Iron Lung received a notable surge in popularity in June 2023 following the disappearance and implosion of the Titan submersible with five people on-board. Some have compared certain aspects of the game to the circumstances of those on-board the Titan, namely the inability to open the submersible from the inside. The game's creator, David Szymanski, expressed discomfort over this through a series of tweets, the first of which included a weekly sales chart from Steam with the words "This feels so wrong." He then remarked: