Here's a sentence diagram that's a precursor to Lars Von Trier's Kingdom series.  From Grammar for Composition by C. H. Ward, 1933.

Here's a precursor to the sandworms of Frank Herbert's Dune.  From Number Stories Book 2 by Studebaker, Findley, Knight & Gray, 1942.

Here's a precursor to the "Find My" apps.  The talking collar-button, from Life Magazine, 1921.  [Via Jonathan Caws-Elwitt]

Here's a precursor to the film Dark City (1998).  It's Instant Cities by Gunther Paul Barth, 1988.

A quarter century before Dali's melting watch in "Persistence of Memory," there was this melting clock tower in The Book of Spice by "Ginger" a.k.a. Wallace Irwin, 1906.

Perhaps Van Engen's "seeing through mathematics" (1964) is a precursor to the transparent math proofs defined by Babai, Fortnow, Levin & Szegedy (1991).

Here's a possible ancestor of Alfred E. Neuman, named Stackman.  From Amherst College's 1896 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to Henny Youngman's paraprosdokian "Take my wife, please!"  It's "Here, fellow, will you have a wife?"  From Stories of Early England by Ethel Mary Wilmot-Buxton, 1907.

Here's a precursor to Twin Peaks' fish in the percolator.  From Think-and-Do Book to Accompany Streets and Roads by Gray & Monroe, 1940.

Five years before Uncle Fester lit light bulbs in his mouth in The Addams Family series (1964), we saw it done in Broome Technical Community College's 1959 yearbook.

A precursor to Gomez Addams.  From Purple Parrot, 1932.

Two Twin Peaks precursors on the same page -- a vision of an old, tall, gaunt man (as character Dale Cooper had) and a reference to The Great Northern.  From the Duluth Herald, 1900.

Why do kangaroos paint?  Why paint kangaroos?  It's a precursor to Why Cats Paint and Why Paint Cats.  From Barnard College's 1903 yearbook.

A precursor to Disneyland's Storybookland canal ride past little villages.  From The Voyage of the Wishbone Boat by Alice C. D. Riley, 1906.

Here's a precursor to the fortune telling chicken named Henda, here.  From Pennsylvania College of Optometry's 1927 yearbook.

From My Do and Learn Book To Accompany The Little White House by Ousley & Russell, 1948.  It's a precursor to The Minimalist Coloring Book.

Here's a precursor to The Prisoner series in which people go by numbers, not names.  The headline reads, "No name: man known by a number for twelve years."  From The Children's Newspaper, 1922.

Here's a precursor to "The cake is a lie" meme from the 2007 video game Portal.  "It isn't real!  It's a make-believe cake for a make-believe birthday."  From Dark Shadows episode 767.

The cinema had already gone to the dogs in 1927.  From The Children's Newspaper, 1927.

At first glance we thought this was Ben Kenobi getting a message from R2D2.  From The Gateway, 1962.