History Main / FishOutOfTemporalWater

'''Someone from The Past ends up in The Past''': There's a LOT of Past. Can usually result in one Historical Figure or archtype meeting; befriending or fighting another. Ninjas, Pirates, Napoleon, Hitler, Genghis Khan; etc.

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is how [[AudienceSurrogate Anne]] feels in ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'' since Wartwood and Toad Tower, as well as several other areas are about as advanced as the United States in the 18th to 19th century. Until it's revealed that [[spoiler: Amphibia has ancient ruins of factories and advanced computers, as well as robots]].
-->'''Anne:''' I thought you guys were pastoral or something.
* This is the premise for ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'': the Warner siblings getting out of their water tower prison after having been sealed in it by Warner Bros. personnel since the '30s. They adapt fairly well for the most part, but it really comes into play when the show [[WesternAnimation/Animaniacs2020 got revived]], showing how they were sealed again for around ''two more decades'', and after they get out, they wind up trying to catch up on everything they've missed in the interim.
* The major driving plot of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' is how Aang cryogenically froze himself for 100 years, waking up to find that a war with the Fire Nation started not long after he was frozen, wiped out his entire civilization, and has gone on since then. Sometimes, the show thematically explores the consequences of how things change with time -- in an early episode, he meets his only known surviving friend, who is now much older than he is; and about mid-series, he finds what used to be an oasis in the desert to be completely dried up. This is most notably explored, however, whenever the Air Temples are visited -- Aang is shown reminiscing about how things are so different in his old homes, especially since for him it wasn't even a year ago that they were full of life.
* Wanda Pierce from ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' is an owl who recently woke up from a 30-year coma in 2015, and has to adjust to the technology of the modern world. She also dresses in 80s-style clothes.
* The AlternateHistory episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks,'' in which Martin Luther King Jr. didn't die when he was shot, but remained in a coma for 30 years, uses this trope to critique aspects of both contemporary African-American culture and the mainstream news media.
* {{WesternAnimation/Captain Caveman|AndTheTeenAngels}}.
** Cavey seemed either reasonably used to most of the 20th century items he encountered (despite a propensity toward trying to eat half of it), or possessed his own Stone Age equivalents of modern tech. In one episode, Cavey made use of one of his club's functions, a firefly-powered "world's first x-ray" beam. Post-"Teen Angels" appearances of Cavey might {{Handwave}} this by showing him as having lived during [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones the Flintstones']] 20th century-like Stone Age.
* ''WesternAnimation/CleopatraInSpace'': The series focuses on 15-year-old Cleopatra VII as she gets transported 30,000 years into the future, to an Egyptian-themed planet that is ruled by talking cats.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' episode Operation: C.A.K.E.D.-F.I.V.E., a Kids Next Door operative from the 1800s (aptly titled Numbuh 19th Century) is thawed out after being [[HumanPopsicle frozen in an ice cream explosion]] for over a hundred years. Numbuh 19th Century is understandably confused by the modern world, and his archaic views, ''especially'' his male chauvinism, do not make him popular with the operatives of the present... particularly Numbuh 86.
* ''WesternAnimation/ElenaOfAvalor'': The titular princess was trapped in the Amulet of Avalor for 41 years after Shuriki attempted to murder her. Once she is free from the Amulet, Elena finds that Avalor City is a prosperous trading center and such. But, she finds her cousin Esteban has aged that amount, and in a later episode she meets her childhood friend, who is now much older than her.
* Futura in ''WesternAnimation/FilmationsGhostbusters'', a ghostbuster from the future. Her role seems to be the AudienceSurrogate for the ghostbusters to do exposition about thing in the present that she doesn't understand.
* Fry in early ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''; [[LikeADuckTakesToWater he adapted surprisingly quickly]].
** Said best in "[[{{Recap/FuturamaS2E19TheCryonicWoman}} The Cryonic Woman]]"
--->'''Michelle''': You were a loser in the year 2000 and you're a loser [[MakesSenseInContext in the year 4000]].\\
'''Fry''': Yeah, but in the year 3000, I had it all; a couple of friends, a low-paying job, a bed in a robot's closet. I envied no man, but you wrecked everything!
** Speaking of which, Fry's on-again-off-again girlfriend Michelle is a prime example in "Cryonic Woman". She cringes and/or screams at the sight of every weird thing that wasn't in the 20th century, including all the non-human members of the Planet Express crew, and the Professor (once prompted) and Amy (when she says she's from Mars).
** The reason Fry adapted quickly was more of a production thing: they were finding it hard to create more storylines about Fry adapting to the future, so they turned him into a straight, somewhat dim-witted (DependingOnTheWriter) man in an insane future.
** In one episode Fry walks in on a support group for cryonically frozen people. He doesn't really care about anything but the buffet, unlike the guy who lived in a time when man was ruled by sentient carrots, the executive from the 1980s who missed out on the implosion of "merger fever", and the caveman who found his wife in a museum.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' had this in the first episode with the main protagonists having slept for a thousand years, but they adapt surprisingly quickly, particularly Hudson's love of T.V. and Lexington's genius for learning technology in general. Later on, Griff of the London Clan of gargoyles is pulled forward fifty years.
* The Author of the Journals, [[spoiler:Ford Pines,]] from ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls''. [[spoiler: He's been trapped in another dimension since 1982, and it shows.]] He talks about 8-tracks and floppy disks in an EstablishingCharacterMoment.
* Billy of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' dug up [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Fred Flintstone]] in his backyard. And took him to show-and-tell, where he snapped from being 30,000 years out of place and went on a rampage.
* ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983'': In "The Time Wheel", Orko accidentally pulls King Tamusk, a former ruler of Eternia, to the present. Tamusk is at first unaware that he's time traveled and thinks he was simply teleported away from his kingdom. He's disoriented and frightened when he sees several machines, but thinks that the machines and changes to the surroundings are the result of magic. He then mistakes King Randor for a usurper and attempts to fight him to regain his kingdom. Tamusk is also upset because in his time, everything is decided by battle and war and Eternia has become much more peaceful. He-Man manages to stop him and convince him that he's in the future and to be returned home. It's implied this is a StableTimeLoop, as the history books mention Tamusk used to be cruel and warlike, until he suddenly changed to a fair and just ruler after seeing how Randor and He-Man do things.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsonsMeetTheFlintstones'' has this with the Jetsons going back in time and meeting the Flintstones. Eventually the Flintstones end up going forward to the Jetsons' future. Both sides are initially confused by what they find when they leave their respective time periods, but they manage to adapt pretty quickly.
* [[ActionGirl Kiva]] from ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'' is a soldier from the future fighting an alien war. She intended to send the Megas robot back to a turning point in the losing war, but accidentally sends it back to the 20th century. When she finds it in the early 21st century, she discovers the time controls are broken beyond repair.
* [[WesternAnimation/MonkeyDust Ivan Dobsky]] was convicted as the Meatsafe Murderer in the early 70s, only he never done it, he only said he done it so they would take his willy out of the light socket, but two nice men named D 'n A said he never done it, and they told everyone. So Ivan is released from prison, but he finds himself unable to cope with the changes that have occurred in society during the 20-odd years of his imprisonment. He laments this fact and says he wants to go back to prison, but people tell him he can only go back to prison if he does something truly horrible. HilarityEnsues.
* ''WesternAnimation/MummiesAlive'' used and abused this trope with gay abandon. The mummies, after awakening over 3,000 years after their deaths, obviously have a lot of adjusting to do, but this adjustment period seemed to take an ''extremely'' long time, with jokes about the Mummies encountering modern technology making up at least 80% of ''every single episode''.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', Princess Luna was sealed in the moon for a thousand years. As such, her dialogue is peppered with FloweryElizabethanEnglish (often [[NoIndoorVoice at high volume]]), she uses the RoyalWe, and she is obsessed with archaic long-abandoned court protocol. The word "fun" is less than 1000 years old; as such, [[FridgeBrilliance she's unfamiliar with it]].
* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'': The 2019 special ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLifeStaticCling'' revolves around Rocko and his friends returning to O-Town after 20 years in space and finding their home completely changed. Heffer and Filburt embrace new aspects of modern life like food trucks and smartphones; [[ButtMonkey Rocko]], [[SadistShow not so much]].
-->'''Rocko:''' The 21st century is a ''very'' dangerous century.
* This is the entire premise of ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'': Jack has been sent to the future and is trying to get back home to feudal Japan. A great deal of the comedy in the series is dependent on Jack's lack of understanding in the future. Most notably, "Jack" was a slang three hipsters called him on the streets and he thought that was what they seriously thought his name was.
* Played for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' when elderly Jasper freezes himself in the Kwik-E-Mart freezer so that he can be alive to see the future. Apu takes advantage of the situation by changing his store to the 'Freak-E-Mart' with frozen Jasper as an attraction for tourists. This doesn't last very long when the freezer fails and Jasper wakes up and sees the changes in the store, actually thinking he is in the distant future.
-->'''Jasper''': Moon pie... what a time to be alive.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' in both Season 9 of the cartoon show and in the [[Film/TheSmurfs live-action movie]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' {{lampshade|Hanging}}d this in "[[Recap/SouthParkS2E18PrehistoricIceMan Prehistoric Ice Man]]" by having a HumanPopsicle who was only frozen for three years... but the town treated it as if this were a big thing.
** In "[[Recap/SouthParkS10E12GoGodGo Go God Go]]", Cartman was turned into a HumanPopsicle while trying to cut down on the time until the Nintendo Wii came out. Unfortunately, he ended up freezing himself for 500 years, when technology such as the Wii ceased to exist.
*** [[Recap/SouthParkS10E13GoGodGoXII The next episode]] shows that he has adapted to life in the future quite well, although his primary concern is still to get a Wii. And when he gets it, [[ShaggyDogStory he can't play it.]] For bonus points, when he ''does'' return to the present, [[spoiler: he's actually further back [[ShootTheShaggyDog and has to wait months instead of days for the Wii's release]].]]
* An ''almost'' literal example in ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' where one episode has Squidward accidentally get frozen and awaken in the distant future.
* A significant part of the premise of ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward]]'' was seeing them adapt to living 100 years in the future. Everyone but Raphael adjusted fairly quickly while Raph found the conveniences of the future to be ''inconvenient'', i.e. being attacked by appliances while trying to read the holographic newspaper. "I hate the future!"
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'':
** This happens to Cyborg, when he gets spontaneously warped to 3000 BC and dumped right in the middle of a war between a tribe of barbarians (led by the [[ActionGirl surprisingly bad-ass]] Sarasim) and some vaguely demonic creatures. He helps them fight off the monsters several times, and eventually discovers the one responsible for their appearance -- Krall, an unscrupulous warrior from the tribe who asked a witch to give him glory, and instead received monsters he couldn't defeat. He asked her for the strength to beat them, and she brought Cyborg from the present. A transformed Krall and his minions lay siege to the warriors' home, and Krall manages to get the upper hand against Sarasim. Before Cyborg can save her, he's pulled back though a time warp to the present by the other Titans. At first he's distraught, but later Raven shows him a book detailing the history of Sarasim's tribe, which shows that they managed to defeat Krall's army, and Sarasim survived.
** Another episode has Starfire sent twenty years into a BadFuture, when three of her four compatriots are retired.
* Happens to WesternAnimation/TomTerrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog when they travel back in time to help the only survivor of an Indian attack discover California (story arc "Go West, Young Manfred"). Tom tries to change into a helicopter but can't because helicopters hadn't been invented yet.
* ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'''s take on Cyclonus only appears for a few minutes in the actual show, but [[AllThereInTheManual the Allspark Almanac II]] lets us know that he's from the future and is just biding his time until Megatron becomes Galvatron.
* Caleb from ''WesternAnimation/{{Witch}}'' gets transferred from a medieval fantasy-like world to early 2000s America. He fits in pretty well but doesn't understand certain aspects of modern culture or modern technology.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Meta-example: There have been '''''a few video game consoles''''' that exhibited this trope -- Creator/{{Sony}}'s [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation first]] [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 two]] Play-Station video game consoles, as well as Creator/{{Nintendo}}'s UsefulNotes/{{Wii}} and UsefulNotes/NintendoDS systems, which outlasted the generations they were first introduced. As video games advanced to the next generation, it's safe to say that a good number of people felt that these systems were quite démodé and unfitting with the passing times in spite of their continued survival.
* King Malinus from ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest'' returns to life after being dead for centuries only to find his once beautiful kingdom gone. He goes berserk and tries to find someone to blame for its destruction. He refuses to accept [[PlayerCharacter your]] explanation that no one is to blame; that time takes all things. He even attacks you thinking you are responsible. He calms down after you defeat him and then wonders what he should do now. Fortunately, his Moglin assistant (who survived all this time thanks to his healing magic) comforts him by telling Malinus that he has many descendants still alive and that his vanished kingdom acted as the foundation for the present civilization. You throw in your two cents by suggesting that Malinus could be a hero again since Lore will always need more heroes. Malinus takes your words to heart and offers as a reward a spell to summon him in battle.
* In ''VideoGame/AkatsukiBlitzkampf'', the titular Akatsuki spends 50 years trapped in the Arctic Pole as a HumanPopsicle and the action of the game is kickstarted when he wakes up from such a "sleep". He deals with this trope by restarting the mission he was given before being frozen and kicking the asses of anyone who gets in his way...
* Would you ever believe ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' has this in an extreme form? [[spoiler:''Continuum Shift: Extend'' gives us Makoto's story mode, ''Slight Hope''. The aforementioned Makoto Nanaya winds up falling into a dormant Cauldron in the Ikaruga ruins, and gets thrown out back at the events of ''Calamity Trigger'' -- '''[[AlternateTimeline during the]] ''[[AlternateTimeline Wheel of Fortune]]'' [[AlternateTimeline timeline]]'''! Makoto has no role in NOL Intelligence or Sector Seven, her best friend Noel ''does not exist'', and the only folks who have any idea what the hell she's going on about are Hazama, Relius, Kokonoe, and Rachel. In the bad ending Relius finds her first and... [[TearJerker the rest]] [[MindRape is best]] [[MoralEventHorizon/VideoGames left unsaid]]. In the good ending, Rachel helps her back to the active timeline.]]
* Rather the point of ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''. The characters of the story tend to take this in stride, with a few exceptions.
** When Crono, Marle, and Lucca end up in [[AfterTheEnd 2300 A.D.]], they are shocked and horrified by the nature of their future.
--->'''Marle''': It's like another world...
** The results of the Ocean Palace Disaster displaces four characters who have no way back, specifically[[spoiler: Melchior, Gaspar and Belthasar, the three sages, in addition to the young Janus, who became Magus. Belthasar was the only one to try to make a way back, but he died of old age by the time he finished his time machine. The other three made new lives for themselves when they ended up.]]
** After the party defeats Magus and screws up his summoning of Lavos, the resulting time distortions displace Magus [[spoiler: ''again'']] and he ends up in his own past, where he acts as a prophet (using his knowledge of his own time period) to try for another swing at Lavos.
* In ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'' this is Inverted. When Johnny Silverhand returns to Night City after 50 years of absence, he is disturbed by how ''little'' has changed, seeing this as further proof that the corporations have managed to stamp out human creativity and individuality.
* In ''[[VideoGame/DarkFall Dark Fall II: Lights Out]]'', Benjamin Parker travels into two different future eras and one period of the past. His confusion at seeing what's become of the lighthouse he'd been checking up on could fit this trope, even if he didn't get the chance to interact with people as a social FishOutOfWater. [[spoiler: Also applies to Malakai, an AI-controlled space probe from the future, that ended up in the distant past from a deep-space teleportation accident. Having [[AiIsACrapshoot gone a little insane]], Malakai had since been attempting to manipulate people into helping him return home, including Parker.]]
* Eirena the Enchantress in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'', who was placed in a 1,500 year long slumber so that she can help the hero fight the forces of Hell.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' you can encounter Private First Class Dobbs, who was killed in battle prior to the [[WorldWarIII Great War]] and taken to the Sierra Army Depot to be immersed in a HealingVat in an attempt to revive him. When the [[PlayerCharacter Chosen One]] wakes him up in the present day, he doesn't realize the world's ended and runs off in an attempt to rejoin his unit only to melt into a puddle of goo due to [[CryonicsFailure "post-cryogenic syndrome"]].
** In the ''Mothership Zeta'' DLC in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' you can meet people from across history who were cryogenically frozen by aliens, including a little girl from the early days after the Great War, a pre-war soldier, a cowboy, and a samurai.
** The [[PlayerCharacter Sole Survivor]] from ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' was [[HumanPopsicle cryogenically frozen]] on the day the bombs fell, and then thawed out two hundred years AfterTheEnd. They end up oscillating between this and ColdSleepColdFuture depending on the circumstances.
** There's also Curie, a medical robot [[spoiler: and later RobotGirl]] who spent the last two hundred years by herself running tests on mole rats until you find her. She doesn't quite grasp that civilization actually ended and has a tendency to ask if you're going to report attacking Super Mutants to the police or wonder where all the students are when you explore the burned-out ruins of MIT.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** We have Tidus from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', getting thrown approximately a thousand years into the future, where his home Zanarkland was destroyed by Sin. [[spoiler: Turns out that Tidus was a dream created by the fayth and that everything that he knew wasn't real.]]
** [[spoiler: Vanille and Fang]] from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' were TakenForGranite for 500 years and revived just before the start of the game.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' has a moment with Noel Kreiss, who comes from a distant future where there is no Cocoon in the sky and he's the last human left alive. He wonders at the sight of Cocoon when he goes five centuries backwards in time, and marvels at the population of New Bodhum (which apparently had more people than he'd EVER known in his lifetime). Seriously, the guy is even wowed that they're able to grow their own vegetables. Yes, his era sucked that much.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'': The PlayerCharacter is established to have been pulled from the modern day real world into the medieval-esque ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' universe against their will. Some of the other characters ask the player about their homeworld, and find the concepts of "buildings that scrape the sky" and "metallic non-horse-drawn wagons" to be amusing.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'':
** The protagonist of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity'', Tommy Vercetti, had been sent to prison in 1971 and released in 1986, shortly before the game started. One of the people he does jobs for is a sleazy porn director who's shooting a pornographic parody of ''Film/{{Jaws}}''. Tommy wonders to himself why anybody would go see a movie about fish. Tommy's fondness for Hawaiian shirts also leads to a few jokes that his stint in jail has left his fashion sense TwoDecadesBehind.
** Likewise, ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' features a darker, less comedic application of this trope. Dwayne Forge, who had just been released from prison after several years, is shocked about how the drug business, which had once been a last-resort career track for those desperate to escape the ghetto, is now being presented by pop culture as something that black youth should aspire to making it big in.
* Axl Low from ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear'' has the [[BlessedWithSuck ability to randomly, and unwillingly, travel through time]], which leads to him being sent from our time to the post-apocalyptic world of the game. He takes it [[AngstWhatAngst extremely well]], holding his own against the rest of the fighters and even seeming to enjoy himself, but still devotes his time to returning to his girlfriend, Megumi.
* In ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKainSoulReaver'', when Raziel is revived as a wraith and re-enters the physical world, he's shocked to see how much Nosgoth has changed since he's been gone; the vampires have all become ravenous, mutated beasts, and Kain's empire is derelict and ruined.
* ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarryWetDreamsDontDry'' has the protagonist somehow time-travel from the 1980s to 2018. Much of the humor deals with him attempting to deal with modern culture and technology.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'':
** [[DownloadableContent Javik]] from ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' was [[HumanPopsicle frozen in cryostasis for 50,000 years]] and as a result is the last Prothean still alive. As a result, all his memories regarding the races who now rule the galaxy are from when they were little more than cavemen, which he is [[WhileYouWereInDiapers constantly pointing out]]... even when [[StealthInsult he's praising them]]. His reaction to the Salarians, one of the most smartest races and major powers in the current Cycle is to first express amazement that they managed to evolve ''at all'', before remarking that they used to eat flies and lick their own eyeballs.
** Downplayed with Commander Shepard in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', who ''died'' and subsequently spent the next two years (and twelve days) being brought back to life. Since it was only two years, it meant that aside from a few new technological advances, there was very little that actually changed in all that time, so they adapted quite quickly.
* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain''. Venom Snake [[spoiler:and the ''real'' Big Boss]] wakes up after a nine year coma in 1984 and is initally dazed. But thanks to Ocelot filling him in on current events, the nature of Diamond Dogs' operations and the fact that Venom doesn't really go to any major hub of pop culture, he manages to get by.
* This is the basis to the whole story in ''VideoGame/Onimusha3DemonSiege'', as main hero Samanosuke Akechi is sent 500 years forward into modern Paris, just as Jean-Jacques, based on actor Jean Reno, is sent back into Samanosuke's time in a crazy time-travel plot to resurrect Nobunaga. Both of them act properly befuddled by their surroundings, especially Samanosuke.
* To allow new players to enter the game without knowing the theme, ''VideoGame/{{Otherspace}}'' uses this trope to allow players to be from any era in human history, then suddenly be sucked into the game world.
* Jean Bison from ''VideoGame/Sly2BandOfThieves'' is this way by HumanPopsicle, being a frontiersman who continued his work in the present day. In his time, it was considered taming the wilderness. In the present, it's ecological warfare.
* The ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'' takes place in the late 1500s. Most {{Guest Fighter}}s fit some variant of the trope; ComicBook/{{Spawn}}, [[VideoGame/{{Tekken}} Heihachi, and Jin]] come from the modern era and are Present to Past, [[VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} KOS-MOS]], [[Franchise/StarWars Yoda, Darth Vader, the Apprentice]], and [[VideoGame/NierAutomata 2B]] come from futuristic worlds and are Future to Past, and [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII Ezio]], [[VideoGame/GodOfWar Kratos]], and [[VideoGame/SamuraiShodown Haohmaru]] come from the early 1500s, somewhere in the 400-300 BC range, and late 1700s respectively and are Past to Past.
* Judd the cat from ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' is one of only two known mammals in a setting that's otherwise primarily populated by sapient non-mammalian sea creatures. As it turns out, this is because [[spoiler:Judd was one of the few land animals (if not the ''only'') to survive the catastrophic flooding that wiped out humanity 12,000 years before the start of the game, thanks to his owner sealing him in cyrostasis for 10,000 years]].
* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'':
** The "The 2800" arc uses this to answer the question of what exactly happened to the 2,800 Dominion warships the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Prophets]] made vanish in [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]: [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E06SacrificeOfAngels "Sacrifice of Angels"]]. Turns out they got time-shifted 35 years into the future and reappear out of nowhere in the middle of an international summit on the Borg problem. It takes a lot of talking before they even accept that this happened, and getting them to go away still entails a big space battle.
** The Federation temporal contact is a former ''Bozeman'' crewman (see the Live-Action TV entry for ''Star Trek''). He is well-adjusted when met (the game takes place some forty years after ''Bozeman'' was broken out of the loop), but notes that his experiences is one reason why he works for the Department of Temporal Investigations.
* [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Princess Zelda]] as she appears in the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series. Especially in ''Brawl'''s adventure mode, when she just stands on Meta-Knight's ship while getting hit by Fox's cruiser.
* Silas and Verna in ''VideoGame/TheTrailOfAnguish'' can't say exactly where they're from, from the museum exhibit suggests they're from a lost era.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertow}}:'' {{Pun}} aside (due to the aquatic features on their feet and hands), the Atlanteans spent centuries under the ice before the Elect inadvertently unfroze them, and they are eager to reclaim their dominion over mankind.
* In ''VideoGame/Yakuza4'', Taiga Saejima was imprisoned in 1985, and finally [[GreatEscape escapes]] in 2010. As he wanders around Kamurocho, where he used to live, he makes numerous comments about how everything's changed, and he doesn't even know what a CD or DVD is.
** Ditto with ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' and the main protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga. He spends eighteen years in prison starting from 2001, and when he gets back to Kamurocho in 2019, he suffers from a nasty case of future shock when he sees all the modern tech around him. And when he eventually gets a smartphone, he has no clue how to use it.
* In ''VideoGame/YookaLaylee'', Rextro Sixtyfourus is an N64-era character in a modern game. As this is a game where [[MediumAwareness everyone knows they are in a game]], much of the jokes involving him are about the characters being confused by him talking about things such as cheat codes which modern games don't have, as well as him being confused by things modern games do, such as online multiplayer. He ends up taking a class to familiarize himself with modern game design, but unfortunately for everyone else it ended up being mostly about microtransactions.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
** ''Literature/PebbleInTheSky'': Joseph Schwartz, a tailor from [[NextSundayAD contemporary Chicago]], is inadvertently and permanently displaced into TheFuture some several thousand years due to a scientific experiment gone strangely wrong.
** "Literature/TheImmortalBard": Every historical figure that Dr Welch brings to the present begged/demanded to be returned to their own time in very short order, finding the present day far too alien for them to be comfortable in. The exception was Creator/WilliamShakespeare, who adjusted quite well and stuck around for several months... until one day he too demanded to be sent back, not because something made him uncomfortable, but because something seriously ''pissed him off''. [[spoiler:He took a college class on analyzing the works of Shakespeare. [[DeathOfTheAuthor And failed]]]].
* Creator/AndreiBelyanin loves this trope and uses it humorously as a basis for several novels, including the ''Literature/SwordWithNoName'' series (a modern-day man is transported into a medieval kingdom filled with magic and evil sorcerers), the ''Literature/TsarGorokhsDetectiveAgency'' series (a modern-day policeman ends up in a mix of medieval Russia and fairy tales), ''Literature/TheThiefOfBaghdad'' series (the author's friend ends up in Ancient Arabia and forms the legend of the Thief of Baghdad), the ''Literature/ProfessionalWerewolf'' series (a young female college student is recruited by a time-travelling duo to go to different time periods and fight evil), and ''Literature/TheRedheadedKnight'' (a medieval knight ends up in modern-day Russia). The ''Literature/MyWifeIsAWitch'' series also includes several parallel worlds that are in the past (such as the Aztec Empire during its final days). In most of the novels, there is a good deal of anachronism; however, this is deliberate on the author's part, who notes the absurdity of the situation.
* Creator/AleksandrMazin's ''Barbarians'' (AKA ''Roman Eagle'') trilogy:
** It has two Russian cosmonauts somehow end up in the 3rd century AD during the final years of the Roman Empire. One of them gets captured by the barbarians encroaching on Rome, while the other one joins up with the Roman legions. Naturally, they change their names from Gennady Cherepanov and Aleksey Korshunov to Gennadius Paulus and Alaseia the Heavenly Warrior. Somehow, Alaseia/Aleksey ends up the chieftain of the barbarian tribes, while Gennadius/Gennady becomes the Primus Pilus (senior centurion) of the Roman legions. The author's goal appears to be not to change history but to describe the fall of Rome through the eyes of our contemporaries, one of which is determined to keep the Empire from falling (having already lived through [[TheGreatPoliticsMessup one such experience]]).
** Mazin's ''Varyag'' series has an ex-commando end up in 10th century Kievan Rus' (the original Russian state).
** His ''The Morning of Judgment Day'' novel involves a trained commando being ''sent'' to prehistoric past to discover the cause of TwentyMinutesInTheFuture catastrophes. Despite the training (mostly involving survival and fighting big cats), he's still ill-prepared to deal with the reality of prehistoric Africa. Imagine trying to ride an undomesticated zebra without a saddle or the time to break the animal in while running away from a tribe of murderous [[IAmAHumanitarian cannibals]].
* ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo''. A whole modern town gets sent back to the titular year (and moved from Appalachia to Central Europe). Not having any way to return to the present (and having an exclusive cache of modern technology and information), they decide to get the American Revolution started a hundred and fifty years early.
* Creator/CharlesStross' ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'': In ''Glasshouse'', a group of tormented war veterans in the 27th century have their worst memories erased, then find themselves participating in an alleged experiment to recreate society in the "Dark Ages" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, sometimes even [[GenderBender with their genders switched]]. Much HilarityEnsues from the confusion.
* Most of the characters from ''Literature/AeonLegionLabyrinth'' since the Aeon Legion usually recruits [=MIAs=] from various points in history. They tend to experience culture shock when seeing [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas Saturn City]] for the first time where doors vanish in time rather than open and roads have been replaced by glowing lines that fade travelers to their desired location.
* Creator/KirBulychev's ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'' series has a book about the titular from the late 21st century who ends up the 80s USSR. In the meantime, an 80s schoolboy trades places with her and finds himself in the future, trying to stop SpacePirates from obtaining a dangerous mind-reading device.
* ''Literature/AuroraCycle'': At the beginning, HumanPopsicle Auri O'Malley is rescued from the drifting derelict of the colony ship she was travelling on 220 years after the ship was lost. Among the things that she has to adjust to is that humanity has made contact with aliens in the intervening time. However, she also has to run from the government agents hunting her because of who and what she is and has become as a result of her time in [[SubspaceOrHyperspace the Fold]]...
* In ''Blood & Ice'' by Robert Masello, Eleanor Ames and Sinclair Copley spend the better part of two centuries frozen in ice after they are thrown overboard a ship in 1816, until they are found by an Antarctic research base in the twenty-first century. While Sinclair's bitterness makes it harder for him to adapt as he refuses to accept aid, Eleanor soon bonds with her rescuers and is shown to be willing to learn about her new time, quickly accepting the base medical officer Charlotte Barnes as a doctor despite coming from a time when a black woman as a doctor would have been doubly impossible.
* ''The Book Of Kells'' by Creator/RAMacAvoy. Who knew that tracing the pattern of the Cross of Bridget while listening to traditional Irish music could open a portal to another time?
* One of Creator/SpiderRobinson's early ''[[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Callahan's Place]]'' stories -- and one of the few to involve no overt science-fictional elements -- was called ''The Time Traveler''. It was about a man who spent the 1960s in a foreign prison and everything that had changed when he got back. For perspective, he had been jailed before Sputnik was launched and was released around the time of Watergate... This was published in science fiction magazines: the author argued that the character had as much claim to being a time traveler as anyone with a time machine. The whole point of the story was that [[http://callahans.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Hauptman Tom Hauptman]] time travelled the hard way. [[TheSlowPath One day at a time.]]
* ''Literature/TheCampHalfBloodSeries'':
** In the 1940s, Bianca and Nico di Angelo were dropped to [[LotusEaterMachine Lotus Hotel and Casino]], where time runs much faster compared to the outside. When they left, [[YearOutsideHourInside over 60 years have passed]]. While they adjust relatively well, [[spoiler:Nico's angst about his sexuality can be attributed to the fact that LGBT issues were considered taboo in his era]].
** Hazel Levesque, another daughter of Hades/Pluto, also underwent this trope, though it was because she died and was then brought back over 60 years later. Like Nico and Bianca, she seems to have few difficulties adjusting, although she does feel scandalized upon learning that premarital sex is common nowadays.
* In ''The Centurion's Empire'', a popsicled Roman Centurion does the usual "horseless carriage" remark, only to add, after the canonical explanation, that ok, so it is only an unsurprising "Greek Device", and then to brag about having seen similar gadgets when he was in Alexandria...
* ''Literature/AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt'' and all of its imitators/remakes.
* Thibault, one of the main characters of the ''Les Conquérants de l'Impossible'' French novels for young readers, [[HumanPopsicle fell into a natural pool of liquid nitrogen]] just after it is implied that he's the one who fired the shot that killed King Richard Lionheart. He is found and revived in the early 1990s by the other main characters and spends quite some time learning to adapt to the change.
* In Creator/JohnCWright's ''Literature/CountToATrillion'', Menelaus after his cure.
* Astrid in Daniel Gonzalez's time-travel novel ''Crononautas'', she is a 2nd Century Germanic girl traveling in time with three 21st Century scientist. [[spoiler:Although the other characters may also fit the description of this trope do to the fact that they get lost in time and can't control where their time machine travels.]]
* ''The Cross Time Engineer'' has a similar premise as Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, but with a 20th century engineer.
* ''Literature/CrosstimeTraffic'': When characters from [[AlternateUniverse alternate timelines]] come to the "home timeline", they're often shocked at the contrasting technology levels and cultural norms. [[spoiler:Jacques]] (who's from a CrapsackWorld with early-Renaissance tech levels at best) has no idea what a toilet is, and ends up using his hotel room trash can as a chamber pot before it's explained to him.
* Creator/StephenKing does this in ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series, using parallel worlds in which time sometimes passes at different rates. Thus a character from the '60s is as shocked as Doc Brown that Reagan is President in the '80s. (But at the finale, she [[spoiler: ends up in a universe where Gary Hart is President instead]].)
* In the ''Literature/DoraWilkSeries'' short story ''Skeleton In The Closet'', vampire Antoni escapes his punishment tomb after eighty years of imprisonment, and is completely lost -- the street plan of his city is completely different, a whole new political system came and went, along with new laws, culture and architecture, and even blood, with its higher vitamin and sugar count, is different and makes him nauseous.
* ''Literature/TheDragonKnight'' series by Creator/GordonRDickson features graduate student James Eckert, who is teleported back to the middle ages somewhere near the year 1300 and ends up cohabitating a dragon's body for the first book, so he not only has to learn how to adapt to medieval surroundings but also being a large flying target for overzealous knights.
* In ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'', a good number of the dragon-riding occupants of the five Weyrs brought forwards in time by Lessa are this trope, which is a source of drama in quite a few books. In their own time the Weyrs are used to getting whatever they want from the grateful Holds and Halls that they protected from the deadly Thread. Four hundred years later, after an Interval that was twice as long as normal, they arrive from ''Between'' times to find that Hold and Hall no longer respects the Weyr as they once did, and are in fact resistant to returning to their previous unquestioning obedience to dragonfolk.
* ''Literature/DragonsInOurMidst'': In ''The Candlestone'', several Knights of the Round Table have been trapped in the titular gem for centuries. The stories they hear from others have prepared them to some extent [[spoiler:for when they are released]], but still make mistakes, [[spoiler:like when they thought that a giveaway box actually contained [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries goodwill]] and got day-glo leisure suits from the seventies.]]
* In Creator/AndreNorton's ''Literature/DreadCompanion'' returning to their own place puts them decades later than they left.
* Sylvia Engdahl's ''Literature/EnchantressFromTheStars''. The author states specifically that the locale is ''not set in time ''or'' space'' and it is never ever ever ever ever lots and lots of ever ever ever hinted on the truth of if Earth is involved in any way. The Enchantress in the title is a girl from the future in which people have psychic powers and gets a trip on her dad's starship to a more early world in the equivalent of Middle Ages ("dragon" is a mining thing from rebel imperialistic people from the future group.) and the other protagonists are from Mid Ages.
* In ''Literature/ErIstWiederDa''" ("He's Back" or "Look Who's Back"), none other than Adolf Hitler experiences 2011.
* Of similar sensibilities to Robinson's story, Dean [=McLaughlin's=] story "Hawk Among the Sparrows" uses time travel to move both a late 20th century jet fighter and its pilot to UsefulNotes/WW1 France (the Analog magazine in which it appears showed a VERY cool cover painting of the aircraft). The story notes the parallel between useless assumptions present in the pilot and the more or less useless nature of the advanced fighter to that earlier time (at least as it might pertain to combat).
* in Kim Harrison's ''Literature/TheHollows'' series, a witch named Pierce who lived in the 1800s appears first as a ghost, later gaining a body. He often comes up against the unfamiliar technology as well as more liberal culture of the 21st century, and speaks in an archaic manner.
* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'': Nicole, a modern woman from the late 20th century, is sent back to the 2nd century Roman Empire. She knows very little of how things are done (hence her over-romanticized view about ancient Rome, which prompted the wish to begin with) and struggles mightily with adapting. The people around often think there's something off with her as a result.
* In Rene Barjauel's ''The Ice People'', two people are cryonically preserved during a time of technologically advanced civilization thousands of years ago, and reawakened during the twentieth century.
* Played with by the different characters of ''Literature/InTheKeepOfTime''. When the children go to the past, Ian and especially Elinor do not feel like they belong at all, with Elinor constantly complaining of only wanting to get back to the present as soon as possible. Andrew, however, fits in almost right away thanks to some handy archaic clothing and a mercy mission to save the people of Smailholm, befriending Mae, proving himself to the Laird and his men, learning much of history from Cedric, and even witnessing the Battle of Roxburgh. When they all return to the present, it is ''Ollie'', in the mentality of Mae, who is instead completely out of her depth and has to be instructed and helped to become part of that world. Interestingly, she isn't able to fully accept who she is and where she belongs until after another trip where they're all in the wrong time, in the future.
* Floe in ''I Was A Teenage Popsicle'' by Bev Katz Rosenbaum. Floe was [[HumanPopsicle frozen at the time of her death]]. When she is defrosted ten years later, she finds that her parents are still frozen and she must live with her sister, who was younger than her but is now older than her.
* John Schettler's series ''Kirov'' sent a Russian battlecruiser Kirov from year 2020 back to the flames of [=WW2=]. The crew struggle to understand what has happened to them, and then make a choice that could be decisive in the outcome of the war and who’s side are they on.
* The Dutch novel ''Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek'' (''Crusade in Jeans'') is about a 20th century boy who is stranded in the year 1212 and joins the Children's Crusade. He adapts relatively well despite some initial difficulties with language, and his 20th-century knowledge helps keep most of the children alive.
* ''Literature/TheLegendOfYanKanMar'': The three main characters in the novel as well as the invaders are all from a species called Taiko, and the protagonists are from 44 million years ago in earth’s history. Along with being in an unfamiliar time period, the Taiko are also among a different species: humans.
* The narrator/protagonist of ''Literature/LettersBackToAncientChina'' (not only this, but he also arrived on the wrong continent).
* ''Literature/LookingBackward: 2000-1887'' by Edward Bellamy, written in 1888 about a man from 1887 who wakes up in 2000. Which is a socialist utopia.
* Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/ALordFromPlanetEarth'': In ''Sea of Glass'', the main character is a modern-day Russian man who ends up in the 22nd century. However, the cultural and technological shock is lessened by the previous two books in the series being about his adventures in a galaxy populated by numerous HumanAlien races. He mostly adjusts to life in the 22nd century with his wife (a HumanAlien princess from planet Tar) but still feels weird when he sees three young people (one of them barely 13) having sex in the woods. When he confronts an older man with this, the man explains that they are all legally considered adults (even the 13-year-old who has passed his self-sufficiency test) and, thus, are granted all possible rights. The older man points out that freedom must not be limited by any one person's morals or it's not freedom at all. So, if three consenting adults want to have wild sex in the woods, they can do that.
* In ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series, Captain John Geary has spent around 100 years as a HumanPopsicle after his first and only battle, a LastStand during the initial stages of the [[TheAlliance Alliance]]-[[OneNationUnderCopyright Syndic]] war. He wakes up to find that the war is still on with both sides being too large and powerful to be completely defeated by the other. The concept of fleet tactics is gone due to the heavy attrition of the war (all experts died during the early stages), and AttackAttackAttack is the default tactic of any ship commander with admirals being more politicians than fleet commanders (captains actually vote on what to do next). Saluting has been forgotten (except by the SpaceMarines, of course). Interestingly, technology hasn't changed ''that'' much in 100 years, although weapons are slightly more powerful and ships can now send brief messages during FTL jumps. Additionally, a new PortalNetwork speeds up fleet movements, although Geary is forced to avoid it. Basically, being an average commander in his own time, "Black Jack" Geary (as he's now known for his LastStand) is a tactical genius thanks to nobody else knowing how to control an entire fleet in three dimensions with a time lag.
* Cyril Kornbluth's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons The Marching Morons]]''. An amoral 20th century con man awakens in the year 7-B-936, offers his Final Solution to the world's population problem, [[spoiler: hilarity does not ensue. For the billions he helped send to their deaths, or for him when he is forced to join them.]]
* Happens briefly in ''Literature/{{Mindwarp}}'' when two teenagers from the 1990s go back to 1945, chasing an obscure clue. While they're not surprised by the technology, Ethan uses CPR to save a man's life, and several small details are off-putting. [[spoiler: And before that, when the kids all travel forwards to a [[BadFuture post-apocalyptic]] world.]]
* Creator/WilliamMorris' ''Literature/NewsFromNowhere'', written 1890 as a direct response to Bellamy's book, follows the same structure but shows a very different vision of a socialist future.
* ''Literature/{{Nightside}}'':
** In ''Paths Not Taken'', characters from the modern Nightside travel back to Arthurian, Roman, and pre-Roman Britain. While John and Suzie don't have much difficulty elbowing their way through the series' everlasting WorldOfSnark, Tommy Oblivion is horrorstruck by how the squalor and slavery of the 6th century contrast with his romanticised pop-culture impression of the period.
** More broadly, ''lots'' of supporting characters become this trope when they wander out of Timeslips. Julien Advent is the most prominent example, although he's adapted quite well.
* The ''Literature/{{Noob}}'' novels have ''a whole continent'' in such a situation as part of a FictionalVideoGame universe.
* Several novels and stories of the ''Literature/NoonUniverse'' by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers include astronauts coming back from relativistic trips a century or two after they left and have to adjust to living in a new world with all of their friends and loved ones dead. This is until the discovery that relativistic travel doesn't ''have'' to be of the YearOutsideHourInside variety, if one foregoes the Special Theory of Relativity, which flips it into the YearInsideHourOutside variety.
* Creator/MikhailAkhmanov's novel ''Pharaoh's Guard'' has a modern-day Russian man end up in the service of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt.
* In Creator/VernorVinge's ''Literature/RainbowsEnd'', which is all about the rapidly increasing rate of technology change, Robert Gu has been suffering from Alzheimer's since more-or-less the present day, and wasn't much interested in technology then. TwentyMinutesInTheFuture, when he's cured and given rejuve treatments, he's so far behind the curve on everyday technology that he needs to start attending classes at the local high-school just to begin to have a hope of getting by in normal society.
* The main theme of ''Literature/ReturnFromTheStars''. Hal Bregg, the protagonist, ended up returning from his space mission to an Earth 127 years later due to TimeDilation (along with the other astronauts). The Earth government would want them to spend some time adapting in a special educational facility, but Hal decides to try and integrate himself into the future society on his own (mainly because he distrusts the educational facility's propaganda about how wonderful all future achievements are). It is difficult, due to huge changes in psychology of humans, for one.
* The original ''Literature/RipVanWinkle'' story is about a guy who literally sleeps through UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution. He awakens twenty years after having originally fallen asleep and heads back to his town, thinking only one night has passed. Confusion ensues.
* A version in the young adult book ''Literature/RunningOutOfTime'' by Margaret Haddix. The protagonist believes it is 1840, but she is actually living in a historical village in 1996. The parents volunteered to live in the village, posing as frontier villagers 24/7, with tourists watching them via hidden cameras, but they kept this knowledge secret from their children for the sake of authenticity. When diphtheria starts to kill children in the village, the owner won't give them medicine for it (since it didn't exist in 1840), so the main character has to sneak out of the village to get help, and is overwhelmed by the world of 1996. [[spoiler: [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/aug/10/news1 Yes]], the publisher of this book did accuse M. Night Shyamalan of stealing ideas for his movie ''Film/TheVillage''.]]
* ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'' features first Septimus, then Nicko and Snorri in Queen Etheldredda's Time and afterwards Marcellus Pye in Jenna's Time.
* In ''Literature/TheSeventhSword'' trilogy by Creator/DaveDuncan, a chemist named Wally Smith dies and is transported to an unfamiliar world where he inhabits the body of that world's greatest swordsman. Throughout the story, his knowledge of our world and lack of knowledge of his new world both get him into and out of trouble.
* Lily from ''Literature/SoonIWillBeInvincible'' has this as her "official" origin story. [[spoiler:But it turns out it's all just part of her {{Masquerade}}]].
* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries'': In ''3001: The Final Odyssey'', one of the astronauts from ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' has been rescued and revived after floating [[HumanPopsicle frozen in space for a thousand years]]. Now, in RealLife, the year 2001 is in The Past... But in [[AlternateHistory the Odyssey novels' continuity]], in 2001 we've got permanent moon bases and manned missions to Jupiter in giant spaceships, making it feel more like TheFuture to present-day readers (''3001'' was written in 1997, but still assumed the events of ''[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey 2001]]'' will have taken place). Really, though, the trope most closely evoked by the frozen astronaut's experience is someone from ''[[PresentDay The Present]]'' ending up in the future. So which variety of this trope is being exemplified here? Past to Future, Present to Future, or Future to Future? Only ''you'' can decide.
* The book ''Taft 2012'' is based around the idea that UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft fell asleep on the day of Wilson's inauguration and disappeared, then woke up in November 2011. Soon after, he starts a new presidential campaign, adapting his old ideas to the modern world.
* In ''Literature/ThatHideousStrength'', a man from the fifth century is awakened from a temporal ripple and expected to spend the night in a 19th-century mansion. He has problems adjusting to table manners that don't involve eating with your hands, hospitality that combines incredible luxury with extreme apathy, and most importantly, a world where [[UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} Christendom]] emptied its faith and spread that emptiness around the globe.
* In Creator/PoulAnderson's "Literature/TimeLag", Elva, rescued at the end and able to return to her home planet, contemplates how alone she will be. [[spoiler:Her rescuers quickly tell her that her son survived, that one of their number is her grandson [[DeadGuyJunior named for her dead husband]], and that he has a son of his own. And they are all ready to welcome her home.]]
* In ''Literature/TimeScout'' uptimers often make fatal mistakes downtime. Downtimers trapped uptime are the most pitiful refugees ever; many go mad.
* There's ''Umney's Last Case'', where a Raymond Chandler-style PI is dumped out of his vague 30s/40s fictional world by his creator and ends up in the real world of the 90s. It's a serious shock to the system.
* Set in the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' verse, Simon Spurrier's novel ''[[Literature/NightLords Lord of the Night]]'' involves the Night Lords first captain Zso Sahaal [[HumanPopsicle waking from stasis]] after his ship had finally escaped from Warpspace. While Sahaal had thought he had been trapped for a century or two at most, he realizes he woke up ''10,000 years'' in the future. The trope here is notably ZigZagged, in that Sahaal, coming from the era just after the Literature/HorusHeresy, finds that culture and technology in the Imperium has backslid, if anything; but the political situation is almost unrecognizable. The Emperor is now considered a deity, most of the figures of note are forgotten or obscured by legend, and the Night Lords Legion has been broken up and hasn't lived up to their father Konrad Curze's example of [[WellIntentionedExtremist cruelty for purpose]]. [[spoiler: And the part of the Legion Sahaal had seen has turned to Chaos, which Kurze had despised for it corrupting influence.]]
* In Creator/JohnCWright's ''Literature/WarOfTheDreaming'', Warlock Azrael de Gray is one of these: person from the past transported to the present day. While he does eventually figure out the modern world, he never quite ''gets'' it.
* In ''Literature/WarriorCats'', [[spoiler: Jayfeather is sent back to the time of the Ancients and must adapt to their traditions, while teaching them traditions he learned from the future version of them.]]
* ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'': ''Homeward Bound'' by Creator/HarryTurtledove has this briefly. After being sent to an alien planet [[HumanPopsicle while on ice]], the main characters come back to Earth because humanity developed FasterThanLight travel in the meantime. Some of the changes are a result of humanity's interactions with the alien race (such as women going topless), while others are things they would have encountered anyway (like dealing with modern pop culture). The "women going topless" example wasn't ''that'' [[TheFutureIsShocking shocking]], though, as it's mentioned to be one of the trends of the younger generation in the ''Colonization'' series with teenagers (both male and female) wearing ''only'' body paint. However, it was shocking that is was so commonplace that it was perfectly acceptable on network TV even without bodypaint. Additionally, two characters go see a cheesy B-movie at a drive-in only to find that it features a very explicit sex scene with the leads (and Creator/MattDamon as a supporting actor).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/ThirteenGoingOnThirty'', Jenna is a 13-year-old girl in 1987 who wishes she was 30 already. Her wish is granted when she suddenly wakes up in 2004 in her thirty-year-old body. Since she has no memories of what happened in between, she gets confused by her new life as an adult. She gets confused by a cellphone and when someone mentions Music/{{Eminem}}, she thinks they're talking about M&Ms.
* In ''Film/NineteenNinetyFourBakerStreetSherlockHolmesReturns'', Franchise/SherlockHolmes actually adapts fairly quickly to the late 20th Century, despite having been a HumanPopsicle for almost 100 years. However, lack of knowledge of certain social and technological developments cause some of his {{Sherlock Scan}}s to go humorously astray: such as deducing that Lt. Griffin is a supporter of the rights of little people after seeing a certificate of appreciation from the Little League on his wall.
* The final scene of ''Film/AmericanGangster'' shows Frank Lucas stepping out of prison in 1991, in a New York that has changed dramatically since his reign as drug lord. The first thing he hears is gangsta rap blaring from a car rolling down the street.
* ''Film/AnAmericanPickle'': Jewish immigrant worker Herschel Greenbaum accidentally falls into a vat of brine at the Brooklyn pickle factory he works in in 1919. The brine preserves him and he wakes up one century later in a New York City he doesn't recognize anymore, with only one surviving member of his lineage.
* Much of the humor in the ''Film/AustinPowers'' films derives from this trope. Interestingly enough, the movies focus almost entirely on the social changes, with the technology changes barely being mentioned at all. Then again, considering he's a James Bond-style spy, the technology change probably isn't as great for him, but he does try to play a CD on a record player, and there is the scene in ''Goldmember'' where Austin introduces the Internet to Foxxy. HilarityEnsues.
* In ''Film/{{Awakenings}}'', the revived catatonics are pleasantly surprised to learn that Prohibition was long ago repealed. They still feel (and act) young despite their advanced ages.
* ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' films, with the [[Film/BackToTheFuture first]] and [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII third]] both being examples of "From The Present going into The Past", the third even moreso. The [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartII second]] however, puts our heroes into an example of being "From The Present going into The Future" for the first half, then going back to The Present only to end up in a ''different timeline altogether'' for the second half, only to end up going back into being "From The Present ending up in The Past" for the last half of the film.
* The British comedy ''Bernard and the Genie'' features Lenny Henry as Josephus, a former merchant circa 1st Century A.D. (he claims that he met Jesus and was present at the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine), having been cursed into being a genie by an irate customer and sealed in a lamp for 2000 years. While he misses his family, he is amazed by the music, food and technology of the late 20th century. When he first listens to classical music, he declares, [[LargeHam "My ears want to mate with this music and bear its children!"]]. When he first tastes ice cream, his response is to rush out of the ice cream parlor and shout to anyone within earshot, "YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY THIS STUFF! IT IS COMPLETELY COLD AND TASTES WHOLLY OF STRAWBERRIES!"
* [[Creator/MartinLawrence Jamal Walker]] in ''Film/BlackKnight2001'' works at a Medieval-themed park. He is cleaning the moat and sees a necklace. Trying to reach it, he falls into the moat and finds himself in Medieval England. It takes him a while to even figure out that he's not in Kansas anymore. He just assumes that the castle is a rival theme park. Then he witnesses a PublicExecution and realizes the truth. At the end, it's revealed to be AllJustADream, when he is resuscitated by paramedics. Some time later, he trips and falls into the moat again... and ends up in the Roman Colosseum about to be eaten by lions.
* Played with in ''Film/BlastFromThePast'': The main character has the mindset of someone from the late [=50s=]/early [=60s=] because he was raised in a bunker by parents who cut themselves off from the outside world in 1962 and had no idea of the changes the world went through while they were locked away.
* Much of the humor in ''[[Film/TheBradyBunch The Brady Bunch Movie]]'' and ''A Very Brady Sequel'' comes from putting the stuck-in-the-'70s Brady clan in the grunge-era early-to-mid-'90s. This example is a comedy inversion of the trope as the Bradys themselves are perfectly at ease acting as if it were still a 70s era sitcom, leaving others around them stunned and confused.
* Several of the storybook characters of ''Film/ChildrensPartyAtThePalace'' come from works of British literature created over 50 years ago. For one, the Grand High Witch talks about "selling children’s [[UsefulNotes/GameBoy GameBoys]] on Website/EBay", though that handheld had been obsolete for quite a while in 2006, when the production was filmed.
* This is the premise of Creator/TimBurton's ''Film/DarkShadows'' starring (of course) Creator/JohnnyDepp and Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter, about a Vampire waking up after a 200-years-long sleep and finding himself in the 1970s. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTjD3rV27Go See a trailer here.]]
** ''Film/LoveAtFirstBite'' played with the same concept decades earlier, although Dracula hadn't been sleeping, just holed up in his isolated castle for generations.
* ''Film/DemolitionMan'' sees Creator/SylvesterStallone's usual character end up in the future through [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]]. He's suitably confused by technological advances (such as the "three seashells" that have replaced toilet paper), and horrified by the fact that the world (or at least the city) has been entirely {{Disneyfi|cation}}ed.
* Variation: ''Film/{{Enchanted}}''. The world of Andalasia exists in modern times, but is seemingly in MedievalStasis, allowing the characters who cross over into our world to be like this.
* In the first act of ''Film/FlightOfTheNavigator'', set on July 4, 1978, twelve-year-old David Freeman walks across the woods to get a friend, slips into a ravine and returns home... only to find it's July 4, ''1986''. His younger brother is now older than he is. He is taken to a NASA lab where he it is discovered that he was abducted by aliens and taken to their planet 560 light-years away and back in the equivalent of four hours. At the lab he is taken aback by Sarah Jessica Parker's partially purple hair, five different varieties of Coke, and music videos on TV.
* In ''Film/GoodByeLenin'', a fake East Germany needs to be staged for the protagonist's mother who was ''RipVanWinkle'' for just a few months... during which the Berlin Wall fell.
* The French movie ''Film/{{Hibernatus}}'' is about a man who became a HumanPopsicle after a shipwreck in 1905.
* ''Film/{{Iceman|1984}}'' is a deconstruction of this trope. It asks, completely seriously, how a Neanderthal man frozen for 40,000 years would be able to function in the modern world. The answer is very simple: [[spoiler:he wouldn't.]]
* ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'': Suspended animation into a distant future full of idiots...
* In ''Film/IvanVasilievichChangesProfession'', a Soviet comedy movie, a young, aspiring MadScientist Shurik builds a time machine, and a superintendent of the house he was living in, Ivan Bunsha, exchanges places with the tsar Ivan the Terrible (the two Ivans are lookalikes). We get ''two'' fish out of temporal water, the superintendent who impersonates the tsar, and the tsar who thinks he is in a world of demons. HilarityEnsues.
* The famously weird science-fiction musical (!) ''Film/JustImagine'', where someone from the present (1930) awakens in [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture the incredible far-off year of 1980]].
* ''Film/JustVisiting''. The instinctive reaction of a French knight and his servant when confronted with an SUV is to kill it. A lot. Also true in the French original: ''Film/LesVisiteurs''.
* In ''Film/KateAndLeopold'' a 19th century duke falls through a time portal into 21st century New York. While he's out of place he does adjust quickly and isn't really all that out of place (he'd be seen as a quirky cosplayer or method actor who never breaks character, at worst).
* In ''Film/KongSkullIsland'', Hank Marlow is a relic of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII due to being stranded on Skull Island for 28 years and is shocked to learn that [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar the U.S. is now in conflict with the Soviet Union]].
* In ''Film/Life1999'', after being locked up for a murder he didn't commit, convict Claude Banks thinks about driving off in the Governor's car while driving him around town. He changes his mind and stays put, when he realizes that the world in the [[TheSeventies 1970s']] is very different from the world of the [[TheThirties 1930s']].
* ''Film/LookWhosBack'': Chillingly {{Subverted|Trope}}. UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler suddenly comes back to life and he bumbles around in the world of TheNewTens because he doesn't understand a lot of modern technology like the Internet... but then he adapts [[MoodWhiplash and things take a darker turn]]. He becomes an internet celebrity and gullible people begin to fall under his thrall [[RefugeInAudacity precisely because]] [[PoesLaw nobody can believe that a pitch-perfect Hitler impersonator in modern Germany is anything more than some kind of politically-incorrect joke]]. And to him, if being seen as a comedian gets him supporters, then he'll play along. [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding By the end of the film]], Hitler's popularity is soaring and the one person who knows he's the real Hitler is locked in a mental asylum, powerless to do anything but watch as he prepares to strike out into politics.]]
* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse:
** At the end of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', Steve Rogers [[HumanPopsicle wakes up]] in a recovery room in New York, sees through the ruse of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent trying to convince him it's still 1944 and breaks out of the room and runs out of the building. He then realizes he's woken up almost 70 years later (in 2011) as he runs down the street and stands in Times Square. In ''Film/TheAvengers2012'', we see more of this. Steve doesn't know what Pilates is, and all of Tony's pop-culture jokes go over his head. Then Fury mentions that Loki turned two of his best men into [[Film/TheWizardOfOz his personal flying monkeys]].
-->'''Thor:''' I do not understand--\\
'''Captain America:''' I do! (''beat'') I understood that reference.
** By the time of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' Steve has been catching up on pop culture and technology (he's able to recognize a ''Film/WarGames'' reference by Natasha) but is still struggling with the fact that most of the people he knew are either dead or very old and that SHIELD, the supposed "good guys", use tactics that people in the 1940s would consider morally repugnant [[spoiler:because they are largely a front for HYDRA]].
*** The film shows a to-do list he's made (different versions for different language or regional releases of the film) of the things he needs to catch up on. In the North American version, one page shows he's seen ''Franchise/StarWars'' but still needs to look up ''Franchise/StarTrek'', ''Series/ILoveLucy'', the Moon Landing, Steve Jobs, the Berlin Wall (up and down), Thai food, the band Nirvana, ''Film/{{Rocky}}'', disco, and at Sam Wilson's suggestion, Marvin Gaye's album ''Troubleman''.
** ''Film/AvengersEndgame'':
*** [[spoiler:The last thing [[ComicBook/AntMan Scott Lang]] remembered was [[Film/AntManAndTheWasp entering the Quantum Realm and losing contact with Hank, Hope, and Janet]], then come out in what seemed like five hours only to learn that it's been five years since that day, with a kid giving him a dirty look when he asks in genuine confusion what happened. Not only he learns that half of all humans had vanished (including his friends) but he was also reported as a casualty, and when he sees his daughter Cassie again she's now a teenager. On the upside, this also means that when he and Hope reunite for the final battle with Thanos's forces, it's not much of a reunion for them since it's only been a day since they've seen each other from Hope's perspective]].
*** [[spoiler:The Avengers are forced to contend with the Thanos of [[Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy 2014]], who time travels forward to 2023 after learning that [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar he will succeed in destroying half the universe]], but the other half won't move on. Naturally, since he isn't the same Thanos that killed half the universe, he has no idea why some heroes are personally gunning for him. This is best seen in his fight with Wanda Maximoff, who (from her perspective) just saw 2018 Thanos murder her lover 30 minutes ago.]]
--->'''Wanda Maximoff:''' You. Took. '''EVERYTHING.''' From me.\\
'''Thanos:''' I don’t even know who you are![[labelnote:*]]Thanos's 2018 self had a short conversation with Wanda after watching her sacrifice Vision in an attempt to keep the Mind Stone away from him, right before he used the Time Stone to revive Vision and directly rip the Mind Stone from his head[[/labelnote]]\\
'''Wanda Maximoff:''' [[PreAssKickingOneLiner You will]].
*** As is revealed by ''Series/WandaVision'', for everyone who got dusted in the Snap, five years went by in an instant. This is illustrated with Monica Rambeau, who got dusted while her mother Maria was in the hospital for cancer treatments. She's dusted while dozing off in a hospital chair. When she comes back, she's baffled to find that not only have five years passed, [[spoiler:but her mother's cancer relapsed and she died in 2020]].
* The German film ''Das Wunder von Bern'' ("The Miracle of Berne") is set in 1954, the year Germany won the [=FIFA=] world championship the first time. One of the protagonists, Richard Lubanski, returns home from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, one of the last Germans to be repatriated. He finds it hard to adjust to the unfamiliar new West German society which is on its way to give up the strict patriarchal and authoritarian ways he had been accustomed to, and in particular he finds himself unable to deal with his elder son, a young rebel with communist leanings. Richard's situation is aggravated by his own war trauma and the fact that his wife and children have of necessity learned to cope without him during the intervening decade and thus resist his attempts to reimpose the pre-war pattern of him as husband, provider and near-absolute head of the family.
* In ''The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey'', some medieval villagers wander through a time-rift and find themselves in the present day. Unusual in that, while they are frightened by much of what they see, they never realize what's actually happening and assume it's just what big cities are like.
* ''Film/ANewYorkChristmasWedding'': Jenni, stumbling around very confused in the new timeline. Since she's in a timeline where hers and Gabby's split was only temporary the last decade is, for all intents and purposes, a complete blank to her.
* A mild version occurs in ''[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes Escape From the Planet of the Apes]]'', when Zira and Cornelius hop a spaceship and get thrown back in time after Earth is destroyed. They're amazed by how advanced human civilization is and perplexed by human things like prize fights, human clothes, wine (a.k.a. "grape juice plus"), not to mention the fact that apes are wild animals kept in zoos.
* ''Film/{{Pleasantville}}'': Two '90s kids get TrappedInTVLand, in a '50s DomCom of [[StepfordSuburbia exaggerated squareness]].
* A memory-loss version in the Disney Channel Original Movie ''Film/ThePoofPoint''. A failed TimeTravel experiment causes a pair of scientists (a married couple) to [[LaserGuidedAmnesia regress mentally to their college days]]. They don't recognize their kids, and when told of what happened, they spend a few minutes examining the wonderful technology of 2001. The father even expresses his disbelief that "silly Billy Gates", whom he tutored in calculus, is partly responsible for that.
* The 1984 SF farce ''Film/SexMission'' has two guys volunteer to get frozen for a short time, in a medical experiment; of course, a world war erupts in the meantime and they wake up many decades later, in a dystopian world inhabited only by... no, not [[Film/{{Idiocracy}} by idiots]], but by women.
* ''Film/{{Sleeper}}'' has Creator/WoodyAllen's character cryogenically frozen when he doesn't recover from routine surgery, then revived 200 years later. He unwillingly becomes a key figure in a revolution as someone who has no identifying records.
* ''The Spirit of '76''. Citizens of a future American dystopia attempt to travel back and rediscover the nature of the titular spirit. Instead of 1776, they end up in 1976. HilarityEnsues.
* ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'':
** Kirk and company go to the mid-1980s. There was some serious breakage of the Temporal Prime Directive there, what with [=McCoy=] refusing to leave hospital patients to primitive medicine, and Kirk's attempts to explain why Spock wasn't fitting in....
-->'''Kirk:''' Back in the '60s he was part of the free-speech movement at Berkeley... and I think he did a little too much LDS.
** This would have been before (on the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOSers]] timeline) the Temporal Prime Directive existed. Between them and the TNG crew, they made altering the past a B plot.
** And of course, the famous scene where Scotty attempts to issue voice commands to a [[UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh Macintosh]], attempts to talk into the mouse, and is then told to use the keyboard, which he calls "quaint". And Gillian Taylor, who goes from the present to the future and stays there, though we never hear from her again.
--->'''Scotty:''' (in-character as a man from Edinburgh) I've come millions of miles -\\
'''[=McCoy=]:''' (sotto voce) ''Thousands''\\
'''Scotty:''' ''[[VerbalBackspace Thousands]]'' of miles...
** And also the famous scene where Chekov (the Russian guy) stops a cop to get directions to the 'nuclear wessels'.
* Harrison [[spoiler: a.k.a. Khan]] averts this in ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness''. Despite waking up a few centuries into the future, he seems to have adjusted pretty well. [[spoiler:Being genetically enhanced might have something to do with it, and he had been thawed out for significantly longer than his original timeline counterpart had been in his first appearance]].
* The ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' series has a few. The title robots have no problem adapting to the past given their memory banks allows for quick knowledge of the past (having NoSocialSkills is another deal). [[Film/TheTerminator Kyle Reese]], on the other hand, was deemed a lunatic by the LAPD. And then comes ''Film/TerminatorGenisys'', [[spoiler:where Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor travel to 2017 once they realized something in the future created an AlternateTimeline. And in there they find another time traveler in John Connor... [[UnwillingRoboticisation who has become a Terminator.]] Kyle puts it clear that "[[TimeyWimeyBall Time travel makes my head hurt]]".]]
* In ''Film/TimeAfterTime'', idealistic socialist H.G. Wells travels to the 20th century in pursuit of time-machine-thief UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, and finds it's not the {{utopia}} he'd expected.
* The Christian film ''Film/TimeChanger'', is about a nineteenth-century Bible scholar who travels to the present. He gets used to our technology (he'd better; he came in a [[SchizoTech solar-powered time machine]]), but is horrified by our perceived rampant immorality. [[note]]The actual Victorian era had as much immorality as now, though in a different form and not spoken of in polite society, but he's from TheThemeParkVersion.[[/note]]
* ''Film/TheTimeMachine1960'': George is entirely out of place in the future society. They're nearly all apathetic, such that one of his first sights is several placidly watching while another drowns (who he rescues). Since in their time everything is given to them by the Morlocks, they spend all of their time just relaxing and eating. He's disgusted at first, feeling they've given up everything inventors like him worked to build, but then realized it's not their fault as they're kept this way by the Morlocks. After he finally realizes what the Morlocks [[ImAHumanitarian use the Eloi for]], George fights against this and resolves to change their ways for the better.
* The 1986 film ''Film/ToughGuys'' had Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster as the last guys to rob a train, back in the 1950s, coping with the different world they were released from prison into a quarter-century later.
* The tagline from ''Film/{{Trancers}}'' says it all. "Meet Jack Deth. He's a Cop From The Future Trapped in the Present, and he's chasing a 23rd century menace in 1985."
* The page image comes from the Disney movie, ''Film/UnidentifiedFlyingOddball'' (alternately known as ''A Spaceman In King Arthur's Court),'' where an astronaut winds up in the time of King Arthur.
* ''Film/{{Wonder Woman|2017}}'': The title character herself. Since Themyscira has been separated from the human world since time immemorial, and Diana spent her entire life there, she faces cultural shock when she leaves for the human world. A major driving issue is Diana's childhood naivety: she believes that human warfare is artificial, that there is a higher being responsible for instigating it behind the scenes, rather than [[HumansAreBastards warfare being something that is inherent in humanity]]. Coupled with the fact that Themysicra itself is stuck in a MedievalStasis, everyone looks at her funnily because she carries a lasso into a battlefield instead of a gun. In ''Film/WonderWoman1984'' it's the turn of Steve Trevor who's come BackFromTheDead to be confused by the modern era while Diana guides him through it--getting amazed by new technology such as jet aircraft, escalators and CCTV cameras; complaining about 80's fashion, and confusing a trash can with a modern art piece.
* ''Film/XMenApocalypse'': En Sabah Nur wakes up in 1980s Egypt after being sealed for thousands of years, and he's understandably confused at first. He initially speaks ancient Egyptian, and none of the Arabic-speaking people he bumps into can understand what he says. He quickly overcomes the problem after meeting Storm: [[ExpositionBeam he learns every language in the world and the world's history in a matter of seconds]] by touching a TV screen.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/AllAssortedAnimorphsAUs'':
** "What if Elfangor using the Time Matrix had unintended consequences?" is about a young Elfangor being transported to Earth a few years after the war is over.
** In "What if they were Avengers?", Jake was in cryo stasis for decades like ComicBook/CaptainAmerica.
* In ''Fanfic/JonathanJoestarTheFirstJoJo'', most of the main characters experience this to some degree, particularly with Jonathan himself. Examples include:
** Mistakenly thinking that hot dogs are [[IAteWhat made from]] ''actual'' dogs.
** Interpreting "cool" as its' other definition, believing it means "chilled".
** Not looking at Jolyne's [[BareYourMidriff outfit]] out of respect.
** Assuming a photo is a painting because it's in color.
* In ''ComicBook/PowerGirl'' fic ''Fanfic/AForceOfFour'', Zor-L put his daughter in suspended animation before blasting her off into space. Kara woke up many decades later in a strange, unknown and comparatively primitive alien world.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/HellsisterTrilogy'', Kara Zor-El's boyfriend and member of the 31st century super-team ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes Dev-Em doesn't like to go back in time to visit Kara. As far as he is concerned, 21st century Earth is primitive and he can't manage to fit in.
* ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'' fanfictions involving either alternate universes or other situations where the characters are taken out of their WordOfGod 1840s timeframe involve this trope -- e.g. ''Fanfic/{{Unfrozen}}'' (Anna, meet smartphone!)
* The ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' fanfic ''Fanfic/{{Homecoming}}'' has Jules, Verne, and Clara fit the "past ends up in the present" version. They find the future intimidating, but adapt well thanks to having a father/husband from the present.
* This trope is employed to surprisingly good effect in the [[http://community.livejournal.com/a_slight_glitch Unexpected Results series]], a ''LightNovel/TrinityBlood'' fanfic around the premise of a woman from the present getting yanked over 1000 years into the future and landing in the post-Armageddon, vampire-filled Europe in which the series is set. Apart from a couple of relatively minor, and completely justified freak-outs, she copes surprisingly well.
* The ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' fanfic ''Fanfic/TransformersPrimeTimeWar'' has Megatron go back into the past to attempt to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong (or MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight, depending on your point of view). So as to prevent his younger self from [[spoiler: infusing his spark with Dark Energon]]. Though he didn't count on Smokescreen, Wheeljack, Knock Out and a few others following him there.
* The ''Franchise/MassEffect'' SelfInsertFic ''Fanfic/MassVexations'' has a ''subversion'': AuthorAvatar Art ends up 170 years into the future on the Citadel with no idea how he got there. However, since he knows the rules of where he is thanks to having played the game, he's able to adjust pretty quickly ([[AngstWhatAngst though not as]] [[DeconstructedTrope painlessly as he would have hoped]]).
* ''Fanfic/{{Progress}}'' is a ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fic about Princess Luna attempting to adjust to spending a millennium [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the moon]]. To give you an idea of how well it goes, she blows up a microwave trying to make popcorn in the first chapter.
* In ''Fanfic/KitsuneOnCampus'', a ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi[=/=]Manga/{{Naruto}}'' crossover, Naruto digs himself out from the World Tree... 3,500 years after Konoha fell. Being Naruto, he copes it fairly well.
* In ''Fanfic/SoulChess'', a ''Manga/{{Bleach}}[=/=]Anime/CodeGeass'' crossover, [[spoiler:Lelouch]] finds himself going back 136 years BEFORE Britannia invades Japan.
* In the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''/''Franchise/MassEffect'' crossover ''Fanfic/TheLastSpartan'', Master Chief is finally found on the ''Forward Unto Dawn'' and is promptly thawed out...131 years after the events of ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}''. Being TheDeterminator, he gets over the prospect of never seeing anyone from the 26th century again fairly quickly. Not without his reservations of humanity joining [[TheFederation The Citadel]] or being nominated to become a Spectre though.
* In ''Mind-Sifter'' by Shirley S. Maiewski, Kirk goes back in time to the twentieth century. The mind-sifter, mentioned in the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' episode "Errand of Mercy", has rendered him insane. He is periodically lucid, however, and his occasional mentions of things like a turbo-lift puzzle his nurse.
* Played for tragedy in ''FanFic/FalloutEquestria''. After Princess Celestia abdicates the throne of Equestria after the [[DespairEventHorizon Littlehorn Massacre]], her younger sister Luna (who had spent the last thousand years [[SealedEvilInaCan sealed in the moon]] before her [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E2ElementsOfHarmony redemption]]) ascends to the throne. This produces the same effect as William the Conquerer being placed in control of Cold War era Britain: complete and utter ruin.
* The ongoing ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' crossover saga ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6159511/1/Slipping-Between-Worlds Slipping Between Worlds]]'' deals with one of ''those'' series of magical accidents in time and space which, with the assistance of several Terry Pratchett characters, abducts a British Army patrol from Northern Ireland in the middle 1980s to the city of Ankh-Morpork. The Toms are in no position to complain about it, as they were seconds away from death in a rather large bomb explosion (everyone at home thinks they are dead). While the end-game is to return to Earth, the displaced squaddies have to adapt to life in a new, strange and potentially lethal place, ''very, very, quickly''.
* This is fairly common in ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' fics [[spoiler:that are sequels in which [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur]] (or other long-dead characters for that matter) returns]]. This trope won't apply if the story has [[spoiler:Arthur somehow aware of how things have changed or if he's reincarnated instead]], which sidesteps the issue.
* In ''Fanfic/{{Marionettes}}'':
** This is the case of [[spoiler:[[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTales Teddy and Ace]], the two Generation 2 Marionettes. The Stallions had no further use for them, unlike Trixie, and just put them in their stasis pods and left them in the basement for over a decade. When the heroes finally rescue and reactivate them, they're understandably shocked to discover that there are now multiple Alicorns, Nightmare Moon was not only real but returned, and ''[[Manga/DragonBallZ Dragon Eggs Z]]'' added two more levels of 'Super Neighyan' among other things.]]
** A downplayed example: [[spoiler:Gypsy has been held against her will for nearly a decade as well, but being a {{Seer|s}}, she's not missed as much as Ace and Teddy, but still admits the last game system she played was a 'Super Neightendo' and she's missed a lot in that department.]]
* Happens to Rainbow Dash in the ''My Little Pony'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/296185/child-of-order Child of Order.]]'' A stunt/experiment gone wrong causes Rainbow to find herself transported 450 years into the future, in what is essentially a hypertechnological version of Equestria. Upon arrival, she crashes, damaging two of her legs (and possibly several internal organs, too), although she does receive prosthetics. Understandably, she's horrified by some of the changes her country has undergone, as well as the fact that everyone thinks she's dead.
* ''Fanfic/{{Shard}}'': Aero and the other inhabitants of Totum are residents of the distant past, who find themselves in the present day of Remnant. They manage to adapt relatively well, all things considered.
* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8501689/1/The-Havoc-side-of-the-Force The Havoc Side of the Force]]'' manages to put someone from the present into the past and future a the same time. Literature/HarryPotter [[spoiler:and a Bellatrix possessed Pansy]] ends up in a [[Franchise/StarWars galaxy far, far away]] due to a combination of a time-time turner being used at the same time and place as a portkey activating and a magic ritual being interrupted. While technology is ''far'' more advanced, Harry still eventually learns that the universe is far younger than he's used to it being when Anakin points out that if Harry's years are what he says they are, then his math is ''way'' off to think the universe is over 14 billion years old.
* PlayedForLaughs in the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' oneshot ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11508456/1/Shuckster Shuckster]].'' Because Shadow was created 50 years ago, he speaks in outdated 1950s slang.
* Played with for ''Fanfic/LostInCamelot'', although mainly for Kenzi than Bo at first, as Bo finds herself surprisingly fond of Camelot despite the displacement; later explained with [[spoiler:the revelation that Bo is actually ''from'' Camelot, as she was sent into the future when her mother sent her to safety]].
* ''Fanfic/BloomFullyOnTheTallWall'' revolves around Homura being sent into a parallel universe that is also hundreds of years in the future from her own. This is her DespairEventHorizon that leaves her [[DrivenToSuicide suicidal]]. Homura doesn't have issue adapting, however, because the world is still [[ModernStasis near identical to the early 2010s]].
* ''Fanfic/KarmaInRetrograde'' has Dabi revert to his sixteen-year-old self as Touya Todoroki due to the effects of a [[FountainOfYouth deaging Quirk]]. From his perspective, he was effectively thrust five years into the future, where his youngest brother is now attending U.A., Izuku has taken Touya's old dorm room, and All Might is retired, shriveled husk while Endeavor has become the number one hero. He also finds it amazing that hair dye is as simple as adding it to shampoo when there used to be an entire process for it.
* The premise of the ''Temeraire'' and ''Assasin's Creed'' fanfic ''Fanfic/TradeWinds'' is that Desmond Miles, the 21st-century protagonist from the AC series, has suddenly woken up in the AlternateUniverse setting of ''Temeraire'', in about 1805. Desmond's modern speech patterns and the breadth of his (typical) modern education net him several odd looks, although they pale in comparison to the Assassin-grade fighting skills that he's gained from his ancestors. But in a minor, interesting subversion, the name 'Desmond' was actually far more common in the late 1700s/early 1800s than it is now.
* ''Fanfic/FlyMeToTheMoon'' explores the idea behind Shadow being born in the 1950s/1960s before being frozen for 50 years. He enjoys contemporary music and his favorite song is Music/FrankSinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon".
* In ''Fanfic/{{Naming}}'', Zelda has been asleep for 1000 years. She can barely even understand the language after so long. Hyrule has degraded a lot since she was put into a spell.
* In ''Fanfic/ShadowOfAnotherHero'', Zelda goes into a crying fit after learning that she has been asleep for roughly 700 years.
* In ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/24376201/chapters/58791808 Kamino's Ward]]'', Izuku is an enhanced normal human named Captain Kamino (an expy of Captain America) that fights for the right of the newly emerged super-humans. After stopping a bombing on Metahumans by downing the plane carrying the bombs into the water, he is frozen solid for centuries, and wakes up and runs into a changed Kamino, where super-humans call their powers Quirks and are accepted by society, and himself treated as a Symbol of Hope.
* ''Fanfic/SonOfTheSannin'' has [[spoiler:Rin Nohara]] going through this. As it turns out, [[spoiler:after she was killed by the Kirigakure ninjas, she spent over a decade inside a resurrection cocoon kept in Obito's hideout, and by the time she's rescued, everyone in her generation is already pushing thirties while she still remains a teenager]].
* ''Fanfic/RunawayWind'' has Ventus waking up during the events of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', a decade after ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', and he doesn't notice how long its been until he happens to run into Axel and recognizes him as a much older Lea.
* ''Fanfic/{{Discovery}}'': [[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars Ahsoka Tano]] and several other clones wind up getting carbon-frozen for 43 years longer than intended. They are unfrozen long after the Jedi Order, the Republic, and the Empire have fallen.
* TheReveal in ''Fanfic/WhispersOfTheAbyss'' is that [[spoiler:Blot has ventured into the [[YearOutsideHourInside Whispering Abyss]] before... 800 years ago, after which he emerged in the story's present. At the end, all of his friends decide to clear the dungeon with him, and emerge another 800 years into the future.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* Samaritan from ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' is a time-traveler who averted a catastrophe, but rewrote his history so that he has no place in the future. Also Infidel, Samaritan's arch nemesis, is a time-lost villain whose own timeline was inadvertently destroyed by Samaritan's actions. Interestingly, neither of them has much trouble adjusting.
* ComicBook/BoosterGold traveled back from the 25th century to the present, hoping to make a name for himself as a superhero (and make some money in the process).
* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica:
** Part of the reason why Steve Rogers is able to don his costume without irony and be an idealist in the modern world is because he was a young man in World War II who was so eager to fight that he volunteered for experiments when he wasn't physically fit for duty, and was then locked in suspended animation afterwards until the modern era.
** ComicBook/TheUltimates version of Cap had almost exactly that experience, except that he ended up more traumatized than anyone else. Obviously he got better but still had a scary tendency to beat the crap out of people for violating his personal morals. As opposed to modern heroes who do the exact same thing but have values deemed more palatable because they're modern.
** Cap gets hit harder and harder with this trope every year. Most superheroes operate on a sliding timescale, and thus are relatively modern, or have their origins updated slightly (Spider-Man being bitten by a genetically modified spider instead of a radioactive one, for example), but Cap always started out in WWII, he's just been asleep longer. But when Cap was first woken up, it was only about 20 years later, and the world, while very different, would have been more or less recognizable to him, or at least he would have been able to see how the seeds had been sown from his time. Now he is over 70 years out of date, and the modern world is all but incomprehensible to him when first thawed out.
* In the 2014 ''ComicBook/CaptainVictoryAndTheGalacticRangers'' miniseries, one of Captain Victor's clones is sent back in time to Earth in the 1970s.
* ''Franchise/TheDCU'':
** In ''ComicBook/ManyHappyReturns'', Pre-Crisis ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} -Kara Zor-El- accidentally ends up in the Post-Crisis universe, which is more cynical, DarkerAndEdgier than her own universe. She -an idealistic, naive and immensely powerful teenager- has trouble fitting in. Ironically, Linda Danvers had a much easier time fitting in when she travelled to the Pre-Crisis DCU and ultimately grew to love the place (although she does mention the lack of variety on TV took some getting used to).
** During ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', the ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl2005 Post-Crisis]]'' version of ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' was accidentally sent to the 31st Century and joined the Legion. She was so confused that she believed for a while all of it was just a dream.
** In ''ComicBook/AMindSwitchInTime'', ComicBook/{{Superboy}} travels to the future and ends up stuck in 1982. Teenager Clark is rather shocked to learn how much the world has changed for good and for bad since 1969: women are bolder, NASA's space program has truly taken off, and Metropolis is bigger and shinier… but it has also become plagued with corruption and crime.
** ''ComicBook/TheComingOfAtlas'': The titular villain is thrown out of his own quasi-mythical time and into the present day, where he is found by [[spoiler:Sam Lane's]] soldiers. Atlas is quite shocked by modern technology, but he is assisted in catching up rapidly by [[spoiler:Lane's]] scientists.
** Zinda Blake, ComicBook/LadyBlackhawk, got catapulted from the 1940s to the present day during a CrisisCrossover. The problem for her is that, even though ''she'' is the one from the past, everybody ''else'' seems to be stuck in TheFifties! She wants to get on with her life, but people keep complaining her skirt is too short and that she belongs in a quiet job instead of gallivanting about in an airplane (Are we sure the rest of the decade didn't come forward with her?). Eventually she tells the stuffed shirts to get stuffed, steals the plane she technically owns anyway, and joins the ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey.
** ComicBook/CaptainAtom's DCU origin saw him thrown 20 years forward into the present day. It caused him some culture shock, but what ''really'' got to him was discovering what had happened to his wife and kids while he'd been gone.
** ''Franchise/TheFlash:'' Barry Allen, during the brief period between ''Final Crisis'' and ''Flashpoint'', where he's been resurrected from his death in the 1980s. ComicBookTime makes the actual amount of time he was away unclear, but he's disturbed and unnerved by all the changes that took place during the Dark Age of Comic Books. At one point during ''Blackest Night'', it's mentioned he's tried using the internet, but couldn't manage it. Unlike most examples, it's not because of the sheer amount of information. It's too ''slow'' for him.
** ''ComicBook/{{Shazam}}'''s explanation for the franchise's legally stipulated 20-year absence from publication was that the main characters had spent that time in suspended animation thanks to one of Sivana's gadgets. Early on, Billy went to a teen dance and found the styles of clothing, dance and music of the early 1970s jarring compared to what he had been used to in the early '50s.
* Meringue the Malevolent from the ''ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics''. While he takes a bit to adjust to the current time, when he does, he finds it not too bad. Conquering the world is a lot more tempting when the known world is so much larger, and with modern technology, he can pinpoint midnight much more accurately, as well as exploit timezones to get a second chance when the first ritual fails.
* In the ''ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms'' comic book series ''Figment 2''[[note]] the second series based on Ride/JourneyIntoImagination[[/note]], Dreamfinder is this, having time traveled with Figment from 1910 to the 2010s at the end of the first ''Figment'' series. He struggles to get used to more advanced technology and with doubts about his relevance, which sets the main plot in motion.
* Princess Oona from ''WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck'' is a stone age duck who ended up in the present, much to her disgrace.
* In the 2006 iteration of ''ComicBook/TheEternals'', one of the minor characters is Grace Darling, a teenager from the 1820s who was "time-frozen" and ended up in the modern day. She takes it surprisingly well, despite being forced to register under the [[SuperRegistrationAct SHRA]].
* ComicBook/JonahHex becomes this after being tossed through time to present-day Gotham City in the ComicBook/New52 ''All Star Western''. Amongst the shocks he experiences are that colored folk are allowed to be peace officers, and that you cannot walk through city streets with six-guns strapped to your hips.
* ''ComicBook/JudoGirl'' was a stylin' superheroine in the 60s, but after being frozen in time for 40 years she has a hard time dealing in a world where she's not the hippest trip.
* Dodge, the BigBad of ''ComicBook/LockeAndKey'', has some spots of this (having been dead for twenty years) but [[VillainsBlendInBetter manages to blend in well regardless.]] He's mostly just wowed by things like e-mails and cellphones.
* ''ComicBook/ProjectSuperpowers'' does not dwell TOO much on this, but nevertheless, it is about a bunch of World War II superheroes who have been trapped in [[PandorasBox Pandora's Urn]] for decades and are released in an alternate version of present day. Black Terror gets this with some of his ideals. Pyroman, on the other hand, quickly adapts and is just amazed at modern [=TVs=].
* ''ComicBook/{{Ronin}}'' depicts a samurai thrust into the far-flung future.
* Goes both ways in ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}:'' the team ends up in 1907 New York for a while and when they return to their present they take [[spoiler:Klara]] with them; at this point in the story she is still adjusting to the change.
** This happens again in the 2017 relaunch as Gert is pulled two years into the future from the point of her death.
* This is the case with Literature/ConanTheBarbarian in the ''ComicBook/SavageAvengers'' series as the Cimmeranian adjusts to the modern world after being temporally displaced in ''ComicBook/AvengersNoRoadHome''.
* ''ComicBook/SevenSoldiers'', being a maxi-series with time-travelling villains, has several examples:
** Sir Ystin comes from a very distant past and ends up in the modern world after falling out of the Sheeda's time-ship, becoming horribly depressed at the modern world's apparent lack of justice.
** [[ComicBook/KlarionTheWitchBoy Klarion Bleak]] hails from Limbo-Town, a HiddenElfVillage under Manhattan that still believes that the colonial era never ended, but finds his way into the modern world while fleeing from a monster. He is delighted by the modern world.
** Frankenstein was created in the 19th century, but spent nearly over a century in stasis after an encounter with Melmoth in 1870. He adjusts relatively quickly, having received stray radio transmissions from the outside world thanks to the bolts in his head.
* Dan Slott's ''ComicBook/SheHulk'', where obscure Golden Age hero the Challenger shows up at the offices of Goodman, Lieber, Kutzberg and Holliway after being flung into the present day to see if there's any way he can, like, get his stuff and his house back. Stu Cicero tries to assist him in figuring this out, saying that thankfully Captain America's predicament provides ample precedent to work with. The same series also features Matthew Hawk being brought into the modern day and discovering that his license to practice law expired over a century ago, and the law has changed so much since then that he has difficulty passing the bar exam.
* The 2014 ''ComicBook/SpiderMan2099'' series is the adventures of Miguel O'Hara stranded in modern day New York thanks to the ComicBook/SuperiorSpiderMan.
* The 2014 relaunch of ''The Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'' has a minor example with [[ComicBook/{{Silk}} Cindy Moon]], a girl who was also bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker. To protect her from Morlun, she's placed in a special room by Ezekiel Sims and kept there for ten years when Peter accidentally frees her. It's a minor example in that she's been alive the entire time and hasn't been transported forward or back in time, but TechnologyMarchesOn and it takes her off-guard.
* ''ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIDW'': In this continuity, the Shredder is a feudal lord from medieval Japan who was placed in stasis before being revived by Karai in modern-day New York City. Despite this, he [[VillainsBlendInBetter adapts quite quickly]] and shows no difficulty interacting with the modern world.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'', "revivals" - HumanPopsicle subjects unfrozen and regenerated - have a very hard time. The world has changed so radically in this future (to the point nobody knows the ''year'') that most revivals suffer severe mental illness as soon as they look out the door of the cryogenics building. Not helping is that the people in charge think giving them a bed, clothes, and a handful of cash (which many revivals can't figure out how they're supposed to ''spend'') is doing enough for them.
* The Twelve, twelve random superheroes put in suspended animation by the Nazis in the last days of World War II and discovered sometime in 2007. Virtually all of them have a difficult time adjusting, with the curious exception of the Black Widow, who's used to it. She's a lot OlderThanTheyLook because of her supernatural origin, being in WWII was already something of an adjustment for her. So with that experience under her belt, what she did was go look for a place where she doesn't stand out too much. In her case it meant hanging around at a local goth club where her air of mystery and novelty of being from WWII made her a figure of respect.
* Happens in ''ComicBook/{{Witchblade}}'' with former wielder of the Witchblade Katarina Godliffe as a result of her living in the Faerie realm for 900 years. For example, when someone mentions Music/NickiMinaj, she thinks Nicki Minaj is the Queen of America. She also doesn't know how to work a mobile phone.
* During Greg Rucka's run on ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 Vol 2]], the Gorgons (in a hilarious aversion of VillainsBlendInBetter) are totally thrown off of their game by modern civilization. Medusa's initial attempt to kill Franchise/WonderWoman failed because she was scared off by ''traffic''. Her sister Stheno spends most of her panel time studying the wonderful invention known as "television". They are forced to rely on Circe who is far more familiar with the modern world (having spent years living in it as Donna Milton) for most of the actual scheming.
* Exodus of the ''ComicBook/XMen'' is a very similar case to Cap, being an idealist from an earlier period of history [[SealedBadassInACan sealed away]] and revived in the modern day. The main difference is that, while Cap was sealed in suspended animation in the 1940s, Exodus was sealed away [[Really700YearsOld over 800 years ago]], during the [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Third Crusade]]. Like the Ultimates incarnation of Cap, this results in a hardcore champion of antiquated ideals. So hardcore, in fact, that he crosses over into KnightTemplar villainy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/{{Amakusa 1637}}'' is about six Kobe teens who somehow find themselves TrappedInThePast.... and in the Shimabara of 1637, right before [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion the horrible massacre]] of the local UsefulNotes/JapaneseChristian colony. As they gather, they decide to work on averting such a tragedy [[spoiler: and more or less succeed.]]
* ''Manga/{{Amatsuki}}'' is all about modern day city kid Tokidoki being trapped in a computer simulation of the Edo Period.
* ''Anime/AngelBeats'': The ''Heaven's Door'' manga implies this is the case with Shiina, a feudal era ninja who ended up in an afterlife modeled on a modern highschool.
* C.C. from ''Anime/CodeGeass'', [[spoiler:after she loses her memories and reverts to the mentality of a preteen from the Feudal era.]] In one scene, she accidentally turns on a TV, then freaks out at what she sees... though in her defense, it ''was'' [[WidgetSeries Japanese television]] she was watching.
* HumanPopsicle [[FemmeFatale Faye Valentine]] of ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' has a brief scene during her [[ADayInTheLimelight spotlight]] {{flashback}} episode, "My Funny Valentine", when she fails to properly identify several basic appliances just after being unfrozen. The trope is invoked again to a more tragic bent near the end of the series, [[spoiler:when she regains the memories of her past life and tries to go back home. After almost a century. Yeah, it doesn't go well]].
* This is part of [[spoiler:Maia's secret hidden in her forgotten memories]] in ''Anime/DaphneInTheBrilliantBlue''.
* In ''Manga/DNA2'', Karen gets sent from the future to 20th-century Japan. It's unclear how far along from the future she is, but science has evolved far enough that a person's DNA can be altered through medication. She was sent to this point in time to change the DNA of the legendary Mega Playboy that had 100 children with 100 different women, which caused quite a problem due to the overpopulation in the future.
* ''Manga/DrStone'' has an interesting case where it's both Past -> Future and Future -> Past. The main character Senku is from modern day Japan, and ends up being turned to stone in an incident that basically ended human civilization. He revives 3000 years later and discovers a small village of people descended from those who managed to escape the apocalypse, but they're still a Stone Age-level society.
* ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'': Mikuru Asahina is from a future that has passed TheSingularity. While she's not allowed to talk about it, she has absolutely no understanding of modern technology more complicated than a teapot. Not only does she consistently fail to make any type of machine operate, but she doesn't even know how boats work, leading Kyon to assume that the future has moved past buoyancy. Yuki Nagato (an alien) notes at one point that terrestrial humans could make a non-physical computer without too much difficulty, and Mikuru awkwardly says she can neither confirm or deny that. [[spoiler:Mikuru's friend Tsuruya]] eventually reveals that she figured out Mikuru's origin on her own; it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention.
* Sai from ''Manga/HikaruNoGo'' is a humourous example, being the ghost of a master Go player from feudal Japan who was woken up by the titular Hikaru. His bewilderment at television and telephones is played for humour and he laughs hysterically when Hikaru tells him that humans have been on the moon.
* ''Manga/InuYasha'':
** Kagome goes through this when she first visits the Feudal era, but given how much time she ends up spending there, she soon adapts.
** Inuyasha himself also visits the modern from time to time and also occassionally expresses interest in artifects Kagome brings back from the present, most notably instant ramen. One such incident had him amazed at the sight of a TV:
--->'''Inuyasha:''' This is the strangest box I've ever seen!
* ''Anime/IrodukuTheWorldInColours'': Hitomi Tsukishiro is from 2078. When she gets sent to 2018, she gets confused by everything. For example, she tries to open a window by waving her hand over it, expecting it to be automatic.
* ''Manga/{{Jin}}'' tells the story of a brain surgeon in present-day Tokyo who gets sent back to 19th-century Japan, just as the Tokugawa era was ending and the country was beginning to open to foreign influences. He has to adjust to the social codes, but [[GivingRadioToTheRomans manages to fast-forward medical progress by several decades]] with the earlier introduction of germ theory and modern surgical methods.
* Shaorin in ''Manga/MamotteShugogetten.'' She spent 400 years in a ring and on her first night out ended up destroying an oven and a TV. The next day she destroys an entire school. Her destroying the TV actually happens differently in each adaptation. In the anime, she attacks it when it shows a criminal threatening the camera with a gun; in the manga, a dog takes down the criminal and Shao takes the TV apart because she wants to reward him with a treat. Amusingly, when her longtime rival Ruuan joins the cast, she accidentally turns on the TV and Tasuke freaks out in anticipation of a repeat, only for the slightly more on-the-ball Ruuan to [[SubvertedTrope instantly figure out what's going on]].
* ''Anime/NobunagaConcerto'' is about a modern day Japanese teenage slacker called Saburo who falls off a fence one day and lands in warring states era. By strange coincidence, he turns out to be the [[IdenticalStranger perfect body double]] of legendary Japanese warlord UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga, who has only just started his career as leader of the Oda clan and runs into Saburo as soon as he lands. Nobunaga can't handle the stress of leading his clan and asks Saburo to take his place while he runs away. Saburo then [[YouWillBeBeethoven takes Nobunaga's place in history]], even though [[BookDumb he flunked history class]] and doesn't know much about what Nobunaga actually did during his life (for example he believes Nobunaga was the warlord who united Japan- [[DownerEnding but he's wrong]]). Saburo actually adapts surprisingly easily to living in the past, the transition eased by his high social status and his beautiful new wife, although he puts surprisingly little effort into actually trying to blend in (he gets away with it because nobody can question the leader of the clan, giving him a reputation for eccentricity). It also turns out that various other people from the modern era have ended up back in the past too.
* In the josei manga ''Manga/OiranChirashi'', Haru Hanamori is an OfficeLady trapped in the pre-Meiji [[RedLightDistrict Yoshiwara]] after she gets into a street accident. She reinvents herself as the HighClassCallGirl Ayame to survive there.
** [[spoiler: Ayame later finds out that her [[SecretRelationship secret]] LoveInterest, the brothel's hairstylist Shouhei, is in the same situation: in his case, he arrived to Yoshiwara after he fell off a cliff during a vacation trip, years before she fell there herself. Once she finds out, her almost lost hope to return home reignites and they promise to look for a way to come back together.]]
* The events of ''Anime/{{Ojarumaru}}'' begin when the eponymous character, a Heian-era prince, falls through the Moon Hole and gets sent to modern-day Japan after stealing Great King Enma's scepter and being pursued by him. In the present day, the prince meets Kazuma Tamura and his family and starts living with them, fascinated by all the things that are not from his time period.
* Carol Reed from ''Manga/OukeNoMonshou'' was the victim of a curse put on her, her mentor and an excavation team that was exploring an ancient Egyptian tomb. As a result, she gets thrown in the past and reaches AncientEgypt...
* ''Anime/PokemonLucarioAndTheMysteryOfMew'', had Lucario belong hundreds of years in the past until he was trapped in the staff by his master Sir Aaron. He's released at the beginning of the movie and is quite understandably confused (the kingdom he lived in is celebrating a festival, though when he last saw it, it was trapped between two armies; a place he remembers as a bedroom is now a museum, his master is dead, and basically nothing is as he remembers it.)
* Similarly, Yuri Suzuki from ''Manga/RedRiver1995'' is thrown into the Hitite Empire as a consequence of the BigBad trying to use her as a part of a huge curse she plans to cast. Once she sorta gets used to her environment ''and'' begins to fall in love with the Prince that said BigBad wants to eliminate, however, [[SpannerInTheWorks she decides to start fighting back...]]
* In ''LightNovel/StrikeTheBlood'', [[KidFromTheFuture Reina]] bumps into a glass door because in her time, all doors of this type are automatic. Whenever she runs into the present versions of people she knows, she's always shocked because they look so different.
* Coo from ''Anime/SummerDaysWithCoo'' spends 200 years as a fossil underground before being revived in modern day Tokyo. Of course, the fact that he's a {{Kappa}} probably causes more problems for him.
* ''Manga/TamamoChansAFox'': Tamamo is a fox spirit from the Fushimi Inari shrine in Tokyo who disguises herself as a high school student to learn more about human society. She's fascinated by all sorts of modern conveniences that her fellow students take for granted, like subway trains and bicycles.
* ''Manga/ThermaeRomae'' is about an Ancient Roman architect called Lucius who gets magically transported to modern day Japan via a time traveling spa house. Fortunately he can travel back the same way after spending time messing around with modern technology.
* Tora is this in ''Manga/UshioAndTora''. He was impaled to one spot for five hundred years, so when Ushio accidentally releases him, he's unfamiliar with modern day Japan. In one instance, he ends up getting hit by a truck because he's never seen vehicles.
* Atem (Yami Yugi) from ''Anime/YuGiOh'' was an Egyptian pharaoh 5000 years before the events of the series (3000 years in the original version), which makes him a rather frightening arbiter of justice until Yugi "tames" him. Also happens in ''Anime/YuGiOhBondsBeyondTime'', in which Yusei ends up in Judai's time, and then both of them end up in Yugi's time.
* A [[UsefulNotes/KaijuDefenseForce JMSDF]] Aegis destroyer and its crew is TrappedInThePast in ''Manga/{{Zipang}}'', and they have to deal with the ValuesDissonance between their pacifist and humanist values and the more war-oriented mentality of the time.
* ''Anime/ZombieLandSaga'': The main cast is composed of zombies resurrected from various points in Japanese history. The majority of them come from the late 90s to early 2010s, but Junko and Yugiri stick out by being from the 80s and the 1880s. This later leads to an argument between Junko and Ai (from the late 2000s) when the two's images of idols from their respective eras clash.
[[/folder]]

* The ''Fanfic/AllAssortedAnimorphsAUs'' chapter "What if Elfangor using the Time Matrix had unintended consequences?" is about a young Elfangor being transported to Earth a few years after the war ended.

-->'''Inuyasha:''' This is the strangest box I've ever seen!

* ''Manga/{{Jin}}'' tells the story of a brain surgeon in present-day Tokyo who gets sent back to 19th-century Japan, just as the Tokugawa era was ending and the country was beginning to open to foreign influences. He has to adjust to the social codes, but [[GivingRadioToTheRomans manages to fast-forward medical progress by several decades]] with the earlier introduction of germ theory and modern surgical methods.

** [=InuYasha=] himself also ends up one whenever he visits the modern era, though it's not as touched upon. One such incident had him amazed at the sight of a TV:
-->'''[=InuYasha=]''': This is the strangest box I've ever seen!

* A [[UsefulNotes/KaijuDefenseForce JMSDF]] Aegis destroyer and its crew is TrappedInThePast in ''Manga/{{Zipang}}'', and they have to deal with the ValuesDissonance between their pacifist and humanist values and the more war-oriented mentality of the time.

** Ditto with ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' and the main protagonist, Ichiban.

* [[Creator/MartinLawrence Jamal Walker]] in ''Film/BlackKnight'' works at a Medieval-themed park. He is cleaning the moat and sees a necklace. Trying to reach it, he falls into the moat and finds himself in Medieval England. It takes him a while to even figure out that he's not in Kansas anymore. He just assumes that the castle is a rival theme park. Then he witnesses a PublicExecution and realizes the truth. At the end, it's revealed to be AllJustADream, when he is resuscitated by paramedics. Some time later, he trips and falls into the moat again... and ends up in the Roman Colosseum about to be eaten by lions.

* ''ComicBook/SevenSoldiers of Victory'', being a maxi-series with time-travelling villains, has several examples:

* In ''Literaure/ThatHideousStrength'', a man from the fifth century is awakened from a temporal ripple and expected to spend the night in a 19th-century mansion. He has problems adjusting to table manners that don't involve eating with your hands, hospitality that combines incredible luxury with extreme apathy, and most importantly, a world where [[UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} Christendom]] emptied its faith and spread that emptiness around the globe.

* Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}}'s Wrestling/SidneyBakabella, the manager of the Devastation Corporation, is this. His promos are filled with references to promoters and wrestlers of the past, though he claims to be working with them or feuding with them today. At the very ''earliest'', he is stuck in the 1980s, though he has referenced guys as far back as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toots_Mondt Toots Mondt]].
** Before the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/us/pa/e/chikara/chikara-t.html CHIKARA Campeones de Parejas (tag team champions)]] Wrestling/ThreePoint0 ("Big Magic" Shane Matthews and Scott Jagged Parker)-The Devastation Corporation (Max Smashmaster and Blaster [=McMassive=]) match at ''CHIKARA Just Shadows in the Fog'', held in Tampa, Florida, March 8, 2013, Bakabella cut a promo where he said that he would have brought Wrestling/TheOneManGang with him, which got a pop (OMG and Wrestling/{{Demolition}} teamed up as Team Wrestling/{{WW|E}}F at ''CHIKARA King of Trios 2008 Night I'' in a losing effort to The Fabulous Three [Wrestling/LarrySweeney[=/=]Mitch Ryder[=/=]Shayne Hawke]), but said that Wrestling/SirOliverHumperdink had prevented that and proceeded to run down Humperdink. Humperdink, real name John Sutton, who did manage OMG in Florida for a time in the 1980s, passed away in 2011. It is not [[NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead disrespect to the deceased]], since Bakabella's timeline is so confused he probably thought Humperdink was still managing in Florida.

* CHIKARA's Wrestling/{{Xyberhawx 2000}}. They're a bit of a parody of the "futuristic" tag teams from the early 90s like Tekno Team 2000 and The New Breed. Thing is, they hail from the ''early 2000s''. One of them still uses a Myspace, and another asked in a blog why he couldn't find his Geocities page.
** Razerhawk's [[https://razerhawk2000.com/ website]] even has "This page is best viewed with Netscape Now" and "Made With [=MacIntosh=]" logos on it, much like Website/{{GeoCities}} pages from the early days of the Web.

* ''Film/{{Wonder Woman|2017}}'': The title character herself. Since Themyscira has been separated from the human world since time immemorial, and Diana spent her entire life there, she faces cultural shock when she leaves for the human world. A major driving issue is Diana's childhood naivety: she believes that human warfare is artificial, that there is a higher being responsible for instigating it behind the scenes, rather than [[HumansAreBastards warfare being something that is inherent in humanity]]. Coupled with the fact that Themysicra itself is stuck in a MedievalStasis, everyone looks at her funnily because she carries a lasso into a battlefield instead of a gun.

--->'''Wanda Maximoff:''' You. Took. '''EVERYTHING.''' From me.
--->'''Thanos:''' I don’t even know who you are![[labelnote:*]]Thanos's 2018 self had a short conversation with Wanda after he overpowered her and killed Vision for the Mind Stone[[/labelnote]]
--->'''Wanda Maximoff:''' You will.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/HellsisterTrilogy'', Kara Zor-El's boyfriend and member of the 31st century super-team ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}} Dev-Em doesn't like to go back in time to visit Kara. As far as he is concerned, 21st century Earth is primitive and he can't manage to fit in.

** Not looking at Jolyne's [[BAreYourMidriff outfit]] out of respect.

* A man fled to the jungle during the 1969 "[[SeriousBusiness Football War]]" between El Salvador and Honduras. He finally "surrendered" to a group of lumberjacks he mistook for enemy soldiers more than 30 years later, telling them he was tired of running away. The saddest part is that the actual war lasted a total of ''four days''.

** A downplayed example: [[spoiler:Gypsy has been held against her will for nearly a decade as well, but being a {{Seer}}, she's not missed as much as Ace and Teddy, but still admits the last game system she played was a 'Super Neightendo' and she's missed a lot in that department.]]

* [[http://www.lincsfm.co.uk Lincs FM]], a station in {{Lincolnshire}}, considered by some radio enthusiasts to be stuck in The Nineties(and its sister stations like the beach aren't much better).

** Mistakenly thinking that hot dogs are ''actual'' dogs.

** Being startled by the sound of a hairdryer.

* In ''Fanfic/KitsuneOnCampus'', a ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi[=/=]Manga/{{Naruto}}'' crossover, Naruto digs himself out from the World Tree...3,500 years after Konoha fell. Being Naruto, he copes it fairly well.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' oneshot ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11508456/1/Shuckster Shuckster]]''. Because Shadow was created 50 years ago, he speaks in outdated 1950s slang.

* TheReveal in ''Fanfic/WhispersOfTheAbyss'' is that [[spoiler:Blot has ventured into the [[YearOutsideHourInside Whispering Abyss]] before, and emerged in the story's present 800 years after his time. At the end, all of his friends decide to clear the dungeon with him, and emerge another 800 years into the future.]]

* Much of the humor in ''[[Film/TheBradyBunch The Brady Bunch Movie]]'' and ''A Very Brady Sequel'' comes from putting the stuck-in-the-'70s Brady clan in the grunge-era '90s. This example is a comedy inversion of the trope as the Bradys themselves are perfectly at ease acting as if it were still a 70s era sitcom, leaving others around them stunned and confused.