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{{trope}}
{{quote|"''They claim an indeterminate 'near future,' but a careful analysis of the fashions, haircuts, vehicles, and computers seen in this 1987 movie [''
|''[http://www.cracked.com/article_15756_2001-timecop-8-movie-futures-already-proven-wrong.html Cracked.com's 8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong]''}}
Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow! Literally.
[[The Future]], but not so far into it that you'd notice except for the abundance of [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. This is often a linear extrapolation of national malaise, so American works of the 1970s have endlessly skyrocketing crime and inner urban decay while the 1980s brought the notion that [[Mega Corp
Obviously, the setting of most [[Flash Forward]] stories, though they usually don't make a big deal of it except as a minor joke (in the case of a show like ''[[The Simpsons]]'', a major joke). Of course, [[Science Marches On]], so it's fun to watch 10 years later to see how wrong they got it.
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Shows set here seem to have a higher than usual failure rate, as well as falling victim to [[Science Marches On]] and [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]].
Both ''[[Max Headroom]]'', and the film ''[[Brazil (
See also [[Next Sunday
A good way to gauge whether or not a show takes place Twenty Minutes Into The Future: would much of the world's population at the time of filming still be alive by then?
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* A new Volkswagen commercial has someone debating about buying a car, only to have his future self (wearing nifty [[We Will Not Have Pockets in
* [[Play Station 3|Kevin Butler of Sony]] greets the people of March 2010 from the "crazy" future of November 2010. Aside from declaring the success of the Playstation Move, he says that people drink their food through straws, and Kansas City won the World Series.<ref>Non-Americans and Americans who don't care about baseball - the Kansas City Royals are a notoriously terrible baseball team. Sony was being facetious, they didn't have a chance.</ref>
* The now famous "1984" ad from Apple to promote their new Macintosh during the [[Super Bowl]] of, you guessed it, 1984. The ad depicts what would happen to the world had the Macintosh not be made in time and then IBM being displayed as a Big Brother expy on a giant television screen.
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[
** A direct [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[
** There are some indications that it actually takes place in an [[Alternate Universe]].
* ''[[Patlabor]]'', made in 1988 and set in 1998. "This story is a work of fiction -- but in ten years, who knows?"
* ''[[Manabi Straight!]]'' takes place in 2035, which looks just like today, but with fewer people and slightly fancier tech gadgets, such as PDAs and cell phones.
* ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' takes place in a post-apocalyptic future after an atomic war in "199X". Parodied in episode 23 of ''[[Excel Saga (
{{quote|
'''Audience:''' It's already passed!
'''Narrator:''' Oh crap! You're right... }}
* The ''[[Astro Boy (
* The future of ''[[Macross]]'' features not only the Macross crashing to Earth in 1999, but a global unification war where the forces that overthrow the world's governments are [[The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified|the good guys]]. And this is [[Backstory]] for the actual alien invasion in 2009.
* ''[[
* ''Attack of the Super-Monsters'', a memorably bad live action/anime combination, had sentient dinosaurs (played by hand puppets) returning to take over the Earth in 2000.
* ''Code E'' is set in 2017, although the only immediately recognizable difference from the actual modern day are computerized blackboards in the classrooms and computerized billboards and ads on buses. These both exist, but aren't as widespread as in the series.
* Likewise, ''[[School Shock]]'' is set in the same year. The science fiction focuses on nanomachines, single person aviation, cyborgs and a little bit of [[Brain In
* ''[[
* ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' is set in 2003 (2002 in the original). Since the show was first premiered in 2000, the anime was set 3 (4) years into the future. ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' also plays with the trope, but is set in 200X.
* ''[[
* ''[[Wangan Midnight]]'' is set in the year 20XX. The manga was first published in 1992, and is still being published to this day. The year allows for cars that were previously nonexistent to be introduced in later chapters of the manga without forcing the story to advance years at a time. After all, how else can you make a Skyline GT-R R34, which started production in 1999, appear in the manga without making everyone age seven years?
* Considering the [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|nature of the heroines]] of ''[[Mnemosyne]]'', it's a rather interesting case in that we get to see 2011, 2025, ''and'' 2055 in the span of four episodes.
* ''[[X 1999]]'' is set in, you guessed it, [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Android Announcer Maico 2010]]'' (made in 1998) provides another example of how hard prediction is. In 2010, the android Maico's first OS (operating system) is on a 3 1/2 inch floppy, and her full OS is on 50 CDs. It's now 2010, and Windows 7 is a 20 gigabyte OS supplied on DVDs or downloaded from the Net... and most people can't even remember the last time they used a floppy disk.
* ''[[Madoka Magica]]'' averts this by using contemporary technology (such as interactive whiteboards and digital picture frames), although fans who aren't familiar with the technology have mistaken it for this trope ([[Word of God]] is that it takes place in 2011, the same year it was released).
* The hardly known 1982 anime film ''[[Future War
* Subverted in ''[[Code Geass]]'', which appears to be this trope with a dose of [[Alternate History]], and reveals the date to be in the late 2010s. The catch is, it also has an alternate ''calendar''; it actually takes place [[Twenty Minutes Into the Past]]. How they managed to jump ahead of our level of technology by about half a century is not clear.
* ''[[Accel World]]'' is set in 2046 but it doesn't seem that different from modern day Japan, aside from a few technological differences.
* Zig-zagged in ''[[My Hero Academia]]'', which takes place decades into the future. However, people starting to be born with super powers caused such a social upheaval, things like science got super stagnate as society was focused on trying to cope with the change and quell the unrest. As a result, the technology isn't much more advanced than ours is when the series came out.
== Comic Books ==
* [[Darker and Edgier|Grim and gritty]] superhero comic ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'' took place twenty minutes into a future in which [[Batman]] has retired.
* Likewise, numerous other "grim and gritty" superhero comics influenced by ''[[Watchmen]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]''.
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* ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' is set in the grim future of 1997, in a post-apocalyptic Britain ruled by Nazis. Some of the original comics used the tagline "Pray the future never needs... V For Vendetta!". The film adaptation shifts this into the near future as seen from 2006 (2020? 2027?), thinly veiled references to the Bush administration and all.
* ''Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future''. The original series (written in the 1950s and 1960s) took place in an "advanced" future starting in 1995 spanning which had Britain as the world leader of space flight; missions to Venus, Mars, Mercury and Saturn's moons (all of which had/have their own civilization) and beyond the solar system.
* DC's [[Tangent Comics]] imprint (1997), like ''Watchmen'', ran with the idea that the presence of superhumans caused technology to advance more quickly than in our world. According to editor Eddie Berganza: "Leaps in technology, due in part to the superhumans, make the ''Tangent'' Universe about 10 years more advanced than where we are now. If you think you spend a lot of time in front of your computer now, just wait. It's not so hard to imagine print on paper going the way of the dodo." Considering how well newspapers are still doing in
* Deathlok, a character in the [[Marvel Universe]], is a time-traveling cyborg from the 1990s, where civilization has been almost destroyed by nuclear war. In 1974 when the character was created, this seemed plausible, but by this point he's had more than one major [[Retcon]]. Which is a weird one. Obviously, cyborgs were not running around in [[Real Life]] in the 90's but in the [[Marvel|Marvel Universe]], cyborgs were quite common, among other things.
* The comic strip ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' is set 122 years in an alternate future, and the character ages in real time, meaning that number never changes. It also means that as of 2009, Dredd himself has aged 32 years since his inception in 1977.
* Actually a strip, but ''[[Flash Gordon (
* In one old comic book (forgot the name), Aliens show up to a futuristic looking Earth and contact the planet. When nobody answers, they take it as an insult and attack. In the last panel, we learn that humans are now living on Mars, and Earth has been uninhabited since the Nuclear War of 2000.
* The ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' story "Days of Future Past", released in 1981 decipted a dystopian future in 2013.
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* The Highwaymen is about a pair of [[Retired Badass|retired badasses]] from the late 20th century who have to get back together for one more job in 2022.
* ''[[Commando (Comic Book)|Commando]]'' had a series set in the near future where war was effectively outlawed. Instead, nations solved their issues using virtual reality.
== Newspaper Comic Strips ==▼
* In the old ''Buck Rogers'' comics, at one point the hero-pirate Black Barney is trapped on the floor of a Martian ocean, and discovers the wreckage of the first manned Earth-to-Mars expedition, launched (IIRC) in '''1949'''. This was still some years away at the time of the strip, and would also be after Buck Rogers started his long nap.▼
== [[Film]] ==
* Seminal movie example: ''[[
* The sequel, ''[[
*
* ''[[Bicentennial Man]]'' begins in 2005. The opening caption states, [[
* The setting of the movie ''[[I, Robot (
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in the quasi-futuristic [[Dystopia]] ''[[Brazil (
* Parodied in the ''[[Family Guy]]'' movie, when Stewie hitches a ride to the future with his future self. Stewie is amazed that not only has he not conquered the world, but there aren't even flying
▲* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in the quasi-futuristic [[Dystopia]] ''[[Brazil (Film)|Brazil]]'', which takes place "Somewhere in the 20th Century" at "8:45 p.m.".
▲* Parodied in the ''[[Family Guy]]'' movie, when Stewie hitches a ride to the future with his future self. Stewie is amazed that not only has he not conquered the world, but there aren't even flying cars -- however, there is [[Time Travel]].
* ''[[Demolition Man]]'' predicts Los Angeles descending into absolute anarchy and advanced cryogenic freezing technology in 1996, a mere three years after the movie's release date. It also predicted that Taco Bell would become the most powerful economic force on the planet. [[Rule of Funny|Make of that what you will.]] And [[Hilarious in Hindsight|President Schwarzenegger]].
* The Japanese [[Godzilla]] movie ''Destroy All Monsters'', made in 1968, was set in 1999, a year when humans would've supposedly set up a moon colony, built an island capable of holding Godzilla and his buddies, and contacted aliens in shiny silver suits. Similarly, ''Godzilla vs Monster Zero'' which took place in "198X" featured travel to other planets in the solar system.
* According to [[Michael Bay]]'s ''[[The Island]]'', we will have flying motorcycles, hovering trains in the deep South, and really ugly hotrods. Oh, and a city of clones kept for their organs (which already seems archaic, as we can do the same thing with pigs).
* ''[[Escape
** The part about New York was becoming a genuine fear at the time since the film was made only a few years after the 1977 blackout and riot.
** The Los Angeles [[Escape From
* ''[[Gattaca]]'' is frighteningly plausible. Beyond the culture shift brought about by genetic engineering, we see little that would be out of place in our own society, except perhaps the neo-noir fashions and pianists with twelve fingers. However, the fact that we people can map and interpret the entire genetic makeup of a human being, based on a raw cell sample, in a matter of seconds using only a handheld device is far beyond what we're likely to have in the near future.
* ''[[Minority Report]]'' famously had a group of futurologists working on the staff of the movie to make the shown future as plausible as possible. Discounting the precognitives and the somewhat improbable traffic system, the future they came up with, with its omnipresent retinal scans and subsequent total loss of privacy (as well as businesses using said scans to bombard you with advertising) and gesture-based computing controls, certainly could happen.
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** Probably not his rapid-recovery eye transplants though, barring levels of nanotech not otherwise demonstrated in the film.
** There is frequent use of thin and flexible OLED displays, most prominently for advertisement and commercial purposes, such as showing animated cartoons on a cereal box.
** Though one element, the [[Jet Pack
** The movie takes place in 2054. If we started designing it this very minute, we might have 1/10th of the shown maglev freeway system built... maybe. The "futurologists" did a good job visualizing the world of the near-future, but they obviously have no idea how it takes to build city-spanning engineering projects.
** Apparently by 2054 we've un-invented computer networks: at one point, under time pressure, a technician must remove a piece of information from one computer, on a physical medium, and it has to be inserted into another computer to be used.
* Gackt's vampire-yakuza movie ''Moonchild'' starts at the Millennium celebrations in Tokyo, then jumps forward to various points in the main characters' lives, passing 2014, and "A few years later". The setting has Japan devastated by an economic crisis leading to massive emigration to a fictional city on what appears to be Taiwan, where Japanese are low-class.
* ''[[Predator]] 2'' predicts the grim voodoo gangs of 1997 Los Angeles.
* ''[[
* The very first scene of the film version of ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'' states that the story takes place "seven years from now," which turns out to look kind of like the '70s (when the book was written), the early '90s (when the story was ''set),'' and the early 21st century when it was made ... [[Anachronism Stew|all scrambled together]].
* ''[[Strange Days]]'' was released in the mid-1990s, but takes place in a [[Crapsack World]] version of 1999 in which recorded memories transfered through VR headsets have become the new drug of choice. A radio caller sums up how the world has taken a turn for the worse in the scant few years between the film's release and its current setting. Aside from the aforementioned technology, a few other technology and fashion pointers and the fact that it clearly takes Los Angeles immediately post-Rodney King and turns it [[Up to Eleven]]), it's not ''incredibly'' anachronistic viewing when looking back.
* ''[[Terminator]]'' takes place [[Next Sunday
** ''Terminator 2'', taking place in 1994, features a [[Screw Destiny]] plot that creates a possibility of averting the 1997 holocaust. ''Terminator 3'', however, chooses to have that holocaust take place in the ''[[Next Sunday
** ''Terminator: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' ([[Recycled:
* ''[[Time Cop]]'', the 1994 movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme, takes place in several time periods, including 2004, when the typical family car resembles a tank and can drive itself.
** And flashlights are duct taped onto assault rifles...
* In the 1960 film version of ''[[The Time Machine]]'' by H.G. Wells, the time-traveling hero sets off to the future from the start of the 20th century, stopping off at the time of both World Wars. Then he stops again in the year 1966, when ''[[A Nuclear Error|World War III]]'' is starting. When he eventually gets to the far future, he finds, via an ancient computer archive, that the world of the Eloi and Morlocks emerged in the aftermath of "a great war between the East and West."
* ''[[
* The first of the ''[[X-Men (
** The World Trade Centre is still standing in the first film, which seems to make the 'future' early 2001.
*** However, "the not too distant future" subtitle gets a bit confusing by the time the third movie happens. Simply because two scenes occur before the opening credits, and they are stated to be "10 years ago" and "20 years ago." It is never specified when exactly those two scenes were supposed to be 10 and 20 years ago from, now or from the not too distant future. (Confused yet?)
* The much-maligned [[
* ''[[G.I. Joe:
** It could also be taken to mean that the Autobots have either taken it upon themselves or at least helped to repair the damage done to the pyramids in Giza by Devastator ''Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'', during the ten years between both movies, as "Revenge of the Fallen" is set in 2009.
* Poked fun at in ''The Lake House'', when the female lead (who lives [[Next Sunday
* Implicit in the 2010 ''[[The
* In ''[[Inception]]'', the only futuristic technology seems to be the technology to enter another person's dreamscape, but that is only used by a small number of people.
** Used ''constructively'' by a very small number of people. We get a brief glimpse of an "opium cave" where people go to have shared dreams in Mombasa - That pretty strongly implies that unless it's illegal, and if it is, it probably has a fair deal of recreational use in the Western world, as well.
* [[Double Dragon (
* The 2006 Adam Sandler film ''[[Click]]'' takes place in 2006, 2007, 2017, 2023, and finally an unspecified date most likely in the 2030s {{spoiler|before going back to the present day}}. The world doesn't begin to look too different until the latest two.
* ''[[The
* Most of ''Rise Of The [[Planet of the Apes]]'' takes place in 2019. Surprisingly, not many technical advancements have been made.
* The experimental film ''Sweet Movie'' is set in 1984 (ten years after the film's release) and much of the plot is driven by a show where the most pure woman in the world is found. It gets weirder from there.
* ''[[Real Steel]]'' is set in the year 2020. According to the film's timeline, human boxing died out around 2014, being replaced with the more violent World Robot Boxing league. Aside from that, everything looks like present day, save for a few changes (iPhones and computers look more futuristic, referees at boxing matches were denser armor, etc.).
* ''[[Black Butler (film)|Black Butler]]'', very much unlike its Victorian Era manga [[Black Butler (manga)|source material]]... er, [[In Name Only|inspiration]], takes place in a world where there are [[Holographic Terminal]]s, some sort of political realignment has happened, and suitcase locks have the sort of computer technology that could have come straight from the nineties if anyone had bothered to manufacture it, low-resolution monochrome LED screens and all. Oh, and there are wind power plants on the side of a road. That's about it.
== Literature ==
* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' by Neal Stephenson was published in 1992, and for the timeline to work (Hiro and and Raven's fathers were WWII vets) the story would have to have occurred by sometime in the early 2000's. "The Diamond Age" seems to be set in the same universe, just a few decades after "Snow Crash".
** There are two words in ''Diamond Age'' that suggest {{spoiler|a character in common. The words? "Chiseled Spam"}}. Based on this, the events take place
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four
** ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]: Black Dossier'' put the book's events ''in'' 1948, allowing them to {{spoiler|show a fallen Airstrip One government ten years later}}.
* Many novels and short stories by [[Philip K. Dick]] (and the film adaptations of them, such as ''[[Blade Runner]]'', ''[[Total Recall]]'', ''[[Minority Report]]'', and ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'') are set just a decade or so in the future. [[I Want My Jetpack|He was much better at entertaining than predicting the near future.]] It's not uncommon for novels written in the 1960s and 70s that take place in the 80s and 90s to feature flying cars, androids, World Wars, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and legalized marijuana]].
* Charles Stross' Halting State is set in about 2016.
* ''[[
* [[Tom Clancy]]'s first Jack Ryan novels, written throughout the 1980s, were set at an indeterminate point in the near future; the Cold War is still in full bloom and there's a [[Anonymous Ringer|vaguely Reaganesque Republican]] in the White House. ''The Sum of All Fears'', however, tied the series to a specific point in history (the end of the first Gulf War), and from that point on the [[Lead Time]] inherent in the writing and publication of Clancy's [[Protection From Editors|increasingly long novels]] meant that the series turned into an [[Alternate History]] of sorts; ''The Bear and the Dragon'', published in 2001, must occur no later than June 1997 for the internal chronology to hold up. With ''The Teeth of the Tiger'', Clancy moved the series back into an indeterminate near-future setting.
* Joe Haldeman admits that setting his novel ''[[The Forever War]]'', about a deep space war to start in the far-off future of 1996, was silly in retrospect, and was done mainly so that the non-coms could be Vietnam veterans. He told any objectors to just "think of it as a parallel universe."
* The ''Dirk Pitt'' series of novels by Clive Cussler are usually set a year or two into the future, with the United States switching to metric and super A.I. computers with hot chick holograms.
* Any time [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s predictions didn't happen, it was an alternate timeline. He was fair in this, too, in that there were also timelines for the worlds of [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]], [[
** Heinlein invented the waterbed as a concept. That prevented it from being patented. He makes an amusing comment about it in his brick-sized diatribe ''Expanding Universe'' from 1980.
** The themes in the book extrapolated heavily from the 1950s "[[The Beat Generation|Beat Generation]]" subculture, which was the precursor to the counterculture movements of the '60s and early '70s. Its "Church of All Worlds" was based on elements of the neo-pagan/"New Age" mystery religions which were gaining popularity among disaffected youth of the time. Heinlein himself wrote that the book "could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right." Many prominent figures of the counterculture would refer to ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' as a major influence on their thinking and philosophy, particularly the aspects of free love, communalism, and social liberation. Beyond merely predicting the counterculture, the book helped to create it.
* [[Spider Robinson]] has a habit of setting stories five to ten years in the future and including elements such as zero-gravity vehicles, over-population to the extent that murder is no longer a crime even in ''Canada'', futuristic swear words ("You taken slot!") that have completely replaced our current Saxon words, and dilating doors" and a character glancing at his "watch finger". Robinson has in fact had to redate some of his own stories in reprint: the original (1982) edition of ''Mindkiller'' was set in 1995 and 1999, the reprint in 2005 and 2009.
** His [[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
* David Brin's ''Earth'' is set in 2050 or so, and one of the primary notes in his foreword is how ''difficult'' it is to create a believable world set 50 years in the future.
* Earth in Garth Nix's ''[[Keys to
* ''The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant'', the book that was the basis for the musical ''[[Damn Yankees]]'', was published in 1954, but set in 1958. The musical, which came out in 1955, is just set "sometime in the 1950's".
* Matt Ruff's ''Sewer, Gas & Electric'' is set in 2023 and features a world almost devoid of black people, due to {{spoiler|a genetically targeted plague}}, robots and mutant sewer sharks.
* The epilogue of the last ''[[Harry Potter]]'' book (published in 2007) would, according to the official timeline, take place in 2017. We don't really get to see what the Muggle world is like by that time, but at the very least they still have cars and driving tests.
* [[
** In ''Cocktail Time'' (if I'm remembering the correct title), a gentleman disgruntled by an encounter with Drones writes a novel also called ''Cocktail Time'', exposing the depravity of today's youth. The cover of this 'inner' novel is described as featuring a young man in spats dancing the rock-and-roll.
* Shepherd Mead's ''The Big Ball Of Wax'' (published in 1954) predicted that in 1999, [[Video Phone
* [[John Ringo]]'s [[Posleen War Series]], the first book (''A Hymn Before Battle'') published in 2000 but set in 2004. For the most part, his [[Into the Looking Glass]] series, with Travis Taylor, seems to be [[Next Sunday
* John Birmingham's ''Axis of Time'' trilogy is an interesting case as it's very difficult to tell if it is meant seriously or is a very deadpan parody of [[techno Thriller|techno thrillers]]. The first volume was published in 2004 and it's (initially) set in a 2021 where everything that can go wrong with the "war on terror" has gone wrong, turning it into a full scale war of the west against Islam, and the allies act with as much brutality as the enemy (a sanctioned form of field punishment for the US forces is to put a Muslim enemy into a pig carcass and bury him or her alive). Probably the most ridiculous element is the predictions about technology, which include fusion reactors, artificial intelligence, military medical implants (which, amongst other things, reduce the soldiers' sex drive and dispense pain killers) and the routine use of vat grown replacement organs. This is all at least 20 years early.
* Niven & Barnes wrote ''Dream Park'' in 1981, set it in 2051, and doomed it to datedness by making reference to an earthquake that'd leveled Los Angeles in 1985. In the first sequel, they [[
* The ''[[In Death|...in Death]]'' series of mystery novels written by J.D. Robb ([[Moustache De Plume]] of Nora Roberts) takes place in mid-21st-century [[New York City]].
* The main plot of the 2009 novel ''[[
* The 2008 novel ''[[Neuropath]]'' is set at an unmentioned year in the future. 2010 is mentioned as a year gone by, government buildings have fMRI scanners at the entrances, Europe is freezing to death because the gulf stream has changed course and Moscow has been reduced to a crumbling wasteland. What the book focuses on is the hunt on a serial killer who [[Mind Control|mind controls]] his victims.
* The start of the ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' series. The huge influx of advanced technology after the first book renders the date moot, though.
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* [[William Gibson]]'s [[Sprawl Trilogy]] and [[Bridge Trilogy]] (written in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively) are both set in versions of the early twenty-first century. The Sprawl Trilogy (date unspecified) setting still has lingering [[Cold War]] after-effects and [[Japan Takes Over the World|a massive Japanese economic presence]]; in the Bridge trilogy (2006), a massive earthquake has resulted in the abandonment of the Oakland Bay Bridge, which has since been resettled as a sort of squatters' shantytown.
* The time-travelling South African white supremacists of [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[The Guns of the South]]'' come from the year 2015, though besides their being at the bitter end of a struggle to keep control in their country, the few hints of 2015 sound like 1985 in all but name.
* ''The War In The Air'' by [[
** ''The Shape Of Things To Come'' is a similar mix of prophetic and outlandish-in-hindsight, with a submarine launched ballistic missiles, and Poland being a military match for Germany. In fact, depending on how you look at it, this could probably be applied to most of his works.
* ''Eagle Eye''.
* [[Word of God|According to]] [[Ayn Rand]], "the action of [[Atlas Shrugged]] takes place in the near future, about ten years from the time when one reads the book." In other words, Rand was using this trope quite intentionally. That's why the dialogue seems to go slightly out of its way to avoid referencing any specific year or century (with the possible exception of [[Meaningful Name|the Twentieth Century Motor Company]]), and why the setting's technology and sociology tend to be mildly anachronistic in a [[Steampunk]] kind of way.
* James P Hogan's
* The 1982 Stephen King novel ''[[The Running Man (
* Carl Sagan's ''[[Contact]]'' was written in 1983 and set in the late 1990's. Sagan did not foresee the fall of the Soviet Union at the time of writing and the Soviets had a large role to play in the events. He also did not foresee the cell phone, as characters used pagers still. He did ambitiously have a character who solved the grand superunification theory (something that eludes us even today and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future)... And other human technologies that turned out to be beyond what eventuated in the late 90's, such as orbital space stations serving as retirement homes for those who wished to extend their lifespans and could afford it, and shuttle services to go between earth and station.
* Justin Cronin's ''The Passage'' starts in a 2018 where A terrorist massacre in the Mall of America has resulted in an America wherestate borders have checkpoints, a second Class 5 hurricane has resulted in New Orleans becoming directly controlled by the federal government and Jenna Bush is Governor of Texas. Also India and Pakistan nuked each other. [[It Got Worse|The it gets worse]].
* Harry Harrison's 1966 novel [[wikipedia:Make Room! Make Room!|Make Room! Make Room!]] is quite dystopian. Somehow 344 million people is supposed to be a lot of people.
* ''Taken'' by Edward Bloor takes place sometime in the 2050s. The date is never specified, but it is hinted at by characters mentioning the recent 100 year anniversary of ''[[I Love Lucy]]''. The major differences are that indentured servitude is legal, the ultrarich live in extremely gated communities, and it is common for the children of the ultra rich to be kidnapped for ransoms.
* It's implied that ''[[Ender's Game]]'' and the ''[[
* [[
* ''[[
* John Stith's ''[[
* ''[[
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The MTV sketch comedy show ''[[The State]]'' lampooned this idea with a sketch where a man wakes up in a hospital after only a short time knocked out in an accident only to find that he missed the "most exciting 15 minutes in the history of the world", and now aliens have landed and all sorts of things have changed.
* The setting of ''[[Max Headroom]]''. You can still smoke in public buildings. It's a federal offense to turn your TV off. This being cyberpunk, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-zyRlcMi4&fmt=13#t=320 there is an Internet,] though it gets called "The System", and the way it's shown to work is [[It's a Small Net After All|pretty thoroughly gonzo]]. There's no reality shows. [[Japan Takes Over the World|Japan rules the business world]]. Network news is filmed on camcorders.
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** ''[[Max Headroom]]'' is the [[Trope Namer]] here. The titular character, a computer-generated television announcer, was originally created to host a British music video show. A television movie called ''Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future'' gave him a back story and also spawned the ''[[Max Headroom]]'' television series. The phrase "20 minutes into the future" appeared on screen at the opening of each episode.
** Although an actual lip-synching computer-generated television announcer could be created today, in the '80s they faked it with makeup and blue-screenery.
* The setting (and almost-subtitle; they went with "Almost Tomorrow") of the second season of ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]''. Martial law. Bad air. Food shortages. Genetic engineering. "Totally real" VR simulations. [[Tech Marches On|Eight-bit computers]].
* ''[[Dark Angel]]''. USA as a third-world country.
* ''[[Century City]]''. Bright, clean, genetically engineered.
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** The setting of the first half of ''[[Power Rangers Lost Galaxy]]'', until the writers outright forgot that they'd claimed the show was "In the not-too-distant future".
** The heroes of ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' hail from the year 3000. Most of the action takes place in 2001, though (the present day at the time of airing), so it's hard to say how advanced (or not) society is by then. At the very least, aliens are common, there are flying cars, and it's mentioned that junk food has been outlawed. Oh, and [[Designer Babies]] are normal, with mutant failures bearing the brunt of [[Fantastic Racism]].
** ''[[
* The framing story to ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', set in the far-off world of 1997.
** Guess Beckett altered history more than Al or Ziggy expected him to...
** This is most likely because Bellisario wanted to keep the time-travelling within Sam's lifetime, but also within the audience's past, so the show's "present" couldn't be too far in the future.
* ''[[
* The setting of a bunch of episodes of ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Note that many of the stories explicitly set in the 1990s and the 21st century aren't really Twenty Minute into the Future; they're really distant-future stories dated by a writer who didn't realize that the year 2000 really wasn't all that far off. However, ''The Invasion'' and subsequent UNIT stories were always intended to be set just a few years in the future. This was ignored in ''Mawdryn Undead'', but by UNIT's final classic-series appearance in ''Battlefield'', the setting was clearly re-established as the very-near future. The issue of "UNIT dating" (when exactly the UNIT stories take place, since there's a bucketload of contradictory evidence) is a major topic of debate among fans, has been parodied a number of times in the [[Expanded Universe]] and gets its own [[wikipedia:UNIT dating controversy|Wikipedia entry]] (it also got [[Lampshaded]] in the books and the New Series episode "The Poison Sky" by having Sarah Jane and the Doctor respectively say they "used to work for UNIT in the Seventies, or was it the Eighties?").
** In ''Mawdryn Undead'', producer John Nathan-Turner demanded that one of the story's time periods be 1977. This caused Script Editor Eric Saward incredible trauma, because he knew about the UNIT dating situation and, more importantly, he knew the fans knew and would pillory the creative team for the 1977 decision. This is exactly what happened.
** The Second Doctor's companion Zoe comes from the 21st century, but few dates are given for her era... until in ''The Mind Robber'' (aired in 1968), she is familiar with a cartoon character from the year 2000, implying that she's from a few years past that time at most. Or that she's a comics geek, which wouldn't be out of character for her.
** ''The Tenth Planet'' (1966) was set in the futuristic age of 1986, and features the discovery of Earth's twin planet of Mondas, which begins to siphon off Earth's energy. Come 1985, and the show's still
** All episodes set in "present day London" since ''Aliens in London'' take place a year after the airing date.
** [[Word of God]], however, is that, since the 2008 Christmas Special was not contemporary (the Christmas stories otherwise being fixed points of reference for the date), the subsequent "present day" stories (''Planet of the Dead'' and ''The End of Time'') are set in the same year they originally aired -- ''The End of Time Part 1'' (Aired Christmas 2009) takes place one year to the day after ''Voyage of the Damned'' (Aired Christmas 2007)
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** Then there's the 2007 episode "Utopia" which takes place in the year 100 Trillion but depicts humans as using almost exclusively 21st century technology.
* The setting of ''[[Sealab 2021]]''. The show it parodies, ''[[Sealab 2020]]'', arguably suffered worse from the trope because it took itself seriously.
* One of the places that they liked to reference and visit in ''[[Star Trek]]''. ''[[Star Trek:
** Quite niftily, one episode of TOS that came out in 1967 ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday") had the crew going back in time to the late
* Inverted in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' in the episode "2010", where contact with an advanced civilization willing to share technology makes 2010 a much different world than it was at the time of filming. A very visible bit of [[Zeerust]] is the fashions of this 2010: taking a cue from ''[[Wild Palms]]'', President Kinsey wears an outfit that would look more at home in ''1910''.
* ''[[Space Island One]]'' was set on a space station just a hair more advanced than would be possible today.
* An interestingly related setting is that of the new ''[[Battlestar Galactica
** The prequel series ''Caprica'', set about
** In addition to similarities in clothing, the series features other modern-day elements, such as British rifles and American HMMW-Vs.
* ''[[Head of the Class]]'', where Howard Hessman's character comments at a reunion that his teacher's salary has finally reached six figures, and that even though teachers are now paid what they deserve, he's too old to enjoy it.
* The first season of ''[[
* The 1992 series ''[[Wild Palms]]'' was set fifteen years in the future, with technology and fashion that look nothing like that of the real 2007, assuming a revival of Edwardian-inspired fashion.
** And a lounge-style revival of popular sixties tunes.
* ''[[Transformers:
* The TV series (and the film) ''[[Alien Nation (TV series)|Alien Nation]]'' was set in the near-future of the late eighties/early nineties. The TV movies took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s: Emily was 13 in "Dark Horizon" and presumably between 16 and 18 in "The Udara Legacy", as she was still attending high school. The transition from TV series to TV movies involved some unfortunate timeline-tweaking with rather inconsistent aging.
** For the record, you could smoke in the police station, there were a few gags about non-existent sequels to famous movies (''[[Back to The Future]] VI'', etc.), and by the TV movies they had video-phones... but the cars still looked distinctively Eighties.
*** At the time, they were using the most aerodynamic and "futuristic" looking cars they could get.
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* The British 1970s series ''[[Time Slip]]'' showed several potential versions of the year 1990. Cloning. Melted polar icecaps. Longevity serums. Global computer control. Europe being geologically restructured to maximize efficiency. And computers were still room-size monstrosities with reel-to-reel tapes. And as to the sense of taste in decor, let us just say that it is truly fortunate for our corneas that only one episode has survived in its original color.
* ''[[Space: 1999]]''. Still waiting for the moon to leave orbit.
* The ''[[Outer Limits]]'' TOS episode "The Duplicate Man", filmed in 1964, is set in 2025, when space travel is common, [[Cloning Blues|cloning]] has been outlawed and statues of alien lifeforms are exhibited in a museum. The smaller changes from the present are also interesting: future tech includes [[Video Phone
* Humorously invoked by [[Conan O
* ''[[Fringe]]'' is presumably this... as the very least, it's suggested by the scenes set inside [[Mega Corp|Massive Dynamics]] and particularly by Nina Sharp's... [[Hollywood Cyborg|generous enhancements]].
* The 1960s series ''[[Voyage to
* ''[[
* Several episodes of the original ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' were set in a future that has come and gone.
** Some episodes refer to the setting as "the day after tomorrow".
* In the 1979 movie and subsequent TV series, ''[[Buck Rogers in
* ''[[
== Music ==
* "Space Odyssey", the final song on [[
* Canadian band Tokyo Police Club have a song called 'Citizens of Tomorrow,' which predicts humanity's enslavement by robots, who implant microchips in our hearts and make us work to build their giant spaceships. "That's 2009" for you!
* ''[[Flight of the Conchords]]'' parodied this with their song ''Robots'' which took place in "The Distant Future...the year 2000..." - despite the fact that it was written much later.
* The murder that starts the action in [[David Bowie]]'s 1995 [[Concept Album]] ''1. Outside'' takes place on December 31, 1999. Technology hasn't advanced that much, but [[True Art]]
** However, we ''do'' have [[Mad Artist|a trope based on the phenomenon]].
* Bosnian rapper Edo Maajka's new music video for song Panika (Panic) is set "23 minutes after this moment", according to the Youtube description. It starts realistically, with a poor man beaten and robbed by a group of men, but then he creates a futuristic weapon and attacks the said group.
▲* In the old ''Buck Rogers'' comics, at one point the hero-pirate Black Barney is trapped on the floor of a Martian ocean, and discovers the wreckage of the first manned Earth-to-Mars expedition, launched (IIRC) in '''1949'''. This was still some years away at the time of the strip, and would also be after Buck Rogers started his long nap.
== [[Theme Parks]] ==
* The old ''Extraterrorestrial Alien Encounter'' attraction at Walt Disney World was set in a future where unscrupulous [[Mega Corp]] organizations span across entire solar systems. It was slightly tongue in cheek, but a large departure from the tone of everything else in the park.
* The original version of Disneyland California's Tomorrowland from [[The Fifties]] was supposed to depict commercial space travel in the year "1986". Obviously, [[The Eighties]] didn't turn out that way.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Castlevania]]: Aria of Sorrow'' is set in 2035, 36 years after Dracula was supposedly defeated for good and his castle banished into a solar eclipse. Ironically, the only modern or futuristic things and people in the game are a U.S. Army soldier, in-game items that are never shown graphically, a handgun, and a positron rifle.
* The first four ''[[.hack]]'' games take place in 2010, with a virus having wiped out all computers except for the Altmit OS in 2005. The next three games take place in 2017.
* ''[[
* Nearly every [[Tom Clancy]] game; see his [[Literature]] entry.
** Pretty much comes to a head in ''[[
* ''[[The Sims]]'' is never said to take place at any specific time in the Simverse, although The Sims 2 is set around 25 years after the original while The Sims 3 is set 25 years before. The neighborhoods in [[The Sims]] are very similar (well, with the limitations of the game) to our current society and levels of technology (with some differences between each game) - except for the robots (both [[A Is]] that begin functioning as [[Robot Maid|household servants]] but can be freed and helpful household robots), aliens, werewolves, ninja teleportation, resurrection, the Grim Reaper, zombies, plantsims (Sims that function like plants, needing oxygen and water to survive), and more.
* ''Crystalis:'' October 1, 1997. The END DAY.
** The Game Boy Color remake didn't specify the date of the end of the world (it was released after 1997, which should be obvious since the system it's on was also released after 1997). Seeing how the remake wasn't received as well as the original, most ''Crystalis'' fans probably don't care.
* The original ''[[Command
* ''[[Duke Nukem]] 3D'' is played in 2007 December. It was released in 1997. Its kinda funny (sad) how [[Vaporware|the sequel was promised to be out in 98]]...
** The sequel ''[[
** Further muddled by the fact that, likely as yet another reference to the extreme time in development, everybody at the beginning of ''Forever'' refers to the events of ''3D'' as having taken place "twelve years ago", which would place ''Forever'' in 2019 or 2020.
* ''[[
** [[Deus Ex: Invisible War
** [[Deus Ex: Human Revolution
*** Even the ''developers themselves'' said at one point that that last bit is "not going to happen".
*** The timeline shown in [[All There in the Manual|the tie in Sarif Industries website]] shows that this is a minor example of an [[Alternate Universe]]; the titular prosthetics company was founded in 2007, amongst other examples.
* ''[[
** Averted in ''[[
* The original ''[[Half-Life]]'' took place sometime during the 2000s. The sequel takes place 20 years later.
** Fans have debated the exact date of the Black Mesa Incident quite heavily. According to the [http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline#200- Half-Life wiki], the exact year is most likely 2003 though 2008 is also possible. 1998 was a third option until [[Word of God]] dismissed it as a mistake.
* Inverted in ''[[Halo]]''; though the game takes place in 2552 and the overall series takes place in the 26th century, most of the technology is remarkably close to preset day, with a few exceptions, such as anti-gravity warships, holographic AIs, portable railguns and powered battle armor.
* ''[[The House of the Dead (
** Inverted in ''The House of the Dead 4'', which was released in 2005 in Japan. On top of being a prequel to the third game, it's set in the ''past'' (2003).
* The original ''[[Mega Man (
** ''[[
** ''[[
* Each game in the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series (with the exception of prequels) is set nearly a decade after the ones when they were released: the first ''Metal Gear'', originally released in 1987, is set in the placeholder date of 199X (later established to be 1995 or '96, depending on the source), ''Metal Gear 2'', released in 1990, is set in 1999; ''Metal Gear Solid'', released in 1998, is set in 2005; ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'', released in 2001; is set in 2007 and '09; and ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', released in 2008, is set in 2014.
** In Kojima's earlier game, ''[[Snatcher]]'', the [[After the End|Catastrophe]] (an event which results in [[Depopulation Bomb|the deaths of 80% of the Eurasian population]]) occurs on June 6, 1991 in the Japanese versions (the first versions of the game were released for Japanese computers in 1988). Changed to 1996 (convenient due to the presence of a [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|third 6 in its date]]) in the English Sega CD version released in 1994.
** ''[[Policenauts]]'', the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''Snatcher'' originally released in 1994, states that mankind's first fully functional space colony would be launched in 2010.
* Even though it has very strong [[Post Cyber Punk]] vibes, ''[[
* ''[[Call of Duty Black Ops 2]]'': Parts of the game are set in the year 2025.
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' takes place in 2024, and it seems we're less than two decades away from flying cars, self-aware robots, extra-terrestrial contact, and a black president. That last one's already in place.
* The exact year isn't spoken out loud, but based on internal evidence, ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'' begins near the end of the year 2016. Technology's exactly the same, but the court system was severely overhauled to reduce
** New trailers for the [[Live Action Adaptation]] describe it as being in the "not too distant future" with the year 20XX listed on screen. Likely because by the time it comes out, 2016 will be only four years from the present day as opposed to the 15 when the game first came out.
* ''[[Trauma Center]]'': It's 2018. AIDS has been eradicated, tumours can be removed by a simple process, and there's a wonderful antibiotic gel that disinfects, arrests bleeding and ''instantly heals'' small wounds. On the other hand, weird man-made parasites called GUILT are tearing up your organs from the inside, petrify your liver and wrap webs around your heart, draining it of its energy.
* ''[[Uplink]]'', written in 2001 and focusing on [[Hollywood Hacking]] in Far-Off Year of 2010 AD, has more than a few issues. For the more technically-oriented gamer, this can lead to either [[Narm]] or [[So Bad It's Good|unintentional hilarity]]. A 60
* ''[[
* The SNES cult classic ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[Battlefield: Bad Company
* ''[[Hydrophobia (
* ''[[Remember 11]]'' takes place in January 2011 and mentions the existence of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) VI, used in the field of psychology to classify and describe the symptoms of disorders; as of fall 2010, they're still saying the DSM-V won't be published until 2013.
* Both ''[[The Conduit]]'' and ''[[Conduit 2]]'' take place in the near future; the backstory of ''[[The Conduit]]'' even includes a second terrorist attack in the United States on [[The War
* The setting of the arena [[Shoot'Em Up]] ''[[Smash TV]]'', released in 1990, is a violent game show in the now-not-so-futuristic year of 1999.
** ''[[Total Carnage]]'', which was released the following year, is also set in 1999.
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* ''[[Battle Tanx]]'' and its sequel, released in 1999, set in 2001 and 2006 respectively. Tanks in-game are certainly more advanced than in real life; the real-world M1 Abrams is the [[Jack of All Stats]] to things such as hovering tanks or tanks with laser cannons.
* ''[[Aerobiz]]'': The Supersonic Era of gameplay from the 1994-released Aerobiz Supersonic has the player starting in 2000. It painted a bright future of supersonic airliners and 1000+ passenger super-jumbo jets covering the globe.
* ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense''
* ''[[
* Played with in the final content of [[World of Warcraft|Cataclysm]]. The Hour of Twilight instance and the Dragon Soul raid both take place in modern Azeroth's Dragonblight, with Deathwing and the Old Gods laying siege to Wyrmrest Temple, but are both accessed through the Caverns of Time. Also, for obvious reasons regarding Wrath's content, non-instanced Dragonblight looks exactly the same. To any character it can seem like these two instances are set 20 minutes into Azeroth's future.
* ''
== Webcomics ==
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* The exact timeline of ''[[Zombie Ranch]]'' been kept deliberately vague (although references are made to the present day as a not-too-distant past), but a lot of the technology shown already exists in some form or is in development. There's definitely some [[Applied Phlebotinum|Phlebotinum]] at work, though, not only in the form of zombie-based miracle drugs but devices like the free floating camera drones.
* [[Shifters]] is set in the year 2034.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* The ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'', while officially set in whatever the current year happened to be, was actually this. The technology, social mores, and general feel of the setting were never really matched with [[Real Life]].
* The article presented in ''[[The First Run]]'' was set on August 25, 2023.
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[
* ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' is set forty years into the future of the [[DCAU]] (meaning it takes place during the 2040s or so), and by then New Gotham's a [[Cyberpunk]] dystopia of human gene splicing, flying cars, night clubs that play nothing but techno, [[Kill Sat
** Oh and Bruce Wayne had retired 20 years before the events of the show, as shown in a prologue scene during the first episode. Aside from Bruce being older and wearing a new batsuit, hardly anything else looks any different from the 'modern' Gotham City during this sequence.
** Meanwhile, ''[[Justice League]]'' has huge space stations with artificial gravity, a [[Kill Sat]], sentient robots and lasers. Having people like Lex Luthor and other [[Mad Scientist|mad scientists]] around probably helps, as well as reverse-engineered alien technology.
** Granted, Timm and Dini said that the show takes place 50 years from now, whenever now is.
* ''[[
* ''[[Captain Scarlet]]'' is set in 2070-something, which might seem a way off, but don't worry. Aside from a floating fortress, some nifty lorry manoeuvring gear, cars that can (sort of) fly and hoverbikes, not much has changed.
** ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' and ''[[Stingray (1985 TV series)|Stingray]]'' take place a decade or two earlier. The biggest oddities are ''relatively small'' nuclear reactors (which permit most of the rest of the vehicle technology) and whatever heavy duty equipment allows ''WASP'' to hide their city underground.
* Parodied in ''[[The Ripping Friends]]'', in the two-part episode entitled "A Man From Next Thursday." The Ripping Friends' city, Ripcot, is said to be so advanced that it exists in "next Tuesday." The villain, Thursday Man, comes from the highly futuristic world of "next Thursday."
* Made fun of in ''[[South Park]]'', episode 31 "Prehistoric Ice Man". The episode was about a man who had been frozen 32 months earlier who was thawed and had trouble adjusting to the 'future'.
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** Plus, you can beam television shows straight to you brain.
* ''[[The Jetsons]]''. It takes place in 2062 (100 years from the day of the show's launch).
** This was parodied in ''[[Harvey Birdman, Attorney
* ''[[Transformers:
* ''[[Invader Zim]]''.
* ''[[Jonny Quest]]''. It's still set in the present day, but there is futuristic tech, like robots and personal hovercraft, and prototypes like the Parapower Ray Gun. Overlaps with [[Zeerust]] since you can tell by the dated aesthetic, but a lot of the tech featured is still in use or hasn't been made yet, such as the walkie-talkie that basically allows two-way video conferencing.
* ''[[Futurama]]'' pokes fun at this on occasion, in the fact that it takes place 1000 years later, thus the [[Couch Gag]] in the opening title claimed "YOU CAN'T PROVE IT WON'T HAPPEN!". In the first episode, Suicide Booths also had printed on them "since 2008".
*
** The show itself probably starts in a
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[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
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