The Ring of the Nibelung/Shout-Out

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



Works which cite The Ring of the Nibelung include:


Anime and Manga

  • Giant Robo
  • 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.

Film - Animated

Film - Live-Action

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.
  • 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.
  • 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 James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus yells "Nothung!" as he destroys a lamp with his staff.
  • 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.

Live-Action TV

  • On an episode of Cheers: Rebecca's wealthy boyfriend promises her a wonderful gift and references a "ring." She gets a desk. Convinced that there's an engagement ring hidden inside, she literally tears the desk apart to find it. Then Sam finds the packing slip, explaining that it's the very valuable and historic desk at which Wagner composed Der Ring des Nibelungen.
  • On Kingdom during a Chase Scene involving Peter Kingdom's Cool Car and a guy on a bike. Lyle puts on the "Ride of the Valkyries."

Music

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.

Theater

Video Games

Western Animation