot point in ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' is the StatuteOfLimitations on an old murder case being almost up. Despite what most players would assume, at the time of the game's original 2001 release (and even the 2005 updated re-release), Japan [[AluminumChristmasTrees really did have a 15-year Statute of Limitations on murder]]. However, [[http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/japan-statute-of-limitations-for-murder-abolished/ it would be abolished in 2010]], with the abolition applying to all murders that were still active under the prior Statute. As such, since the game takes place in 2016, the entire idea that those who plotted against Edgeworth were "running out of time to get revenge" no longer makes sense.
* ''VideoGame/{{Harpoon}}'' was released in 1989 and one expansion pack assumed that the Soviet Union would still exist in 1996. After the USSR's collapse, there was a big scramble to create new scenarios that weren't obsolete. Of course, since it was a simulation the existing ones were still developed.

* ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' predicted a civil war in Russia by 2011 which obviously did not come to pass.
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' predicted that David Petraeus would be Secretary of Defense in 2025. Given the fact that Petraeus was caught up in an extramarital affair in late 2012 and ended up resigning as Director of the CIA just three days before the game came out, that seems really unlikely.
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII'' predicts the collapse of the UsefulNotes/EuropeanUnion by 2025. It predicted that Italy, Spain and Greece would leave the EU by 2021. By that year in real life, only the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom had left the union. All things considered, the EU is in a lot better shape than predicted in many works, including this one.

** ''{{VideoGame/Endwar}}'' has '''another''' World War Three, kicked off by a preceding [[NukeEm nuclear]] war in the Middle East in 2014.

* The background history of the ''VideoGame/StarControl'' franchise has the ''Small War of 2015'', in which a small nuclear exchange took place between Middle East countries that year, killing several million people. [[CaptainObvious That fortunately never happened in the real world]].
* The FramingDevice of [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI the original]] ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' was set in the not-too-distant future of ''2012''. As 2012 came and went in real life and the MayanDoomsday behind the use of this date was thwarted in-universe, the series dropped overt references to modern real-world events and dates.

* ''VideoGame/{{Contradiction}}'' has characters say that salvia divinorum is a legal hallucinogenic. About a year after the game's release, the UK (where the game takes place) made it illegal to supply, produce, or import it.

* Website/{{Fenspace}} has made it an official editorial policy that no real-world elected officials from after 2006 will appear to avoid bringing partisan political squabbles into the process of creating a shared universe. One story does mention Edward Snowden in passing though, and establishes that he did basically the same thing as in RealLife except for seeking asylum in near-Earth orbit instead of Russia.
* The Literature/ChaosTimeline has its own version for in-universe works done before [[spoiler:the Logo and AI-induced abortion of World War III]] but set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture.

* ''Webcomic/KnightsOfBuenaVista'' is a CampaignComic covering the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon. When they are playing ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', it turns out that Zangief still doesn't know the USSR fell, and no one's had the heart to tell him.

* The original last few episodes of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''[='=]s season 20 StoryArc described UsefulNotes/HillaryClinton defeating Mr. Garrison in the presidential election, an obvious parallel to her expected win over UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump. When Trump won, the seventh episode had to be entirely rewritten between the time it was announced (1 AM of the day after the election took place) and the premiere of the episode that same day specifically to avert this.

* The Soviet Union somehow exists in the third season of ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'', produced in 1986 and [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture set in 2006]].
* The animated series ''WesternAnimation/SpiralZone'', produced in 1987 but set in 2007, assumes that the Soviet Union still exists in the early 21st century.

* "WesternAnimation/GravityFalls": Lampshaded when Dipper brings a brawler from a Street Fighter-inspired fighting game to life; Rumble McSkirmish asks to be taken to the Soviet Union, and Dipper answers that it's going to be difficult for a number of reasons.

* ''Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries'':
** The book ''2061'' not only has the Soviet Union still around, it has South African apartheid continue until the 2030s, when it is destroyed by a violent revolution that scatters the Afrikaners across the Earth and Solar System. They more or less become the new Jews.
** The ''2001'' series had a sort-of double mess-up. In the first book (and movie), though the USSR is still around, it and the US are cooperating and have friendly relations (as shown by Floyd chatting casually with Soviet citizens, who are also clearly friends, on the space station. They even inform each other that they're always welcome to come by to visit ''whenever they just happen to be in each other's countries''). When Clarke wrote ''2010'' (in 1982), it was obvious the real-world US and USSR were not quite being so friendly, so he decided that there should be conflict between the Soviet and American astronauts because of their respective countries' rivalry (though not as blatant as in the film, where the two countries are at the brink of war). Of course, fast forward to the ''real'' year 2001, where Soviet Union is gone, the US is supreme, and where, in fact, Russia and the US ''are building a joint space station'', though not one as big and fancy as the one in the book.
* In a bit of a meta-entry, several techno-thrillers and what-if war novels from 1978's ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar'' though 1984's ''Literature/RedStormRising'' to 1990's ''Sword Point'', all written '''prior''' to the end of the Cold War have WorldWarIII end up in a ''status quo ante'' peace treaty, where other than a few million dead, the Superpowers continue their struggle against each other ''as if nothing happened!'' It was almost as if no author could remember a time before the two super powers, or imagine a time after them. One of the few that averted this was, ironically, the first listed. ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar'' had the Soviet Union abruptly collapse after the nuking of Minsk (in response to the Soviet nuking of Birmingham, England), with the 1982 sequel/expansion detailing how it happened.
* The war outlined in ''Literature/RedStormRising'' is purely conventional with no nuclear or chemical weapons causing massive civilian casualties, making an immediate postwar return to the status quo more plausible. Lampshaded by the US ground forces commander in Europe during the ceasefire talks; his Soviet counterpart points out that "both sides can still lose" if NATO advances into the USSR itself. Also, the novel ends with the ceasefire; the survival of an oil-starved and war-weakened Soviet Union in the aftermath is open to the reader's interpretation.
* ''Literature/FullDisclosure:'' The novel takes place during the administration of the 41st president of the United States. Israel and the Arabs are allies, China and Japan have become one country, America and the Soviets are allies, and most of the U.S. government cabinet positions have been combined to form consolidated departments (for a total of five secretaries, and the attorney general).
* Creator/JohnWyndham appears to have been among the first people to believe the Soviet Union was going to collapse at some point, and not in a manner that took human civilization down with it, because any of his books that are set in what in the 1960s would have been NextSundayAD usually include a bit of exposition about the Cold War.
* ''Literature/TheGatesOfEden'' by Brian Stableford is set in 2441. The captain of a returned cold-sleep ship is surprised, not to say exasperated, that after 350 years and one ecological collapse there is still a "West" and a "Soviet bloc", "and they're still 'they' and we're 'us'." On the other hand, the deep space arms of both groups care less and less about what Earth thinks.
* In the prototypical CyberPunk novel ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', the Soviet Union is still alive and kicking; in fact, it's the United States that's fallen apart.
--> [[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/13/william-gibson-interview Quoth]] [[WordOfGod Gibson]]: ''I wrote the book so that it`s impossible to prove from internal evidence that the United States exists as a nation state. It seems to exist as some sort of congerie of city states and, possibly as the result of some semi-abortive not too bad sort of nuclear war... But I left the Soviet Union looming and rusting away, a sort of slag heap. I never imagined that it could dry up and blow up away.''
** While in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/{{Friday}}'' the USSR fell only after the dissolution of the USA.
** ''Neuromancer'' and its sequels also feature a world dominated by Japanese corporations, echoing the ''very'' common theory that [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japan would emerge as the world's dominant economic superpower once the United States and the Soviet Union inevitably bankrupted themselves through rampant defense spending]].
** ''Literature/{{Idoru}}'', written in 1996, has Russia transform into a kind of criminal empire run by the TheMafiya, which was a fairly common speculation of Russia's future in the West during the [[UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia Yeltsin years]].

%%** Asimov also has a short story happening in the 21st Century where the world is thoroughly split between the capitalist West and the socialist East to the point that Cuba became capitalist and South Korea was absorved by the North with no proxy wars or any other fighting among the sizes. Of course as we know, the USSR collapsed in 1991.* The ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' novel ''Eternity Weeps'', published in 1997 but set in 2003, features Iran and Iraq soldiers competing to acquire an alien artifact. No one could have foreseen that in 2003 Iraq would be occupied by the US-led coalition.
* While not a SciFi novel, the Creator/DaleBrown novel ''Literature/SkyMasters'' was published in 1991 and set in 1994. It makes references to the Soviet Union (which would cease to exist at the end of 1991) and features the Strategic Air Command in a prominent role. The SAC would be abolished in 1992.
* ''Literature/TheWaySeries'': A major plot point of ''Eon'', written in 1985 and set in the early 21st century, is that the USSR still exists [[spoiler:and the Third World War breaks out between it and the USA]]. On the other hand, [[spoiler:the plot makes extensive use of the concept of parallel worlds and alternate histories, which handwaves the problem away: the story is not taking place in our timeline]].
* The ''Literature/SagaOfTheExiles'' by Creator/JulianMay takes place both in the 21st century and in the Pliocene. The [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] plays a prominent, but peaceful, role in psychic research. The author has had to dodge the Soviet issue in the sequels.
* ''Literature/TheThirdMillennium'', a book of future history by Creator/DavidLangford and Creator/BrianStableford, written in 1985, has communism (and capitalism) collapsing in the mid 21st century, but the USSR existing as a political entity right up until 3000.

* ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar: August 1985'', a 1978 mock-history book on a WorldWarIII, has the USSR collapse in 1985... [[spoiler: In a highly violent manner after the nuclear destruction of Minsk, now Belarus, and Birmingham, UK.]]
* Creator/JackChalker's original ''Literature/WellWorld'' novels from the 1970s featured Com Worlds, generally horrific dystopian planets descended from earth's Communist nations. At the end of that series the whole universe gets rebooted. The next series reveals that human history was altered slightly by the reboot, resulting in the world as we know it and the presumption that Com Worlds will not be a big part of the new future. (Rebooting the universe allows you to {{Retcon}} ''everything'', it seems.)
* Creator/StephenKing
** In ''Literature/TheStand'', written in 1979 and set in 1990, an American general instructs his subordinate to [[spoiler: release a virus]] in each of the Soviet satellite states.
** ''Literature/TheDeadZone'' has a relatively minor one: Johnny Smith's vision of a future nuclear apocalypse ushered in by President Greg Stillson. Smith predicts that the war will originate in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica which, at the time the book was written, was pursuing a nuclear weapons program under the direction of the ''apartheid'' government. However, South Africa dismantled its arsenal in 1989, three years before Smith predicted Stillson would be elected.
* ''Literature/TheZone'' WorldWarIII novels by Creator/JamesRouch (written in the 1980s, though an actual year is never mentioned) are now referred to as AlternateHistory for this reason.
* Creator/JamesBlish's ''Literature/CitiesInFlight'' series involves the Western democratic government model becoming ever more intolerant, eventually resembling the Soviet model very closely, and then the Soviets winning the war (and absorbing the West) because they were better at being Soviets.
* Creator/MackMaloney's ''{{Literature/Wingman}}'' series, first published in 1984, had World War III take place in the 80s, and in the 90s, some time after the real-life collapse, the Soviet Union (which somehow still exists despite being bombed into oblivion in the war) uses a traitorous Vice President to let them bomb and take over the United States.
* ''Literature/AWomanOfTheIronPeople'' by Creator/EleanorArnason (copyright 1991) not only has the Soviet Union survive, it has communism as the dominant political system of Earth at the time of the First Interstellar Expedition (on which the main characters traveled).
* Creator/JoeHaldeman's book ''Worlds'', written in 1981, is set in roughly 2085, with a significant population living on satellite semi-independent "worlds" in space, but makes note that on Earth, most of Asia is now part of the "Supreme Socialist Union."
* Creator/JohnBrunner's ''Literature/StandOnZanzibar'' actually handles this pretty well, despite being written in 1968. The USSR isn't gone in 2010, but it's mostly defunct and implied to be Communist only in name, and the real threat is ... China. A lot of other predictions in the book are surprisingly accurate as well.

* In the 1990 short story "The Emperor's Return" by Creator/HarryTurtledove, the Soviet Union invades Turkey in 2003 - and not only that, Greece has gone communist as well and is allied with the USSR. Now, since Turtledove has made most of his career writing AlternateHistory, Fantasy or any possible combination of both[[note]]The story itself features a prophecy and a time-travelling Byzantine emperor[[/note]] it's very easy to {{handwave}} that.
* In the novel ''Literature/PresidentsVampire'' by Creator/ChristopherFarnsworth, Cade, the eponymous vampire, assassinated Osama bin Laden as he was fleeing Tora Bora. This could not be revealed to the public without breaking the {{Masquerade}}, especially after bin Laden [[WeDidntStartTheFuhrer revealed his true form]] as a [[Literature/CthulhuMythos Deep One]]. After bin Laden's real life death, a later book in the series has an offhand mention of the government staging said death for the sake of political capital.
* In ''Literature/VoyageFromYesteryear'' by Creator/JamesPHogan, the Soviet Union is stated to have collapsed in 2021.
* In Creator/SimonHawke's ''Literature/TheWizardOfCamelot'', a resurrected Merlin is nearly assassinated by a Provisional IRA terrorist in 2182. Even if the Good Friday Accords fail in the future, those splinter groups which still agitate against peace in Northern Ireland now spurn the "Provo" name.
* Creator/NormanSpinrad's 1991 novel ''Literature/RussianSpring'' was overtaken by events within months of its publication. The novel was an extrapolation of the events that actually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, but predicted a more gradual, on-going evolution and opening-up. As the old guard of Soviet leaders continued to age and die, a new generation of young Russians became adept at working around the restraints of what was left of Communism, and started a cultural and artistic renaissance that soon became the envy of the rest of Europe, while America became increasingly insular and stagnant.
* The early books of the ''Literature/VenusPrime'' series, being based on old short stories written by Creator/ArthurCClarke and having been started in the eighties, imply that Russia is still Communist, despite taking place at least a century into the future. The last book, written more recently, clarifies that the Soviet Union ''is'' still around (or reformed itself), but the second "S" in USSR stands for something other than "Socialist", and apparently, there are still Russians who want to return their country to socialism; the Soviet colony on Mars featured in the third book was an attempt to pacify them.
** In the first book, one of the suspects in the ''Star Queen'' sabotage, Sondra Sylvester, has a big secret that she doesn't want anyone to find out... she's living with another woman. While this might have been scandalous in the 80's, it's not so controversial nowadays.
** The plot of the third book relies heavily on the assumption that the Soviet Union is still around in the 22nd century, and has enough clout that the Council of Worlds (a successor to the UN) granted it and China their own colony on Mars to spread communism. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. The last book, written after the Soviet Union's demise, retroactively places a lampshade on this, claiming that in recent years, there have been Russians pining for a return to communism, and the Mars colony was an attempt to siphon those agitators away from Mother Russia.
* Creator/CliveCussler often set his books (particularly the Literature/DirkPittAdventures) a few years in the future, so he was bound to get some things wrong.
** ''Night Probe'' has the U.S. President being told the Middle East has two years of oil left...in 1989.
** ''Cyclops'' imagines that in 1989, the Soviet Union is still strong, but Fidel Castro breaks Cuba away to become an ally to the U.S.
** ''Treasure'' stated that in 1991, the U.S. finally converted to the metric system. Also, it said that Muammar Gaddafi died of cancer while Ayatollah Khomeni was still alive. By 1990, Khomeni had been dead for a year, while Gaddafi would live until 2011.
** ''Valhalla Rising'', set in 2003, has the villain's plot involving blowing up a tanker at the base of [[HarsherInHindsight the World Trade Center]].
** ''[[Literature/TheOregonFiles Corsair]]'' is centered in Libya where Muammar Gaddafi announces an increased cooperation with NATO in anti-terrorism efforts. The book was written just two years before the Libyan Civil War.
* Creator/JerryAhern's epic pulp adventure series ''The Survivalist'' begins with the Soviets invading Pakistan to try to stabilize Afghanistan during their occupation of it, which starts a nuclear war. The series continues with post-Apocalyptic schemes between the US and the USSR continuing to dominate the main plotline, including a ''fleet'' of Space Shuttles and some serious Soviet Superscience, after which the title character and his family cold sleep into the future and start again there (unfortunately so have the DirtyCommunists).
* Louis-Sébastien Mercier's ''L'an 2440'' ("The Year 2440"), published in 1770, is an old example. Predicting what France would be like in 2440, Mercier believes France would still have a hereditary monarchy (albeit a constitutional one), although his future France ''has'', like modern France, seen its nobility abolished.
* ''Literature/TheDarkForest'' by Creator/LiuCixin, originally published in 2008, has a meeting TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture between a former American secretary of defense and an aged Islamic fundamentalist hiding out in Afghanistan who is clearly intended to be -- but not named as -- Osama bin Laden. The English translation of the book didn't appear until 2015, meaning that the mess-up was baked into it from the start.
* In the web-novel ''Literature/{{Domina}}'', the Soviets are mentioned obliquely a few times even before the reveal that the story takes place [[AlternateTimeline in an alternate 2001]]. The timeline changed in 1970, and apparently one of the effects is that the USSR never fell. The Cold War appears to be long over, though, and the Soviets maintain the space station that serves as the communications hub for the space colonies.
* In the 1965 novel- set in the future- ''Literature/TheStarFox'' by Creator/PoulAnderson, there's a reference to the Russian Republic, which is also noted as being 'amiably inept'. (Poul Anderson was a noted anti-communist).
* Even scholars on the subject were caught off-guard. History Professor Michael Hughes of University College of Wales, in the epilogue to his book ''Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800-1945'', ends with speculation on the subject of German reunification. He quickly dismisses it as impossible, as it would require the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its European Empire. The book was published in ''1988''. On the other hand, he was completely right that the only way for it to happen is if the Soviet Union entered into a terminal collapse. He didn't predict reunification but the correctly assessed what would be needed for reunification to happen, although the Soviet Union limped on for another year after Germany was reunified.

* The original ''Literature/JamesBond'' novels were primarily about Bond fighting agents of the Soviet spy organization SMERSH. But Creator/IanFleming began to worry that the Cold War might end at some point and leave his stories feeling dated. So when writing ''Literature/{{Thunderball}}'', he decided to come up with SPECTRE, an apolitical, multinational terrorist organization with a tendency to [[PlayingBothSides play both sides]] of the Cold War and other conflicts for their own schemes who could fit into any political context imaginable.
* In Creator/AnneMcCaffrey's ''[[Literature/ToRidePegasus Pegasus in Flight]]'', written in 1990, she predicted that Russia would abandon Communism through a continuation of Gorbachev-era policies rather than national collapse. Accordingly, Russia still had Communist-era labor laws on the books that became a plot point in the construction of Padrugoi Station. ''Pegasus in Space'' just rolled with it.
* Creator/MaryShelley's ''Literature/TheLastMan'' is set between 2073 and 2100 recording TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt by ThePlague, although most of the story is about the family drama of the main character. Despite happening in the late 21st century all European monarchies are still in place, the Ottoman empire still exists, and so on.
* ''Literature/ThePeaceWar'' opens with a prologue set in 1997, featuring a US Air Force recon mission over the still-existing Soviet Union. It's a relatively minor case, though, because then the Peace War breaks out and rewrites all the existing political borders.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's original novel ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'', first published in 1973, is set in what is still the pretty distant future (the 2130s) and anything resembling 20th century geopolitics is serenely absent from Clarke's basically very utopian setting. In the sequel ''Literature/RamaII'' (written with Gentry Lee) the authors have essentially pushed a great big reset button on the original novel's whole utopian-futuristic setting, and various characters are described as "Soviets"...and the book was published in 1989, [[UsefulNotes/BerlinWall of all years]].

* The long-running ''Literature/{{Deathlands}}'' series of novels started in 1986. They claimed that a nuclear war broke out between the USA and the USSR on January 20, 2001, leading to the [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic setting]] where the action takes place. In real life, not only was there no war between the USA and the Soviet Union in 2001, the latter had ceased to exist ten years prior. Rather than attempt to retcon any of their predictions, the series simply became AlternateHistory.
* Creator/KAApplegate's ''Literature/{{Remnants}}'' series has Earth struck by a planet-killing asteroid in 2011. Though funnily enough a much more minor prediction in the book ''did'' come true: that the United States would have [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama a black president]] in 2011 (though a man, not a woman).
* ''Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries'' predicted lunar bases and manned missions to Jupiter by the first year of the 21st Century. More egregiously, [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey the movie]] predicted that we would be flown there by [=PanAm=], which went out of business in 1991.
* Creator/GeorgeOrwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'': Although there are some concepts in the novel that we'd be wise to heed as milder versions have crept into RealLife ("Orwellian" political euphemisms or doublespeak, control of information and "the memory hole", increased surveillance and "Total Information Awareness", perpetual war and war footing, etc.), the developed world in 1984 wasn't divided into three totalitarian superstates (although the Third World, in terms of UsefulNotes/ColdWar proxy wars, bore some similarity to that geographical southern quadrant constantly fought over by the three big powers as described in the novel), and the West at any rate wasn't living anywhere near the level of oppression as described in the setting of Airstrip One (Britain), Oceania. Orwell himself discussed this as more of a ''counter''-prediction: hoping that such a dystopia ''wouldn't'' happen (it seemed possible to him at the time). In that case, he got his wish.
* Both the book and [[Film/ThingsToCome the movie]] of Creator/HGWells's ''Literature/TheShapeOfThingsToCome'' predicted that UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would lead to the collapse of civilization and the rise of a technocratic new world order. Among Wells's howlers was the prediction that the German army would be fought to a standstill by Poland. However, he did accurately predict the second world war coming (admittedly not that hard) along with the fact it would happen by 1940 (the war began four months before).
* The predictions UsefulNotes/{{Nostradamus}} made in ''Literature/TheProphecies'' were, as previously mentioned, usually pretty darn vague, but he did have a few unambiguous ones. For instance, his very specific prophecy for July 1999 -- he could only have dated it more precisely if he'd specified which day of the month -- which completely and utterly failed to happen. Paris was not, in fact, smitten by winged terror from the skies. Or if it was, they kept quiet about it.
* Creator/GKChesterton discusses this trope in the introduction to ''Literature/TheNapoleonOfNottingHill'':
-->The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

* Creator/LeVarBurton wrote his only novel, ''Aftermath'' in 1997, predicting the US would be in a state of utter economic and social collapse by the present as a result of a civil war. However, he got one prediction right, that a black president would be elected in 2008 (it's his assassination that triggers said civil war).

* ''Literature/JackRyan'':
** ''Literature/TheSumOfAllFears'' is a close one-written in early 1991, months before the breakup of the Soviet Union, and revolves around a "hoaxed" Soviet attack on the US in January 1992, by which time the USSR had been formally dissolved for a month. The [[Film/TheSumOfAllFears film adaptation]] was aware of this, with the main villain changed from an East German to a neo-Nazi.
** His portrayal of the prominent Afghan viewpoint character, a mujahideen, in ''Cardinal of the Kremlin'' also uses the "tragic, noble victims of the invading Soviets" political HistoricalHeroUpgrade common in those times as he was stated to have been nothing but a peaceful teacher who only became a ruthless killer after the Soviets had ruined his life and killed his family and that he wouldn't have even picked up a gun if it were otherwise. Played with in that the other mujahideen viewpoint character is AxCrazy, but it still didn't stop the novel ultimately laying the fault on the Soviet invasion and the American interference in it:
---> Not a ''trick'', Ortiz [a CIA agent] noted. He called it a ''tactic.'' He wants to go after transports now, he wants to kill a hundred Russians at a time. Jesus, what have I made this man?[[note]]Later the same character snaps at his aide and demands that he shows the Afghans some respect because of all they had suffered through after said aide dismisses them as brutal, primitive "sand-niggers."[[/note]]
* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' features a nuclear war breaking out sometime in the late 1950s, making it this trope if you block out all the heavy-handed symbolism.
* ''Literature/SometimeNeverAFableForSupermen'' has a nuclear war where there shouldn't have been, though Creator/RoaldDahl is just looking for a convenient time to kill humanity.
* ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. All of the ''Space Odyssey'' series have already been invalidated this way, one way or another. For example, the first three books all feature a still-existing USSR; the backstory of 2061 involves a revolution in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica in the 2030s which overthrows the apartheid regime; then of course there's the invention of HAL. Creator/ArthurCClarke went on record to state that the 'sequels' were actually stories taking place in [[AlternateUniverse alternate universes]] when current events surpassed his stories.
* Averted in a Creator/MarkTwain [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18846_6-eerily-specific-inventions-predicted-in-science-fiction.html short story,]] "From The London Times Of 1904", which predicts the Internet and social media (actually ''far'' ahead of their time).
* Creator/LarryNiven's Literature/KnownSpace has humanity midway through colonizing the solar system and beginning to get slowboats to nearby habitable systems ready by this point in its history, as well as widespread death penalties to force organ donation. Many of its more fanciful aspects that happened in the late 20th century (legal rights and translators for dolphins, mining and colonies on Mercury and Venus) have changed from prediction into alternate history as the decades since the series started have passed. On the bright side, organ harvesting isn't ''nearly'' as bad as it predicted either.
* ''Literature/DreamPark'' by Niven and Steven Barnes has California decimated by an earthquake and associated tsunami in 1985. The second sequel bumped this to 1995, after which the authors threw up their hands and let it stand as an alternate-history Verse.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein is often credited with inventing the idea of an author linking his works into a single timeline and coining the term "future history." Nonetheless, he eventually had to declare his Future History to be an alternate universe (and he then introduced inter-universal travel so those characters could visit worlds more like our own).
* ''Literature/TheManWhoBroughtTheDodgersBackToBrooklyn'' was written in 1981, but largely takes place in 1985–88. A few of the changes are necessary for the story to work; for instance, the LA Dodgers' mid-Eighties stats ended up being pretty good in RealLife, but had to be abysmal in the book to help the characters buy out the team.
** A minor aversion occurs with the 1988 World Series; the Dodgers make it to the Series in the book, just like they made it to the actual '88 Series.
** Played straight with the book's central premise, though. As of 2024, the Dodgers are still in Los Angeles.
* ''The Literature/ChaletSchool in Exile'' (1940) has the Chalet School relocate from Austria to Guernsey to escape the Nazis. Shortly after it was published, the Nazis invaded Guernsey. ''The Chalet School Goes to It'' (1941) establishes that they almost immediately ''re''-relocate to Wales.
* ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'' was written and released in the middle of the Great Recession. The book takes place in a world where the Recession never ended, stretching into the 2040s. The real Great Recession officially ended in 2009, but most people had felt the last of its effects by 2015. . . only for another Recession to hit in 2020.

* Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka's ''Literature/{{Warday}}'' (1984) depicts a "limited" nuclear war in 1988. In a case of WriteWhoYouKnow the authors recount their (fictional) experiences in the war and travel across a devastated and depopulated America to show the consequences of the war. The eastern half of the country has been destroyed by bombings on San Antonio, New York, and UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC and the breakdown of order while California is pretty much untouched and has become an undeclared separate country with closed borders.
* Alan Steele's ''Literature/JerichoIteration'', written in 1994 and set in 2013: St. Louis has not been destroyed by a massive earthquake and Cascadia, a nation consisting of Washington and Oregon, has not seceded from the Union.
* Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Zendegi}}'', written in 2009 it has the Iranian theocracy overthrown in 2012.
* ''An Island Called Moreau'' by Creator/BrianWAldiss has World War III happening in the mid-1980s between the USSR and "its Middle East allies" against NATO, Israel and China.
* ''Literature/WorldWarZ'': The exact date is never openly established but the fact that Fidel Castro is still alive allows you to presume it's intended to be in or near the date it was published (2006). The most obvious failed prediction (thankfully) is the ZombieApocalypse, however a series of political and geographical changes that happen as consequence of the war include: peace between Israel and Palestine (renamed Unified Palestine), the independence of Tibet from China, Russia turning into the theocratic Holy Russian Empire, Mexico changing its name to Aztlan and the aforementioned Fidel Castro not only alive but leading the democratization of Cuba. Of course some of these events may still happen but none of them would happen before the death of Castro who died in 2016.
* Hector Bywater's ''Literature/TheGreatPacificWar'' was actually written as future fiction (it was published in 1925, the war in the book takes lasts from 1931 - 1933), but the naval conflict in the book had so many similarities to the actual Pacific war that happened soon after that it now seems like an alt-history novel.
* ''Literature/KamalAndBarnea'': Though the series is not explicitly about this, it quickly becomes so. It started as being set in some near future where the Israelis largely pulled out of the West Bank, and Yasser Arafat was President of the Palestinian state. After this was written, Israel eventually did pull out of Gaza, but Arafat died in 2004 and the West Bank remains occupied. Nor unfortunately is peace any closer more than twenty years on, contrary to what these books show.
* In Creator/MichaelCrichton's ''Literature/RisingSun'', the JapanTakesOverTheWorld narrative is played out on steroids. Crichton envisions a Japanese culture so ruthless and so powerful that they get away with murder. This was 1992, shortly before (or more accurately during) the Japanese economy's downfall, and the myth of the Japanese's business superiority to America was shattered.
* Lampshaded at the end of the 1952 novel ''Literature/{{Limbo|1952}}'' by Bernard Wolfe. His novel is set in a fictional post-WWIII 1990s that maintains racial segregation, sexual discrimination, and UsefulNotes/ColdWar rivalries in a world of automated factories, rocket planes and nuclear-powered artificial limbs.
-->''Anybody who "paints a picture" of some coming year is kidding -- he's only fancying up something in the present or past, not blueprinting the future. All such writing is essentially satiric (today-centered), not utopic (tomorrow-centered). This book, then, is a rather bilious rib on 1950 -- on what 1950 might have been like if it had been allowed to fulfill itself, if it had gone on being 1950, only more and more so, for four more decades. But no year ever fulfills itself: the cowpath of History is littered with the corpses of years, their silly throats slit from ear to ear by the improbable.''

* ''Literature/HoverCarRacer'' has an in-universe example. After Jason's car is destroyed in the Italian Run, a newspaper prepares two versions of the front page but prints the wrong one, leading Jason to discover a story with the headline "The Death of Jason Chaser''.
* An early version of "The Great Politics Mess-Up" was the use of "Prussians" as [[NationalStereotypes stock foreign characters]] in scifi stories set in TheFuture (e.g. the Seetee stories by Creator/JackWilliamson) long after UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} had been split up and absorbed by communist countries that had little interest in maintaining the institutions that created that [[KaiserReich stereotype]] in the first place.

* "You will. And the company that'll bring it to you: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJcABbtvtA AT&T."]] Many of the technologies shown in this 1993 ad campaign exist today, but a lot of them are brought to us by Google, not AT&T. CRT monitors, sending a ''fax'' from a tablet, and VideoPhone booths are hilariously dated concepts.

* The story of ''[[Anime/BlueCometSPTLayzner SPT Layzner]]'' features students from both sides of the Iron Curtain traveling to the moon together on the equivalent of a field trip. At least it actually predicts that the conflict between both sides will end, just much slower than it actually did. Also, the potential end of this Cold War is the stated reason that the ''aliens'' show up in the first place, to take over the world before the two sides work together well enough to take over their planet, which they have no idea exists in the first place.

* There was a trend in action films between the 1970s and early 1990s (particularly in the late 80s) [[ApocalypseHow in which the rising crime rates of the era would inevitably lead by the end of the century to a near-collapse of civilization...]] unless a [[CowboyCop hard-boiled copper]] or a VigilanteMan could bring some order. The fact that by the late 90s crime rates ''decreased'' (to historical ''lows'' in some places), and (for added irony) alongside a softer stance on crime in the mid-90s makes modern audiences ponder in hindsight if the writers either mocked or were part of the moral panic of the era.
** In ''Film/Predator2'', it was predicted that [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture by 1997]] Los Angeles would decay into a dystopian CrapsackWorld with drug gangs in open war with each other, as well as the police, using military-grade hardware and body counts seemingly in the thousands. The police themselves show elements of being an occupying force in their own city and Harrigan himself refers to his beat as "the war." Based on the high crime rates of L.A. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this didn't seem too far-fetched circa 1990, but fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century and we see that Los Angeles, while still not a utopia, has far lower crime rates than it did at the time the film was made. Ironically, it was in the next year that they started to fall.
** See also the opening of ''Film/DemolitionMan'', which shows about 10% of the city on fire ([[MonumentalDamage including the Hollywood sign]]), gangs with ''anti-aircraft'' weapons and police riding military grade Humvees... in 1996 (just ''three'' years after the film's release, making it even more ridiculous than most of them). This is mostly to crank up the contrast with the 2032 world, where crime is so low that the police have basically forgotten what it is.
** ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'', in 1981, predicted that by 1997 crime rates would have risen to such catastrophic levels that Manhattan Island would be turned into a penal colony for containing all the convicts. While the high crime rates of the 1970s-80s made it look more plausible then, the fact they started falling just ten years on left it looking silly when the actual 1997 rolled around.
* This was averted in the 1968 movie ''Film/TheShoesOfTheFisherman'', which predicted that by the time the film was set in the late 1980s a non-Italian from an Eastern European country would be elected [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]] of the Roman Catholic Church. When the film had been made there had not been a non-Italian Pontiff in over four hundred years. Ten years after the film was made that prediction became true when the College of Cardinals elected the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła Pope, the first non-Italian to hold the office in over 455 years.

* ''Series/TwentyFour'': Season 1 was written and filmed pre-9/11 but was set in 2004. By the second season, 9/11 had happened, and the Department of Homeland Security suddenly existed when it hadn't before.

* ''Series/StarCops'' includes a recurring character who is generally referred to as Russian, but clearly has the Soviet flag on his uniform. The premise seems such that the major UsefulNotes/ColdWar tensions have eased and the two superpowers have learned to get along...more or less. Sort of like the way it is now between the US and Russia.
* ''Series/Space1999'': It was covered later by stating it had taken place in an AlternateUniverse.
** The first episode has a news report referring to Yugoslavia. ''Technically'', Serbia and Montenegro still called itself Yugoslavia until 2003 (although they had a hard time getting the rest of the world to do the same), but Yugoslavia as it was known in the 70s ceased to exist in 1992.
** And of course we all remember where we were on September 13, 1999 when a huge nuclear explosion blew the Moon out of Earth orbit.

* In ''Series/MoonbaseThree'', the Soviet Union still exists in 2003. It operates Moonbase 2, one of five lunar outposts (the others being operated by the US, Europe, China and Brazil). Furthermore, in the fifth episode "Castor and Pollux", it is revealed that the Soviets are on the verge of sending a manned mission to UsefulNotes/{{Mars}} and that their long-term goal is to launch a manned orbital flight of UsefulNotes/{{Jupiter}} using Mars as a springboard.
* ''Series/LogansRun'': In "Man Out of Time", the Soviet Union seemingly still existed in 2119 as a newspaper headline reads "Eastern Bloc Demands Time Travel Controls."
* ''Series/TheLastManOnEarth'' offhandedly depicts Mike Pence as being the 46th president of the United States, aligning with common predictions in the late 2010s that he'd emerge as a potential successor to UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, under whom he served as vice president. The ''actual'' 46th president would end up being UsefulNotes/JoeBiden, whose election coincidentally occurred during a pandemic similar to the one depicted in the show.
* The PBS game show adaptation of ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego'' had the misfortune of being launched just as the USSR was on the verge of collapse, meaning that by the second season, anything related to it or Eastern Europe in the first season reruns was already outdated. This, combined with chronic instability in the third world, prompted a disclaimer to be added: "All geographic information was accurate as of the date this program was recorded." It also necessitated constant updating of the maps used on the show, sometimes overnight according to ''WebVideo/{{Defunctland}}''.
* ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'':
** "In the year 1987, NASA launched the last of America's deep space probes. ..." Granted, we haven't sent any ''manned'' probes past Earth orbit since ''Apollo 17'' in 1972, but we're still sending unmanned ones.
** The show, which aired from 1979 until 1981, took as its main premise that Captain William "Buck" Rogers would be lost in space during a NegativeSpaceWedgie that would engulf his deep-space ''Ranger 3'' exploratory craft sometime in the far-off year... of '''1987'''. As of 2018, humanity is still trying to get back to the moon, let alone anywhere further afield, with a manned mission. [[HarsherInHindsight And, more to the point of 1987, in real life, no space launches of any sort happened in the US that year, due to the Challenger disaster the previous year.]]
** In an episode someone tests to see if Buck is who he says he is by making a pop culture reference to the 20th Century. Today, UsefulNotes/OJSimpson's image as "The Juice" has fallen out of public consciousness. And when one thinks of O.J, it's about something completely different. In Buck's defense, he was frozen in 1987, years before O.J's fall from grace.
-->'''Duke:''' If you're Buck Rogers, then who's "The Juice"?\\
'''Buck:''' The Juice? Hah. O.J. Simpson. I told you all about him.

* The miniseries ''Series/{{Amerika}}'' posits a U.S. that was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1987 and was now Soviet-occupied territory. The reason given in the movie as to why this happens is "[[{{Anvilicious}} American apathy]]." To contrast, there is also a novel entitled ''USSA: United Soviet States of America'', which is a murder mystery set in American-occupied Russia.

* With frightening accuracy, ''Series/RowanAndMartinsLaughIn'' averted this. In their "News of the Future" segment they mentioned that in 1988, twenty years from the time the episode was telecast, UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan would be the U.S. President and the Berlin Wall would come down. (Okay, the Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989, but still close enough for jazz.) [[note]] And this prediction spawned an aversion of its own in a 2011 Cracked article: https://www.cracked.com/article_19146_8-absurd-jokes-that-predicted-real-life-events.html [[/note]] [[note]]("''Of course, a little more than a decade later, Reagan did win the presidency, his term ending the very year their "news of the future" segment took place. So, has anyone done a wacky "Donald Trump as president" sketch yet? Laugh all you want, it may seem strangely prescient in, say, '''2017'''''".[[labelnote:*]] [---emphasis added by TV Tropes contributor ---] [[/labelnote]]"''[-And we're legitimately sorry if this comes true.-]''") [[/note]]
* The ''Series/{{Spooks}}'' spin-off series ''Spooks: Code 9'' started with a nuclear attack during the London 2012 Opening Ceremony - an event that thankfully never happened.
* During the TV movie ''Knight Rider 2000'', made in 1991, a news clip can be seen of "President Quayle" giving a speech. At the time, Dan Quayle was the ''Vice'' President and had things followed a typical political trend, assuming he would be President in the year 2000 wasn't too farfetched. Only for Bush to lose the following year's election and Quayle to retire from politics afterwards.

* Most of the relevant parts of the ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' timeline are in the middle parts of the 31st century, so it's a petty detail -- but the game's timeline includes a ''second'' "Soviet Civil War" in the early 21st century, just before the first manned flight to Mars. Newer materials haven't retconned this; presumably, it's just assumed to be an alternate reality.
** Actually similar to ''Shadowrun'' (only logical since both were created by the same company), it was at one point mentioned that an attempted retcon to the Russian Federation was made, before the creators gave up and as much as declared (Particularly joked on on the ''[=BattleTech=]'' forums) that ''[=BattleTech=]'' is not our future but rather the future of the mid 1980s. Which actually explains quite a bit, including the bulk of much of the computer equipment in the game in comparison to modern computers and the like.
* Steve Jackson Games' ''TabletopGame/{{Illuminati}}'' card game (first published in [[TheEighties 1982]]) assigned groups various alignments that (mostly) came in opposing pairs; one opposing pair was "Government" and "Communist". When they adapted the concept into the ''Illuminati: New World Order'' CollectibleCardGame (in [[TheNineties 1995]]), "Communist" was demoted from an alignment to a secondary "attribute", and the "[[OneNationUnderCopyright Corporate]]" alignment was introduced as the new opposite to "Government".
* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' has some kind of world-ending catastrophe in its {{backstory}}, and though the details are vague and obscured by time, secrecy and misinformation, the main culprits that The Computer suspects are Communists, hinting at WorldWarIII. Not surprising, since the game first came out in TheEighties, but not the first people you'd blame these days. On the other hand, [[FutureImperfect records of the past are so mangled and manipulated]] that it hasn't affected the setting. In fact, the core drives behind the setting have proven remarkably resilient. As the Kickstarter for the 2015 edition says, "The original Paranoia was a product of, well, Cold War paranoia. Today, we have no need to be paranoid! The NSA and GCHQ work tirelessly to ensure that we are all safe and secure against the pervasive threat of Commie mutant trai.... Uh, I mean, evil, crazed terrorists."
* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Terradyne'' has a much-reduced (with only five republics left) USSR in the year 2120. Again, this was written in the period where it was expected that some states would peel off from the Union but not that it would break completely.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' has a weird example. The {{Sourcebook}} ''Warlords of Russia'' was written well after the fall of the Soviet Union (the game itself came out in 1991), yet one of the power blocs mentioned in the setting is a group called the "Sovietski." The book explains that they are the remnants of a second Soviet Union that was formed in the 21st Century before the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Coming of the Rifts]].
* The default setting for ''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'' displayed a classic great mix-up turnaround. ''Red Doom'', a 3rd edition supplement, was published in 1988, and depicted a pair of official Soviet superteams -- "The Supreme Soviets", who were basically loyal to the state, if only because that suited their ambitious leader, Colonel Vasalov, and who thus tended to operate in the range from {{Worthy Opponent}}s to DirtyCommunists, and their auxiliary team, the "Comintern", who were created as something of a dumping-ground for less reliable or more independent-minded supers, and who could thus be more likely to come across as ChummyCommies. (Both included non-Russian members.) However, by the time the characters were updated for the 4th edition in ''Classic Enemies'' (1991), they needed major changes. One group, "Red Doom", had gone rogue, with Colonel Vasalov aiming to depose President Gorbachev and take over Russia, thus falling into the RenegadeRussian category (though the team still had several non-Russian members); the other characters had become an independent hero team, the "New Guard", albeit still loyal to their various homelands and so potentially able to operate at cross-purposes to western heroes, making them basically ChummyCommies who weren't especially communist.

* [[Series/TheColbertReport Stephen Colbert]] insists the Cold War is ''still going on'', and has periodic Cold War Updates whenever anything newsworthy happens in Russia.

* ''Film/TheManWhoSawTomorrow'', a 1981 SpeculativeDocumentary about UsefulNotes/{{Nostradamus}}, has become an amusing example of this trope. [[BlatantLies Apparently, we're in the late stages of World War III right now, New York City is a radioactive crater, Ted Kennedy was the Democratic presidential candidate a while back,]] and [[MissedHimByThatMuch Loma Prieta's Quake of '89 happened in '88.]] {{This Is the Part Where}} we explain that Nostradamus typically made his predictions so vague as to be interpretable six ways from Sunday in a successful bid to stay off the ChurchPolice's radar.

This is a particularly OmnipresentTrope in [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture near-future]] SpeculativeFiction, since the readers (and author) are usually still around when the prediction fails. If the creator is still alive they may even offer an official explanation. The fact that the prediction isn't true may be HilariousInHindsight or HarsherInHindsight. See also TimeMarchesOn, which tends more towards reactions of current audiences (e.g. a work becomes unreadable due to ValuesDissonance).

** In one that crosses with HarsherInHindsight, "Queen Diana visits Washington". Not only did Princess Diana leave the royal family through a divorce and then die tragically long before, in 1997, but UsefulNotes/ElizabethII was still reigning in 2015 and all the way until her own death in 2022. [[EpilepticTrees Maybe the two swapped fates?]] On October 21, 2015, the real-life ''USA Today'' [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/22/back-to-the-future-newspaper-success/74418826/ issued a special edition]] replicating the front page from the movie, but omitting the Queen Diana headline.
** As shown above, the newspaper that mentions "Queen Diana" also suggests a female president. If it's referring to the President of the United States, that still hasn't happened (as of the 2020 election).[[note]]A female ''Vice'' President of the United States has happened though.[[/note]]

** Played straight with the book's central premise, though. As of 2014, the Dodgers are still in Los Angeles.

** Zig-zagged during [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E17BartToTheFuture "Bart to the Future"]], a glimpse into Lisa Simpson's adulthood set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Lenny offhandedly references the idea of Chaz Bono taking up a career in politics like his father, Music/SonnyBono, when in reality, he ended up becoming an actor. The episode also refers to the younger Bono by his deadname, as he didn't come out as a trans man until nine years after its premiere. Also, there's an infamous line about a UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump presidency in the distant future. At the time, Trump was seeking the Reform Party's candidacy for president during the 2000 presidential election, but by the time the episode aired, Trump already ended his campaign. However, he ended up winning the 2016 presidential election as the Republican Party's candidate.

*** The beginning of "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E12TheRoyale The Royale]]" has Picard musing about UsefulNotes/FermatsLastTheorem, pointing to humanity's continued failure to solve the problem despite being centuries more technologically advanced than its creator as a lesson in humility. He must have missed that it had actually been solved as early as 1995. This would eventually get referenced in the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E25Facets Facets]]", when Dax says one of her previous hosts had the best approach to proving it since Andrew Wiles, presumably one relying only on techniques made before Fermat stated the theorem.[[note]]Fermat's Last Theorem was first stated as a note in the margin of a book he owned, which also stated he had developed a proof but would be unable to fit it on the page. Wiles's proof relied on mathematical techniques developed after Fermat's death, meaning it's not the one Fermat would have been talking about. As of 2024, Fermat's own proof, if it was correct, remains unknown.[[/note]]

*** The beginning of "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E12TheRoyale The Royale]]" has Picard musing about UsefulNotes/FermatsLastTheorem, pointing to humanity's continued failure to solve the problem despite being centuries more technologically advanced than its creator as a lesson in humility. He must have missed that it had actually been solved as early as 1995. This would eventually get referenced in the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E25Facets Facets]]", when Dax says one of her previous hosts had the best approach to proving it since Andrew Wiles.

* Zig-zagged on ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'': When Freakazoid goes back in time and averts World War II, he returns to the present [[ButterflyOfDoom and sees things have changed]]: Creator/SharonStone can act, Radio/RushLimbaugh is a bleeding-heart liberal, and thumbing through a newspaper: "Cold fusion works... Euro Disney packed... No more Creator/ChevyChase movies!" There’s just one catch to all of this: Now [[WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain The Brain]] is President.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Zig-zagged during [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E17BartToTheFuture "Bart to the Future"]], a glimpse into Lisa Simpson's adulthood set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Lenny offhandedly references the idea of Chaz Bono taking up a career in politics like his father, Music/SonnyBono, when in reality, he ended up becoming an actor. The episode also refers to the younger Bono by his deadname, as he didn't come out as a trans man until nine years after its premiere. Also, there's an infamous line about a UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump presidency in the distant future. At the time, Trump was seeking the Reform Party's candidacy for president during the 2000 presidential election, but by the time the episode aired, Trump already ended his campaign. However, he ended up winning the 2016 presidential election as the Republican Party's candidate.

* A major plot point in ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' is the StatuteOfLimitations on an old murder case being almost up. Despite what most players would assume, at the time of the game's original release, Japan [[AluminumChristmasTrees really did have a Statute of Limitations on murder]]. However, [[http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/japan-statute-of-limitations-for-murder-abolished/ it would be abolished in 2010]], with the abolition applying to all murders that were still active under the prior Statute. As such, since the game takes place in 2016, the entire idea that those who plotted against Edgeworth were "running out of time to get revenge" no longer makes sense.