For pieces of media that use the ubiquitous "Ride of the Valkyries", see its own page.
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- The Legend of Koizumi features a reincarnated cyborg Wagner as one of Those Wacky Nazis whom our heroes battle, complete with attacks based on his operas.
- The Yu-Gi-Oh! character, Siegfried von Schroider, is derived from the Wagnerian character, and one of his cards is even called "Nibelung's Ring." Moreover, he has a Valkyrie deck, which is a reference to Walküre.
- The foundation for The World in the .hack series is based off of this and Norse mythology in general. Several characters also are references.
- Trinity Blood: Melchior von Neumann's favourite Auto-Doll is named Sieglinde.
- Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea also references the Ring. Ponyo's original name is Brunhilde, and like the character of the same name from the opera, she's a supernatural being who defies her father and falls in love with a human. In case someone thought all this is coincidental, the connection is further emphasized when her leitmotif is orchestrated as a pastiche of the "Ride of the Valkyries" during the climactic tsunami scene.
Films — Live-Action
- In the universe of Army of the Dead and Army of Thieves, the four safes conceived by locksmith Hans Wagner (of course) are named Rheingold, Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) even summarizes and philosophizes about the cycle's stories while working to open the safes, and has several excerpts of it playing on his phone as he does so.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Red Skull listens to Götterdämmerung as he's having his portrait painted in Captain America: The First Avenger.
- Loki makes a clever use of his leitmotif, choreographing one of his fight scenes to it in The Avengers (2012).
- The New World uses the opening of Das Rheingold as the ships reach North America with the Natives observing them.
- In a Musical Gag, the cavalry blacksmith in John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is named Wagner; when he appears, the soundtrack plays the smithying Leitmotif from the Ring.
- In the beginning of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the film cuts from a fiery explosion (something that can be called a Feuerzauber in German slang) to Kommissar Lohmann humming Wotans Feuerzauber from the finale of Die Walküre and telling his secretary that this evening he at last has the time to attend a performance of that opera. Of course, this is precisely the moment when the telephone rings...
Literature
- In James Herriot's "All Creatures Great and Small" books, Siegfried Farnon got that name because his father was a fan of Wagner.
- In George C. Chesbro's The Beasts Of Valhalla, Evilutionary Biologist Siegmund Loge (ha ha) is a fanatical Wagner fan.
- The main character of Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls also admits to cribbing the plot for one of his books from Der Ring des Nibelungen.
- In John C. Wright's The Chronicles Of Chaos, there is banter mangling together The Lord of the Rings and Der Ring des Nibelungen.
- Dies The Fire. Mike Havel mentions how he once sat through the whole boring performance because his girlfriend of the time was into it, musing on the things he used to do to get laid.
- Stephen R. Donaldson's The Gap series is literally a Space Opera, being an adaptation of the Ring IN SPACE!.
- George Bernard Shaw’s The Perfect Wagnerite is an analysis of the Ring from a Socialist point of view. It was a big influence on Patrice Chéreau's Jahrhundertring, the production for the centennial of the Bayreuth festival in 1979.
- In Nicholas Meyer's Sherlock Holmes Pastiche The Seven Per Cent Solution, Holmes (who adores Wagner), Dr. Watson, and Sigmund Freud all attend a performance of Siegfried; Watson and Freud fall asleep.
- In The Sleeping Beauty, the little bird warns Siegfried not to take the ring or mess with Bruunhilde, saying it will be his "DOOM!" After a book's length of other adventures, Bruunhilde is awakened by a completely different prince, tells Wotan exactly what she thinks of him and the entire story, and informs him that she took the Ring back to the river maidens herself and put an end to the whole silly misunderstanding.
- In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus yells "Nothung!" as he destroys a lamp with his staff.
- Tom Holt's comic fantasy novel, Expecting Someone Taller, is, very loosely, a sequel, set in modern times.
- The novella Wälsungenblut ("Walsung Blood", written in 1906) by Thomas Mann invokes Die Walküre: Decadent Jewish twins Siegmund and Sieglind Aarenhold decide to emulate the example of their namesakes after attending a performance of the opera.
- In Soul Music Susan, while doing her grandfather's Duty, has to visit a battlefield, where she meets a group of Valkyries in a scene that parodies the beginning of act 3 of Die Walküre.
- In Save the Enemy, Zoey remembers her dad taking her to see the Ring cycle at the Kennedy Center. Her dad was willing to overlook the antisemitism because it was a monumental work, but Zoey found it boring.
Live Action TV
- Frasier: Niles and Daphne's close marital bond is demonstrated during a game of Pictionary when she draws a circle on the board and Niles immediately guesses that her prompt was this opera. In another episode Niles builds a dragon kite with his father and suggests they name it Fafner after "Siegfried's fiery nemesis".
- On Kingdom (2007) during a Chase Scene involving Peter Kingdom's Cool Car and a guy on a bike. Lyle puts on the "Ride of the Valkyries."
- In the Münster Tatort Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne is a great admirer of Richard Wagner, which led him to give his diminutive assistant Silke Haller the nickname Alberich. In the course of later episodes she acquired a dog called Wotan, which belonged to a murder victim who turned out to be Boerne's near-identical half-brother, and it was revealed that she lives in Rheingoldweg ("Rhine Gold Way").
Radio
- In the aftermath of the Enron disaster, the Firesign Theater compared the Enron story to "The Ring cycle," with hilarious results. A video of that show can be found on the DVD of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Video Games
- The Action RPG Odin Sphere is riddled through with Wagnerian references. There's even a character named Wagner!
- In World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a staff called "Nibelung" can be found on one of the bosses in the Icecrown Citadel raid.
Western Animation
- In Adventure Time With Finn And Jake, Billy's sword is called "Nothung".
- The Looney Tunes short, What's Opera, Doc? (and its 1945 precursor, Herr Meets Hare), although most of the music in them is actually not from the Ring.
- The Real Ghostbusters had the episode "A Fright at the Opera," in which a performance of Wagner's work gets interrupted by a horde of real (if ghostly) Valkyries.
- In DuckTales (1987), Mrs. Beakley is playing Brünhilde in an opera performance - which results in her being kidnapped by actual Vikings...
