Basic Trope: A work set in a certain historical time period has elements of other time periods thrown in.
- Straight:
- People using telephones in 1860 AD.
- People doing Fortnite dances in 1405 AD.
- Exaggerated:
- People listening to iPods in 1860 BC.
- In dinosaur ages, humans are seen flying with planes and browsing the internet with laptops. Bonus points if there's also technology that's not even possible yet.
- Single-celled organisms billions of years ago have fully colonised other planets.
- Browning M2s and Boeing B-52s still in US service in 2157.
- Downplayed:
- A society believes in a heliocentric universe even though it's still in the Ancient Roman times.
- People listening to iPods and playing Xbox 360 in the year 1998.
- Sci-fi Futuristic superplanes are chasing down MiG-21s and F-35s and vice versa.
- A carriage salesman has all of the hallmarks of a car dealership.
- Justified:
- One of the characters is a time traveler who brings anachronistic elements with them into other time periods.
- It's an Alternate Universe where technology advanced faster.
- One of the characters is ahead of his or her time in inventing various devices the modern audience would recognize, but their contemporaries keep telling them that It Will Never Catch On.
- An item exists in a work set a few years before it should be commonplace but is suggested to be a prototype.
- The heroes Break Out the Museum Piece.
- Time is breaking down. See "Deconstructed" for more information.
- Time has already broken down. This results in a sort of patchwork world made up of different places from different time periods, and after a fray and a handful of conflicts, the technology is mutually shared throughout history with the world's different time periods slowly blending to create new technologies from existing ones throughout history. And people have tamed dinosaurs and kept them as pets!
- The work is set in an Ambiguous Time Period or a Retro Universe.
- The work is set inside of a computer system/virtual reality game (although we are not told that at the beginning) with an emphasis on the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (people pay $300 a month on the Virtuality membership for the chance to blast T-Rexes with lasers, and by Jove, they shall!).
- Inverted: People listening to 8-track tapes in 2038.
- Subverted:
- Bob realizes it's really a bunch of historical recreationists who make a Plethora of Mistakes.
- The story is set in an Old Order Amish community. Things just appear backwards.
- Bob goes to see a historical recreation, and quite accurately praises it on its realism.
- Bob has a modern revolver which superficially resembles a six shooter and a metal lined fast draw holster. This is foreshadowing that he is a TimeTraveler.
- It turns out that Bob is stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine and that the anachronistic world is merely a fake created by someone who didn't care for getting the details right as long as Bob was out of the way.
- While the 1983 vintage TV showed what at first glance seemed to be S-Video* , a quick look at its back revealed it to be Commodore's LCA* .
- Double Subverted: Bob asks them about it, and they say it's intentional because it seems cooler that way.
- Parodied: Purely Aesthetic Era
- Zig Zagged: The setting can't make up its mind when it's set, so you're never quite sure if it's an anachronism or not.
- The characters use modern (or only slightly outdated) speech patterns, but the work explicitly notes that this is a form of Translation Convention and that any Orphaned Etymology is a side effect of the translation (or to avoid 'spoilers' for those downtime). The Framing Device gives a specific example: Godwin's Law references often appear to those from before World War II as references to wicked pharaohs.
- Averted: All technology used is accurate to the specific time period.
- Enforced:
- "I just don't care if Julius Caesar wasn't really in a steamy love affair with Mary, Queen of Scots! We've got to sell tickets!"
- Accurate sources and surviving examples of materials from the age that the story is set in may be incomplete, inaccurate, in short supply or too delicate to be used, meaning that even if the producers do care they still have to do the best with what they have, even if it means extrapolating based on the evidence or using anachronistic stand-ins.
- And of course, the Rule of Funny.
- Lampshaded: "You know the telephone wasn't meant to be invented for another sixteen years, right?"
- Invoked: Time travelers leave a few pieces of modern technology lying around specifically to see what happens when you mix a few items of modern technology into an older setting.
- Exploited: The Shadowed Light include deliberate anachronisms to what they have preplanned to make any disclosure of their works look like bad forgeries.
- Defied: "Time police" ensure that time travelers do not leave anything in the wrong era.
- Discussed: "Aw, we've time-traveled back a hundred years again. Unfortunately, this means we don't have televisions, unlike what movies might make you think."
- Conversed: "Was the motorcycle even invented in 1810?" "No, but this is a fictional universe. It doesn't have to make any sort of sense."
- Plotted A Good Waste:
- The author wanted to create his own fictional universe and didn't care about realism. He just wanted the story to run on Rule of Cool, so he mixed and matched whatever he wanted.
- The author deliberately obscures the exact era the story takes place in to create a timeless, slightly surreal world that leaves the reader off-balance and resists efforts to ground it too heavily in reality.
- Deconstructed:
- The more advanced technologies have been dropped into this time by a malfunctioning time machine from thousands of years in the future where mankind is extinct and there is no one to turn it off. Each piece of future technology that is dropped and used in the older time risks destabilizing the time stream and causing the destruction of the universe.
- Any coolness in the setting self-destructs. The Victorian Gentleman promptly kills himself upon seeing a T-rex. The T-rex promptly swallows a jetpack and explodes.
- Reconstructed: Modern-era technology, while anachronistic, conveys to the viewer the social or emotional impact of the setting and its own technical advances.
Back to Anachronism Stew
