Upon re-watching the Metropolis 2000 DVD with the commentary track recently, I stumbled into something I felt was a not *huge* influence, but still a notable influence on Scenes from a Memory. And surprisingly, I searched and wasn't able to find any discussion pertaining to this on this forum, leading me to believe that this may not even be widely known among the most fanatical of DT fanatics.
During the commentary track when the band is playing "Beyond This Life", Mike Portnoy calls a certain section (it's the chorus I believe) the "Jesus Jones section". Of course, I had to investigate and find out more about Jesus Jones. The specific Jesus Jones song isn't mentioned, but it didn't take long for me to find it from listening to their best selling album 'Doubt' from 1991. If you're unfamiliar with Jesus Jones and their hit single "Right Here Right Now", you should be able to immediately recognize in the first verse alone the influence here on that part in BTL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MznHdJReoeoTo be honest, Jesus Jones is not at all my thing and I'm in no way trying to accuse DT of plagiarism or whatever. But I found too many examples of what I can only conclude as subconsciously being influenced by Jesus Jones - 'Doubt' for it to just be a coincidence.
The Beyond This Life chorus is the only example of where DT were musically influenced by JJ, at least that I could pinpoint. The real kicker is in the lyrics, which became quite apparent to me as I listened to the entire 'Doubt' album from start to finish (it's not a very good album, by the way lol).
Here's a few lyrics to track 2 "Who? Where? Why?":
[Chorus]
Who am I?
Where am I?
Why do I feel this way?
Where am I?
Why do I feel this way?
[Verse 1]
Have you ever felt that it's someone else
Living your life?
The image of you, only better, it's true
At the outside, at the outside
At the outside, at the outside
And here's track 8 "Welcome Back Victoria":
Welcome back Victoria
Since you've gone you know that no-one's really missed you
Welcome back Victoria
And now your friends watch over everything
That we-ee do
Welcome back Victoria
So the pendulum swings back
Welcome back Victoria
You went away, OK
We got a little slack
And once again you'll cover up
What you don't understand
Don't close your eyes
You can't hide behind your hands
It's obvious that the Victoria in question is referring to the Victorian era, not a woman named Victoria, but come on! Of all the names to pick for Victoria Page, this has to be what influenced that decision.
If reading the above lyrics didn't give you a sense of "strange deja vu" of many of the lyrical themes echoed on SfaM, I don't know what to tell you! My highly unverified guess is that Petrucci listened to this album a lot and in turn, a few ideas from it subconsciously influenced his own lyrical contributions and even musically in one case.