Tannhauser Gate: a fictional place symbolizing the finite nature and transience of any moment in life. The knight Tannhäuser in Richard Wagner's opera of the same name voluntarily waives ►immortality. The character in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, where the Tannhauser Gate is mentioned for the first time, does not have this choice. Nonetheless, the corresponding scene has had such a haunting effect that since then it has been circulated in films, books, computer games, and on internet pages. Blade Runner, a meditation on mortality, human identity, and free will, is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. "I've seen things you people would not believe.
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