Here's a precursor to Marilyn Monroe standing on that air vent.  From Pick Me Up, 1895.

Here's a precursor to Gary Oldman as Dracula in the Coppola film.  From Droll Stories Collected From the Abbeys of Touraine, illustrated by Gustave Doré, 1907.

Here's a precursor to the Atkins diet.  This ice cream vending machine has been marked "Permanently out of order."  From Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1963.

Here's a precursor to Arrested Development, in which a Star of David pattern appears on the wall of George Sr.'s prison cell and inspires him to film a series motivational discourses "for only four payments of $19.95."  From Die Bühne, 1925.

Here's a precursor to The Human Centipede.  From Die Muskete, 1934.

Here's a precursor to the great stand-up tragedian Brother Theodore, from Pick Me Up, 1895.

Geneticists have found DNA markers associated with mathematical ability.  And here's a precursor to that: Sudoku in embryo, from Die Stoffliche Grundlage der Vererbung, 1921.

Here's a precursor to the inept magician Gob Bluth in Arrested Development, who always asks about the return policy on rabbits and doves.  From Die Muskete, 1940.

Fake news, 1890-style.  "'What's his line, fiction?'  'Yes—he's a journalist.'"  From Pick Me Up, 1890.

Here's a precursor to the film Weird Science.  "There in the other doorway stood the girl he had conjured up."   From Everybody's Magazine, 1908.

Before the "grim grinning ghosts" of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, there were "grim, grey, gibing, gibbering ... ghosts."  From The Man in the Moon, Vol. IV, 1849.

Here's a precursor to the monstrous furnace that confounds the father in A Christmas Story.  From Everybody's Magazine, 1908.

Before the Grinch Stole Christmas, an angel did it.  From Die Muskete, 1919.  This will also be of interest: The Collected Lost Meanings of Christmas.

Here's a precursor to the song "Crimson and Clover."

Here's a precursor to Toad [Kinopio (キノピオ)] from the Mushroom Kingdom of the Mario universe.  From Die Muskete, 1933.

Here is revealed how to see the Black Madonna/Isis precursor to (Blessed Virgin) Mary.  Our illustration is from El Mundo Físico by A. Guillemin, 1882.

You might have thought that the Baby Boomers (peaking in 1957) were the first "Now Generation," and you might have thought that the culture of Soul music originated in the late 1950s.  But back in 1902, a book was dedicated "to the young disciples of Soul Cultrue who made 'Now' Folk possible."  From Not Hypnotism But Suggestion by Henry Harrison Brown.

Here's a precursor to our Collected Lost Meanings of Christmas.  The caption reads, "Old Christmas — 'On acts of charity intent.'"  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1882.