http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust

Groovy space suit, baby.

The Meaning of Liff "Zeerust: The particular kind of datedness which afflicts things that were originally designed to look futuristic."

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Something — a character design, a building, anything — used to be someone's idea of futuristic. Nowadays though, it ironically has a quaint sort of datedness to it more reminiscent of the era the work came from (or imitates, in case the zeerust is deliberate). Also sometimes called "Retro Futuristic." Think of mobile phones as a simple example — once it was considered that they would only ever be available to the rich, and they'd never get any smaller than a brick plugged into a suitcase. Now they are available to one and all and the preference has shifted from them getting smaller to thin enough to slide into the back pocket of your jeans - they'd be smaller still but you have to put your finger-tips somewhere.

Sometimes the dated feeling is due to the blatant extrapolation of trends ascendant when the work was written into the far future. Sometimes the datedness is a bit more subtle. It's possible that the prediction turned out to be technologically or aesthetically accurate (or at least on the right track), but the prediction still fails because of the designer's implicit assumption that social values will be the same in the future as in their own time (as demonstrated in the page image).

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Often the datedness behind zeerusty designs lies in the attempt of the designers to get an advantage over the technology of their time, only to find out that more mundane designs are actually far more efficient if advanced engineering and craftsmanship are used on them. Not that this is not always a bad thing: Often the dated vision of the future is a lot more imaginative than anything being attempted today, with more modern, "realistic" depictions striking viewers as bland and boring precisely because of the authenticity.

Gets its name and definition from The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams & John Lloyd, a book of neologisms concocted by the two. Not to be confused with the South African town of the same name (Adams and Lloyd mostly used actual place names for their words).

Sometimes Zeerust is present in Retraux form. May lead to Zeerust Canon over time.

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Compare The Aesthetics of Technology, Crystal Spires and Togas, I Want My Jet Pack, Hollywood History, Punk Punk, Steam Never Dies, Schizo Tech, Science Marches On, 20 Minutes into the Future, Raygun Gothic, and Retro Universe. Contrast with New Weird. When the creators actually predict what the future holds correctly, then it's Life Imitates Art.

Tropes commonly associated with Zeerust:

Examples in media:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Commercials

Have you ever used a phone booth with a video screen rather than just a cell phone? You Will. Many of the technologies featured in the ads did in fact come to pass, including turn-by-turn GPS, touchscreen tablets, wireless internet, and video-on-demand services — mostly in forms remarkably similar to the commercials' versions. The most out-of-date part is the assumption that AT&T would be the main carrier for all — or any — of these technologies. Almost every one of those technologies exists in pretty much the form depicted in the commercial but most of them are either non-centralized or connected to the public Internet; the only way AT&T would make any money off of any of them would be as a patent holder.

Many of the technologies featured in the ads did in fact come to pass, including turn-by-turn GPS, touchscreen tablets, wireless internet, and video-on-demand services — mostly in forms remarkably similar to the commercials' versions. The most out-of-date part is the assumption that AT&T would be the main carrier for all — or any — of these technologies. Almost every one of those technologies exists in pretty much the form depicted in the commercial but most of them are either non-centralized or connected to the public Internet; the only way AT&T would make any money off of any of them would be as a patent holder. Telmex (a telephone company in Mexico) heralded in 2008 its brand-new video phone service by airing a "Homage to the Video Calls," which was basically a montage of every single "TV phone" featured in a sci-fi movie. Except that one from Demolition Man.

Fan Works

Films — Animated

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Radio

The 1978 radio show Alien Worlds took place in the 2020's, but dates itself because the episode "Resurrectionists of Lethe" makes a passing mention of Richard Nixon that implies that he lived an unusually long life, when in real life he'd pass away in 1994.

Podcasts

One of the worlds seen in the Gemini arc of Sequinox is a Flash Gordon-style 70s sci-fi set. Yes, it's specifically designed to resemble a shoddy, dated, tv serial.

Tabletop Games

Cyberpunk: A game released in the late '80s/early '90s (first edition was released in '88, second in '90) hilariously depicts "cellular cyberdecks" as massive, expensive, and unwieldy. While taking place about ten years from now. The stats for the cyberdecks were listed in real life units: one of the top-of-the-line cyberdecks had a massive 256 MB of RAM and ran at a blazing 100 MHz. Also, according to the depictions in the game material, the most popular kind of music in the 2010s/2020s is basically an updated version 80s hair metal with cyberpunk-themed lyrics. One of the eight character classes you can choose from is that of a rebellious rock musician called "rockerboy". The game writers must've thought rap and electronic music were just passing fads, as they are not mentioned.

In ICE's 1990s 'Cyberspace' it is noted that by 2090 some portable phones are small enough to fit into a pocket.

In the original Traveller ship's computers start at one ton for the most basic, 2 program model. If you pay extra you can have an optical backup device. Later versions make it clearer that "tons" are neither a weight nor mass measurement for ship sizes, but a volume measurement, that of liquid hydrogen. This means your 1-ton ship's computer has a volume of a bit over fourteen cubic meters ... a cube almost two and a half meters on a side. Presumably this includes all the control wiring and interface hardware (keyboards, screens, servo motors to actually control the ship, etc.) and not just the computer proper, but still.

Shadowrun: This is the case with the entire first three editions of the game. Since the game was set 20 Minutes into the Future, every few years they would need to reboot the game to keep ahead of growing technology. For the hacker type class, the original series had deckers that would have to literally plug a wire into the back of their head to go virtual. Later on, everyone has augmented-reality goggles or a wi-fi computer in their head. Many fans, however, are not as happy with this change however, as the zeerust present in the original gave it its cyberpunk charm.

BattleTech has a hint of Zeerust with comically oversized targeting computers (similar to the Traveller example). In addition, the "future history" of the game was written in the 1980s and featured the Soviet Union remaining a power in international politics well into the 21st century. This history has been reprinted, but not updated, in later editions of the game, so that it references events that should now be in our past.

The original Main Book for Rifts lists an item called the PC-3000 Hand-Held Computer. It's about the size of a Nintendo DS Lite. It uses one inch disks, has a Dual drive system, and a hard memory of 16 megabytes, and has no sound capabilities. Later versions avert this by saying that the player should assume that it's more powerful than whatever's currently available on the market.

Paranoia was designed to invoke this on purpose, to help make the end date of our civilization and the rise of Alpha Complex unclear. Buildings, pills and even the swooshing doors all invoke Zeerust, and then we get talk of cloning and genetics that suggests that mankind was actually 20 Minutes into the Future when the apocalypse happened. More like twenty minutes into the past, given Friend Computer's obsession with "commies". There's one adventure in which the commies involved are of the Chinese variety, but for the most part they're pretty clearly intended to be the Cold War Soviet type. Although this is a product of the game's origin (first published in 1984), it's easily future-proofed by the idea that the Computer has formed the wrong impression from its patchy historical records.

Narrowly averted by the original Trinity, set in the 22nd century. Computers in that RPG are only one step under true AI, are small enough to fit in a pocket, and are presumed to have most of the capacities of 2011 smartphones. The smallest unit of memory described is the "bloc," able to hold "a large library." The only notable limit on what computers can do is the "Comm Crunch," which states that cellular bandwidth is in very short supply (so the GM can arbitrarily throttle the PC's communications, as needed by the plot). This seems eerily prescient for a game from the 90s! Zeerust only arises in the presumption that computers would still have keyboards, would be strapped to your forearm, and would be called "computers" not "phones."

Dark Conspiracy, based off of Twilight: 2000, was set similar to this. During the Greater Depression most of the technology and design went back to the fifties, unless you were a corporation, or the government, in which case it was set back to the early '90s. Excluding the invading aliens, who used brain tissue of organisms fitted with advanced computer chips.

Myriad Song was intentionally designed that way. Everything's analog, the concept of "digital" was lost when the Syndics enslaved the galaxy. Nuclear batteries are a common power source. And the most common Energy Weapon is called a "raygun pistol" and looks straight out of a sci-fi flick from the first half of the 20th century.

Deliberately invoked in Rocket Age. Since this is 1938 every human made screen is a CRT and punch card operated vacuum tube computers exist alongside more advanced versions, some of which even incorporate parts of Ancient Martian robobrains.

A decent amount of gear in The Splinter deliberately falls into this category. Most of the gear that fits this description is leftover from one of the many precursor races that have inhabited The Realm.

TORG: The Nippon Tech realm, being set 20 Minutes into the Future, has its share of this trope. Not only are the computers hilariously underpowered for a "cyberpunk without the cyber" setting (e.g. "supercomputers" with 64-bit video co-processors and up to 256 MB of user memory), the Japan Takes Over the World aspects make the realm a product of the time it was released.

The board game Alien Frontiers is about creating a human civilization on an alien planet by using zeerusty rocket ships, space suits, domed colonies, etc.

Invoked Trope by Cartoon Action Hour. It deliberately encourages GM's coming up with elements for their settings not to base them on reality, but on the goofy ideas of technology in 80's sci-fi cartoons (E.g. supercomputers that use 5.25 floppies).

Toys

The Classic LEGO Space era largely falls into this, as do some of the early days of "modern" LEGO Space; this set , from 1986, is a pretty good example.

Video Games

Web Comics

I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space is a 1950s and 1960s Fest of this trope.

The Distant Finale of Penny and Aggie, set six years in the future, shows several of the female characters wearing outfits of this type to their Class Reunion. Sara even lampshades this by telling Daphne, "The retro-future trend was made for you."

Sometimes, characters in Electric Wonderland use technology that feels dated even for the year of the respective comic's release. The cartoonist reportedly hopes that this will prevent references that will date in the future from sticking out.

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life