.Commonly referenced works include Relativity (The One With All the Stairs), Another World, Ascending and Descending, and Waterfall.
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Advertising
- Look out for an animated version of Waterfall in this Smarties commercial.
- A commercial promo for Syfy has a lot of weird stuff going on inside a house, with one of them being a football pass among three people in a setting based on Relativity.
Anime and Manga
- The first time we meet the Godhand in Berserk, they're in a Relativity-esque dimension filled with multidirectional staircases and a shot that resembles Another World.
- Cardcaptor Sakura has the Maze card being able to make the case of Relativity real.
- There's a scene in Owarimonogatari where the visuals show Ougi and Koyomi Super-Deformed in cat-filled cartoony versions of Another World, Print Gallery, Relativity, and some sort of Tessellation.
- An episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei concludes with a fake show-within-a-show involving the character Kaere as a Hot Teacher. Since she's teaching geometry, she's shown strolling through several famous Escher works.
- In Yuri Kuma Arashi one of the walls of Yurika's office has an engraving that resembles Escher's Sky and Water I, with a pattern that starts as a set of birds that turn into lilies as it goes downward.
Comic Books
- A strip in an early issue of Marvel's Epic Illustrated is about a demonic architect boasting to a lady friend about the new house he's designed, which is finally revealed to be based on a mixture of Relativity and other works. The strip concludes with a dedication "to MCE" in the shape of Escher's own logo.
- Secret Origins v.2 #10 (the famous issue containing multiple irreconcilable origins for The Phantom Stranger) had a cover based on Another World.
- Mount Olympus in George Perez' run of the Post-Crisis Wonder Woman is based on Relativity.
Comic Strips
- Bizarro has featured several homages to Escher, including Escher's Gulch, Escher's Pub◊, Escher's Rapunzel◊, and Escher messing with pedestrians◊.
Films — Animated
- Relativity is briefly seen in The Simpsons Movie during Homer's dream quest, with the stairs shaped like the inside of Homer's head.
Films — Live-Action
- Escher's work Eye is seen in Donnie Darko, as a poster on Donnie's wall.
- Christopher Nolan was inspired by Escher in Inception, which has two sets of Ascending and Descending (and hence Penrose stairs)-inspired stairs: Arthur shows a fairly large one to Ariadne during her training and later makes good with an ass-kicking use of a second one in the second dream level's hotel.
- Labyrinth: The Goblin King's final chamber was clearly based on Relativity, and Sarah has a print of Relativity in her room.
- During a fight/chase scene, several characters in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb fall into a Relativity Portal Picture, causing the action to become more confusing with the inconsistent gravity of the place.
- The end credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home include a Penrose triangle and homages to Waterfall, Relativity, a tessellation, and Dr. Strange's character portrait in the style of Rind.
- Patterns created or noticeably inspired by Escher appear on the walls of various rooms in Suspiria, and the road the dance academy itself stands on is called Escherstrasse.
Literature
- In the Young Adult novel Before I Fall, it's revealed that the school bike Anna Cartullo likes M.C. Escher. Sam gives her a book of his drawings on her final day.
- James Gurney's Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara features a university structure with an impossible staircase known as the Scholar's Stairway based on Escher's work.
- Discworld:
- In Guards! Guards!, old-fashioned bookshops are said to be looking like "as though they were designed by M.C. Escher on a bad day".
- In Moving Pictures, the layout of the Library of Unseen University is described as "a topographical nightmare, [...] that would make M.C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways."
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid includes (along with many other references to Escher, as one might infer from the title) a dialogue in which the characters find themselves inside "Convex and Concave" and "Reptiles".
- In Half World, by Hiromi Goto, Melanie's mother keeps Escher prints on the wall. Later, when Melanie goes Down the Rabbit Hole, to the magical realm Half World, the staircases go both up and down like Relativity.
- Protector by Larry Niven: Jack Brennan uses gravity generators to build Relativity inside his mad scientist-style castle.
Live-Action TV
- The Doctor Who serial Castrovalva, involving a world of Escher-like recursion, is titled in homage to one of his earlier (non-paradoxical) works.
- The staircases in Squid Game are actually inspired from Relativity.
- Warehouse 13 has the "Escher Vault," which is a room constructed like Relativity, which is constantly changing at high speed. You need special equipment of one kind or another to get through it. According to Mrs. Frederic, at least one Warehouse Agent has gotten lost in the room because they forgot to wear safety goggles when venturing inside and hasn't been seen since. It's called the Escher Vault because the man himself was an architect on that iteration of the Warehouse. His initial design involved it folding up like a tesseract and the model of it is an artifact.
Music
- The video for "Drive" by Incubus is largely a Shout-Out to Drawing Hands.
- Much of the graphics in the video for "Otherside" by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
- The music video for "Break the Man" by Tears for Fears features animated CGI men marching through a landscape inspired by Escher's artwork.
- In "Weird Al" Yankovic's White And Nerdy, the titular white nerd raps that M.C. Escher is his favorite MC.
Theme Parks
- The Haunted Mansion at Disney World now includes a "Relativity" room, complete with ghostly footprints appearing on the steps, usually at extreme angles to the direction of gravity.
Video Games
- In AdventureQuest Worlds, the town of Mobius is the victim of the First Lord of Chaos: Escherion. The entire quest chain to confront him is filled with M.C. Escher references, fitting of a Lord of Chaos.
- The Bridge (2013) is the game that resulted when M.C. Escher met Isaac Newton and learned programming.
- In Chrono Cross, a sojourn through a place that appears to be outside reality, or something, features a tower with an endless staircase like that in Ascending and Descending.
- Atari Games' Crystal Castles has one level with a looped staircase based on Ascending And Descending.
- Dante's Inferno has a room evocative of "Other World".
- In the Netherworld of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, the Lost Souls Nirvana is a pristine white version of M. C. Escher's Relativity stairways.
- DUSK: E2M5 is named "The Escher Labs". The level starts unconspicuous enough, but soon degenerates in a Mind Screw of epic proportions.
- echochrome is a puzzle game based on the works of M. C. Escher. The geometries are as weird as you might expect. In the game, you are allowed to "cheat" the laws of perspective because only the camera angle's perspective counts as "real". If there is a beam covering up a hole, the hole then ceases to exist. This is a necessary skill to guide the main characternote to safety.
- Ipsen's Castle in Final Fantasy IX seems to be based on Relativity. Described as an architectural marvel, many rooms are upside down and in one room the visitor has to slide up a pole. While in Ipsen's Castle, weapons will do more damage the lower their attack power is.
- HyperRogue has graphics inspired by the hyperbolic tilings in the Circle Limit series.
- Illusions (1984) was based on elements of several Escher prints.
- A choice adventure in the Kingdom of Loathing — more specifically, the Haunted Art Gallery — starts here, and all directions seem to be as if Relativity was providing directions (up, down, or sideways).
- In King's Quest VII, you have to get through a room shaped like Relativity in Archduke Fifi's manor.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess features the Oocca, which resemble the human-bird... things in Another World. They can walk on walls, furthering the allusion when seen doing so in their city in the sky.
- The 78th level of Lemmings is titled "Tribute to M.C. Escher". The main solution to the level involves building a confusing zigzag stairway.
- Monument Valley has perspective and impossible paths as a major element of game play. One of the levels in the "Forgotten Shores" expansion pack is a recreation of Waterfall.
- The Tain in Myth resembles M.C. Escher's "Double Planetoid".
- In Quest for Glory I, when you navigate the Brigand warlock's maze, one of the comments you make is that M.C. Escher would love this place. The maze in question is somewhat reminiscent of Relativity, but also of other Escher drawings.
- SaGa Frontier: Appropriately for the master of Space magic, Kylin's domain is full of Alien Geometries, one room in particular◊ that is extremely evocative of Escher's art style.
Web Animation
- The animated short Hallucii features Penrose stairs in an urban environment.
Web Comics
- The cover of volume 1 of Dumbing of Age homages Relativity. It's titled "This Campus is a Friggin' Escher Print".
- Exterminatus Now: After a Scooby-Dooby Doors scene, this page features a replica of Relativity.
- Flipside University:
- On the last page of chapter two, a character remarks "This place is more confusing than an M.C. Escher painting."
- Later, Josh gets lost in a building that resembles Relativity.
- On the last page of chapter two
- Quantum Vibe has The Weapon Shop of Escher. See it here. Justified in that it's on a low-gravity asteroid so the local gravity can be manipulated easily.
- In Tales of the Questor, one part of the Castle of Tir Na Nog in the Fae realm resembles Relativity. It becomes hilarious when a human boy subjected to it promptly loses his lunch.
Web Original
- In the Furcadia contest dream "Puzzle Mansion", the stairway works like this.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum HQ has Escher Rooms where gravity is weird.
- The SCP Foundation references the Penrose staircase of Ascending and Descending when a living drawing is asked to walk it. She thinks it's neat, and asks why more stairways aren't like this.
Western Animation
- In one of the last episodes of CatDog, one of Winslow's rooms hidden in CatDog's house is directly based on Relativity.
- In the second episode of Drawn Together, Toots convinces Clara she's pregnant after her Les Yay kiss with Foxxy, just so she can push her down a flight of stairs for laughs. When Clara "still smells pregnant," they next try the "M.C. Escher room," where Clara falls down the iconic set of circling stairs for like three minutes to kill her non-existent baby. Yes, it was that kind of show.
- Family Guy referenced Relativity twice. Once Stewie obtained a copy while posing as Brian's college roommate; on another occasion Peter referenced "that rap video by MC Escher", prompting a cut to Escher dressed as MC Hammer doing an incredibly bad rap song and dancing on the stairs.Stewie: I think it's called... Crazy Stairs...
- One of the apartments Fry and Bender look at in the Futurama episode "I, Roommate" resembles Relativity. Bender falls down, up, and across the stairs. Fry decides they don't want to pay for a dimension they won't be using.
- In 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, part of Castle Grayskull's internal architecture appears to be based on Belvedere.
- A version of Relativity appears in Jackie Chan Adventures, in the Lotus Temple.
- Phineas and Ferb:
- In "Gaming the System", they made a section of their video game based on Relativity.
- In "The Doof Side of the Moon", the same coaster goes through a Relativity room on four different tracks at the same time, as Phineas explains that it's 'the M.C. Escher Floor!'
- The Simpsons: One of the show's Couch Gags is based on Relativity.
- In Space Ghost Coast to Coast, the title character tells Chuck D of Public Enemy that M.C. Escher is his favourite rapper.
