Here's a precursor to the Teletubbies sun, from Lilliput Lyrics by William Brighty Rands, 1899.

Here's a precursor to the "unfollow" and "unfriend" phenomenon of social media, from Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War by Rochard Doddridge Blackmore, 1888.  The caption reads, "I am not at all happy at losing dear friends."

A decade before Stanislavski's "system" and three decades before Strasberg's "method," we find "a modern method" for acting in The Lady's Realm (1901) by the mysterious M. M. M.  But mostly we just like the wonky font.

Here's a precursor to the animal print craze of the 1960s Bohemian movement, from Punch, 1867.

"The world in which we live[:] the abominable, sentimental, mob-ruled world of cheap newspapers and cheaper minds, where every imbecile is articulate and every folly tolerated, where the arts are dying out and the intellect is scorned, where every little cheap-jack knows what he likes and what he thinks.  Our moralities, our democracy, have taught us to suffer fools gladly, and now we suffer from an overplus of fools." —The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944)

"What odd, misshapen, ugly things I made."  If only Etsy had existed back in 1719.  From Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

This "Black Death Record" is a precursor to the music label Black Death Records, from The Grange of St. Giles, the Bass by Jane Stewart Smith, 1898.

Here's a precursor to the modern computer from The Chase of the Golden Plate by Jacques Futrelle (1906).  The caption reads: "Suddenly he stopped and turned upon The Thinking Machine."

A precursor from "A Trip to Hollywood," by Frank Sullivan. Cf. Python's famous "I'd like to have an argument, please" sketch.

"I am here to see the sights, and I have read so much in the papers about the famous arguments that you and Mrs. Weissmuller have, that I was hoping to see one before I left."

"I'll see if I can fix it," Mr. Weissmuller said pleasantly. . . . "Lupe! Lupe!"

[...]

"What you want now, John-ee?" she exploded. "Always you call, 'Lupe, Lupe, Lupe.' Why do you not leave me alone?"

"This gentleman wanted to see you and me have a little spat."

"I am beezy sweeming," stormed Miss Velez. "I have no time to spat wiz you."

A precursor to Victor Borge: According to H. Allen Smith, Vladimir de Pachmann would call for a book to elevate himself on a piano stool that was supposedly too low, then pretend he was now too high, and then remove one page to get the height just right.

We learn in the BBC series The Mighty Boosh that "there are over seventeen mirrors in the mirror world."  We find a precursor in The Century of Louis XIV by Frances Cashel Hoey, 1896.

A precursor to the Death By Lemon cake recipe.  An illustration from an 1879 issue of Punch magazine.

Here's a precursor to fans of Seal (Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel), from seventy years before the singer-songwriter's birthday.

The first "you mama such a dog" joke appears in Ghost Stories (1865).  The caption reads: "There is the nocturnal visitor whom you have so long taken for the ghost of your mother."

Here's a precursor to Merrell's line of "angelic shoes," from Kulturgeschichte by Friedrich Anton Heller von Hellwald, 1896.

Here's a precursor to the Orwellian NSA's rampant violations of civil liberties, from The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1893.