World of Darkness inspired Media

VtM: Los Angeles by Night (1994) – The book that started it all.

V:tM – Bloodlines (2004) – The game that many enjoyed and remember.

Chinatown (1974) – The best cinematic take on L.A.’s early ‘Water Wars’ and the real blood that was shed in the process.

Entourage (2004) – could easily represent a young Ventrue and Toreador ‘coterie’ in the early 00’s with a little imagination

Swingers (1996) – A movie which White Wolf writers have endlessly referred to as their inspiration for vampiric nightlife.

Drive (2011) – The movie on this list with the closest feel to and sound of our L.A.

Escape from LA (1996) – A very goofy yet iconic example of the exaggerated views that the rest of the country has of L.A.

The Lost Boys (1987) – A famous classic which inspired the original L.A By Night.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) – It is (technically) set in San Francisco, yet was a direct inspiration to how White Wolf chose to portray L.A.’s Chinatown in Bloodlines and in L.A. By Night.

Boyz N The Hood (1991) – Perfectly captures the culture in which many of L.A.’s Anarchs were born into and Embraced from during the 80s and 90s.

The Long Goodbye (1973) – A brutal look at Hollywood in the 1970s: “a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in a selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance.”

Less Than Zero (1987) – Brilliantly evocative of the hedonism and nihilism of L.A’s decadent nightlife.

Point Break (1991) – A faintly amusing glimpse of the surfer culture and lifestyle that many of L.A’s Anarchs were born into and Embraced from during the 80s and 90s. Bodhi’s crew could have represented a tight knit pack or coterie.

Tribes of Palos Verdes (2017) – The tribal nature of territorial surfers touches certain WoD chords. See Point Break (1991) as well.

Mulholland Drive (2001) – Most everything David Lynch has touched comes very near the World of Darkness with its surreal night life.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – The original World of Darkness movie – LA Noir tropes clash with a sinister government conspiracy and a whiff of the supernatural.

Blade Runner (1982) – A direct inspiration that White Wolf has gone back to time and again, set in an increasingly less futuristic L.A.

The Big Lebowski (1998) – Especially the sense of being surrounded by increasingly bizarre and obscure, competitive factions L.A. Confidential (1997) – The best cinematic example of a World of Darkness-esque take on post-war 1950s Los Angeles.

Heat (1995) – Perhaps the best L.A. ‘heist’ movie ever made.

Training Day (2001) – The best cinematic representation of how the police tend to operate in our WoD version of L.A.

Collateral (2004) – The seemingly endless night and otherworldly streets is very approximate to our WoD-inspired L.A.

Michael Clayton (2007) – The last great legal thriller to ever come out of Hollywood. The corrupt agricultural chemical company in this movie could easily substitute for any Pentex subsidiary.

Margin Call (2011) – Set in New York, yet still a fantastic example of Ventrue boardroom power politics.

True Detective Season 2 (2015) – A bloody detective mystery revolving around the corruption where Los Angeles business and politics intersect, inspired by the real life scandal of Vernon. More procedural police dramas like ‘The Shield‘, ‘S.W.A.T‘ and ‘Power‘ are also worth a look for the light they shine on the L.A underworld, such as the Armenian or Korean mobs.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) – An irreverent WoD-esque take on slightly skewed, alternative Hollywood history.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020) – A supernatural crime thriller set in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Barry (2018) – Barry’s seemingly unlimited capacity for violence which separates him from the L.A. denizens around him, and which must be kept carefully hidden, is amusingly proximate to the Masquerade.

The Neon Demon (2016) – A little known movie which captures the horror of World of Darkness’ L.A. better than any other.

Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021) – About as close to a World of Darkness-themed tale (supernatural horror, retro-gothic nightscapes and queasy power imbalances) set in Los Angeles as it’s possible to get.