First of all welcome to the board and thanks for such an informative post!
I also found the influence of Giger in Niheis works quite striking, but i haven't seen the schacht-series yet, now i wonder who copied whom..
also, when i saw this one particular picture
http://heeen.de/pics/blame/staircase.jpg
i was remembered of escher's works also because of the strange perspective.
oh
wow
holy shit
i swear i have seen this picture from that bellmer page
http://ebanjohnson.com/BELLMER/m198218940006.jpg
on the cover of a book in ghost in the shell 2:innocence...
i'll have to check that.
by the way, the androids in ghost in the shell look quite familiar to those bellmer dolls, before they get their skin coating on.

Indeed, the strange use of perspective in some parts of Blame! makes me always think of Escher.

I haven't read GOITS 2, only the first volume, but I have to agree with you, the androids of Shirow are really similar to Bellmer's dolls. I think Bellmer created the perfect image of an artificial living being with those expressionless dolls. It's no wonder we're seeing it popping out everywhere...

But I think Nihei has got it just right, the way he uses bellmer's and giger's images is damn perfect! In fact, his Silicon Life creatures look like they were made by Giger himself! I wonder if Giger knows Blame!, it would be nice to know what he thinks of it, eheh.

from ghost in the shell 2: innocence, at minute 25

there is an part in blame (I'll find the page number when i get home) It's after Cibo and Killy get through to the next level above the capital, the level where they encounter toha heavy industries. they come across a barely living entity that is accessed by the governing agency (or maybe it was once a member) that warns them that the safeguard are approaching. this thing that warns them looks extremely similiar to the dead alien pilot they encounter on the downed spacecraft in alien. it's almost like its an intentional homage to giger.

In this image there's a reptile thing climbimg up a wall, the first thing that came to my head when I saw this was the Builder in vol9 that is with Cibo. It really looks like a reptile.
Also, there is a description on animenfo.com that says this:
"In a shutdown area, thousands of levels overlap each other, you couldn't tell the sky from the ground and you couldn't tell which way is up or which way is down."

Very interesting, indeed.

I drew the connection between I, Robot and the safeguards myself, in fact. And I've forgotten the name, but there's a polish artist whose style is similiar to that of Nihei's. Maybe you've already mentioned him, but it was years ago I saw some of his works.

Either way, no-one thinks that the guys in Half-Life 2 looks alot like the ones in Biomega? Err... I can't recall the names right now (haven't played HL2 and I don't have the BioMega-chapters on my laptop), but look for yourself.

whoah! nice... I was not aware of Zdzislaw Beksinski before...
thanx for pointing out

about Hans Bellmer i'm not too sure.. Nihei isn't realy using the crippled/mutated kind of dolls and if you are resembling to the faces and
joints they look like the older and regular doll-making technique


dolls are scary... especialy the ceramic ones and googling for 'doll' is kinda harrasing :p

My parents had the big Necromonicon by H.R.Giger so i grew up with his art
so i felt quite at home with Nihei's work :p

I registered just because i discovered this photo by Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico which i think was used in Abara:

I noticed a definite steal (in my mind)

The gun is the WR09HL SPIRIT laser gun from armored core. I didn't notice until I saw this picture, then double checked the game, and found that it looks exactly like a gbe made into a rifle

to bad they didnt steal some good design for the clothing to :p

well, there isn't supposed to be clothing in armored core. In fact, people have nothing to do with the game. This is just a picture someone drew of an anime girl WITH armored core parts on her. Honestly, it was the only pic I could find that showed the gun :/