The Way Things Go aka Der Lauf der Dinge is a kinetic art piece displayed in a 16 mm film more so than it is an art film. There have been many things like it over the years but I would argue that most of the media that seems like it is inspired by it is more like a cousin to Der Lauf der Dinge and many people may not even know about the film, and were actually inspired by Rube Goldberg machines in children’s media prior to 1987. Rube Goldberg made comic diagrams of similar every day objects set up as kinetic machines from 1914 through the 1930s.
I say this as someone who was born in 1985 and grew up watching Sesame Street reruns, PeeWee’s Playhouse, and other kids’ programming. Rube Goldberg machines are more chaotic, less meditative than the Der Lauf der Dinge film, and have more of a punchline – the impracticality of setting up an entire machine to crack an egg, for instance.
So later music videos like OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” from 2010 and The Bravery’s “An Honest Mistake” from 2005 seem right in that 70’s and 80’s baby sweet spot.
Sesame Street had a recurring bit in the 1970s called “The Wonderful World of Rube Goldberg,” where they’d showcase real-life contraptions made from household junk, often narrated or framed for kids to marvel at. There were also animated shorts, like the one where a ball rolls through a crazy obstacle course to ring a bell, airing as early as the late ’60s or early ’70s. These predate Der Lauf der Dinge by over a decade and were explicitly tied to Goldberg’s name, keeping his legacy alive in pop culture. I think Der Lauf der Dinge was derived from these ideas being so popular after the PeeWee movie in 1985, with it releasing just two years later.