Here's a precursor to Obi Wan deactivating the tractor beam on the Death Star to help Princess Leia escape (nearly a quarter century before Star Wars debuted).  From Super Science Stories, 1951.

Here's a precursor to robot priests, like this one who runs a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and this one in Germany that bestows blessings in five languages.

From La Colotte, 1908.

Here's a precursor to overlaying album covers and photos onto other scenes.  From La Colotte, 1907.

Did Billy Idol foresee Uber Eats 31 years in advance of its debut?  Of course he did!  In the bridge of 1983's "Rebel Yell," Idol sings:

The invention of the insta-print camera (with self-developing film) is credited to Edwin Land in 1948.  But you knew we'd find a precursor, and here's one from 1932.  From Nebelspalter, 1932.

No one needs to be told that this is a precursor to the crew of the Falcon at the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.  From Planet Stories, Fall 1943.

"You're not the first one to develop a bug powder problem" (the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch).  From Nebelspalter, 1933.

Here's a precursor to one of Penn and Teller's elaborate "Is this your card?" revelations.  From Nebelspalter, 1930.

Eight years before the debut of the Mary Poppins books, here's a lady with an umbrella flying weightless.  From Nebelspalter, 1926.

Here's a precursor to people disrupting daily life with their "comfort animals."  From Nebelspalter, 1929.

Holidays collide -- a skeleton at Christmas, precursing The Nightmare Before Christmas.  From Volshebnyi Fonar', 1906.

Four years before Smokey Bear first cautioned against being a firebug, there was this donkey singing from "The Firefly."  From Centenary's 1940 yearbook.

Unusual to see an artist's palette as a saucer.  This musical teacup appears 20 years before Disneyland debuted its Mad Tea Party ride.  From New Jersey State Teachers College's 1935 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to Annie Dillard's classic Teaching a Stone to Talk:

An illustration from a 1907 issue of McClure's magazine.  The caption reads: "'I love her more every minute,' he informed a large boulder."

From Le Journal Amusant, 1898.

Ah, the classic circling of the obvious anomaly, a practice as old as anomalies themselves.  From Lumières Dans la Nuit, 1980.

Here's a 1967 precursor to the "one weird trick" advertising meme.  It's an ad for CliffsNotes literary study guides.