| rdfs:comment
| - Strictly historically accurate writing, set and costume design, and dialogue is often counter-productive. Few audience members will have the historical knowledge to appreciate the differences between distant eras, and they often have muddled expectations of what they would be like. And in any case, for some eras genuine examples of or guides towards clothes, artifacts or items that they would have used in the time in question may be in short supply or sketchy at best, forcing props and costume designers to speculate or do the best with what they have. Thus, it is sometimes more effective to imply a general sense of 'the past' drawn in broad strokes rather than bog the story down with exposition and pedantry. More often, writers and producers are too lazy or have too little time to get the
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| abstract
| - Strictly historically accurate writing, set and costume design, and dialogue is often counter-productive. Few audience members will have the historical knowledge to appreciate the differences between distant eras, and they often have muddled expectations of what they would be like. And in any case, for some eras genuine examples of or guides towards clothes, artifacts or items that they would have used in the time in question may be in short supply or sketchy at best, forcing props and costume designers to speculate or do the best with what they have. Thus, it is sometimes more effective to imply a general sense of 'the past' drawn in broad strokes rather than bog the story down with exposition and pedantry. More often, writers and producers are too lazy or have too little time to get the facts correct, or they may actually believe they have the facts correct when they don't. As a result, historical (or futuristic) stories often confuse two or more time periods. For example, Renaissance dress may appear with 12th-century crusaders in a story set in Charlemagne's empire. Fortunately for the writers and designers, the viewers rarely notice this enough to affect the bottom line, which is all that matters. In other words, this is The Theme Park Version of history. Note that this is not a strictly modern trope. Medieval artists, for example, routinely dressed Biblical figures in contemporary fashions, and the Greek myth of Theseus features similar confusion. Compare Popular History, Purely Aesthetic Era, and Present Day Past. When it's the people of the future doing this with the present, it's Future Imperfect. If the era depicted comes off as ridiculously advanced sociologically rather than technologically, that's Politically-Correct History. If it's not a specific "real" time and place but rather an invented Verse, you're looking at Schizo-Tech. Compare also Reality Is Unrealistic, when the producers get everything right... but because it's not what the audience was expecting, they're criticized for getting it wrong (which prompts them to not bother next time). Fantasy works set in secondary worlds are not examples of this, since their histories and geographies relate to those of the real world vaguely at best (through the use of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures). Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying is a related Trope on a much larger scale; Steam Never Dies is this trope on a very specific smaller scale. Contrast Low Culture, High Tech, where a similar anachronism happens with a low tech culture using far advanced technologies it doesn't understand. Examples of Anachronism Stew include:
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