http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Y3hhduFIg
This episode of The Twilight Zone from 1985, titled Dreams for Sale, shows a woman in a virtual reality world struggling to figure out what’s going on as the events around her begin to glitch and stutter. When she awakens from her time in the VR machine, she discovers that she’s actually an inhabitant of a futuristic society who uses VR to unwind between work shifts by running the “Country Picnic Program”. Now, some people claim that this episode inspired The Matrix and/or Total Recall, but I’m inclined to disagree with the latter, since Total Recall was based on the story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, written by Philip K. Dick in 1966. That this episode inspired The Matrix is a bit more likely, since The Matrix drew its inspiration from a variety of sources such as mangas, anime, William Gibson novels and kung fu movies. But whether or not you think there’s a direct correllation between this and The Matrix, you’ve gotta admit…it does seem a bit like deja vu, doesn’t it? It does seem a bit like deja vu, doesn’t it?