World Trade Center in popular culture

Movies

(See also: Skyscrapers in film)

The 1970 film Loving includes a walk through of the World Trade Center construction site.
The 1971 film The French Connection shows the still under construction WTC in the background during the unloading of the "drug car" in Brooklyn Heights.
The 1972 film The Hot Rock includes footage taken from a helicopter flying toward the World Trade Center, still under construction.
In the 1973 film version of the musical Godspell, the song "All For the Best" ends atop the newly-finished World Trade Center.
The 1975 film Three Days of the Condor has CIA offices based in the World Trade Center.
The 1976 remake of King Kong has the giant ape climbing the World Trade Center, as opposed to the Empire State Building.
The 1978 blockbuster Superman: The Movie shows Superman and Lois Lane flying around Metropolis (which was filmed in New York) and passing by the twin towers numerous times. The towers would be seen as well in all Superman movie sequels.
The 1978 film adaptation of the musical The Wiz uses the twin towers as the location of "The Wiz" in the Emerald City, and a musical number was shot in the plaza between the two towers.
The 1979 film Meteor shows the twin towers hit by a meteor fragment.
In the 1981 film Escape from New York, the lead character lands a glider on the roof of the World Trade Center.
The 1983 film Trading Places includes an exteral shot of the towers (at the plaza level) where, presumably, the commodities trading floor featured in the climax of the film is located.
The 1988 film Working Girl features the Trade Center complex in its opening sequence moving from the Staten Island Ferry to Lower Manhattan. Advertising and promotional pieces for the film also used images of the World Trade Center heavily. The film itself is set in 7 World Trade Center.
The 1989 film Ghostbusters 2 features many New York cityscapes in which the WTC can be seen, including two very prominent shots. In one scene Dan Aykroyd's character Ray Stantz accidentally causes a blackout and the lights in all of New York City, including the WTC go out. Another notable shot is when Peter MacNicol's character Janosz Poha takes on the form of an old woman ghost and flies through the New York City skyline to steal a child as part of the chief villain's grand plan.
The 1989 film Back to the Future II features a view across New York harbour of the WTC towers in 2015 on the cable tv station "The Scenery Channel".
The 1990 film The Bonfire of the Vanities features an opening sequence following Bruce Willis through the basement of the World Trade Center Complex for nearly five minutes.
Macaulay Culkin visits the outdoor observation deck of the WTC and snaps a photograph of the view during a montage in the 1992 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
In the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros., the Twin Towers become the "Koopa Towers" in the film's parallel dimension, which is a dinosaur-laden Manhattan run by antagonist King Koopa (Dennis Hopper). One of the towers features a sharpened top and both are adorned with Koopa's signature "K" symbol.
The 1996 documentary Triumph of the Nerds features two shots of the World Trade Centers: one from the East River and one from a rooftop in Upper Manhattan
The 1997 made-for-television film Path to Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing chronicled the events leading up to and shortly after the 1993 attack.
The 1998 film Armageddon shows a scene where the twin towers are being hit by meteor fragments.
The 1998 disaster film Deep Impact shows the massive tidal wave that destroys Manhattan pushing the towers up against each other.
The 2000 film Little Nicky's poster and VHS/DVD covers show the World Trade Center in the background of Adam Sandler and Mr. Beefy (an English bulldog) sitting on a bench in Central Park.
The release of the movie Spider-Man was delayed until 2002 following the events of 9/11, so that shots of Spider-Man spinning a web between the two towers could be removed using computer-generated imagery.
The 2001 film American Pie 2 features Shannon Elizabeth's character, Nadia, calling Jason Biggs' character, Jim, from a pay phone in New York City, with the towers in the background. In reality, the scene was shot in Los Angeles and the towers were digitally inserted in post-production. The film was released in August of 2001.
In the 2001 Steven Spielberg film Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), the WTC towers are shown standing 2,000 years into the future after humanity has ceased to exist. This is noted to have been the last major film in which the towers were portrayed prior to their destruction on September 11, 2001.
The release of the 2001 Dave Barry comedy "Big Trouble" was delayed until 2 April 2002, since its major plot line involved a stolen nuclear warhead in the posession of a common criminal with delusions of grandeur.
The finale of the 2002 film Men in Black II was set to take place atop one of the WTC buildings. Due to the tragic fate of the towers, it was modified prior to release.
The end segments of the movie Vanilla Sky feature the Twin Towers still standing in the panoramic city background.
Martin Scorsese's 2002 film Gangs of New York, about life in New York's Five Points neighborhood in the 1860s, featured a ending sequence showing the city's skyline slowly progressing to its modern form. The final shot featured the World Trade Center restored to the skyline using computer-generated imagery.
The first 9/11 dramatization, 2002's Stairwell: Trapped In The World Trade Center, showed a number of different shots of the towers. The footage was shot in 1999 and was originally going to be used in a movie about the 1993 bombing. The movie, entitled Hellevator, was shelved after the September 11 attacks.
Action star Jackie Chan was scheduled to film a movie that featured him as a window-washer who worked on The Twin Towers, but was forced to delay the start of the picture due to the filming of Rush Hour 2, released in July 2001. Had Rush Hour 2 not been delayed, many believe Mr. Chan would have been filming the action/comedy, entitled Nosebleed, during the time of the attacks.
The towers are the focus of the last shot of Steven Spielberg's Munich (film). A period film ending in 1973, the towers' presence serve as a reminder that the troubles in the Middle East depicted in the film had not ended by 2001, when the WTC was destroyed, or by 2005, when the movie was released.

Television

There are several shots of the WTC in Friends over the first seven seasons (1994-2001).

The opening credits of the first three seasons of the HBO mob drama The Sopranos featured a shot of the World Trade Center as seen from the rear view mirror of Tony Soprano's SUV, as he enters the New Jersey Turnpike. In later seasons, after 9/11, the sequence was replaced with a new view of the Manhattan skyline in which the WTC is absent. Among the things Tony later discloses to his psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi as contributing to his depression is "this whole 9/11 thing".

Sex and the City, another HBO original series, also showed a quick shot of the World Trade Center in its opening credits (with the name of its lead actress, Sarah Jessica Parker). For seasons 5 and 6, shown after 9/11, the visual was changed to a stylized shot of the Empire State Building.

The pilot of the TV series The Lone Gunmen, first aired March 4, 2001, had the gunmen thwarting a plot to fly a jet into the World Trade Center. In the episode, a faction of the U.S. government is behind the plot; they hope to blame the attack on another country's dictator and use it as an excuse to start a war with him. Transcript of pilot episode

Cartoons

In the 1997 episode of The Simpsons (season 9) entitled The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson, Homer is forced to deal with a mountain of parking tickets issued while his car sat illegally for months in the plaza of the WTC. Particular comic relief is provided when Homer, desperately needing to use the restroom, pushes people out of his way to get a ticket to the elevator into the towers and after pushing other people out of the elevator line to get to the elevator to ride to top of the North Tower only to discover the only working bathroom is in the South Tower, which he took the elevator for. You can see this because when Homer is going up the towers you can clearly hear the elevator rising and dinging at the top of both towers. Also in the episode, two men in opposite towers begin arguing with each other, which was tipped off after one proclaimed, "Sorry, they put all the jerks in Tower One." A man apparently residing a few floors above the brawling men (as evidenced by a clothesline strung across the towers) finally yells at them to shut up.
In the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon the WTC often is seen. One of the most famous incidents in the series is the episode Enter: The Fly, which begins with the TMNT flying in their blimp over New York City, searching for Shredder. April O'Neil said that Shredder was seen on the roof on one of the two WTC buildings, and the TMNT find Shredder and Baxter Stockman there. However, Shredder and Baxter Stockman manage to escape.

Comic books

In the 1989 Damage Control, the twin towers were damaged when a giant robot fell on them. Damage Control, a construction company that specialized in repairing superhero-related damage, had the towers repaired (although visibly crooked) by the end of the issue.
The 2004 comic Ex Machina detailed the life of Mitchell Hundred, formerly the world's first and only superhero, who was elected mayor of New York City in the wake of his saving hundreds of lives during the collapse of the north tower, and in preventing the collapse of the south tower.

Computer and video games

The 1999 city building simulation game SimCity 3000 features the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center as free landmarks which could be built in a city. However, both towers are apparently portrayed as the South Tower: Each of the towers featured a rooftop observation deck, but lacked the massive antenna. As the 2003 sequel SimCity 4 no longer features the World Trade Center in the game, third party modders recreated the entire complex, including 3, 4, 5 and 6 WTC, for the game and released the lot to the public on 11 September, 2004 in Simtropolis, a SimCity 4 fan site.

The first map of the 2000 game Deus Ex, set in 2052, encompasses Liberty Island and a bombed Statue of Liberty. The section of the New York City skyline containing the Twin Towers is absent, to reduce memory requirements for the map. The reason that the developers gave, if anyone asked, was that they had been destroyed by terrorists. "We just said that the towers had been destroyed too. And this was way before 9-11. Years. That's kind of freaky."[1]

Shortly after the attacks, the now defunct Westwood Studios pulled all remaining copies of the 2000 real-time strategy game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, whose box contained artwork of New York City under attack by invading Soviet forces; notable buildings depicted under attack included the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. The single player campaign of the game also contains a pair of missions in which the player was instructed to destroy The Pentagon and capture the World Trade Center. Westwood retooled the box art before re-releasing the game.

In response to the tragic events of September 11th, Microsoft announced that future versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator would not include the Twin Towers in the game's New York City skyline. A patch was also made available to remove the WTC buildings from the existing versions of the simulator. More disturbing however was the speculation that the flight simulator found by the FBI on the laptop of the would-be 20th hijacker was indeed Microsoft's offering.