Further Reading

This is not a list of likes or fancies. It is an ongoing list of puddles that I've stuck my head in and come back out with a fish between my teeth.

Film

Beyond the Black Rainbow
Gnostic mysticism sci-fi with excellent liftable components

Holy Mountain
Alchemical mysticism. Not easily stolen from in full pieces, but the general tone is something worth learning from.

Legend
Serious but not po-faced fantasy that avoids the worst of Hollywood machismo. The bad guys are a highlight, excellent bog monster, and fairies age backwards, which is great.

Time Bandits
Good ideas. Giants with boat hats an especial treat.

Eraserhead
Tonal mostly. Encourages use of thick metaphor in obtuse and personal ways for a claustrophobic result. Another film that enforces a fear of people at a basic level.

A Field in England
It's a complete adventure.

Hard to be a God
Warhammer

Gozu
Things like the milk lady are worth it. Placement of extreme strangeness at liminal places.

Kill List
Oh, that ending. If you ever pulled that off in a game you would be a hero.

Princess Mononoke
God/not-god relationships

Krull
All of it, very liftable.

Labyrinth
These are the only sort of goblins that should exist.

Brasil
This is how government works. Bureaucratic confusion and the hopelessness of resistance.

Mulholland Drive
This could probably go for most Lynch films, but NPCs. He does great NPCs. Also consider taking 5 minutes out for a Spanish rendition of Crying Over You.

Borgman
Unique depiction of demons

TV

Twin Peaks
Tonal/NPCs. Pretty obvious if you've seen it. Worth stealing.

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Gnostic mysticism again.

Literature

Goblins of the Labyrinth
See Labyrinth above

Gormenghast
A master class of NPC and dungeon creation

On
World building ideas, war-pope, that goddamn jungle, and child eating.

Book of the New Sun
Confidence to be confusing. Impetus to make it have an underlying and satisfying sense.

Wizard/Knight
Cosmology and NPCs. Excellent fairies and giants.

The Great Mortality
Idiosyncratic telling of the plague. 

Blood Meridian
NPC pile

Dictionary of Mu
Setting communicated through very little

The Vorrh
Bakelite sex-androids, cyclops' that grow like goldfish.

Great Cities of the Ancient World (L. Sprague de Camp)

Classic of Mountains and Seas

The Island of Bali (Miguel Covarrubias)

Internet

Welcome to Pine Point

Strong sense of place and loss