I was watching Demolition Man last night (hey, it has Benjamin Bratt in it, so there) and I was tickled at some of the references they made that today seem almost pre-cognitive.
Of course, they made reference to the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library years before Arnold became governor, and mentioned the Constitutional Amendment that allowed him to run for president even though he wasn’t born in this country. Interestingly enough, Orrin Hatch introduced such an amendment.
Oh, and one of the prisoners in cryo-freeze? Scott Petersen :eek:
In Like Flint (1967): Flint discovers that a cabal of women have replaced the President with an imposter, and stunned, repeatedly responds, “An actor as President?”
Laugh-In in their “news of the future” segment often had items beginning: "1988, twenty years from now. President Ronald Reagan . . . . " Nailed that one.
Back to the Future pt. II had Biff get his hands on a sports Almanac. Old Biff hands it to his young self who starts thumbing through. He stops and says something along the lines of “Florida wins the '97 World Series? Yeah, right.”
At the time, 1989, Miami was the biggest city without a MLB team. But they did have one in '92 and it won the World Series in '97. Life imitates art.
It’s TV, but the pilot of The Lone Gunmen involved a conspiracy to ram a 727 into the World Trade Center. (It was, obviously, written some time before 9/11.)
As I remember, there was a little murmuring about the move Wag the Dog, which came out shortly before the U.S. began strikes in Kosovo, during the Clinton sex scandal.
Long story short, Back to the Future II says that the Cubs defeated “Miami” in the 2015 World series. Nothing about 1997, or even the Florida team winning.
I suppose the single most significant and timely coincidence was The China Syndrome, released 13 days before the incident at Three-Mile Island, and the two combined to put the kibosh on America’s nuclear industry, which is a genuine shame.
Dex, Shatner has a TV movie coming out about Trek fiction and today’s tech. I’ll see if I can find the specifics. (There are a couple of books already out about it.)
In *The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! * (1988), Lt. Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen, thwarts a plot to assassinate the queen of England during the course of a playoff game between the California Angels and the Seattle Mariners to decide the American League West division title. In October 1995, the Mariners won the division by beating the Angels in a one-game playoff.
I think we have to ignore technology. I mean, who’s to say someone didn’t watch a movie or TV show and think, “Wow, that would be really cool if it were real” and go out and try to invent it. I’m thinking more of “prophetic” instances in movies and TV shows, like Scott Petersen being an inmate in a 2032 San Angeles cryo-prison.
I do remember an episode in TOS where someone uses a common spray bottle to spritz a poison. It looks very anachronisitic today, but back in the 60s such spray bottles were not common at all.
In the opening of The Big Lebowski, the Dude is writing a check for some piddling amount (to buy milk for his white Russians). In the background there is news coveting the Gulf War 1.0 and the date on the check that he is writing is September 11, 1991. Not sure if it counts, but it was odd.
