Tackling Multi-person Games

In popular culture

Based on the 1998 book by Sylvia Nasar, the life story of game theorist and mathematician John Nash was turned into the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as Nash.
The 1959 military science fiction novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein mentioned "games theory" and "theory of games". In the 1997 film of the same name, the character Carl Jenkins referred to his military intelligence assignment as being assigned to "games and theory".
The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove satirizes game theoretic ideas about deterrence theory. For example, nuclear deterrence depends on the threat to retaliate catastrophically if a nuclear attack is detected. A game theorist might argue that such threats can fail to be credible, in the sense that they can lead to subgame imperfect equilibria. The movie takes this idea one step further, with the Soviet Union irrevocably committing to a catastrophic nuclear response without making the threat public.
The 1980s power pop band Game Theory was founded by singer/songwriter Scott Miller, who described the band's name as alluding to "the study of calculating the most appropriate action given an adversary ... to give yourself the minimum amount of failure".
Liar Game, a 2005 Japanese manga and 2007 television series, presents the main characters in each episode with a game or problem that is typically drawn from game theory, as demonstrated by the strategies applied by the characters.
The 1974 novel Spy Story by Len Deighton explores elements of game theory in regard to cold war army exercises.
The 2008 novel The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin explores the relationship between extraterrestrial life, humanity, and game theory.
The prime antagonist Joker in the movie The Dark Knight presents game theory concepts - notably the prisoner's dilemma in a scene where he asks passengers in two different ferries to bomb the other one to save their own.
In the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians, the female lead Rachel Chu is a professor of economics and game theory at New York University. At the beginning of the film she is seen in her NYU classroom playing a game of poker with her teaching assistant and wins the game by bluffing; then in the climax of the film, she plays a game of mahjong with her boy friend's disapproving mother Eleanor, losing the game to Eleanor on purpose but winning her approval as a result.
In the 2017 film Molly's Game, Brad who is inexperienced poker player, makes an irrational betting decision without realising and causes his opponent Harlan to deviate from his Nash Equilibrium strategy, resulting in a significant loss when Harlan loses the hand.