The title screen in China Warrior shows one of Bruce Lee's trademark moves, pretty much identical in positioning and perspective to a still from his last, unfinished movie Game of Death (aside from the lower arm, which got bent a bit).

Of course Bruce Lee remained the major influence for martial arts games throughout the 1980s. The central characters on the arcade flyer (and title screen in some ports) for Shao-Lin's Road and the title screen of the Commodore 64 game The Vikings are derived from another still of his duel with Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon.

The jump-kicking guy on the Shao-Lin's Road image - who's only properly visible on the computer version covers - is also based on a Bruce Lee illustration. One figures that the rest would be cobbled together from martial arts movies as well.

This one had actually gotten Falcom in trouble. The developer was looking for someone to publish their game in the US, when they turned to Origin and had the Garriotts come to Japan for a presentation of Xanadu. The Americans were not amused when they started seeing images ripped straight from the manual to Ultima III appear in the game. It is said that Falcom paid reparations to Origin, who refrained from publishing Xanadu, and later versions use different portraits for the shop owners.

Oh SNK, if the makers of one of the greatest anti-war movies had ever seen your game were players get to gun down hundreds of enemy soldiers, with the most famous scenes of their work spliced in as stage transitions or boss introductions, you would have been so screwed!

Dead Connection is a reminiscence on the classic mobster movie genre, opening with a shot of Marlon Brando as the gangster boss. The mugshot for James, one of the four playable characters, is closely related to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables, while his partner Gary could be a younger version of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Philip shares features with Andy Garcia, who starred both in The Untouchables and in The Godfather. We're sure Eddie also has his origin in the movies, and so might other scenes from within the game, but there's not enough evidence to convict them just yet.

Top Gun used to be another favourite for Japanese arcade games to rip off. SEGA's After Burner has images from the movie in its stage intermission screens, at least one of which apparently is just a digitized production still. Corporal Swift Arnold from Zed Blade (Operation Ragnarok in Japan) is very obviously Tom Cruise, and Carrier Airwing (once again a different title in Japan: U.S. Navy) recreates some scenes from the film as well, right down to imitating the insignia on the characters' flight jackets.

Not only Japan, but also Korea (represented by SunA) secured a slice from the Top Gun pie, albeit with a sick twist:

The latter title from the above compparison also features a well-known Scotsman with a very familiar expression on his face.

Not only is the title Thunder Blade openly referencing the movie, SEGA put in another ballsy digitized photo as the title screen, too.

Given the title of the game, it seemed like the obvious choice to go with Roger Moore's trademark stance for his James Bond role. The poster also reproduces the same stance, but adds a woman in the agent's arms, diluting the pose. The secret agent's arm in fact seems to be traced from the promo still from Octopussy seen on the left, while his clothes and hair closer resemble the older variant that was shot for Live and Let Die.

This Super Pang rip-off contains several background images that look fishy, but certainly the most obvious one is this trace of the skull from the Evil Dead 2 film poster. The flying dead hand originally decorated the cover of House III.

Now things get interesting. Hideo Kojima is well known for being a total sucker for American action movies, and Snatcher was the first of his games were he got the chance to make his artists put the same love into the graphics as well (although most screenshots here are taken from the later PC-Engine version). The whole plot and setting of the game is deeply influence by Blade Runner, to the point where some locations in the production artworks almost translate 1:1 to the pixel graphics of Snatcher.

Gillian's appearance is comparatively distinctive from Rick Deckard, yet many of his faces and poses make him look like someone else doing a Harrison Ford impression. It's right there on the Sega CD cover:

Then there's Random Hajile, a bounty hunter who gets his face, his clothes and most of his faces from Sting's performance as Feyd-Rautha in Dune, even though pretty much the only thing the two movies have in common is being sci-fi flicks with massively influential visual design.

Random often gets confused with a stand-in for Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty because of the vaguely similar hair and the black collar, but in truth there is an actual Rutger Hauer Snatcher named Freddie Nielsen in the game, as seen below.

Kojima's next adventure game, Policenauts, is no slouch, either. While the hero Jonathan Ingram and his best buddy Ed Brown are very obviously inspired by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's roles in Lethal Weapon (it seems one of Kojima's favourite movies), there is also this scene adapted from the 1970s science fiction movie Coma:

For once not an action or science fiction inspiration, but Kojima's naughty side is also fuelled with American movie influences. The only downer: the Sharon Stone stand-in never switches her legs.

Who would have thought that one of the great classic American action game heroes shamelessly stole pixel art from one of the great classic European action game heroes? Nemmelheim.de has a whole gallery of ripped background elements in both the original platformer and its sequel Duke Nukem II. Some of the most striking examples in the latter can be found here. Duke's flame thrower weapon comes from the Amiga version of Turrican II (also notice the soil with the rocks), the screen with the metal objects is from the first game. Incidentally, the Korean game Super Cop also rips off the flame effect, although seemingly not from the original, but the already stolen version.

Of course it's not like Turrican creator Manfred Trenz never got inspired by other games. The very concept is a melange from Metroid, Contra and Psycho-Nics Oscar, and Mr. Trenz obviously played the shoot-'em-up Aldynes on the TG-16 SuperGrafx shortly before remaking his creation for the NES.

In it's first stage, the "black sheep" of the Street Fighter series very closely recreates part of the view from Tyrell's giant office. Doubtful if a pan to the right would reveal the Statue of Liberty like it does in the game, though.

Most of the portrayed characters in this shoot-'em-up are machines or aliens, but the few human ones are pasted directly from actual photos.

While the cityscape above might still be a borderline case (nice job on the Gundam MSM-03C Hygog, by the way), but the crater below is an exact recreation of a shot in Akira, down to the most minute detail. Amusingly, the former background got ripped off yet again, from the Korean shoot-'em-up Illusion Blaze. But not enough, SNK also used the skyline once again for the farthest background layer in The King of Fighters '94's team Japan stage.

There have been some changes to the design of the tank, but certain details and the perspective in the intro to Metal Slug leave no doubt that the Super Vehicle-001 wouldn't look the way it does without Dominion Tank Police.

Mr. Bogart would have had a hard time getting this case through, what with him dying some forty years before the game was made and all. It's not a big deal though, as Jerome Lange's In-game representation looks way different, and most of the adventure is displayed from a first person perspective, anyway.

Moore, Eastwood and Stallone have all appeared on their own on previous pages, now they're battling it out on the road as cyborgs in this Amiga racing game.

The many plot similarities between Clock Tower and the Dario Argento shocker from 1985 have been extensively documented. Interesting for this article is mostly the Japanese film poster, that shows Jennifer in an angle that makes her look exactly like the Jennifer (yep, the name is also the same) from the game.

Reese Witherspoon as a leopard lady on the background image for the song "Afronova" in Dance Dance Revolution has got to be the single most bizarre image in this entire gallery. It seems Konami either even got into trouble or was wise enough to re-edit it on their own, for an almost even weirder image in a later version.

When this was discovered fairly recently, it made a huge news splash all over the video game press. Apparently Team Silent based the creepy elementary school for their game on one of the most unlikely movies - The Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even the number on the school bus is the same, and many signs from the walls are brought over, too.

Comparison screenshots from the Silent Hill Heaven forum.