Fish Out Of Temporal Water / Comic Books

• Samaritan from Astro City 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.
• Booster Gold: Booster 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).
• Captain America:
  • 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.
  • The Ultimates version of Cap had almost exactly that experience, except that he ended up more traumatized than anything 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 Now he is over 70 years out of date, and the modern world is all but incomprehensible to him when first thawed out.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 Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers miniseries, one of Captain Victor's clones is sent back in time to Earth in the 1970s.
• The DCU:
  • In Many Happy Returns, Pre-Crisis Supergirl -Kara Zor-El- accidentally ends up in the Post-Crisis universe, which is more cynical, Darker and Edgier 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 Infinite Crisis, the Post-Crisis version of 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 A Mind-Switch in Time, 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.
  • The Coming of Atlas: The titular villain is thrown out of his own quasi-mythical time and into the present day, where he is found by Sam Lane's soldiers. Atlas is quite shocked by modern technology, but he is assisted in catching up rapidly by Lane's scientists.
  • Zinda Blake, Lady Blackhawk, got catapulted from the 1940s to the present day during a Crisis Crossover. The problem for her is that, even though she is the one from the past, everybody else seems to be stuck in The '50s! 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 Birds of Prey.
  • Captain Atom'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.
  • The Flash: Barry Allen, during the brief period between Final Crisis and Flashpoint, where he's been resurrected from his death in the 1980s. Comic-Book Time 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.
  • 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 Disney Mouse and Duck Comics. 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 Disney Kingdoms comic book series Figment 2, 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 Donald Duck is a stone age duck who ended up in the present, much to her disgrace.
• In Eight Billion Genies, a woman makes a wish to create a replica of her small hometown from 1982, complete with period-appropriate movies, fashion, shops, and people.
• In the 2006 iteration of The Eternals, 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 SHRA.
• Jonah Hex becomes this after being tossed through time to present-day Gotham City in the New 52 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.
• Judo Girl 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 Big Bad of Locke & Key, has some spots of this (having been dead for twenty years) but manages to blend in well regardless. He's mostly just wowed by things like e-mails and cellphones.
• Project Superpowers does not dwell TOO much on this, but nevertheless, it is about a bunch of World War II superheroes who have been trapped in 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.
• Ronin (1983) depicts a samurai thrust into the far-flung future.
• Goes both ways in Runaways: the team ends up in 1907 New York for a while and when they return to their present they take 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 Conan the Barbarian in the Savage Avengers series as the Cimmeranian adjusts to the modern world after being temporally displaced in Avengers: No Road Home.
• Seven Soldiers, 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.
  • Klarion Bleak hails from Limbo-Town, a Hidden Elf Village 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 She-Hulk, 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 Spider-Man 2099 series is the adventures of Miguel O'Hara stranded in modern day New York thanks to the Superior Spider Man.
• The 2014 relaunch of The Amazing Spider-Man has a minor example with 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 Technology Marches On and it takes her off-guard.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW): 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 adapts quite quickly and shows no difficulty interacting with the modern world.
• In Transmetropolitan, "revivals" - Human Popsicle 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 Older Than They Look 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 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 Nicki Minaj, 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 Wonder Woman Vol 2, the Gorgons (in a hilarious aversion of Villains Blend in Better) are totally thrown off of their game by modern civilization. Medusa's initial attempt to kill Wonder Woman 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 X-Men is a very similar case to Cap, being an idealist from an earlier period of history 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 over 800 years ago, during the 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 Knight Templar villainy.