What Kind of World is This? is not a retelling of Dante’s Inferno, exactly; rather, the two-part multimedia project — a concept album and a full-length feature film — serves as a "metamorphosed rebuke” of today’s world. Check it: the story follows a hero who transitions from a wistful reflection at home to a state of untimely possession by a nefarious prophet, eventually descending into a dark, fiery hell. Fair.

This lineage from engineering study to technical illustration eventually reached Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Space Station V serves as the cinematic successor to the Wohnrad. The film's rotating station follows the exact design logic Potočnik established: a wheel-shaped structure spinning to provide gravity for passengers, complete with observation decks and labs.

Playing The Blue Danube while seated backwards; tormenting a page-turner by tugging on a tie; spending an absurd amount of time adjusting the bench before playing a note — all of these routines worked because he treated trivial actions with the seriousness usually reserved for a difficult passage, allowing classical decorum itself to become comic material.