[1] The slasher film A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) features a pastiche of House of Stairs or Relativity conjured up by Freddy Krueger in his dream dimension,[2] referred to in the script as the "Escher Maze", where it is described as "an Escheresque, expressionistic landscape" and "an insane, logic-defying world where water runs uphill and stairs and doors stand at impossible angles to one another.
A later episode, "No Meals on Wheels", features Peter complaining that the fact that his new restaurant is attracting paraplegics "is weirder than that rap video by M.C.
H. G. Wells is the only known individual to have successfully navigated the Escher Vault without glasses, instead using her Inperceptor Vest to retrieve personal items stored within.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yami Yugi's mind in the Millenium Puzzle is represented as a construction similar to Relativity, to emphasize the confusion he feels about who he is.
In the anime Ronin Warriors, the inside of Lord Arago's castle in the Netherworld resembles Escher's Relativity yet in a more Japanese design.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of Squid Game, said in an interview with Netflix that the set's maze-like corridors and stairs were inspired by M.C.
[6][7][8] In Transformers: Cyberverse, "the End of the Universe part 2" Optimus, Bumblebee and Wheeljack get stranded in a dimension with infinite stairs connecting to each other defying the laws of gravity.
In Final Fantasy IX, the third-disc dungeon Ipsen's Castle is modeled after the painting, featuring an array of inverted ladders and stairs.
In AdventureQuest Worlds, the first lord of chaos is Escherion, who has the ability to invert objects and lives in a castle with an inside similar to "Relativity".
In God of War III, 'Hera's Garden' is an Escher inspired puzzle in which the player must manipulate various objects and the camera perspective to guide protagonist Kratos to the exit.
[10][11] The cover of British band Mott the Hoople's self-titled debut album features a colorized reproduction of Escher's lithograph Reptiles.
In the video "Around the World" (1997) of Daft Punk, men and women, dressed like mummies similar to those in Escher's painting, perpetually walk around on a stair.
[20] The bonus stages of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, feature an animated background of birds turning into fish, a reference to Sky and Water I.
The 1995 animated film The Thief and the Cobbler features a chase sequence taking place within set pieces loosely based on Escher's works.
[24] In Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception, Arthur demonstrates to Ariadne how to make unbreakable mental mazes by constructing infinite structures.
He points out that during their long conversation, they have been traversing the same single flight of stairs, and the camera pans out to show a staircase similar to Escher's Ascending and Descending.