Here's a precursor to photocopy fading and digital compression artifacts.  "Photos sent through air by radio or over wire."  From Popular Mechanics, 1924.

Your instinct was correct: the corruption of the press is hardly anything new.  From Kladderadatsch, 1928.

Here's a precursor to the Doomsday Clock.  "Queer French clocks celebrate world war."  From Popular Mechanics, 1927.

Here's a precusor to Walt Disney's Fantasia.  From Fliegende Blätter, 1927.

Here's a precursor to William Castle-style gimmick advertising.  From Fliegende Blätter, 1933.

Here's a precursor to "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."  The caption reads, "I can't tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it."  From The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, 1868.

Here's a precursor to the Slinky toy, 13 years before its invention.  From Popular Mechanics, 1930.

Here's a precursor to jet skiis.  From Fliegende Blätter, 1934.

Here's a precursor to Why Paint Cats?  From Kladderadatsch, 1932.

Nearly fifty years before the gel-filled action figure Stretch Armstrong, rubber dough was the thing.  From Popular Mechanics, 1927.

Decades and decades before Puff the Magic Dragon, The Rainbow Connection, and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, there were these sunbeam wishes of a floating song in Rainbow Verse: A Book of Helpful Sunny Philosophy by W. Dayton Wegefarth, 1919.

Before The Neverending Story, there was "No End of No-Story."  From The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, 1893.

You may recall that Prince originally intended his Sign O' the Times (1987) to be a triple album.  Here's a precursor to that, The Signs of the Times: In Three Parts by James Bicheno (1808).

Here's an eerie precursor to Princess Diana -- a "candle in the wind" paired with the similar name Diane.  By Mary Imlay Taylor, 1919.

Here's a precursor to Dark Shadows' Collinwood Mansion.  (The "g" of Collingwood didn't withstand the ravages of time.)  From Darkness and Daylight by Mary Jane Holmes, 1864.

Here's a precursor to the Severed Heads song "Dead Eyes Opened."  The caption reads, "It opened its eyes."  From The Arabian Nights Entertainments, 1899.

Here's a precursor to the famous finale of Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).  From Jugend, 1902.

When we saw the cover to Model for Murder, we immediately recognized the inspiration: the beloved film Burn, Witch, Burn!  (Book cover courtesy of 54mge.)