Iconic Anachronisms and Stuff that Only Exists in Movies

Case 1. The Diner

An American touchstone. From Twin Peaks to Happy Days, the diner is everywhere. Checkered tile floor. Jukebox. Booths. Spinning stools at the counter. Menu's that feature chili, pie, eggs, burgers, stew, milkshakes, and coffee. Waitresses in skirts. Orders taken on paper and sent to kitchen on metal order wheels. A single cook sweating in a funny hat and greasy t-shirt.

This is one of many detached icons which floats freely in our collective consciousness. The diner is a permanent fixture of the dreamscape of visual literature.

There are two architectural "perfections" of the diner which come to mind. One is the old traincar style diner such as might be painted by Edward Hopper or Norman Rockwell. It is the sort of thing that you'd expect to see in the naked city of yore.



The other perfection is generic west-coast style eatery that we find in a Tarantino or Lynch film. The unbranded or generic "Denny's" style diner where our characters engage in dialogue.



The latter is the "modern" diner and is, more or less, a "reality." The former, however, is an anachronism that we keep revisiting, although the closest things we have is a Waffle House or an overpriced nostalgia themed establishment like Gunther Toody's where you overpay to imagine that you're in Marty McFly walking back into 1955.

We find the classic diner in space (Attack of the Clones) and we find Diners as a purgatory space (e.g., Legion, Romeo is Bleeding).

When it all comes tumbling down, the diner will still be there. And you will be able to get a piece of pie with Clarence Worley or Agent Cooper.

Case 2. The F-150 (1967-1986)

Before the modern look of flush mounted headlights, but after the rounded-age of classic 50's and 60's style, there was a boxy shape that came define middle America.



It's as American as Superman, which is probably why he has one on his farm.



But this icon is largely a fantasy. Trucks get used. They notoriously rust out. Film and TV overrepresents these vehicles as if they are typical conveyances in heartland America, the union of mostly square states, flyover country, where the dueling banjos play.

In the real world, a typical truck is 10-20 years-old, not 40. These cars don't exist, but they're lingering icons, images of an America which no longer exists.

You still see these vehicles, but they're typically jalopies that barely run or toys of the rich, baubles which have been restored at considerable cost. They are NOT everyman's truck anymore. But watch an episode of Yellowstone, and you'll be convinced that they're the norm.

And so, they remain, about to pull up to our local diner in America-ville any minute now.

Case 3. The Deagle

Bigger is better and a big gun conveys "BDE." Does your character need a BDE? Have you considered the Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistol? Expensive. Unreliable. Impractical. Used by special operators, police, and military nowhere all over the world.



The number of appearances made by the monstrosity in film in television is staggering.

There are a lot of other guns which are heavily featured in film and television. Joon Woo loves double-wielded 1911s. Any child of the 80s is familiar with the Beretta 92 series. Anyone who watches cop TV is familiar with the block-of-wood shape of a Glock. But these are guns that actually function, and used by real people (good and bad) to do actual gun-stuff. The Desert Eagle isn't real, but it is the go to BFG of film and TV.

Case 4. The Ridiculous Suburban Home

Americans are poor, but teenagers are rich. They all drink from Red Solo cups at parties in amazingly capacious multi-million-dollar homes in the burbs. High ceilings. Hardwood floors. Large open kitchens. Big bay windows.



You may get cut to pieces by the baddie in a slasher, but damned if there isn't a lot of space in that house with which to chase you around before your die. Americans, it has been said, like to think of themselves as all being temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. These "every homes" that we visit in the movies, are apparently the homes we think we should be living in or which the average person is living in. The average person thinks that they are above average, so when we imagine a house, we imagine a tax bracket on standard deviation out from the average. Single level homes are generally the province of the poor in film and television.

Case 5. "The War Room"

The thinkery of doom. Apocalypse H.Q. Last stop before oblivion. The bunker of existential roulette. The brain of the American war machine. Filled with screens, experts, and the managers who must sift through sobering reports, scenarios, and trade-offs, before ultimately deciding whether or not to push a button. Two films have cemented this fantasy icon in our minds: Dr. Strangelove and War Games.



Ronald Reagan is reported to have asked to be shown the War Room when he first got into office (apparently, he thought it was in the Pentagon). Spoiler Alert: There isn't a war room (as far as we know).

NORAD, of course, does exist, although it is no longer as central in national defense as it used to be (they still track Santa, though...). That stated, War Games has us imagine a capacious high vaulted cavern with towering screens. Basically, the NASA control room.


The thing is, NORAD is a bunker, so space is more limited. They had to drill into Cheyenne mountain to build the thing and but the bunker on shock absorbers, so space is much more limited. When War Games was made, it had equipment in it from the 1950s. A photo from 2005 shows a more interesting image



which looks like it might be the office of some stock trading company.

But the icon will not be denied. In our collective cultural imagination, The Man, The Powers that Be, the super duper secret people running everything, have super cool control rooms in which they sift, sort, collate, evaluate, and call the plays on the field. Be very wary if you ever find yourself in this room. If you do, you've probably left our mundane world and slipped into a fantasy dimension.

Do you have more of these to come?

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Case 4 can also cover the unfeasibly huge apartment that's lived in by a regular person.

Said apartment has 6 bedrooms, all en-suite, with a huge kitchen that's so large it can be considered a kitchen with a dining area...

... plus, a livingroom/lounge that also doubles as a livingroom, gaming room, den, dining area, and also a function room because it's so large... and a balcony... a balcony so large there's a firepit and couches, with an outside bar...

Possibly even a swimming pool as well on the balcony if needed.

Also, said apartment is on the 14th+ floor of a lavish skyscraper that actually has a security desk and security staff in the lobby, in the middle of a major metropolitan city, with undisturbed window-views in every conceivable direction.

The renter/owner/character... works part time, 6 hours a week at absolute most, in a bar or restaurant... and is constantly complaining about the lack of cashflow.

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There are appear to be different interpretations of "suburb" and "middle-class".
My father was working class but he had his own home and overall we've lived a relatively luxurious life. Not splashy, but we had all the things we needed and everything was paid for in cash rather than credit cards. The money was real and there, not wanna-be money.
Personally I think that put us exactly between the poor and the rich, but in films and TV "middle class" usually means people with a (small) business or dentists or doctors, and these people often have more money to spend than the average person (e.g. Knots Landing).

Ain't that the g*dam*ed truth.

My dad when he passed in 2021... left the house to me and my siblings... and we looked into the records.
He bought it in 1977...

3 bed, semi-detached with garage on the side, front and back gardens...

In 1977 it was worth a grand total of...

Drum roll...

£9000.
And working wage, minimum wage, what my dad was working for, in 1977, was... £4500 per year.

A house like that was essentially, 2 years' wages.

Today, that house is worth £140,000.
Min wage today is... £20,000.

And yet, in 1977, £4500, is the same as £30,000 in today's money.

Working minimum wage in the UK has actually dropped by 33%.
That house price has increased by over 15x.

To put it into perspective, you work 40 hours this week, and earn £100... and your mortgage is £30.
But, next week, same job, you work 40 hours as usual, but for some reason, you only earned £66, not £100... but your mortgage is now closer to £450.

Case 6. Super Space Shuttles!

A moment showing the kids driving NASA's winged minivan in '86.


The real world space shuttle operated from 1981 to 2011. The Hollywood Shuttle started service in the 1970s. Noteworthy entries include Moonraker (1979), Lifeforce (1985), SpaceCamp (1986), Armageddon and Deep Impact(1998),Space Cowboys (2000), and Moonfall (2022).

Below: A super-shuttle from Lifeforce (1986). Note the canards (little winglets near the nose) and the booster rocket bell on the belly.

The actual shuttle never left Low Earth Orbit (LEO). It was a masterful achievement in picking Low Hanging Fruit (LHF) after the climax of the moon landing (OMG). Hollywood Space Shuttles have had a longer service life and wider field of travel than the actual orbiter. They're often equipped with nuclear weapons and may fly off to the Moon and even beyond... ...depending on the needs of the story.

Like Hollywood submarines, they have spacious interiors and have plenty of provisions for longer journeys. Those rockets never run out of fuel or don't run out that fast which allows them to travel past the Van Allen belt and back with ease.

The super shuttle never existed. It was a plot device needed for plausible humans to face off with incoming comets and alien visitors. Today, it is an anachronism, a fantasy scenario like bringing a battleship out of mothballs for one last fight. Before it was an anachronism it was a fantasy icon of "squint hard enough and you can believe it" space travel fiction. It wasn't great, but it got us there (much like the actual shuttle).

>Case 4 can also cover the unfeasibly huge apartment that's lived in by a regular person.

By fat the biggest offender is Shelley Long's apartment in Night Shift. She plays a prostitute but she seems very smart and has this otherwise nice place down the hall from Henry Winkler's. Completely defies the profession.

>Case 6. Super Space Shuttles!

The biggest issue is super space shuttles are the #1 necessary theory for those who believe we've been visited by aliens. You HAVE to adopt the fantasy that these exist and could actually move at warp speed without falling apart completely.

Yep. This seems like the beginning of several threads, not just urban apartments, but suburban single homes. Having known a couple of people who have held cameras in some movies and TV shows, I'm familiar with their take on all that, about how interior shots require bigger rooms and brighter lights than any real home in order to have lights, crew and cameras along with enough visual space to make acting work. You also need less visual clutter, certainly less than MY living room. Set designers do this stuff....bookcases for academics, vases with fresh flowers, rifles above the fireplace in a western....all that.

Then, there's exteriors, which are even more complicated. If the movie is set in New York and shot in LA, you need to replace dry hills with skyscrapers, etc. You need controlled traffic, the right sunlight angles and shadows. It's a complicated setup, done by pros that none of us have ever heard of. Those movies work, visually speaking, because of those unknown technicians.

Case 7. The Police Interrogation Room

You know the place. Cuffed to a metal table in a dimly lit room. NOTE: The darker the interrogation room, the more likely it is that someone is going to shine a light in your face. Regardless, you will almost certainly have crime scene photos violently tossed on the table in front of you. You will be commanded to look at these pictures in much the same way a dog has its nose rubbed into the pee stain on the carpet. Two-way glass is positioned directly to your left or your right. This is important. You must to be able to dramatically turn your head in a moment of surprise to talk directly to the coppers on the other side and let them know that the rookie ain't gettin' nothing out of ya'.

Look around the room. Take it in for a moment. Austere, isn't it? And dated. It suggests a building with a Freddy Krueger-style boiler room in its basement. It's gritty, industrial, utilitarian, brutal. Still, there's plenty of room for the inspector to stand up and walk around, peacock, and gesticulate. He's going to need that space to lean over your shoulder and whisper into your ear like Joe Biden meeting women on the campaign trail. There's an ashtray, because (strangely) this particular public building allows smoking. That's a bonus. This allows you to dramatically take a beat as you take a drag. And you will look absolutely fabulous with all that billowing smoke curling around your face.

This dream image is a powerful one. We want to see the confrontation of good and evil. We want a verbal chess match. We want our hero to make the baddie crack under direct pressure. We want a confession, damnit! Either that or we want our hero to beat the bad inspector by being more clever.

In the real world an interrogation room looks more like a janitor's closet at some local high school. Bright fluorescent lights. It will most likely be carpeted and have a small office table, or even a folding table. The rooms are small.

The cop will usually sit at at angle. This isn't a high noon intellectual show down. They're just having a friendly conversation. They're just sorting out details. As soon as you tell them enough, you can probably get out of this cramped-ass room.

In the real world, they squeeze you with space, but also suggest that they're not looking at you. They're friendly. Heck, they might grab a beer with you sometime after this all gets sorted out. They're makin' with the "just makin' conversation questions." They're not leaning over a table screaming at you to confess. They want you to keep talking. "Give him what he wants and he'll go away," you think. In truth, if you give him what he wants, you'll go away. They're not coming at you head on. They come at you sideways in the real world.

>The cop will usually sit at at angle. This isn't a high noon intellectual show down.

Been there myself. Two cops sat directly across from me at a small table. No side-sitting. Obviously no anger but a simple question and it was a short conversation since I told them I'd feel terrible if I mentioned anyone else's name, that it was my responsibility, and apologized for not giving them more info. They understood and were polite about it but I wonder if they were annoyed about it when they trashed me in the police report.

We could make one of these only with IT related examples... the ever-clacking of the keyboard as forensic analysts don't even touch the mouse, the opposites of simple black screens with a box in the middle asking for a password... or the glowy, transparent, animation-y screens where everything seems so jazzy and alive, computer screens flickering and going bzzz as they damage... it's too much.

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Perfect example:

Seems like only case 1 and 2 are iconic anachronisms, the other examples are fictional tropes and clichés.

Well, the second half of the title is "and Stuff that Only Exists in Movies"
Therefore, tropes and cliches fit, but only a particular variety. We are speaking of "things" (material items) which are not really real either because they are

1. anachronistic (they existed once, but no longer, but which linger because of their iconicity) or because
   
2. fictional (never really existed, at least as a typical or representative thing).

I argue that the Space Shuttle IS deeply iconic, but also that in films made after it's last flight (2011), such as Gravity (2013) is also an anachronism. Overall, however, the space shuttles are also in the "never existed" category, because they tend to fly like planes in space, have huge interiors, and have the ability to easily exceed Low-Earth Orbit. In this sense, it is also fantastical (in much the same way that shotguns that blow people back 7 feet are fantastical).

Basically, I am speaking of fuzzy "dream things" here which fit either or partially (e.g., the space shuttle) in categories 1 or 2).

Personally, find this fuzzy category of fuzzy things interesting, because we're speaking of things which have "permanence" but which we only really experience in our collective dream of film and television.

I like when people point out anachronisms in movies - like in a WWII movie where a soldier starts smoking a brand of cigarettes that wouldn't exist (in reality) until 20 years later.

Then there was that scene in Lincoln where they screwed up by having honest Abe call Seward on his cell phone! C'mon man!

Reading the Gettysburg off his Blackberry was a bit much. Guess they thought it was old enough tech that even Lincoln might have used it.

With regard to soldiers, it is kind of sad that we're still imagining WWII vets in our films (they're basically all dead) and even Vietnam vets (they're pensioners). The grizzled vets are now Gulf War (I and 2) participants. The world has changed, but we have a lingering nostalgia for the good war and the guilty war.