During the final concert of the 1977 In the Flesh tour in Montreal, Roger Waters became so irritated by a noisy group of fans that he spat on one of them. He later said he was shocked by his behaviour and described the relationship between band and audience as sado-masochistic. That night he talked with producer Bob Ezrin about wanting to build a wall between the band and the crowd, and the idea became the basis of a concept album about a man isolated by trauma, loss and authority. In 1978 Waters presented a 90-minute demo, Bricks in the Wall, and the band chose it over a more personal album that later became his solo debut. Financial problems followed after the band's financial planners lost money in high-risk ventures, leaving them facing high tax bills. Waters and Ezrin then shaped the story around a composite character named Pink, with Gilmour co-writing Comfortably Numb.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.