the Empire State Building

In popular culture

Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the building is in the 1933 film King Kong, in which the title character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors but falls to his death. In 1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was placed on the actual building. In 2005, a remake of King Kong was released, set in 1930s New York City, including a final showdown between Kong and bi-planes atop a greatly detailed Empire State Building. (The 1976 remake of King Kong was set in then-modern times and held its climactic scene on the towers of the World Trade Center.)

Andy Warhol's 1964 silent film Empire is one continuous, eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building at night, shot in black-and-white. In 2004, the National Film Registry deemed its cultural significance worthy of preservation in the Library of Congress.

In the 1981 movie, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, the building is destroyed in the Nostradamus nuclear attack.

The film Independence Day features the Empire State Building as ground zero for an alien attack; it is devastated by the aliens' primary weapon which incinerates most of New York City.

English progressive rock band Pink Floyd launched the U.S. release of their double live album, P*U*L*S*E*, with a laser light show beaming from the top of the Empire State Building in June 1995.

In the Latin American literary classic Empire of Dreams (Yale, 1994) by Giannina Braschi, the top of the Empire State Building is taken over by shepherds who dance and sing, "Now we do whatever we please. Whatever we please. Whatever we damn well please."

The Empire State Building featured in the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Chase, in which the TARDIS lands on the roof of the building; The Doctor and his companions leave quite quickly, however, because The Daleks are close behind them. A Dalek is also seen on the roof of the building while it interrogated a human. In 2007, Doctor Who episodes "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" also featured the building, which the Daleks are constructing to use as a lightning conductor. Russell T Davies said in an article that "in his mind", the Daleks remembered the building from their last visit.

The Discovery Channel show MythBusters tested the "urban myth" which claims that if one drops a penny off the top of the Empire State Building, it could kill someone or put a crater in the pavement. The outcome was that, by the time the penny hits the ground, it is going roughly 65 miles per hour (105 km/h) (terminal velocity for an object of its mass and shape), which is not fast enough to inflict lethal injury or put a crater into the pavement.[citation needed] The urban legend is a joke in the 2003 musical Avenue Q, where a character waiting atop the building for a rendezvous tosses a penny over the side—only to hit her rival.

The Empire State Building serves as the setting for the last scene and one of the main themes in the movie Sleepless in Seattle.

Many other movies that feature the Empire State Building are listed on the building's own website.[52]

H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, written in the form of a history book published in the far future, includes the following passage: "Up to quite recently Lower New York has been the most old-fashioned city in the world, unique in its gloomy antiquity. The last of the ancient skyscrapers, the Empire State Building, is even now under demolition in C.E. 2106!". [53]

In the Science Fiction novel The Rebel of Rhada by Robert Cham Gilman (Alfred Coppel), taking place at a decayed galactic empire of the far future, New York in an ancient city which was destroyed and rebuilt countless times. Its highest and most ancient building, covered with piled-up ruins up to half its height, is known simply as "The Empire Tower", but is obviously the Empire State Building.

In Godzilla: The Animated Series, Godzilla is shown sitting on the top of the Empire State Building in the show's main title sequence.

The Empire State Building is featured prominently as both a setting and integral plot device throughout much of Michael Chabon's 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

In the Percy Jackson book series, Mount Olympus is located over the Empire State Building, and there is a special elevator in the building to the "600th floor," which is supposed to be Olympus.