Set in the 1980s.
4 works chose this decade. They did not choose it from the same distance, so applying each gap from 2026 scatters them across 68 years — 1993 to 2061.
Stranger Things
The Duffer brothers set their first series 33 years before it aired, in a 1983 of bicycles, walkie-talkies and basement Dungeons & Dragons. The show is an argument that a particular childhood is worth rebuilding in detail, and the detail is what people came for.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell finished his last book on a Scottish island, dying of tuberculosis, and set it 35 years ahead of himself. The year in the title is the most famous date in English fiction, and the novel itself is not certain it is the right one — Winston writes it down and immediately doubts it.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Rockstar built 1986 in 2002, 16 years after the fact, out of Miami Vice, Scarface and 113 licensed songs. Made in 2026, the same reach would have it recreating 2010 instead — a year now old enough to sell as a period, complete with its own radio stations.
Escape from New York
The year the wall went up
Carpenter wrote it in 1976, after Watergate, and set it 16 years ahead, in 1997, with Manhattan walled off as the country's only maximum-security prison. Made in 2026, the same reach would put the wall up in 2042 — near enough that the first audience would expect to be around to check.