[RPG] What Works Inspired Paranoia

history-of-gamingparanoia

Paranoia is obviously descended from dystopian works such as 1984 and Logan's Run with black comedy that I have sometimes heard is inspired by Monty Python's Flying Circus. For a long time I had thought that Paranoia was directly inspired by the film Brazil being that it mixed a dystopian future with black humor, but I realized recently that Paranoia was first released in 1984 with Brazil being released the following year, so it couldn't have been an inspiration.

Which works inspired which aspects of the Paranoia setting? I'd especially like to see citations from the creators, if they exist.

I realize that Paranoia has been around for over 25 years. If certain works have influenced different editions over time, I'd like to know that too.

Best Answer

Back cover of Paranoia Second Edition

Imagine a world designed by Kafka, Stalin, Orwell, Huxley, Sartre and the Marx Brothers

Bibliography and Resources from Paranoia (2004/XP), page 243

Books

  • Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973)
  • George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
  • Franz Kafka, The Trial (1937) and many other works
  • Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1962)
  • Philip K. Dick, The Penultimate Truth (1964) and nearly everything else
  • Yevgeny Zamiatin, We (1921-22)
  • Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, the Illuminatus! trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan (1988)

Movies and TV

  • Brazil, Terry Gilliam (1985)
  • THX-1138, George Lucas (1971)
  • The Prisoner, TV series (1967)
  • Equilibrium, Kurt Wimmer (2002)
  • Logan's Run, Michael Anderson (1976); TV series (1977-78)
  • A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick (1969)
  • Soylent Green, Richard Fleischer (1973)