# Metropolis (1927 film) in popular culture

Following are mentions of the Metropolis film in popular culture:
* The cover of 1970s British rock band Be Bop Deluxe's 1977 album Live! In the Air Age is a still from the film.
* David Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour and Diamond Dogs album was inspired by the film with Amanda Lear recalling "He rented the film and ran it over and over again in his house. And that's where Diamond Dogs came from – the whole staging and album and everything, Bowie got from Metropolis".
* The German electronic group Kraftwerk's 1978 album The Man-Machine contains the song "Metropolis".
* The rock band Motörhead's album Overkill contains the song "Metropolis", which was written by Lemmy, the band's lead singer and bassist, after he saw the film in 1979. It was written to fill space on the album which was short.
* When designing the character of C-3PO for Star Wars, Ralph McQuarrie was inspired by the aesthetic of the Maschinenmensch, the two bearing a striking resemblance to one another.
* The music video for Queen's 1984 song "Radio Ga Ga" uses imagery and clips from the movie. The four members of the band are inserted into clips, for example the face of Freddie Mercury is briefly superimposed over the robot's face. The video ends with the caption "Thanks to Metropolis". Mercury also contributed the song "Love Kills" to the soundtrack of the Moroder version of the film, for which he received a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Original Song.
* Madonna's 1989 music video "Express Yourself" pays homage to the film and Fritz Lang.
* Whitney Houston's 1994 music video "Queen of the Night" also pays homage to Lang's film, with Houston wearing a metallic costume inspired by Maria robot. Likewise, the 1992 blockbuster The Bodyguard also uses clips from the movie, when Houston was singing this song at a night club and they appear on a multi-screen in the background.
* In 1998, American nu metal band System of a Down released a music video called "Sugar", which features footage from Metropolis.
* Janelle Monáe based both her concept albums on the original film, including her EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), released in mid-2007, and The ArchAndroid, released in 2009. The latter also included an homage to Metropolis on its cover, with the film version of the Tower of Babel among the remainder of the city. The albums follow the adventures of Monáe's alter-ego and robot, Cindi Mayweather, as a messianic figure to the android community of Metropolis.
* Videos for songs by pop singer-songwriter Lady Gaga have made a series of references to Lang's film. Visual allusions to the film are noted most predominantly in the music videos for "Alejandro" (2010), "Born This Way" (2011), and "Applause" (2013).
* The 2012 EP Metropolis Part I by the electronic music trio The M Machine is a conceptual work inspired by the film.
* The Brazilian metal band Sepultura named their 2013 album The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart after a quote from the film.
* The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel Nemo: The Roses of Berlin is set in Metropolis in 1941, in the midst of Adenoid Hynkel (from The Great Dictator)'s Nazi-like regime.
* Inspired by the movie, Peter Graham wrote "Metropolis 1927" for brass band in 2014.
* The 2014 music video "Digital Witness" by St. Vincent in collaboration with Chino Moya presents "a surreal, pastel-hued future" in which lead singer Annie Clark is a stand-in for Maria.
* A lookalike of Hanson Robotics robot Sophia was portrayed by drag queen Gigi Goode in the "Snatch Game" episode of the twelfth season of RuPaul's Drag Race (2020). Goode won the episode with her character "Maria the Robot", based heavily on Sophia and named after a robot featured in Metropolis.
* "Monsters in Metropolis", a 2021 Doctor Who audio play released by Big Finish Productions, features the Ninth Doctor battling a Cyberman on the set of the film and includes many references both to the film itself and its legacy.