Cold War

The 50s, the 60s, and the 80s and the climate at the time of the film. Star Wars (but not that Star Wars).

Weapons to End War

Gatling and the Gatling Gun, Alfred Nobel and dynamite, Tesla and his particle beams, and…. nuclear weapons?

Early-80s Computing Hardware

Text-To-Speech. Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair. Matthew Broderick’s computer. WarGames computer graphics and rendering radar screens.

Machine Learning

Teaching computers to teach themselves. The point where this movie steps into scifi territory.

Dinosaurs

Dinosaur extinction hypotheses at the time of the film. Falken is a psychopath.