I too have noticed this problem, perhaps the article is being misused? wouldn't hurt to get a wick check.
EDIT: Sandbox.Inspiration For The Work Wick Check
Edited by SoyValdo7 on Dec 11th 2024 at 5:29:28 AM
ValdoI went through the unsorted folder in the sandbox, and I'll go over which ones I think are inspiration versus influence.
- Trivia.Small Saga: Darya has cited Redwall, Golden Sun, and Berserk as inspirations for this game. They're all pretty evident, Redwall for the animal characters in a Mouse World, Golden Sun for the art style and gameplay, and Berserk because Verm is just Guts as a mouse. Influence.
- Trivia.Family Guy S 4 E 14 PTV: MacFarlane has stated that the episode's plot was based on his and the rest of the production team's angry reaction towards the FCC's handling of the controversy surrounding the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Amphibia: According to Matt Braly, this show is basically the result of him watching Pepper Ann and Dragon Ball Z back-to-back. Maybe both?
- Trivia.Yuya Vision: The author notes that she has seen a lot of fanfics where Zarc wins and ends up breaking his counterparts with the most sadistic punishments going for Yuya. She instead wanted to see a story where Yuya used Zarc's powers for his own use. She also saw WandaVision as the MCU version of Silent Hill and wanted to do her own take on the show. The first two sentences sound like inspiration, but the last sounds like influence.
- Trivia.There Was Once An Avenger From Krypton: According to this post on the author's tumblr blog, the Kryptonverse was inspired by the Subspace Emissary story mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Maybe both?
- Trivia.The Human Centipede: Tom Six claims that he got the idea for the film from discussions with a friend on how to punish child molesters. One of them came up with stapling the pedophile's mouth to the ass of a fat truck driver. As sort of a Development Gag on the above, the first subject Heiter procures for his experiment is in fact a fat truck driver - once he has two more subjects, he finds the trucker is "not a match" and just kills him. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Married To The Mob: Mark R. Burns got the idea to write a mob movie when he was ten years old, a house in his suburban Long Island neighborhood was raided, and the father was discovered to have been in the mob. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Tamers Abridged: Like how Mugiwara Yoshi was inspired to begin Sgt. Frog Abridged because he couldn't find any abridged series of Sgt Frog (that he liked), Thorn was inspired to begin Tamers Abridged because she didn't like any of the existing Digimon Tamers abridged series. The Framing Device of the TV station was inspired by the lack of raw footage for the show when Thorn began planning in 2012, the best available footage being recordings from Jetix program blocks that included the logo watermark and ratings card. Rather than ignore them, or try to edit around them like she did with the captions in Jetters Abridged's footage, she decided to incorporate them into the series. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Licorice Pizza: In the early 2000s, Paul Thomas Anderson once walked by a junior high school on picture day and observed a student nagging the female photographer. This gave him the seed that would grow into the relationship between Gary and Alana. In addition, as described under Write What You Know, Gary's character was based on stories told to him by his friend Gary Goetzman. Inspiration.
- Trivia.The Bubble 2022: Apatow got the idea for the film from wife Leslie Mann relating stories told to her from a friend involved with the Troubled Production of Jurassic World Dominion amid the pandemic. Inspiration.
- Trivia.The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy: Douglas Adams claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitchhiking around Europe as a young man with a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe book: while lying drunk in a field near Innsbruck with a copy of the book and looking up at the stars, he thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well. However, he later claimed that he had forgotten the incident itself, and only knew of it because he'd told the story of it so many times. His friends are quoted as saying that Adams mentioned the idea of "hitch-hiking around the galaxy" to them while on holiday in Greece in 1973. Inspiration.
- Trivia.We All Need A Hero: The title of the fic “We All Need A Hero” is taken from the song from Death Note The Musical of the same name. The chapter titles being the song lyrics matched appropriately to the events that transpire in said chapter. The author also states that previous fanfics of the same premise inspired them such as We Will Stumble Through Heaven by Susieboo, and to a lesser extent The Most Cursed of Hands by Brownbeard_the_Pirate, both stories that never finished to author’s dismay. Maybe both? Not sure.
- Trivia.The Green Knight: The idea for adapting The Green Knight came to David Lowery while he was setting up a diorama of Willow action figures in his backyard. Lowery also said that another source of inspiration for the film was Excalibur (1981). First sentence sounds like inspiration, second is influence.
- Trivia.The Secret Of Kells: According to director Tomm Moore, he was inspired to create the film after seeing Mulan and how it incorporated traditional Chinese art into its art direction, which made him want to do something similar with a film set in Ireland that took cues from medieval Irish art (specifically the Book of Kells). Even though Mulan is cited as an influence, it still says where the creator got the idea, so I think it fits well under inspiration.
- Trivia.Carry On Regardless: Norman Hudis' inspiration for Helping Hands came from a similar orginisation called Universal Aunts. Inspiration?
- Trivia.Mannequin: Director Michael Gottlieb got the idea for this film when he was walking by a store window and was startled to "see" a mannequin move by itself. He realized it was just an optical illusion caused by a combination of lights and shadows, but began to wonder what would happen if a mannequin actually did come to life. Inspiration.
- Trivia.The Simpsons S 9 E 13 The Joy Of Sect: David Mirkin conceived the episode after hearing a radio show about the history of cults whilst driving home one night. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Decarnation: Word of God cites Perfect Blue and Mulholland Dr. as two of the game's biggest inspirations. Influence.
- Trivia.Phantom Thread: Paul Thomas Anderson got the initial idea for the film while he was sick in bed one day. His partner, Maya Rudolph, was tending to him and gave him a look that made him realize that she had not looked at him with such tenderness and love in a long time. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Piglets Big Game: An interview with one of the game designers admitted that the game was mainly inspired to be "Resident Evil for kids". The game document specifically mentions Luigi's Mansion as the primary influence for the style and tone of the game, while also being referred to again as "cartoon Resident Evil dealt with in a comic way". Sounds more like influence than inspiration.
- Trivia.Star Fox: Miyamoto was a big fan of the Thunderbirds series, explaining why the character's mouths open and close like puppets. Miyamoto even admitted in an interview once that he secretly wanted to do a Star Fox TV show with the Thunderbirds team. Namco's sci-fi rail shooter Star Blade was a big inspiration for the series. Multiple staffers on the first game mentioned it as an inspiration and playing it after shifts for research, and the level id for a Dummied Out turret gameplay mode in Star Fox 64 is named internally "Starblade Imitation". Influence.
- Trivia.Kirbys Halloween Adventure: As stated above, Mystery Meat was the main factor behind the development of 1.2, the other factor was Youtube channel Ant Dude featuring the romhack on one of his videos, inspiring Kirb-Star to make a more impressive work to live up to the video. Mystery Meat's presence can be seen with the Meat Vineshroom enemy, added in 1.2 to homage the romhack that inspired this work to be continued. Influence, I guess?
- Trivia.Kamen Rider Geats: The development team cites Fortnite and Apex Legends as major influences. In an interview with Figure King, head writer Yuya Takahashi states that Squid Game and Kaiji were his main inspirations when writing Geats, both being stories about a Deadly Game where people stake their lives in the name of a grand prize. Kazuto Mokudai watched Kamen Rider Ex-Aid in preparation for his role as Michinaga/Buffa; particularly, he took notes from Genm, another zombie-themed Rider. Influence.
- Trivia.Noddys Toyland Adventures: The idea for the Noddy series originated when Blyton used to holiday virtually every summer at the village of Studland (which ToyTown was designed after) in Dorset sometime in the 1930s and 1940s. Some English book historians even claimed that a small corset was "Noddy's Wood". Inspiration?
- Trivia.The Gold Rush: Charlie Chaplin claimed he got the idea for the film when he saw pictures of gigantic lines of prospectors heading up to the Alaskan gold fields. He was also inspired by the Donner Party. Inspiration.
- Trivia.The Wild Robot 2024: The movie's visuals were inspired by classic Disney movies and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, with Bambi and My Neighbor Totoro being the biggest influences according to the director. Influence.
- Trivia.Weird The Al Yankovic Story: "Weird Al" Yankovic came up with the idea of a completely inaccurate biopic after becoming annoyed at the amount of Artistic License other music biopics were taking despite claiming to tell the "true" story of their subjects. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Cabin Fever: Eli Roth originally got the idea for this movie while working in Iceland on a horse farm. He got such a bad skin infection from the rotting hay in the barn that his face broke out in sores, bled, and peeled off when he shaved. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Beath Of Flams: One day, the author received a horribly typoed email asking something about his (very real) Breath of Fire 3 FAQ, but mistyped it as Beath of Flams, and set out to write up this FAQ just to answer his question. Inspiration.
- Trivia.Balatro: According to LocalThunk, the game was inspired by other roguelike deckbuilders such as Slay the Spire, Luck be a Landlord, The Binding of Isaac, and SNKRX. Influence.
What I'm wondering is if Influence For the Work could be moved into its own separate trope (creator cites the works they took influence from), if we assume that's not People Sit on Chairs.
Indeed. Go ahead and place it on the TRS Queue if you want — I could see a strong case for an expansion.
IMO, “where the author got the idea” and “what works the author took influence from” are distinct enough concepts.
For instance, the Elinor Wonders Why example tells us what works influenced the visual style, but not where the creator came up with the idea for the show in the first place.

This is a problem I've noticed with Inspiration for the Work that I've been wanting to talk about for a while.
See, IFTW is supposed to be where the author first came up with the idea for it, but a lot of the examples in it (for instance, Turning Red) are just listing other works that the media took influence from.
Should the latter examples be cut, given that practically every work takes influence from another, thus making it an example of PSOC?
Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Dec 11th 2024 at 2:51:07 AM