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

Kent Brockman, The Simpsons "Let's take a look back at the year 1928. A year when you might have seen Al Capone dancing the Charleston on top of a flagpole."

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A scene in a Period Piece that hits the viewer with as many period signifiers as possible. The scene exists to quickly establish the "feel" of the time period and will almost always feature a period song (typically one that is still popular in the present) playing on the film's soundtrack. More-or-less it's Popular History condensed into a sequence usually less than two minutes long.

These are most commonly and generally best utilized by films and TV shows about Time Travel (especially when the characters frequently travel between different eras, making quickly establishing the time period a necessity).

Compare Spinning Paper and Eiffel Tower Effect. When a scene in a work set in the present day becomes this in hindsight, then you've got an Unintentional Period Piece. See also Progressive Era Montage.

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Examples:

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General

Advertising

A 2009 Pepsi commercial depicts young folks consuming their product through the decades, from the turn of the century to the present. Each decade is shown as you'd expect: flappers in the '20s, returning World War II soldiers in the '40s, hippie protesters in the '60s, etc. The ad is accompanied by a remixed version of The Who's "My Generation"; in a nifty touch, the arrangement changes with each scene to reflect that given era.

depicts young folks consuming their product through the decades, from the turn of the century to the present. Each decade is shown as you'd expect: flappers in the '20s, returning World War II soldiers in the '40s, hippie protesters in the '60s, etc. The ad is accompanied by a remixed version of The Who's "My Generation"; in a nifty touch, the arrangement changes with each scene to reflect that given era. A 2008 Hovis bread advert does this, involving a kid running through recent British history with a loaf of bread. As above, each decade is represented by something iconic; suffragettes, both wars, the Coronation, the 66 World Cup squad, immigration, the miners' strike and the millennium celebrations. The kid's outfit also changes, at first subtly, with the cut of his jacket changing from Victorian to Edwardian, and then more obviously, such as the vividly striped jumper and wide collar he's sporting in the Seventies.

does this, involving a kid running through recent British history with a loaf of bread. As above, each decade is represented by something iconic; suffragettes, both wars, the Coronation, the 66 World Cup squad, immigration, the miners' strike and the millennium celebrations. The kid's outfit also changes, at first subtly, with the cut of his jacket changing from Victorian to Edwardian, and then more obviously, such as the vividly striped jumper and wide collar he's sporting in the Seventies. There was a Chevy Volt ad that did the same thing, but focusing on one plot of land.

that did the same thing, but focusing on one plot of land. Also a Mercedes-Benz commercial called "Timeless." Various model Benzes drive through the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80's and '90s to a version of "Unchained Melody" which seamlessly changes musical style for each decade.

called "Timeless." Various model Benzes drive through the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80's and '90s to a version of "Unchained Melody" which seamlessly changes musical style for each decade. Langham Hotel's 2007 commercial does a backward variation where a butler retrogrades through time from the present day up to the hotel's founding. There, the butler does most of the services to prominent guests such as Winston Churchill, King Edward VIII (then Prince of Wales in the 1920s), Oscar Wilde and Emperor Napoleon III of France. And then cue a slight awkward reaction from the butler and the guests while a contemporary phone he kept is ringing on the grand opening in 1865.

Anime and Manga

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life does several of these sequences to illustrate Japan's recovery from World War II.

The very first sequence in Taisho Baseball Girls establishes the atmosphere of 1920s Japan. It's all in Koume's head, though.

Young Blackjack starts with a sequence mentioning the political issues Japan was having in the 1960s.

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Comic Books

Archie Comics did a few stories extolling the virtues of The Gay '90s that where essentially this trope on the comics page (so no soundtrack).

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was positively littered with visual references to the time periods in which its various arcs were set, especially during Century.

During their first few minutes in New York circa 1907, the Runaways read a newspaper about Typhoid Mary, walk past an Emma Goldman expy, and intervene in a fire in a factory staffed by child labor.

Comic Strips

In Alison Bechdel's collection of Dykes to Watch Out For comics, the introduction where she explains herself and the comic contains flashbacks with a box that name-drops a song for each decade: "that disco mix of the Star Wars theme" for 1977, "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John for 1981, and "She's All I Ever Had" by Ricky Martin for 1999.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Ready Player One: Within seconds of Wade/Parzival teleporting to Middleton, James Halliday's virtual recreation of his mid-80's childhood hometown within the OASIS, he immediately notices "A woman with a giant, ozone-depleting hairdo bobbing her head to an oversize Walkman. A kid in a gray Members Only jacket leaning against a wall, working on a Rubik's Cube. A Mohawked punk rocker sitting in a plastic chair, watching a Riptide rerun on a coin-operated television."

Iain Banks starts his novel Dead Air at a party in London. One of the guests asks the host if he's flying to New York on Concorde, which turns out hasn't started flying again yet. So sometime between July 2000 and November 2001. The narrator notes the host's PS2, so we've narrowed down the scene to a single year - 2001. By the end of the chapter we know exactly when the party was. What? What? New York? The what? Where? The World Trade Center? Isn't that—? A plane? What, a big plane, like a Jumbo or something? You mean, like, the two big, um, skyscrapers? ....

Live-Action TV

Music

Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire " is basically a laundry list of late-20th-century cultural markers rattled off one after the other. He stays in chronological order (at least approximately) until he reaches 1963, after which he starts throwing them out more or less at random... '80s, '60s, '80s again...

" is basically a laundry list of late-20th-century cultural markers rattled off one after the other. He stays in chronological order (at least approximately) until he reaches 1963, after which he starts throwing them out more or less at random... '80s, '60s, '80s again... Don McLean's "American Pie".

Several Evelyn Evelyn songs start out mentioning things that occured that year. For example, "The Tragic Events of September" (which is about the day the twins were born) features the lines "The year is 1985. St. Elmo's Fire is at the top of the charts, the wreckage of the Titanic has just been discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and on a small farm on the Kansas-Colorado border a young mother is about to give birth".

Theatre

The Trocadero sequence in Show Boat (which takes place on New Year's Eve, 1904) uses only period music. The overture to its Spiritual Successor, Sweet Adeline, is a medley of tunes from The Gay '90s.

Video Games

Web Comics

Casey and Andy: When Jenn accidentally ends up in The '80s, stores and signs show off various fads and icons of the decade, such as Betamax players and thin ties.

Juvenile Diversion: Alicia is treated to this when she wakes up in 2015.

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life