I'm going to stick to written works.

J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Silmarillion
Robert E. Howard - Conan
H.P. Lovecraft
Neil Gaiman - Sandman
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
Alexander Dumas - The Three Musketeers
Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
Steven Brust - Vlad Taltos

Those would all definitely be on the list. I'll also toss out:

Michael Moorcock -Elric
Roger Zelazny - Nine Princes of Amber
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars
C.L. Moore - Jirel of Joiry
Clark Ashton Smith
George R.R. Martin - A Game of Thrones
Randall Garrett - Lord Darcy
Stephen King - The Dark Tower
Robert Asprin - Myth Conceptions
Jeff Smith - Bone
Frank Herbert - Dune
R.A. Salvatore - Dark Elf Trilogy
Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun

Things noticeably absent from this list would include J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, and Phillip Pullman. I enjoy their work immensely, but it doesn't have any significant impact on my vision of fantasy.

Cartoon:  Thundarr the Barbarian

Quote from: Narmer;722758Cartoon:  Thundarr the Barbarian

I wanted to put that in my list, but I think my like for Thundarr was a result not a cause.

I my case, talking about cartoons, it'd be Shagma (Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, to English-speakers). At times full-on Heavy Metal/70s-80s weird SF eurocomics vibe, yet kid-friendly (to varying degrees, a couple of the eps were fairly scary! ).

Quote from: The Ent;722385Now, this is a big ! moment for me, because I forgot one of my absolutely biggest "Appendix N" things ever back in my original post in this thread, in spite of having told myself "you HAVE TO remember to add this stuff".

Astrid Lindgren's fantasy novels.

Thanks for remembering! The Brothers Lionheart are a spiritual and a fantasy delight, and my first love was Ronja... The movies are brilliant as well.

I'm not nearly done with my own list, but this reminds me of another masterpiece of fantasy for young and old: Otfried Preussler's Krabat. The recent movie was merely OK, but the novel itself is up there with Lindgren's stuff. Highly recommended.

Quote from: Riordan;723025Thanks for remembering! The Brothers Lionheart are a spiritual and a fantasy delight, and my first love was Ronja... The movies are brilliant as well.

Happy to see I'm not alone!
(On TBP mentioning Lindgren's fantasy novels is always a great way to bond with the Swedepack...there's not quite as many Scandinavians here though)

I was a bit too young to actually crush on Ronja myself when reading (or rather having the book read to me, I was like 6 or something) But I enjoyed it lots.

I've stolen from both in D&D campaigns before (Brothers as "out of the way area brutalized by evil lord with secret superweapon [aka dragon]", Ronja more as in "seriously faerie tale-ish forests with lots of scary things in it for low level dudes to explore"). I believe I once made a kinda mashup of both + Mio (I made the evil lord undead - a vampire in this case). I'd do it again any time! :cool:

Quote from: RiordanI'm not nearly done with my own list, but this reminds me of another masterpiece of fantasy for young and old: Otfried Preussler's Krabat. The recent movie was merely OK, but the novel itself is up there with Lindgren's stuff. Highly recommended.

Thanks! I'll check it out!

I haven't seen this yet, so I'll name it as an early key influence:

Urshurak by the Brothers Hildebrandt.

Boy-howdy, it's not very good, but in the relatively empty scene of late 1970s/early 1980s fantasy (speaking as someone who lived several mountains away from a Waldenbooks as a kid), it had a massive effect on how I envisioned D&D.