Rothenburg has appeared in several films, notably fantasies. It was the inspiration for the village in the 1940 Walt Disney movie Pinocchio. It was also the location for the Vulgarian village scenes in the 1968 family movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Also, this place has become a popular tourist destination for Japanese because of the animated film "Sugar a little snow fairy", where the main character lives in Rothenburg. It is sometimes mistaken as the town at the end of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971); that town was N�rdlingen. The town served as a loose basis for the fictional town of Lebensbaum (Life Tree) in the video game Shadow of Memories (Shadow of Destiny in American markets). Pictures of the town were used in some parts of "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm", and in the trailer for the film the camera seems to fly over the town from the direction of the valley towards the Town Hall. A plaque can be seen on the rebuilt town wall to commemorate this. Filming was also done in Rothenburg for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows � Part 1 (2010) and Part 2 (2011).
Rothenburg is the primary location for Elizabeth Peters's mystery novel, Borrower of the Night (1973) which involves the search for a missing Tilman Riemenschneider sculpture. The town also featured as the location in the Belgian comic book La Fronti�re de la vie (The Frontier of Life, 1977) and it inspired the look of the town in the Japanese manga and anime series A Little Snow Fairy Sugar (2001).
Rothenburg's famous street Kobolzeller Steige and Spitalgasse is depicted on the cover of two Blackmore's Night albums, 1999's Under a Violet Moon and their 2006 album Winter Carols
