History Main / GloryDays

** After a forced retirement from his career as a super-hero, Mr. Incredible settles down and becomes a typical cubicle dweller. While his wife has adapted to their new circumstances, he is stuck re-living his past glories, [[spoiler:a fact which the villain exploits to get Mr. Incredible to unknowingly help him.]] He is even on the cover of a [[LampshadeHanging "Glory Days" magazine]].

-->'''Penny:''' It's funny. I wish I fit in better at school, but mom says that doesn't matter any. Someone with big dreams and big plans like me will blossom out in the real world, she says, while for the cheerleaders and football jocks, this is as good as it’ll get. Their lives will just head downhill after this. I hope that's right about me, at least. It's no fun feeling like a freak, darn it.

* In much of the first world, the postwar prosperity of TheFifties is seen as this after decades of depression and war. The decade was a period of relative stability and unprecedented optimism, both probably enhanced by comparison since the period was bracketed by the horrors of World War II and the upcoming turbulence of The '60s. This was particularly prevalent in the US, which had not only triumphed in the war but, more importantly, was just about the only major nation to come out of the conflict with its infrastructure intact. With no rebuilding to do, the focus was on innovation; there was a strong belief in the prospect of limitless progress through science and industry,

** Russians also invoke the glory days of Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great and the long 19th Century from Napoleon's Invasion to the Russian Japanese War mostly because it was the Golden Age of Russian letters (Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov). This was also the era of the end of serfdom, the failed Decembrist uprising and early attempts at liberalism. There's also a lot of nostalgia for Russian Formalism and UsefulNotes/TheSovietTwenties, mostly because it was the Golden Age for Soviet cinema.

** For socialists and left-wingers, the post-war era under Clement Atlee which led to the rise of the [=NHS=] and other social works organizations was the glorious period. On a cultural level, nearly all English people long for such triumphs as the age of Elizabeth I and the English Renaissance, the UsefulNotes/IndustrialRevolution and UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain, the Romantic movement, TheSixties, and the "Cool Brittania" of TheNineties.

* TheSixties is this for nearly all First-World nations. For the French this was the period of "Les trente glorieuses", post-war UsefulNotes/{{existentialism}} and the UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave and Chanson. For the English, this was the era of UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion and the rise of working-class English culture into the mainstream. For the Americans, this decade is marred by the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar but they nonetheless enjoy the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, gay rights and the sexual revolution. In Canada it's the era of [[UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}} Expo 67]] and bridging the "Two Solitudes", a new flag, and the dawn of [[UsefulNotes/PierreTrudeau Trudeaumania]].

** Consensually, such events as the Protestant Reformation (which spread literacy and withered the power of the Catholic Church), [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker the Sturm-Und-Drang phase of the Enlightenment and Romantic era]] and the age of German classical music and opera is very much this. Likewise, UsefulNotes/TheWeimarRepublic is invoked for its progressive values, caberet culture, modernist literature and theatre, architecture and GermanExpressionism in film. Modern Germans celebrate the Economic Miracle of TheFifties, and the Reunification of Germany.

* During the 1996 U.S. presidential election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, Dole gave a campaign speech in the which he reminisced about what he viewed as the glory days of the post-WWII decade of TheFifties, and criticizing baby boomers for (as he claimed) destroying what was good about that era. Many critics of his speech suggested he bungled it by reemphasizing his old age (he was 72, Clinton was 50 in '96) and by not sufficiently considering the fact for many minority groups, the 1950s were a time of rampant racial segregation, bigotry, and discrimination (he did mention the reality of how bad racial relations were in the '50s, but seemed to downplay the importance of desegregation). This glory days speech was cited by some post-election as playing a key role in his loss to Bill Clinton, who easily won reelection.

* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' opens with [[Characters/BojackHorsemanBojackHorseman Bojack]]constantly watching episodes of his own show from the Nineties, due to being unable to move on from that era, though he still hates when the paparazzi recognize him and chase him down.

* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' opens with Bojack constantly watching episodes of his own show from the Nineties, due to being unable to move on from that era, though he still hates when the paparazzi recognize him and chase him down.

* One of the main themes in ''Film/TheTurningPoint.'' Emma was once a great dancer, but now she's in her mid-forties and can barely execute a double pirouette. Her old friends Wayne and [=DeeDee=], also once on their way to ballet stardom, abandoned their performing careers shortly after having their first child. And Michael, the artistic director, has devolved from a great choreographer into an administrator.

* In ''ComicBook/AstroCity'', invoked by name by a police officer forced to retire -- he didn't look up a superhero he had known because he didn't want to be two old men bragging about their glory days. The superhero, who really had retired because he no longer had it, helps him come to grips with it.

** Humanity themselves had the Dark Age of Technology, where mankind created anything that could have been created and rapidly colonized known space. Then the Age of Strife happened, throwing everything to the crapper. Fortunately for humanity, after the Age of Strife came the rise of The Emperor and The Imperium of Mankind, which led to the ''second'' glory days of the Great Crusade. With Space Marine legions backed with mighty war machines fighting as the Imperium's [[{{Mooks}} basic troops,]] nothing could hope to stand in The Imperium's way. ''Then'' the Literature/HorusHeresy happened, and everything went to an even deeper crapper than before, and The Imperium has been repeatedly described as 'rotting' or 'decaying' ever since.

* The Renaissance saw AncientRome as the Glory Days of mankind, hence the popularity of the terms "DarkAgeEurope" and "MedievalMorons". Petrarch even said "What else, then, is all history, but the praise of Rome?" In the Victorian and Romantic era, UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance was seen as Europe's true glory days with its achievements in exploration, science, philosophy and art seen as the DawnOfAnEra. Needless to say, Victorian, Romantic, Modernist and 60s Art movements are all seen and invoked the same way.