Fantasy Counterpart Appliance

And there's more where that came from.

Barney Rubble, laughing like a hyena
Barney Rubble, what a little wiener
Where's Wilma, anybody seen her?
Got a baby elephant vacuum cleaner

— Weird Al, "Bedrock Anthem"

In a setting which is not particularly close to reality, the lifestyles of the characters will also tend to be less like those of the audience. Sometimes, this is intended. Other times, creators will take pains to make the world they're demonstrating more familiar.

A big step in doing this is to include devices and comforts the audience is familiar with and encounters regularly, such as phones, televisions, washing machines, guns. That way, even if the geography is totally alien, and the culture completely unusual, the viewer will have something to connect them with what they know and relate more closely to the cast.

With Science Fiction, this is easy. Common objects can be inserted into the world, given a more technological appearance, a few extra functions, and a weird name. Job done. This works as long as the technology doesn't become woefully archaic over time.

In a fantasy world or a Period Piece, this is harder. Familiar items can still be inserted, creating a Schizo Tech, Anachronism Stew or even Purely Aesthetic Era effect, but this is so jarring that it can actually pull the viewer out of the world they're meant to believe in.

The alternative is to have devices which have the same functions as those we know, but rely on different principles than modern technology. They may be powered by the likes of Magitek, Bamboo, or Steam. They may look completely unusual, but will be used in a way to facilitate the quality of life we recognise as normal, and the characters will regard them as commonplace.

Fantastic Nuke and Fantasy Contraception are subtropes. Related to Fictional Counterpart and Fantasy Counterpart Culture. Compare and contrast Aliens Never Invented the Wheel.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• One chapter of Hell Teacher Nube has Hiroshi find a weird piece of stone shaped like an ocarina with spikes. Despite having the composition of a normal stone, it exhibits very strange behaviours such as puffing up while spewing lightning and having strange symbols appear on its surface. Nube and the boys eventually discover that it's pretty much an ancient cellphone, with the vibration and lightning being the equivalent of a call/notification ringtone, while the strange symbols are actually text message.
• In One Piece, the Den-Den Mushi, a kind of snail capable of transmitting radio signals, is modified for use as telephones and cameras.
  • A later arc introduced objects resembling seashells that, ironically, are imported from an ecosystem of solid clouds in the sky. They had the ability to store and release specific energies or substances. Known as dials, they were used to effectively recreate gas tanks, water tanks, lightbulbs and flash grenades, photo cameras, heating elements, airjet engines, batteries and even portable music players.

Fan Works

• In the The Tainted Grimoire, Whisperweed is used as phones, two way radios and speakers because of its unique ability to transmit sound.

Films — Animated

• In the Shrek films, the Magic Mirror doubles as a television set.

Films — Live-Action

• Halloweentown II had "skull phones" which worked exactly like interdimensional walkie-talkies.

Literature

• In Bubble World, bubbles and Bright Planet's PESTs work like cell phones and videophones. The bubbles also let you choose your wardrobe and hair.
• Darkness Series: Used constantly in the series, unsurprisingly as it is a fantastic allegory of World War II and is set in a Low Fantasy setting which requires fantastic equivalents of the technologies needed for industrialised warfare.
• Discworld:
  • The series is full of this stuff, usually played for humour either by contrasting the mundanity of such devices with a fantasy world, or by showing how hectic these advances have made everyone's lives. Notable examples include the Iconographs (cameras), the semaphore towers (the internet, information superhighway), the Dis-organiser (PDAs, especially Blackberries), and the cubic Device found by the Dwarves (sound-recording equipment). Interestingly, the Disc came up with all of these advances without the more basic advents of a working postal system, a stable taxation system, or printed money (all of which were implemented when Moist von Lipwig came along).
  • An interesting point about the Discworld examples is that Discworld magic is unreliable enough to be a very poor substitute for technology, it's just the only one available. There were demon-powered watches in the early books, but as soon as miniature clockwork was developed these were abandoned as almost totally useless.
  • It should be noted that at least they used to have a working postal system before most of those (except for the Devices, which in any case can't be replicated by modern Disc magic/science) — it's just that an attempt at modernisation in the postal service went disastrously wrong for the largest and single most influential city on the Disc.
• In the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Magic Mirrors can be used for scrying, but tend to work more like videophones, allowing one party to call another (provided they have a compatible unit) at convenience.
• Harry Potter: The wizarding world uses many forms of muggle technology, typically with upgrades, and where they don't use technology they often have advents so bizarre that they don't resemble anything in the real world, like broomsticks and hippogriffs as a form of transportation; but sometimes, they come down into the middle ground of this trope. Case in point, floo powder. Functioning as a network able to take people from one fireplace to another, it's basically like a mass transit system, albeit a much faster one, though still prone to accidents. And by sticking one's head only into a fireplace, it's possible to communicate with another's home, much like a telephone. Note also the use of owls as the equivalent to the postal service, and the use of a Patronus as a way of sending a message quickly, like email or text (and less likely to be intercepted than an owl).
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Due to the presence of magic, the setting has a lot of Schizo Tech of this sort. Stoves and ovens in wealthier households are often powered by low-level fire magic instead of wood products or fossil fuels, and street lights typically are filled with a bioluminescent moss.
• I Couldn't Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job: This trope describes 90% of the inventory of the protagonists' store, Magic Shop Leon: it's essentially a neighborhood appliance store that sells everything from blenders to air conditioners that are powered by magic in one form or another.
• Lord Darcy: A regular feature of the stories; one features a "preservator" which is basically a magical refrigerator, and several feature the teleson, which is a magic phone. Subverted in one story which features a flashlight-equivalent; the magical principles behind it are explained, but it becomes apparent that they're not how it actually produces light, which is done by a poorly-understood process involving a zinc cell forcing some kind of energy through a thin metal filament...
• The Lord of the Rings: Palantíri resemble and function like crystal balls, but were originally meant to work in a group, as something like Middle-Earth telephones. Tolkien's efforts at Applicability, and the lack of such things when the story was conceived, notwithstanding, many have also interpreted them to represent TV and whatever new media they despise. This works on a broadly metaphorical level; they provide lots of information, but seldom in a context that leads the user to a useful conclusion.
• Brandon Sanderson:
  • Elantris: The Seons perform many of the functions of a personal computer, including preserving documents and long-term communication in the manner of a videophone.
  • The Stormlight Archive:
    • The series has spanreeds, contraptions that allow two quills to be synced up so that one controls the other from a distance. The practical effect of this is similar to a cumbersome form of texting, but with a very different cultural context.
    • More common is the use that is found for the local currency—small gemstones suspended in glass spheres. Because they store Stormlight and emit it evenly, the spheres are used, at least by the wealthy, as lightbulbs.
• Tales of MU has many examples, magical TVs and refrigerators are mentioned by name, crystal balls are used as computers (complete with "aethernet") and mirrors are like phones (including pocket-sized "smart" mirrors).
• Harry Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump is set in a magical version of 20th-century Los Angeles where all appliances are this. Clocks and telephones are demon-powered, as is the "simularity", which is a form of radio. Hollywood produces "light and magic shows", the main character packs a rod instead of a gun, and cars are replaced by magic carpets.
• In The Wheel of Time's Age of Legends, Magitek did everything, and people relied on such Smeerpy counterparts as "Jo-cars" (automobiles), "sho-wings" (planes), and "shocklances" (guns, although probably more like Boom Sticks). Interestingly, they seem to have had the physics know-how to create regular technology if they wished, but magic was easier. Also, in one book, there is a throwaway mention of a device that works the same as an iPod, though given the cyclical time in the series, it might have been an actual iPod.
• In The Witchlands:
  • Firewitched lamps serve in place of streetlights, as they don't require fuel, and firewitchery is used to make a substance explosive, replacing TNT with firewitched pots of oil. Merik's pistol also uses firewitchery as ignition mechanism.
  • Voicewitches are basically human telephones, connecting themselves to Voicewitches in other places and repeating words they hear for them. At the end of the second book, Iseult manages to rig Threadstones she and Safi are wearing to fulfill similar function.
  • In the third book, Vaness has two scrolls made that each reflect what is written on the other, serving as a rudimentary, two-person chat.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons. Dragon magazine #73 had an article about "Non-violent Magic Items". Some of them were magical versions of real life devices, such as a Thermos bottle, electric fan, space heater, electronic scale, electric blanket and smoke detector.
• Earthdawn has a couple of minor magic items, including magic cannons, self-heating magic pots or lighting crystals.
• Some of the items in the GURPS Magic Items books, for example the Returner System, which is the magical equivalent of a department store security gate.

Video Games

• Airships in the Final Fantasy series, and any number of games influenced by them, are used the same way as aircraft, but are driven by magic. This is particularly apparent in Final Fantasy XII, where Aerodromes providing commercial travel are exactly like airports.
• The Magitek Sheikah Slate in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the appearance of a tablet computer or large cell phone, and similar function such as a phone and repository of information, but also has magic runes programmed into it. The very similar-looking Purah Pad from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom also functions similarly.
• In Myst, the ancient D'ni civilisation used Firemarbles is much the way we do lightbulbs. It's never explained exactly how they work, but they light when struck, extinguish in water, and have a long but not interminable lifespan.
• Lawn mowers in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time have different designs depending on the time period, with the most notorious being the ones at Frostbite Caves, which are just saber-tooth beavers tied to a lawn mower base similar to image example.

Web Comics

• In Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan crystal balls are used like video cellphones.
• In Unsounded, stoves and refrigerators are powered by the Sufficiently Analyzed Magic of pymary rather than by electricity.

Western Animation

• The Flintstones have taken this premise to the point of one enormous Running Gag that drives the show's premise, i.e. Flintstone Theming. Appliances usually on Bamboo and now-extinct animals, especially dinosaurs.
• The Smurfs (1981) attempted this with primitive counterparts of modern inventions (a network of hollow smurfmelon vines became the telephone, and a series of crystals became "window-vision"), but would soon be abandoned by the end of the episode.
• Trollz had spell phones, which act like flip cell phones that can send spells to other phone users, as well as a group call feature.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, there are magic mirrors that are the equivalent of cell phones, allowing you to communicate with other people who also have magic mirrors, even their use must be paid for at the equivalent of a telephone company managed by fairies. It is also possible to watch TV shows with them.
• The Owl House has quite a bit of this as part of its whole Dungeon Punk aesthetic, though interestingly the tech is not a 1:1 translation, with some devices either being combined together (Crystal Balls serve as both computers and televisions) or split apart (scrolls work like smartphones but the ability to actually call people is instead relegated to crows).

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