History Main / PresentDay

Contrast with UnintentionalPeriodPiece, where a work attempted to ''not'' be set in the then-present day but failed, and TwoDecadesBehind, when something set in the "present day" has out-of-date elements.

* ''Series/{{Community}}.''

* Except for a few specific cases, ''Series/DoctorWho'' has a sliding 'present' which lines up with the current real date,; this is usually when the companion is from. Interestingly enough, partially avoided for the 5th series finale: [[spoiler: Although for much of the season they were counting down to June 26th, 2010, the date of the season finale and destruction of the TARDIS, very little of the actual episode took place in that time period, dealing mostly with its time-spanning aftermath.]]
** Inconsistently averted during the 3rd and 4th Doctors' years with UNIT. DependingOnTheWriter, these episodes were either set in the present day, or the near future (e.g., Sarah Jane explicitly says that she's from 1980, in an episode released in 1974).
* ''Series/SoulTrain'': Mainly for The70s, but also for The80s, The90s and the early-to-mid-2000s. Watching an old episode of ''Soul Train'' makes for a great time capsule of the culture of whatever period it aired in, especially in regards to which R&B and hip-hop artists were popular at the time the episode originally aired.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2019'' starts one day before its actual release date on Oct. 24, 2019.
* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' supposedly takes place during its release year, 2004... and every computer in the Los Angeles area has an OS that looks like it came from the mid-1980's.

Since a lot of media [[Administrivia/PeopleSitOnChairs is assumed to be set near the era it's released]] unless specifying otherwise (such as a PeriodPiece set in the past or TheFuture set in ... the future), this trope should focus on when media emphasizes that it's set in the present day of the time it's released, such as with references to on-going events or current popular media or technology of the time.

Contrast with UnintentionalPeriodPiece, where a work attempted to ''not'' be set in the then-present day, but failed.

Setting includes time as well as place, and stories of this trope are set at (approximately) the time when they are made. Some works take this further, constantly reminding the viewers that [[Film/{{Spaceballs}} whatever is happening now]], is happening '''[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment now]]'''.

Stories with this setting act like a time capsule of history, showcasing popular trends, current culture, and period aesthetics. They can range from just as the creator started work on the idea, to try and target the day that the story is published. Most things are [[LikeRealityUnlessNoted as they would be in real life]], and the story is set in a culture with which the creator is familiar.

Compare TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture (close enough to be just a few years away but noticeably futuristic), NextSundayAD (just ahead of the present day -- the AlienInvasion arrived next week) and LongRunnerTechMarchesOn. When a work is set in the recent past, but treats it ''as if'' it were Present Day to the point of including anachronisms, it's a PresentDayPast. Contrast with UnintentionalPeriodPiece, where a work attempted to ''not'' be set in the present day, but failed.

!!Examples, organized by decade then media:

[[folder:1920s]]

[[AC:1920s {{Literature}}]]
* Creator/FScottFitzgerald's ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'': The novel is a critique of American social norms of the era, mocking the cast of wealthy New Yorkers who live extravagantly in TheRoaringTwenties, complete with references to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and bootlegging.
* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/CthulhuMythos'' were written in the 20s and 30s, and this is borne out by mentions of Prohibition and fashion habits, like one character being concerned about ''not wearing a hat'' as he's fleeing from the monstrous denizens of the TownWithADarkSecret.

[[AC:1920s WesternAnimation]]
* Most early [[WesternAnimation/FelixTheCatOttoMessmer Felix the Cat]] cartoons mirrored American attitudes of this era such as Prohibition era in "Felix Finds Out" (released in 1924) and "Whys and Other Whys" (released in 1927) and flappers appearing in "Felix Strikes It Rich" (released in 1923). In some cartoons, Felix performed a rendition of the Charleston which was popular in that era.

[[folder:1930s]]

[[AC:Comics]]

[[AC:Films]]

* ''Film/GabrielOverTheWhiteHouse'' depicts an American President who solves TheGreatDepression by abolishing the Constitution, creating a private police force, ascending as an absolute dictator, and forcing other nations into submission through a superior military. And all of this is treated as ''a good thing''. Such a President then was viewed as a willful, active leader compared to the incompetent UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover (and even UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt voiced his support of the film).
* ''Film/GoldDiggersOf1933'' is about the difficulties of life during TheGreatDepression, with evocative story and its songs. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the movie in the Depression years.
* ''Film/TheLittleRascals'', which today come off as quaint stories your grandparents might tell about being children at the time. Specifically, it's about children during The Great Depression.[[note]]While the series dates back to the early 1920s, pre-1930 shorts weren't featured in the TV package[[/note]] In more than a few episodes, the children wonder where their next meal is coming from.

[[AC:Theatre]]
* ''Theatre/FaceTheMusic'' (1932) begins on the joke that TheGreatDepression has reduced the rich and famous to eating at an Automat, with this scene leading into a BreakawayPopHit that includes UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover among its optimistic reference. The second act has a drinking song in ironic salute of the not-yet-repealed Eighteenth Amendment.
* The plot of the 1938 musical ''Theatre/LeaveItToMe!'' relied on the facts that relations between the US and the USSR were relatively cordial, while their relations with UsefulNotes/NaziGermany were not, and war in Europe, though seemingly imminent, was not yet a reality. Several of these facts changed irrevocably while the musical was in its post-Broadway tour.
* ''Theatre/MarginForError'': The published script specifies the setting as "prior to September 1939", and takes place during a rather specific point in the diplomatic history of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany. The Communist-Nazi alliance and invasion of Poland are brought up as predicted turns of events. The movie version was made after the U.S. entered UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, which forced the plot to be framed as a {{flashback}}.
* ''Theatre/OfTheeISing'': Originally produced in 1931 as a satire on U.S. party politics, the 1952 SettingUpdate reached Broadway and flopped. Later productions have reverted to the original version, in which [[TheGreatDepression "the country thinks it's got depression"]] but it turns out that posterity (not prosperity, as President Hoover said) is just around the corner. Even educated audience members may still wonder what [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Moratorium moratorium]] the chorus of reporters didn't want to know about (it was a freeze on war payments from those nations indebted to the US).
%%* ''Theatre/TheWomen'': The author's 1960s SettingUpdate of her play has been generally ignored, and revivals tend to be based on GorgeousPeriodDress.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:1940s]]
[[AC:Films]]
* ''Film/AnchorsAweigh'' was released as a morale booster for the US Navy. While WWII was clearly coming to an end in Europe, it was still raging in the Pacific where the Navy was actively engaged against the Japanese. The opening sequence of the film is clearly designed to make the nation feel good about its naval forces.

[[folder:1950s]]

[[AC:Film]]
* ''Film/TheBlueLamp'': The film establishes the era of immediately-post-war {{UsefulNotes/London}} with children playing on bomb sites, austerity and rationing still somewhat present, slums that seemingly never left the Victorian era, a panic over juvenile delinquents who dress in sharp suits and fedoras, trolleybuses, and police cars with bells rather than sirens.

[[AC:Literature]]

----

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'' avoids use of specific dates, but features modern technology several times (the hospital room Shuichi's mother is in, CRT screens, the VCR for the Chapter Black tape), making it clear that the events take place in sometime in the mid-nineties, when the series was made.

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* The first issue of ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'' takes place roughly now. For values of "now" equal to "2002", since that's when it was released, and actual dates ''are'' given in-series to confirm this.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/DraftDay'' centers around the 2014 NFL Draft. It was released in 2014, before the draft. In the real NFL draft, some people actually referred to this movie.
* Attempted with the original trailer for ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'' (with Klaatu's first visit, in which he acquired Keanu Reeves's DNA) is followed by a caption reading "Present Day."
--> '''Website/TheAgonyBooth:''' Hey, everybody, it's Present Day! Yaay!! Gosh, I hope I get an X-Box.

[[folder:Literature]]
* Almost all of Creator/CharlesDickens' novels are set in [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain his own era]]. The two exceptions are ''Barnaby Rudge'' and ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'', both of which take place within what was then living memory.
* The works of Creator/JaneAusten are all set in [[RegencyEngland her own time]]. Ironically, they would go on to inspire an entire genre of PeriodPiece, the Regency romance.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/TwentyFour'': "events occur in real-time". Even when several years or months pass between seasons, the day occurring is always implied to be the present.
* ''Series/{{Community}}.''
* Although the main story line of ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' takes place in the Present Day, this is actually a FlashBack, as Ted is telling the story to his kids in 2030. Some episodes even have flashbacks ({{FlashForward}}s?) to events that take place between the two.
* Surprising for a show told in AnachronicOrder, but ''Series/{{Lost}}'' began this way, with the plane crash occurring on September 22, 2004, the same date the show premiered. However, it has never been set in the present after, instead being in the near-present: seasons 1-4 covered late 2004 to really early 2005 and the main action of season 5 takes place in 2007 and [[spoiler:1977]].
* ''Series/FlashForward2009'' attempted this, with the date of the "blackout" being about when it first aired, and the date of the flashforward the expected date of the season finale, but a hiatus screwed up the scheduling. And then it was cancelled.
* Except for a few specific cases, ''Series/DoctorWho'' has a sliding 'present' which lines up with the current real date,; this is usually when the companion is from. Interestingly enough, partially avoided for the 5th series finale: [[spoiler: Although for much of the season they were counting down to June 26th, 2010, the date of the season finale and destruction of the TARDIS, very little of the actual episode took place in that time period, dealing mostly with its time-spanning aftermath.]]
** Inconsistently averted during the 3rd and 4th Doctors' years with UNIT. DependingOnTheWriter, these episodes were either set in the present day, or the near future (e.g., Sarah Jane explicitly says that she's from 1980, in an episode released in 1974).
* ''Series/SoulTrain'': Mainly for The70s, but also for The80s, The90s and the early-to-mid-2000s. Watching an old episode of ''Soul Train'' makes for a great time capsule of the culture of whatever period it aired in, especially in regards to which R&B and hip-hop artists were popular at the time the episode originally aired.
* ''Series/TimeTrax'' has criminals from the late 22nd century escaping to the present, or 1993, when the series aired.
* The live-action adaptation of ''Series/DeathNote'' takes place in 2015, where [[Manga/DeathNote the original series]] took place about 10 years earlier (at the time ''it'' was released).
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' tries to do this, though it results in continuity errors because of ignored time jumps in at least two different seasons. But the date Dean [[spoiler:is saved from Hell]], is the same date that the Season 4 premiere first aired September 18, 2008.

[[folder:Radio]]
* Orson Welles' radio adaptation of ''Radio/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' was infamous for use of this trope. Many listeners actually believed that the up-to-the-minute newscasts of an ongoing alien invasion were real.

[[folder:Theater]]
* ''Theatre/TheMerryWivesOfWindsor'' is Creator/WilliamShakespeare[='s=] only play set in his own era.
* Many plays, when not set in a particular time, will be set in "the present." This becomes problematic when producing a play written in the 1940s in 2012.
** This is parodied in ''Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone'': many of the Man in the Chair's favorite shows, including the ShowWithinAShow ''The Drowsy Chaperone", are products of their time. At best, things simply become nonsensical to modern listeners without an explanation (such as the advertisement of "mixups, mayhem, and [[HaveAGayOldTime a gay wedding]]!"), and at worst, like the beginning of the Second Act of a completely different show, [[Theatre/TheKingAndI "Message From a Nightengale"]], it's InnocentlyInsensitive.
* ''Theatre/{{Chess}}'' is an example of a show for which this became problematic [[FailedFutureForecast much quicker than expected]]. Its first few productions required revisions to allow it to continue to make sense in "the present", and after 1991, only five years after it originally opened, there wasn't much choice but to treat it as a period piece instead.
* ''Critic's Choice'' by Creator/IraLevin, first produced in 1960, identifies the time of the play as "last season."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''WesternAnimation/AnotherCode'': Both games take place in the mid-2000s; the events ''Two Memories'' explicitly occur on July 24, 2005, right before the protagonist's 14th birthday, while ''Journey into Lost Memories'' takes place sometime in August 2007 after her 16th birthday. This is especially clear in the latter game, such as with Ashley helping a local band find a misplaced [=MP3=] player.
* There's two main eras in each ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' game -- the past sequences in various historical eras that are relived via GeneticMemory in the Animus, and the present day sequences taking place roughly the year of each game's release with the protagonists reliving said past (usually the least interesting ones, for they are very short and have a limited gameplay and none of the appeal of the sequences in historical eras).
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'' has a good example of a "dated" present day: being made in 2001, Liberty City looks like any modern metropolis, but if you pay attention, you see how the 1998-2000 dot-com boom, when businessmen had just discovered the Internet, is still in full swing. Smartphones still didn't exist, text pagers were still in use, cars still sported the 90's curvy box look, nobody ever thought the person Donald Love was supposed to be satirizing would be the President of the United States, and Islamist terrorism wasn't even considered a threat compared to domestic crime.
** The [[http://www.rockstargames.com/libertytree/ online version of the fictional ''Liberty Tree'' news website]] for ''[=GTA III=]'' also invokes this trope by reporting events in Liberty City as if they were actually unfolding in the months leading up to the release of the game.
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2019'' starts one day before its actual release date on Oct. 24, 2019.
* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' supposedly takes place during its release year, 2004... and every computer in the Los Angeles area has an OS that looks like it came from the mid-1980's.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest'' is set more or less in the modern day, with slight variations (George Bush isn't the President, for example, replaced with a fictional President, and Japan uses the ''Literature/BattleRoyale'' act like in the eponymous film and book, which gave [[BigBad Danya]] the idea), but is technically set a year behind the real world. For example, v3 is the current game, played in 2008, but in the SOTF world it's 2007. With v3 finally nearing its end after about two years of play, the setting is now further behind.
* This was done somewhat literally with the Bookfarters Saga, the crossover event between WebVideo/ShipwreckedComedy and The Tin Can Bros.. Thanks to the meta-narrative, the story does take place in real-time as fans watched along via livestreams and social media. It's also notable that, thanks to Shipwrecked's fondness for historical fiction, it was the first of their projects to take place in Present Day since ''Kissing in the Rain''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is an interesting use of "present day", because [[LongRunners the show has been running so long]] and [[NotAllowedToGrowUp the characters never age]]. It becomes increasingly bizarre when characters have flashbacks to their childhoods. This is a case of a [[ComicBookTime floating timeline]].
* ''WesternAnimation/TimeWarpTrio'' was made in 2005. The "present" year as it is stated in the show? 2005, of course! The book series, which in 1991, logically enough took place in that year. Although each book is set in the year that one came out, so they get set in 1995, 2003 and so on while [[NotAllowedToGrowUp everyone stays the same age.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' established the events of their first episode, ''Death Has A Shadow'', to actually begin on January 31, 1999 (the episode's original airdate) in ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Back To The Pilot]]''. The episode aired on November 13, 2011, but it could still be on September 11, 2011 (as it was mentioned to be just 10 years after September 11, 2001).
* ''Family Guy''[='s=] spinoff ''WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow'' has an episode (''California Dreamin[='=]'') beginning exactly three years after the events of the first episode mentioned at the beginning of that episode, which is September 27, 2009 (the episode's original airdate, so it would be September 27, 2012). However, the episode aired on March 17, 2013.
[[/folder]]

The goal with stories being set in the Present Day is to appeal to audiences of today, instead of audiences of past or future generations. Stories with this setting act like a time capsule of history, showcasing popular trends, current culture, and period aesthetics. They can range from just as the creator started work on the idea, to try and target the day that the story is published. Most things are [[LikeRealityUnlessNoted as they would be in real life]], and the story is set in a culture with which the creator is familiar.

[[folder:1950]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AnotherCode'': Both games take place in the mid-2000s; the events ''Two Memories'' explicitly occur on July 24, 2005, right before the protagonist's 14th birthday, while ''Journey into Lost Memories'' takes place sometime in August 2007 after her 16th birthday. This is especially clear in the latter game, such as with Ashley helping a local band find a misplaced MP3 player.

* Attempted with the original trailer for ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' (with Klaatu's first visit, in which he acquired Keanu Reeves's DNA) is followed by a caption reading "Present Day."

* There's two main eras in each ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' game -- the past sequences in various historical eras that are relived via GeneticMemory in the Animus, and the present day sequences with the protagonists reliving said past (usually the least interesting ones, for they are very short and have a limited gameplay and none of the appeal of the sequences in historical eras).

* There's two main eras in each ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' game -- the past sequences in the Animus that are relived via GeneticMemory, and the present day sequences with the protagonists reliving said past (usually the least interesting ones, for they are short and have a limited gameplay).