Was the Philadelphia Projects imagery of crew members fused with the bulkhead borrowed or original?

This imagery is so startling that it seems very original or unobvious. Maybe it was something that had already been described in a different disaster. Perhaps the author of this idea borrowed from accidents with concrete pouring where just a limb might be exposed if someone fell in unnoticed.

But, it just seems bizarre to invent this concept, so bizarre that it tends to lend suspicion of truth to the story, and persist in the zeitgeist.