9 Famous Storylines That Hollywood Stole From Anime

8. The Matrix (Ghost In The Shell)

Unlike the obvious narrative similarities present between Inception and Paprika, the relationship between The Matrix series and Ghost In The Shell extends beyond a singular, similar plot device. In fact, the two films in question here share very little in terms of narrative, but the ideas and themes behind both are so similar in nature, that you'll wonder how there wasn't some kind of lawsuit filed against the Wachowski Bros. Ghost In The Shell takes place in a 21st century Japan where human enhancement has become so extreme that the line between being human and being a robot is so blurred that even the thickest spectacles wouldn't make the metaphorical line any clearer. The series focuses around a cyber-terrorism prevention unit and their efforts to prevent total manipulation of humans that have enhanced themselves with implants. By the time of the series' beginning, people are able to completely replace their flesh and bone with prosthetic limbs, cybernetic implants and even cyber brains - enabling them to connect directly to a digital network that runs throughout the entire city in which they live. Because of this surge in technology, hackers are able to compromise those with cybernetic brains, completely bending them to their will.

In The Matrix, the human race still left in the real world has been almost completely subjugated by the sentient machines that they created, fearing for their lives and hiding below the surface of Earth. With no sun to draw solar power from, the machines devise a method of 'growing' humans so as to use them as an energy source. Okay, so that premise doesn't sound particularly similar to Ghost In The Shell, but when you start talking about how humans can plug themselves into the Matrix - the computer-generated "dream world" that the machines created to placate the human subconscious - then you start to realise how similar The Matrix is to Ghost In The Shell. Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and all of the other characters from The Matrix series are all people that have been freed from a false reality that has been pulled over their eyes to blind them from the truth, and the film continually asks us to consider what it means to be human. Not only that, but humans that plug themselves into the Matrix are essentially hackers forcing their way into a false reality, just like the cyborgs do in Ghost In The Shell.