To New Horizons was a promotional film made by General Motors for its Highways and Horizons exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. It shows a vision of 1960 as seen from 1940, with a narrator promising a world that will always grow forward. The fair's Futurama exhibit was a ride that carried 552 people at a time past a diorama designed by Norman Bel Geddes. It showed city centres with elevated pedestrian walkways and highways with seven lanes for cars travelling at different speeds. Visitors loved it, and it became the fair's most popular attraction, because people who had lived through the Great Depression were eager for an optimistic future. The next five years brought the Second World War.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.