- In a Sunday Strip of Peanuts from the 1980s, Lucy has a ganglion on the back of her hand. Linus suggests hitting it with a Bible, but Lucy gives him a copy of A Tale of Two Cities instead.
- The last lines of the novel are read out during Batman's eulogy in The Dark Knight Rises.
- A Simple Wish: "Two Cities" is the musical whose production forms much of the plot. It's a takeoff on Les Misérables.
- Bewilderment: During the neural activity recording session, Theo is told to feel Admiration. He thinks about Sydney Carton, among other people.
- The Carton Chronicles by Keith Laidler begins where A Tale of Two Cities ends. After escaping the guillotine at the literal last minute, Carton — the narrator, this time — embarks on a Flashman-esque series of adventures in Revolutionary France.
- This was adapted by Wishbone in the episode "A Tale of Two Sitters." Rather perplexingly, Darnay was played by Wishbone, while Sydney Carton wasn't. What timeline a human could be mistaken for a dog is anyone's guess.
Music
- Styx's Paradise Theater has the song "The Best of Times": "The headlines read: These are the worst of times, and I do believe it's true."
- Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel has a copy of this book in the hotel's library, forming part of a Numerological Motif puzzle (the other books have numbers in their titles too, like Three Musketeers and Slaughterhouse Five) where you arrange the books to unlock an exit.
- In Rotten Tomatoes' editorial
for the Game of Thrones series finale, several reviews praising it were grouped under the header "It Was the Best of Finales…" and several reviews panning it were grouped under the header "It Was the Worst of Finales".
- It gets a Literary Allusion Title in the Oscar's Orchestra episode "A Tale Of Two Tells".
- The Simpsons:
- "A Tale of Two Springfields" is a Literary Allusion Title.
- In "Last Exit to Springfield", Mr. Burns shows Homer his thousand Monkeys on a Typewriter who are writing him the greatest novel ever written. He scolds one of them after typing "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times."
